Carol for Another Christmas by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page A

you?” she asked. “I mean, didn’t he send you here?”
    â€œI’m as puzzled about how I came to be here as you yourself seem to be, my—Miss Banks—but I believe we have sorted it out. Very well—ahem—” He cleared his throat and attempted to sound properly somber and spectrally authoritative. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Follow me.”
    â€œWhat if you’re all there is?”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œYou got four. You said so. It says so in every stupid Christmas play and TV takeoff you see. Three ghosts, plus the prequel. Christmases Past, Present, and Future, and Marley. So how come I only get you and Doug? Downsizing?”
    â€œI’m not sure. Since I didn’t know of your brother’s visit, it is unlikely I would know about other specters that are to appear to you.”
    â€œThis gets more reassuring all the time. You know what I think? I think you’re another bad dream. I’m so tired and stressed- out, I’ve fallen asleep again, and you’re my follow-up nightmare. A little something to waste my time when I have a job to do. Either that or you, Doug, the whole thing is a really clever computer virus: a little piece of techno-sabotage dreamed up by my competitors. Now, fess up, you pixilated refugee from a Disney movie. What is it you want with me, exactly, other than to ruin everything my brother and I have struggled to build here at Databanks and cost thousands of people their jobs?”
    â€œSurely you know that already since you appear to be familiar with the, er, procedure. I believe I must be here simply to, er, ensure that you have—that you appreciate, that is—that you help others to have—a merry Christmas.”
    â€œOh, yeah?”
    â€œI believe so, yes.”
    â€œWell, in your own words, then, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ ”
    At that point, two separate things happened. One was that red and green lights flashed on and off in front of Scrooge’s eyes, and when he opened them, he was standing in front of three portals. Two of these were tightly closed with red lights above their thresholds but the third, and nearest, was marked by a button glowing green that bore the legend Christmas Past .
    The second thing that happened, and he realized this only when the lights stopped flashing, was that Monica Banks now stood beside him, her feet lost in mist and her face looking as if, well, as if she’d seen a ghost.

Nine

    Where the door had been there was now a Christmas tree, a large, fresh one, strung with popcorn and cranberries and gilded pinecones.
    A man held a little girl up to the top of the tree, where she was placing an angel with a plastic and tinsel halo.
    â€œAngie!” Monica squealed in a voice much younger than her current one. “It’s Angie! Our Christmas angel. I used to put her up there every year. Mama and I strung all that popcorn and all those berries and she helped me dip the cones for the tree, too. And Daddy took us over on the ferry boat to the other side of the water and way out into the forest, where a friend of his worked for one of the timber companies, so we could cut our tree every year.”
    Piles and piles of presents sat under the tree, most of them wrapped in paper to please the heart of a child, paper with Santas and elves and snowmen and kittens, paper with reindeer and Christmas trees, little drummer boys and partridges in pear trees, paper with stars and angels and ornaments and candy canes, paper with gingerbread men and bells and holly sprigs and teddy bears. “Can’t I open just one now?” the little girl asked.
    â€œYou know better than that, princess,” her father said. “We have to wait until we get back from Grandma’s for the ones under the tree, and then you have to go to sleep so Santa can bring you his gift and fill your stocking.”
    The father bundled the little girl into her red velvet