Christmas Stalkings Read online

  “Nothing,” Joyce’s shade said. “It will continue to function...when we have finished reading the Wake.”

  “You’ve stopped time!”

  “A providential side consequence of the curse,” he said, a slight smile at the corners of his mouth, “so we can’t be interrupted.”

  “But I’ll be in my eighties by the time we get through this thing!” I sputtered.

  “It’s nothing I would not ask of any of my readers, especially my ‘enormous fans’,” he added as his smile broadened into a wolfish grin.

  At that moment, a cold chill shook my entire frame. Along with the comprehension of the fiendish plot I had fallen into. I also remembered another famous quotation attributed to the living Joyce: “The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.”

  “You tricked me!” I said.

  “You haven’t spent seven decades in limbo,” he replied coolly.

  “This deal is off.”

  “Our deal is only over when you finish reading the Wake,” Joyce’s shade said, making himself more comfortable on the couch. “Come, sir, we have at least another five hundred pages to enjoy.”

  He had me foxed. I could think of no way to extricate myself.

  “Merm,” Roxie said from where he lay on the floor. During our reading session, he had amused himself by batting his paws at the heap of books that had shared the shopping bag with the Wake.

  “Not now, animal,” I said, in my misery.

  “Marmerrmar,” the cat replied. My eyes fell upon him and how he was flicking through what should have been a Penguin edition of Martin Chuzzlewit.

  Only its pages were as blank as a newly purchased journal. Odd. Wait a sec...that coffee table book of classic Hollywood movies is also open, and its pages are blank, too.

  I grabbed other books from the pile: each of them had nothing but blank pages.

  “What did you do to my books?” I demanded of Joyce’s shade.

  “I read them all. Or something like that,” he replied. “Then I had to find a space for them to fit in this copy of the Wake. I didn’t finish that task until this evening. Now, if we are to start again from the beginning...”

  It was at that moment our eyes locked and Joyce’s shade knew this jig was up.

  “Time to get back in your bottle, genie-us,” I said, grabbing an armful of books from a nearby chair and throwing them into the shopping bag.

  “Traitor!” Joyce’s shade cried.

  “You should have stopped after Ulysses,” I said, slamming shut the cover of the Wake like a prison cell door and blithely tossing it into the shopping bag.

  As soon as it made contact with the jumble of books, Joyce’s shade gave an inhuman shriek, with a charming Irish lilt, and quickly dissolved into a pus-green cloud of smoke that funnelled itself into the shopping bag. I speedily piled as many books as I could on top of it.

  Joyce read St. Augustine and Dante, but he had a compulsion to read everything; dime novels, city street gazettes, old racing papers, anything that could enhance his own work. I knew as long as I fed him a steady diet of books, I could keep his spirit, and our pact, at bay.

  And so it was for Christmas and the New Year and to February when, for his birthday on the second, I gave him some Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. That quieted him almost until June 15, Bloomsday, the day on which Ulysses is set. By then I was shovelling in anything I could find: the Cape Breton telephone directory, some Sears’ catalogues, pamphlets on avoiding sexually transmitted diseases. On occasion, when murmurs of revolt came from the shopping bag, I simply waved something from the collected works of Dan Brown and the smell of it shut him up real quick.

  But this was only a temporary reprieve. I had to get Joyce’s shade and his print prison out of the apartment.

  I always said if I think long and hard about something, eventually the obvious will occur to me.

  So a couple of weeks ago on the first Saturday in December, I brought the haunted copy of the Wake to the five-dollar-a-bag day ending the latest McConnell fundraising book sale. I am gratified to see many of you who attended that last day of the sale are in attendance at tonight’s performance.

  In fact, it may even have been your recklessly unattended bag into which I slipped the cursed copy of the Wake. In the bustle and frenzy of the sale, even I had trouble remembering in whose bag I secreted the great book.

