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Victor Grue was a curious sort. The kind who drew perplexed looks from those he walked by or did business with.
He didn’t seem to care for other people, but not in the way that he resented them. Some thought he was perpetually distracted. Sometimes he looked anxious, like he was always expecting someone, when really he was fixated on the seamstress’ window display across the street as he waited for his order at the butcher shop and as soon as he was free Victor would go and get a better look at the display. Not that he intended to buy anything from them, just that he needed to write down what he saw to the precise accurate detail.
Some thought of Victor as a master multitasker, for he would often be seen walking along the pavement, pocketbook in hand and obsessively writing down every odd and distinct detail he could spot.
In a large city like London one was bound to meet a few odd ducks like Victor, so the adults would just let him be in spite of their concern for him.
The children, however, found him to be a hilarious diversion, like someone throwing their voice while drinking water, except he did it so casually. Even the now industrious Beryl had to take in the spectacle and tail him to see him at work, walking and writing at the same time while avoiding all passersby with succession.
However Victor didn’t account for that one turn around the corner.
Victor was violently jolted out of his musings over the worn-for-wear state of the baker’s old shop sign as he collided with another, the sound of a walking stick clattering against the pavement.
“Oh, heavens! I’m so sorry!”
“No, no. It was my fault,” Victor replied, straightening his spectacles.
The man that Victor had bumped into was a tall and thin fellow, about fifteen to twenty years his senior.
“That was very careless of me,” Victor continued as he went for the man’s walking stick. “Normally I’m—”
Before he could pick up the walking stick his hand was given a sudden thorough inspection from the nose of a middle-aged mastiff, who then excitedly licked Victor’s hand declaring him good people.
Victor recoiled in general disgust to the feel of dog drool and scrambled to look for his kerchief.
“Prudence, please,” said the man. “Now is not the time for such pleasantries.” He picked up his own walking stick and said to Victor, “My apologies for her behavior, sir. She can get a bit too enthusiastic when making a new friend.”
“Is that so…?” Victor didn’t even look him in the eye responding to him. He found his handkerchief and calmly wiped the canine saliva away. It was sufficient enough until he could find a wash basin.
Putting the cloth back in his pocket he let out a frustrated sigh as he saw his written musings left unfinished mid-sentence, having lost his creative train of thought, and now his pencil was lost to the crevices of the cobblestone street.
“Please, excuse me.” Still without looking him in the eye, Victor went on his way. He could still make it home to finish writing that sentence if he was quick enough.
Now it was Ebenezer Scrooge’s turn to give Victor Grue a perplexed look.
Prudence whined in shame, fearing it was her fault. But her master reassured that it wasn’t with a loving scratch behind the ears.
A spot of yellow caught Scrooge’s eye and lying on the ground was a small scrap of paper just centimeters away from a puddle in the pavement’s cracks. Rescuing it from being drenched and illegible Scrooge guessed it must have been from the younger man’s little pocketbook, for it was covered in writing from front to back in a hand that was rushed but still readable.
Such a curious cause for such a collision.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was a few days later that Victor Grue had to pay a visit to the money-lenders’ office.
The plaque at the door had been recently installed and now read “Scrooge and Cratchit,” but Victor hadn’t the time to write about its newly-minted sheen.
“Excuse me?” Victor beckoned as he stepped inside, most unfamiliar with etiquette in such situations.
A young red-haired fellow behind a desk was already assisting a thin old woman.
“I can help you,” a voice further back called him over and Victor followed.
He had come asking for a loan as his publisher was late with his payment, and he hadn’t recognized the older man who sat behind the desk. He hadn’t even noticed the mastiff asleep in her bed.
“I promise usually never happens and I shall pay you back in full.”
“It’s not a problem.” Scrooge gave him the money he needed, and paused at his desk. “There is one thing, however.” He reached into his bottom drawer. “I don’t suppose this belongs to you.”
