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Marley was dead, to begin with.
It had been a swift end, a pesky, irritating cough followed by an evening wherein the gentleman went to bed and the spirit walked in the morning. And what followed were ages and days, seconds and eternities, for spirits do not experience time as the living do.
Jacob Marley did not know how long he had been dead, and it would have done him no good to know. For while his body was relieved of pains and hungers, his soul knew the miseries of the misers.
Everywhere he wandered, spirited across oceans by unseen hands, blown about by the breath of the unforgiving winds to lands he had never imagined. Everywhere he went, his chains rattled behind him, dragging the lock boxes weighted down with riches. Here was his money where it could do no good, as useless as hands that passed through those he wished to comfort and embrace. Here were reminders from a great power: for you were My eyes and you looked away, for you were My hands and you grasped, for you were My lips and you spoke lies.
He wandered alongside the other rich ghosts who, like him, could only witness the despair they could have alleviated in life. They never spoke to one another, for they could not stand the sight of their own peers. It was a loathsome and lonely experience, but an earned one, a merciful one, in a way. For to think of himself as he was, Jacob could only feel disgust and terror. In death he was given wisdom, wisdom he could not share but held dear nonetheless. If the spirit does not hold tenderness in life, let it ponder tenderness in death.
No. There had been one tenderness in his life, one he had smothered out of fear. It had been his own, a feeling towards his partner of…was it warmth? Desire? He and Scrooge had understood each other as well as two men of business could, and together they built up the firm of Scrooge and Marley as their pride and their legacy.
It was because of this pride that Marley kept that desire to himself, for it was of an improper nature. He was never one to care for the moral complications of such a relation, but knew it could bring them both financial ruin if he were to act and Scrooge was to reciprocate. There were laws, and Marley was careful to operate within the laws. And if Scrooge did not reciprocate, it would kill a partnership for the ages.
Had it been love? Was it possible for someone like Scrooge, as Marley had known him, to inspire love? Had Marley been capable of love, or could he only covet?
Bah, a covetous desire. He nurtured a covetous desire all right, for that which filled his counting boxes and forged his iron chains. Coin, coin which could not love back, cold and dead. Coin which said, I escaped the poor houses of my birth, clawed my way out and shall never fall back in again. Coin that said, I am better than those who linger and languish in poverty. Coin that lied.
He used coin to fill his heart, and now coin weighed it down, tiny bits of metal jingling in the cavity of his chest.
Only once a year was he allowed to return to his old counting-house in London. On Christmas Eve, for it was the night of his death, and a time when the veil between the living and the dead grew thin as spider silk. Every year he watched Scrooge grow older and richer, colder and more distant from the world. He saw the spiritual chains around him grow and grow, like enormous serpents coiled to strike. It was a faint comfort that Scrooge lived in Marley’s old property, that he ate well enough and kept himself just well enough in his dimly-lit home to avoid illness. For Marley knew Scrooge was destined to join him in the end, and wept for him. Illogical as it seemed to weep and mourn for one living who had grown so cruel, Marley and his fellow spirits grieved all they had harmed and all who would harm alongside them.
Marley could not save Scrooge, any more than he could feed the starving mothers or comfort the children shivering in the bitter cold.
For spirits, words and thoughts blend together. Something heard him as he wept for Scrooge one night, one Christmas Eve night, and something answered.
“You cannot save him,” the spirit whispered into his ear. “But…”
Marley raised his head, still bound by the ragged cloth meant to soothe his sore temples before he died. Before him was a Spirit so faint and so thin it twisted in his ghostly breath. It looked like a spider, snow-white and no bigger than Marley’s thumb.
“I am the Spirit of the Unmourned. I visit those who die unknown and forgotten, and I comfort them. You have seen me before, Jacob Marley.”
And Marley had, the tiny Spirit resting on the foreheads of the lost souls at the times of their deaths. It sang gentle dirges for the kind and the cruel alike.
The Spirit had no head to turn, but it drifted ever so close to the window of Scrooge’s counting office. “When he passes, if the future goes unchanged, I shall rest upon his brow and give him my blessings before he is cast out to wander. But…”
The Spirit waited, and Marley found he had to use his voice to speak, rusty and weak as it was. “You speak of an alternative for him? But you say I cannot help him?”
“You cannot. But you can give him the chance to help himself, one last chance. For you are not among my domain, Jacob Marley. Ebenezer Scrooge was your sole mourner.”
Marley groaned, his chains rattling around him. “He did not mourn me. No one mourned the one who claimed their homes and cut their salaries. He mourned the loss of a good businessman,” and he said the last part with the derision it deserved.
“He mourned Jacob Marley, whatever Jacob Marley was in life. It was a faint thought, a mild passing regret, but there is still power in such things.”
