Travers was dead to begin with. There is no doubt that Travers was dead. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. He had died inside the Council Headquarters, a forbidding, dark building whose dank corridors and draughty rooms Travers had loved far more than any human being.
Now the man who had assumed Travers’ role and title, sat writing in an office that would have been pleasant had its occupant allowed for even the merest trace of personality to colour its walls or fill its shelves. Rupert Giles came here to work and the room held no interest for him beyond its function. This office was located on the top floor of the new Council Headquarters, as modern and airy as its predecessor had been antiquated and oppressive.
Another man, of much younger years ran along the corridor, calling out cheerful greetings to the throng of people crammed into the offices that lined it. For on this special afternoon work had been abandoned, doors were flung open, desks had been cleared of books and laptops and instead were pressed into use as extra seats or somewhere to rest a glass of wine or plate of food. Eight different stereos were playing entirely separate songs appropriate to the season creating a pleasing cacophony of comforting sentiments, ‘joy to the world’ ‘peace on Earth’ ‘unto us a child is born’.
The young man stopped outside the door at the end of the corridor, which had been firmly closed against the happy babble of the impromptu party. He knocked, hastily removed the crown of tinsel he‘d been sporting, smoothed down his hair and entered a room that was barely warmer than the grey streets it looked out on, and remained the only one in the entire organization not to be festooned with the brightly coloured, gaudy, plastic fripperies that cost so little and yet the sight of which can raise the spirits further than anything valued at ten thousand times the price.
‘Bugger me, it’s freezing in here,’ observed the young man, adding as an afterthought a respectful. ‘Sir.’
‘Thank you, Fred. I had noticed. It would seem that the thermostat is broken.’
Giles continued to write, paying no heed to his visitor, who remained standing, his ebullient mood briefly deflated by the austerity of his surroundings and the grim, unsmiling face of his boss.
‘It’s about tomorrow. We were wondering if you’d…’
‘I can’t help but think that everyone would be wise to stop drinking,’ mused Giles. ‘Early morning lectures are enough of a struggle without the entire class being hung-over.’
‘But tomorrow’s Christmas!’ Blurted out Fred with the passion of one who feels twice as alive at this most fantastical time of year
Giles put down his pen and looked up at the trainee Watcher. Fixing him with a green-eyed gaze as cold and unforgiving as the grave.
‘And what difference does that make?’
‘You can’t expect us all to be here. Not on Christmas Day.’
There was a pause, the muted sounds of the party bubbled up from under the door, but it seemed to Fred that it may as well have been a hundred miles instead of a few metres away.
‘What I expect is for people to execute their duties, with efficiency, intelligence and promptness,’ Giles removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘However it seems that all three of those have been abandoned for today and no doubt will be tomorrow. So I’ll cancel tomorrow’s schedule, be here all the earlier the next morning.’
Fred felt as if he would explode with relief. ‘Oh I will, sir! We all will! Thank you, sir!’
Impulsively he stepped forward and shook Giles’ hand.
‘Merry Christmas, Sir!’
This was said with such honest joy and heart-felt sincerity that Giles had to look away.
The door slammed as the young man bounded out triumphantly to yell out the good news and be rewarded with a cheer. Giles listened for a few moments, then put his glasses back on and picked up his pen.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he said softly.
********************
The fog and the darkness had thickened when Giles came to leave Council Headquarters and join the teeming throng of people keen to return to their loved ones, snuggled in the warmth of houses full of decorations, cards and the tantalizing promise of surprise and wonder embodied by fat piles of presents under the tree, their secrets hidden behind layers of shining paper.
Tonight the streets were full of chatter, the usual silence and selfish hurry replaced by good-natured banter and amongst those who were full of not just Christmas spirit, but also the alcoholic kind, spontaneous, raucous carol singing kept breaking out. No one called out to Giles, no one’s face lit up as they saw him approach, even the Big Issue seller on the corner of Muscovy Street gave the tall black coated figure a swift glance and decided not to waste his breath.