  No matter. Christmas Eve is nigh and no doubt it will become clear into whose possession I passed my treasure.

  But I have generously given you all the information you need to survive your encounter with Joyce’s shade. Or, you could prove yourself the world’s greatest Joyce reader.

  Either way, make sure to get your own damn cat.

  To everybody else, I wish a happy and Joyce-less Christmas.

  Author Notes

  At the first Gaudy Night reading at the McConnell, I was a very entertained audience member. The second year, Todd Pettigrew, the event’s organiser, asked me, as the Cape Breton Regional Library’s Storyteller in Residence, to read one of Davies’ stories which I happily agreed to do. After that event he brought up the idea that we should compose our own tales—to which I remember answering with a confident, “Yes?”

  In both stories I eventually contributed, I made the deliberate decision to incorporate actual events and services I had used at the McConnell.

  The haunted copy of Finnegans Wake (the story contains much of the actuality of my James Joyce fanboy devotion) came from the highly anticipated and enthusiastically attended twice-yearly book sale at the McConnell. Knowing that a sizable portion of my audience would have attended it, I decided to include them in the story. Did they unknowingly take home a haunted book? Nah-ha-ha-ha!

  The Ghost who came to Visit for a Spell

  Todd Pettigrew

  Last year at this time, I told you the story of my singular encounter with the ghost of Robertson Davies and how I had promised that majestic spectre that this year would feature new stories along the same lines. At the time, standing as I was with that formidable spirit, the prospect of meeting ghosts seemed not at all implausible. If you had asked me, I would have confidently predicted a veritable parade of apparitions in the coming months, all providing me with material for no end of tales, of yarns. Perhaps even a ballad or two.

  But the new year came without the hint of a ghost. No phantom threatened my Valentine’s Day. Easter came without anyone rising from the dead. Well, no one recently, I mean. And so the year went. Summer passed without paranormal incident and autumn was mellow and fruitful, not hellish and spook-filled.

  And so, as the snows of December started to swirl, a chilling thought came upon me. What if I remain entirely unhaunted? Shall I have to stoop to inventing a story? Davies would never have done such a thing! The thought was more terrifying than any ghost could ever have been.

  But the thought had scarcely taken up residence in my mind when an event occurred that nearly made me wish such contrivance had been necessary.

  It was a cold night—for, as you know, the weather has been uncharacteristically harsh this Yuletide, and I was grading exam papers at my dining room table as is my normal custom at this time of year. This was a particularly uninspired batch of tests and so the red ink flowed almost as freely as the invective and craft beer. I had just put my favourite Christmas CD—Barenaked for the Holdiays—in the player and started those jaunty tunes going, when out of the corner of my eye, I spied a boy, perhaps eleven or twelve, standing in the room with me.

  I knew him at once to be a ghost. Not only did he exhibit a tell-tale translucence, but his clothes were not of this era. His entire demeanor placed him, to my untrained eye, almost a century in the past. He appeared dirty and thin, but generally in good health. Dead, obviously, but besides that, in fine form. And there was something familiar in his posture, as though I had seen other children standing just as he was now.

  Now, I should have been polite. Not only
was he a child, and a guest of a kind, but he was also the ghost I had been hoping for nearly a year, would arrive. But as you will recall, I was up to my neck in amateur analysis of poetry and in a bad mood.

  “And what do you want?” I asked, my voice surly.

  “I’m ready for my first word,” he replied calmly.

  This took me aback. “What word?”

  “The first word I am to spell.”

  It took me a moment, but my exam-addled brain cleared and I deduced what he was looking for.

  At this point I must explain to those who don't know me that among my many tasks as a professor of English, I am sometimes called upon to serve as an official at spelling bees. In fact, I am something of a celebrity in the fast-paced world of competitive orthography.

  “You’ve come to spell words,” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied, “and I intend to win.”

  “Well, you’ve come too early,” I said. “The Nova Scotia spelling bee is still two months away. You’ll have to come back then.”