Between his fingers he presented the missing page from Victor’s pocket book, a wry smile on Scrooge’s face.
Victor flushed, snatching it from his hand. “How did you get that?! I—” It finally occurred to him that this man, Ebenezer Scrooge, was the one he literally bumped into the other day.
Victor took the stance of a cornered animal. “You haven’t read any of it, have you?”
“Why? Is there something incriminating I should know about?” Scrooge teased.
“No, I just—” Victor’s eyes darted about the room. “It was unfinished, all right.”
“Well, Mr. Wordsmith, I’ll have to ask you to write a bit more for me,” Scrooge instructed, tapping his finger on the agreement Victor needed to sign.
Victor signed and left the money-lenders’ absolutely mortified. He had just wanted to get a much-needed errand done; he didn’t plan for such an embarrassment, regardless of how few people witnessed it. Even if Scrooge and the mastiff were the only witnesses present, it was humiliation to him.
Prudence turned to her master with a disapproving grunt. She had just woken up to the end of that encounter.
“What?” Scrooge defended. “I was just teasing. I didn’t think he’d take it so hard.” However as he resumed his checking of the books he resolved that the next time he saw Victor he had best apologize for upsetting him so.
Scrooge had indeed examined what Victor had written on that little leaflet, as it had been in his possession for a few days and he was only curious. There really wasn’t anything incriminating or improper to speak of. Mostly hastily-scrawled observations of the city all run together.
However there was one note that Scrooge found eerily apt. How posters and leaflets left unattended and aged were inevitably swept away by the wind and danced about in such a haunting manner that in London they had come to replace the falling autumn leaves.
Scrooge thumbed at the pages of his ledger pensively.
Haunting…
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
A few days later Scrooge had almost completely forgotten that odd encounter with the eccentric author.
Until one afternoon when on his way to work he stopped for his newspaper.
His eyes wandered along the selection of periodicals when he paused, and zeroed in on a small but bold “V.” For “Victor Grue.”
Jacketed in green paper and cradled in between adverts for tonics and apothecary needs was the fourth chapter in a twenty-part story called “The Marks on the Tree.”
That curious Mr. Grue was a writer. Scrooge purchased one for the price of a shilling. It would at least make for an interesting curiosity to be thumbed through in between client visitations.
As the day wore on and the customers became scarce, Scrooge set his pen and ledgers aside and retrieved the green-jacketed book.
A tale in the first-person. A man named Alexander Rudge alone in his vast, empty household with only his memories of loss and regret for company. Weighed down in his wingback before a dying flame in the hearth by unseen shackles of heartbreak and hopelessness, yet too numb to weep. And the voices of the past wailing through the window and the chimney stack, while the deathly faces of loved ones past emerged from their framed portraits.
Scrooge exhaled cautiously as if hiding and not wanting to be found out with his pulse rising in his throat. It was all too familiar, too reminiscent of that one cold Christmas Eve he had been haunted by his late friend Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas three.
How could he have known…? How could this Victor Grue be so apt in describing his own hauntings…?
The sound of a dog’s concerned whine jolted him from his near-panicked daze.
He looked aside and Prudence tilted her head with a second whine, sensing the fear in her master’s being.
Scrooge scratched her head in thanks for her consideration, and glanced again at the book’s printed word.
Surely it’s a coincidence, he thought. A most fertile imagination. He slapped the booklet shut for now. This Victor Grue is more of a wordsmith than he led on.
He leaned his elbows on his desk with a heavy sigh. He couldn’t deny that Victor Grue had an uncanny understanding of what a haunting is like.
Scrooge furrowed his brow, and looked back at Prudence again. “You don’t suppose… he too…?” But Scrooge then shook his head with a scoff. “How ridiculous.”
Regardless, he resolved that he should inquire Mr. Grue about it the next time he met with him.
Even if Victor Grue had no run-ins with spirits of his own, it was a small curiosity that Ebenezer Scrooge could not let go.