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A Midsummers' Carol - Part Three
by Clint Driftwood

Read the story from the beginning

This Dickens parody was the winner in the prose section of our Summer Parodies competition, and was originally contributed to the Fantasy Archers topic on The Archers .

Aldridge turned the heavy key and locked the office door for the night. Pocketing the key he turned and made for The Bull public house. As he went on his journey people who saw him coming towards them crossed the street to avoid him. Aldridge saw that they did this; he did not give a care. He had no wish to meet them. He considered the majority of mankind to be weak, shallow creatures that wasted time and money on frivolity.

In his book love was the greatest frivolity of all, the greatest weakness, and usually counted for the largest expenditure in the accountings of a fool. A man must put profit above all else to succeed in life. Love is compensation, a luxury affordable to the poor because they can lose nothing of value by failure in it. For if a rich man were to invest in love it could only end in ruination. A businessman, indeed any man of substance, must resist the temptation at all times.

Aldridge considered this as he ate a frugal meal in the public bar of The Bull. Having finished his meal he retired to his usual easy chair and perused the dayÂ’s newspapers. He sat alone, mostly in silence, only grumbling a "Bah" or a "Humbug" when he read something with which he disagreed. The regulars, well acquainted with AldridgeÂ’s habits afforded him a wide berth.

No one ever used ‘Aldridge’s Throne,’ that being the title given by the locals to his easy chair. If a stranger, unknowingly made to sit upon it they were hastily warned against the manoeuvre by regulars, who would then proceed to regale the hapless person with tales of its usual incumbent’s misdeeds, both true and fanciful, though however incredible they may have seemed to the uninformed, they were mostly true.

Sid brought Aldridge a whisky when he judged his glass was near empty: Sid knew from bitter experience the wrath he would incur if there were not a drink set before him at all times. Sid could not bar Aldridge from his establishment, in fact he was forced to charge him reduced prices and extend credit to him.
Aldridge had had the foresight to lend Sid a considerable sum of money: at what Aldridge considered to be by his part, a very agreeable rate of interest, when Sid was having cash flow problems. No other lender would offer Sid Perks the time of day at that time. As yet the debt was far from being repaid.
Aldridge would rather Jolene than Sid served him. But Sid knowing Jolene to hate the old lecher to distraction, and she being liable to speak her mind at the least provocation, had, as much for her sake, as for the sake of civility in general, put her to work in The Bull Upstairs.

At length the pub became busy. People who were on their way to Midsummer’s Eve festivities, called in for a ‘quick one,’ to start the evening off. Many turned the one into two, or even three as they chanced to meet a friend or acquaintance who would argue that they should let them buy the other ‘one for the road,’ or ‘one for old times' sake’ for propriety to be seen to be done.
During the time Aldridge was dining at The Bull, the sky had turned from azure to a glowing blotting paper pink as the sun began to set. As she continued her majestic journey and dipped below the horizon, the deep blue ink stain of night began to saturate heaven's page, cascading slowly from above.

A white inkwell of a moon became visible, casting her pale silver grey light, bringing near equality of tones, to where her celestial sister in her brilliance had brought contrast and vivid colour, just a few hours earlier.

This was the near monotone landscape that Aldridge stepped into when he left The Bull late that midsummerÂ’s eve. Streetlamps lit his way for a short while, but as he left the village he had only the wan light of the moon for his guide.

As Aldridge neared the huge sprawling pile that was his home, it seemed to him to loom up out of the surroundings. As if dark mists rose from the earth into the night and gained solid geometric form as he approached. Its very being there had turned what had once been a place of natural beauty into a veritable eyesore. All in the locality, except for Aldridge, considered Midsummer Mansion to be a gigantic blackhead upon the fair face of Ambridge and avoided it at all costs.

It had once belonged to his former partner Crawford; in fact he had built it and Aldridge had inherited it on CrawfordÂ’s death; the latter having no living relations made Aldridge the sole beneficiary to his estate. Aldridge felt a sense of pride as he remembered how easily Crawford had duped the dull witted David Archer into selling the parcel of land to him for next to a nothing on the pretext that he wanted it for horses. Then when the deal was done he proceeded to build a period style mansion on it, much to ArcherÂ’s and many of the local inhabitants' dismay and AldridgeÂ’s delight at his partnerÂ’s duplicity in the matter.

Yes! indeed it was truly a masterful 'bit of business', thought Aldridge, but then Crawford had been masterful concerning all his business affairs. He had a keen eye for a law or loophole he could exploit in his favour. If David Archer had paid as much attention to his business as he did to breeding with that dreary wife of his, he may have spotted the deception. But that was then and now is now, the master is long dead, the pupil is worse off financially, but wiser and richer in the ways of the world.

Seven years of neglect had given the property a desolate and eerie appearance that was multiplied twofold after nightfall. Instead of the magnificent building and grounds to which Crawford had aspired, in AldridgeÂ’s care it had taken on the guise of an insane asylum, more so, a picture of Bedlam taken from a nightmare of one of its more disturbed inmates.

There was no external lighting and the walls were overgrown with a thick matt of feral clematis that reflected not as much a one single moonbeam, it was as if it drank in the moonlight and fed upon its beauty to maintain its own sickly condition. An outdoor swimming pool lay stinking, covered in a foul smelling slime; except for a small, dark, oily patch where a drowned sheepÂ’s carcass was slowly decomposing. This gave the whole area the stench of decay and death.

Aldridge picked his way in the near darkness along what had once been a splendid block-paved drive. Now it was bramble-strewn and potholed, a ankle breaker and head bruiser to any but him. He knew his way blindfolded; some nights he had imbibed to the extent he may as well have been.

Arriving at his front door he took from his pocket his latchkey and made to insert it in the keyhole. As he did so he espied the large ornate lion's head doorknocker, then in the very next instant he was looking into the face of the long departed Crawford, which had taken residence where the knocker should have been. Thinking his senses to be tricked, he shut his eyes, but upon opening them the face was still there. It seemed to be lit from inside by some unearthly light, then just as quickly as it came it dissolved and became once again the familiar lion's head knocker. Aldridge shook his head to clear his wits then muttered "Humbug" and let himself indoors.

He reached out and picked up a candle, then took a lighter from his waistcoat and lit it. He did not use electricity; he deemed it an unnecessary extravagance. Ascending the Italian marble staircase, he decided that it had been a combination of a particularly fine single malt and recent talk of his late partner that had caused his hallucination at the front door.

Read Part Four - and the first visitation

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