  “I’m ready now,” he insisted. “My first word, please."

  “Oh very well,” I said. And just to make him feel like he was doing well, I gave him an easy one.

  “Jeopardy.”

  “You need the bell,” he intoned brightly.

  “The bell?”

  “In case I get one wrong. You have to ring the bell.”

  There are, I would imagine, only a handful people in this world who can put their hands on a spelling bee bell at a moment’s notice. I happen to be one of them. I obliged. His pessimism over the expectation that I might need the bell was heartening, and I began to imagine how this little adventure would play out. I would give him a word or two, he would misspell soon enough, I would hit the dreaded bell and he would be free to continue his long overdue journey to the next world.

  With said bell installed on my dining table, the ghost seemed satisfied.

  “Would you repeat the word, please?”

  “Jeopardy,” I said again.

  He smiled and gave the correct spelling without so much as a shaking hand or troubled brow. “Next word.”

  “Psalm,” I said, hoping to trip him up with the silent P. But he rattled it off without error. I should have been looking to extend his visit, but having no children of my own, I sometimes find young people unnerving, and I had forgotten how intimidating it can be to stand in the presence of disembodied souls. In a word, I was restless. It was time to turn up the lexicographical heat.

  “Pulchritude,” I said, expecting him to at least be given pause. He was not. My mind searched for harder and harder words. “Harridan,” I tried next. No dice. This was getting serious.

  “Hypobulia,” I intoned, knowing this was a champion speller’s word.

  He didn’t miss a beat.

  Hamadryad. Syzygy. Weimaraner. He spelled them all flawlessly.

  “How do you know so many words?” I finally cried out— losing for the first time the professional decorum that has earned me so much regard among spelling bee judges.

  “I have been studying for nearly a century,” he said proudly. “Beneath this very spot, in fact.”

  “Beneath?” I stammered.

  And then multiple realizations dawned at once. My house, as is common in Glace Bay where I live, sits atop long abandoned mine shafts. And I also recalled from a visit to my local miner’s museum that the old mines used to employ young boys to open and close doors for ventilation.

  Enticing the lad into conversation—a welcome relief from spelling—I eventually learned that my young visitor was just such a boy as my tour guides had spoken of. From what I could gather, he had been an exceedingly bright child in school, but when his father broke his leg in a man-rake accident, the boy, whose name was Jeremiah, as it happened, agreed to go underground to assure the family at least a meager income while his father was laid up. His mother, saddened at the prospect of her precocious son’s studies being choked off in this way, secured for him the only book that she could find that she knew to be suitable for learning. A tattered old Webster's dictionary she found at a flea market. It was his present for the Christmas of 1924.

  “You learn all dem words,” his mother told Jeremiah, “and then you kin make up any other book you want.”

  Jeremiah lasted all of two weeks in the pit before the cave in. He died, even as thousands of other children were preparing for the first ever Scripps National Spelling Bee.

  But while his body lay beneath the earth like so many others, his soul persevered. And he remained there year after year, decade upon decade, studying his dictionary, learning every word there was to learn. Until by whatever turning of whatever cosmic wheels bring mortal men and immortal spirits together, he had come to me. Come to show what he had learned. Come to do his mother proud.

  I gave him his next word. And a word after that. And another.

  And so it went for hours.

  I grew increasingly desperate. With no other competitors, there was no way for Jeremiah to win. But with his superhuman knowledge of the dictionary, there was no way for him to lose. He simply knew every word there was.

  Then a thought occurred. He knew every word there was. In 1924. Jeremiah’s dictionary would have stopped before 1924, and so I only needed to give him a word from later than that period and he would be stumped.

  It shouldn’t be too hard, I thought. New words come into the language every day. Though fatigue had worn me down, I knew I must rally. I took a deep breath and was about to resume.