Power in a mild, passing regret? How strange the spirit world was to Marley, even these many (ten? Two? A hundred?) years. “What power does it hold? How can it save his wretched soul?”
“It is your power, Jacob Marley. If you wish it, the spirits will call to him. It can only happen once, and he must choose as he will. Do you have faith in his ability to choose, Marley? To change?”
Faith? If he still felt any tenderness towards Scrooge, as he did, could he extend faith to such a fallen man? Would Marley himself have listened if a spirit tried to open his eyes? Could souls of their kind change?
“He will listen. He must listen. To them. To me.”
“To you,” the Spirit echoed. “Know this. You may appear to him to warn him. After that, no matter the result, you will never again see him while he lives.”
“…And I will not know if he was saved?”
“Not while he lives. The magic requires sacrifice. It is a rare and powerful thing, to save a soul.”
So there would be no more visits to the old counting house. No more watching Scrooge’s heart harden or melt, his life wither or bloom. Marley would continue to wander, alone. Alone, if he succeeded.
“Let it be so. If I am granted one last chance to make a change in one life, let it be this.”
The Spirit vanished, and in his ears Marley heard the whispers of three more spirits, the likes of which he had not known in life. He knew, then, what he was to do. He lurched towards Scrooge’s home, and felt himself transformed into something as fearsome as he was pitiful.
And he spoke with Scrooge one last time.
Years and seconds and days passed, time just as fluid and oily as ever. Marley wandered, and witnessed, as was his duty. His heart bled coins and his wrists chafed under his endless chains. He glimpsed pasts and futures, lands distant and impossible. He could return to London, but never again the counting house, which was hidden behind a veil of fog. He watched the lives of so many he could not reach, and lived in ignorance of the one he had known.
So it went on until one Christmas Eve, when the winds blew him back to London and the invisible hands set him in front of an old, familiar building.
It was no longer the darkened, nearly empty thing it had been, the offices refurbished into homes bustling with the holiday. All the rooms were alight but one, the one he knew best, for it was where Scrooge had lived. Here only a single candle burned.
And here he heard the voices of the gatherings. They were mourning a loss and yet rejoicing in his life, for they said he had been a great man in his later years, generous and vivacious. He had brought joy to all who crossed his path. He was prone to spontaneous laughter and singing, bubbly as a child. A young man named Tim led a toast in his honor, reminding all that while they could weep at his loss, it was the old man’s wish that they keep merry at Christmas and hold joy in their hearts for the still-living.
And then Marley felt a hand on his shoulder. A warm hand, a sensation so unfamiliar he barley recognized it. He turned around in astonishment to behold Scrooge, smiling as he never had in life. A golden blaze seemed to burn within his heart, and Marley winced away, so used was he to the cold of death.
“Now, Marley, old friend! What kind of greeting is that? Here I finally make it to the other side, and on Christmas Eve of all nights! Oh, I tried to make it through one more Christmas Day, I did, but even the merriest heart needs a rest I suppose.”
Marley fell to his knees before Scrooge’s spirit, unable to find speech, only for Scrooge to pull him back to his feet as if Marley’s chains were light as air. Then he grabbed Marley and embraced him, his laughter like bells. It was a beautiful laugh, one Marley never heard of the living Scrooge.
“Well, I just had to thank you. I never got to thank you, you know! I thought every year maybe you’d come by to visit, but I suppose you couldn’t. Oh, Marley, you changed me! No, I suppose I changed me, but you thought I could! You thought I could and you knew I could! And now there’s so much I want to tell you, so much I’ve seen and done since then. It wasn’t too late for me!”
Marley’s hands trembled, and finally he spoke. “Then you have been saved. I am glad, I am so glad…but then, why come to me? I can only walk among sorrow. You are free.”
“Free, yes! Quite free, to go where I want and do what I want, and what I want is to spend more time with you! There’s so much I never asked about you, Marley, so much I didn’t know about you. And I want to tell you about the Cratchits, and how well Tiny Tim is getting along-can hardly call him Tiny now, can I? And how Martha is getting on with her new beau, and how wonderful my nephew and his wife are.”
“…you want to walk alongside me?”
“Yes! Yes, old fool, old friend, of course I want to walk alongside you! Come, come a little closer, you’re chilly as a hearse. I suppose I should be too, but I feel warm as a volcano! Bubbly as a stew! I’ll miss all my loved ones in life, of course, but I can see them whenever I want. Come, come, take my hand.”
And Marley stood, slowly but surely, and took Scrooge’s hand. And he basked in Scrooge’s joyous laughter until he himself remembered how to laugh along with him. And as Scrooge joined him in his wanderings, Marley thought he felt a link of chain slowly melt away.