A Christmas Carol II--Contagion Page 13
Felicity understood that he needed to feel safe, but for her own part wanted only to feel the snow under her feet and have a look at the local environs, to get the evil sights of the previous night out of her mind by walking through the wide bright fields that surrounded the great house. It seemed she could see for miles, just from the front lawn. She knew that the horrors of the last day would be with her for years, would probably never be truly vanquished, but in this moment the natural beauty of her surroundings, the architectural grandeur of the house and grounds were like she had not seen before, and her luck at having escaped all combined to cause a feeling of miraculous deliverance and pure, natural happiness.
And now she saw people coming over the fields towards her. They had seen the balloon, and were coming to see if there were survivors, or if they could help. From the woods half a mile away she saw them come one by one, and she felt happier still.
‘Hello!’ she called out, even though she knew they wouldn’t be able to hear her. ‘Hello!’ She waved out of sheer joy to see other humans, and waved, and waved. A few seconds later she noticed they were not yet much closer. They didn’t seem to be running. She turned and trotted back to the house.
‘Some people are coming to help us!’ she called up to Scrooge on the battlements above. ‘Can you see them?’
He didn’t answer her at first, but disappeared from view. He came back a few seconds later, and laid out another half-dozen guns from under his arm, over the edge of the battlements. ‘To help us,’ he said. ‘Humbug. Humbug, my dear.’
‘Mr Scrooge?’ she asked, and turned back to look at the locals who had wandered out of the forest. It was curious that they still didn’t seem to be much closer, and quite a few of those she could make out seemed to walk with limps.
‘Come inside, my dear,’ he said, not looking at her, but out over the fields, ‘and fetch yourself a gun. Merry Christmas. We’ve got a fine morning’s killing to do.’ She had already disappeared inside the servant’s entrance by the time he finished his sentence, and he was left alone, cocking gun after gun, and holding one of the rifles up to his shoulder to see if the first one of them was yet within range. He smiled as a thought occurred to him, of a phrase he had once heard used in earnestness, and which now rang nasty and hollow, and without thinking he voiced his own version of it.
‘God save us,’ he said quietly, maintaining his aim dead straight across the fields. He laughed in that mean low chuckle that had not been heard by anyone for many years. ‘God save us, every one.’
Patrick Jackson is an artist and illustrator whose work has been exhibited in the Britain, the United States and France.
www.jackson-art.com
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First edition 2011
ISBN: 978–1–84358–509–1
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© Text copyright Bruno Vincent, 2011
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