  Looking into Jeremiah’s dark, hopeful eyes, I felt bad for what I was about to do. To dash a centuries worth of hopes, that for which he had worked his whole life—well afterlife, technically—to achieve seemed cruel.

  “Come on, you round old fool,” said the child impatiently, “get on with it.”

  Suddenly my plan seemed less cruel.

  “Airplane,” I said

  To my surprise, the boy chuckled, and spelled A E R O P L A N E. I cursed inwardly. My word was not quite modern enough. His spelling was a bit archaic, but I had to accept it nevertheless.

  But I took comfort. My plan was still sound. I just needed a thoroughly modern word.

  “Podcast,” I said.

  For the first time that evening I saw a flicker of discomfort pass over the young man’s ghostly countenance.

  “Definition?” he said for the first time.

  “An electronic recording made freely available via the Internet,” I said with a smile.

  He looked away as his mind pored over the P section of the old dictionary that he had laboriously stored in his... brain? In any case, he paused, looked back at me and I saw his eyes narrow. He had realized what I was doing and clearly thought it to be foul play, but he also knew there was nothing he could do about it.

  With a sigh of determination, not despair, he fell back on the oldest trick in the spelling bee book. He spelled it as it sounded.

  “P O D C A S T.”

  By Dickens’ ghost! I thought. I will never be rid of this spirit. I pictured an eternity of Jeremiah following me around while I repeated every word in the language over and over until my own death released me. The prospect was nothing short of a living hell.

  But no, I was not to be so easily defeated by this pint-sized poltergeist. There were plenty of modern words. Surely one would trip him up.

  Overkill. A simple compound of words an infant could spell. RADAR—too phonetic. Even petrichor—the smell in the air shortly after it begins to rain—he deduced from its Greek roots.

  The fire had burned low, my brain had grown tired, and even the Barenaked Ladies had finished their final chorus of the Dreidel song. But I needed words! Dreidel? No. Compact disc? No. Some component perhaps—maybe, could he?—I had to try.

  Somehow, deep in my soul I knew this was my last hope. If Jeremiah spelled this word correctly, I knew I would be haunted by him forever.

  I took another long inhalation. And I pronounced the fateful word.<
br />
  “Laser.”

  Jeremiah stared at me intently. Somewhere in his encyclopedic mind, a warning flag was going up. He knew it might not be as easy as it sounded. He asked all the questions —origin, definition, part of speech, if I could repeat the word? A flicker of optimism lit within me. I had seen this before. He was stalling. And yet, he hadn’t missed yet.

  Finally he took the plunge and began.

  “L A...”

  He paused as I have heard so many before him do when they come to a tricky spot. The fateful letter—what was it?

  “Z E R,” he finished.

  Relief flooded my soul as I reached out and rang the bell. It was over. Jeremiah was out. However, my relief quickly made way for a modicum of sorrow as I saw the disappointment in the boy’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you’ll have to go now. Don’t worry. I’m sure you’re headed to a better place.”

  “Yes,” he returned, stoically, wiping a teary drop of ectoplasm from his eye. “Perhaps you could direct me?”

  “Direct you?” I said, astounded. “I’m afraid that’s not really my area.”

  “You, a professor of literature? Surely you know where I can find a library?

  “A library?”

  “Yes, you’ve made me realize how many new words I must learn in order to compete next year. I must get to a library and learn as much as I can before next year’s competition. Where is the nearest one located?”

  My friends, I wish I could say that I directed him to the Glace Bay branch of the library not far from where I live, or to the university library where I work. But the truth is that I wanted some distance between me and this ghost, and so I gave him the name of a more...central facility. I mention this only so that you will be prepared when you are browsing the stacks in the coming months.

  As for entertaining Jeremiah next year, with time to reflect since the incident, I now believe I hit upon a way to deal with that particular difficulty. For having been born in the year 1912, he will exceed the maximum age requirement by a considerable number of years, and will, sadly, have to be disqualified.