Colder and colder, a piercing, searching, biting cold that gnawed and mumbled upon long healed fractures and aching joints as bones are gnawed by dogs. Giles reached his front door, pausing to pull forth keys from his pocket. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Giles had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in this place. Let it also be borne in mind that Giles had not bestowed one
thought on Travers for a great many days. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Giles, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change--not the old-fashioned shining brass, but Travers’ face.
To say that Giles was not startled would be untrue, however the apparition lasted for little more than the blinking of an eye and Giles had in his lifetime been witness to horror and violence beyond the imagination of most men. So it was with a firm hand that he turned the key and with a sure foot that he climbed the winding, creaking stairs to his flat.
It was warm inside, though almost as impersonal as his office. At least the demands of his profession and the many files and books it accumulated created some disorder, Giles chose to live in an environment of almost obsessive neatness. The most tangible clue that someone lived here was a framed photograph of four smiling people, one a teenager the other three a few years older, wedged together in a tangle of limbs and hair so that they would all fit into the shot. The photograph stood on a shelf and Giles spent more time looking at it than he would ever be aware of.
He had forgotten to buy any food, and so sat at the kitchen counter trying to convince his body that a crust of bread, a sliver of cheese and a rather elderly apple was a sufficient meal for someone who’d also forgotten to eat lunch. Giles poured himself a drink, but was unable to settle, seized as he was by a sense of inexplicable dread. Though he chastised himself for being irrational, he paced from room to room checking that windows were shut, drawers closed, and that everything was as it should be. He descended the stairs and pulled at the heavy front door to convince himself that it was locked, finally he stood in the centre of his lounge thoroughly unnerved, ears straining to hear an intruder whose presence he could already feel, but the only sound was the ticking of the clock.
Giles forced himself to sit down, as he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest storey of the building. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first the bell began to swing. Faster and faster swung the bell, louder and louder rose its metallic chime until it seemed that it must surely shatter from the supernatural force being exerted upon it. The front door below, that Giles knew to be locked and securely bolted slammed and heavy footsteps could be heard charging up the stairs their speed, deafening sound and rhythm proclaiming that nothing of human origin was approaching.
Giles jumped to his feet, determined to confront his foe standing. Suddenly all noise ceased and a much gentler tread was heard, softly, slowly crossing the hall until Giles could see a shadow and then a man stood in the doorway.
‘Good evening, Rupert,’ said Travers affably.
*******************
The ice rattled against the side of the glass held in Giles’ hand.
‘I’d drink that,’ encouraged Travers. ‘You look as if you’re about to pass out.’
Giles downed his Scotch in one and stared at the phantom stood before him. For there could be no mistaking Travers as anything other than a creature not of this Earth. Giles felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of its waistcoat and hair, yet he could also see straight through it.
‘What do you want with me?’
‘Much,’ intoned the phantom with severity. ‘But you don’t believe in me.’
Composure regained, Giles shook his head.
‘No, no I don’t,’ he said slowly vocalising his thoughts as they came to him. ‘Too much work…not eating…can’t sleep. You’re a product of a tired mind.’
He gestured towards the impassive ghost with his glass.
‘There’s more of Glenfiddich than the grave about you.’
Travers gave a fearful cry and to Giles’ horror leapt forward and gripped his arm with terrible strength. With his free hand Travers rolled up his sleeve to reveal not flesh and bone, but fire. Hot, dancing, wicked flames that slinked, rippled and flowed over Giles. Laughing Travers dug his fingers deeper into Giles’ arm as he desperately tried to escape from the heat, the pain and the nauseating smell of his own burning flesh. At last Travers let go, and instantly all was well again. Giles sank to his knees in shock, Travers grabbed the front of his shirt and bent down so that his face was inches from Giles’ own.
‘Those flames I fuelled in my lifetime, wasted as it was. I treated Slayers as if they were merely weapons not humans. I cared only for the higher purpose of The Council and nothing of the souls that peopled it. I allowed Wet Works to run riot and commit deeds of such foulness in the Council’s name that even now I cannot give words to them. I am damned, tormented and lost. I had my chance and squandered it, it is not too late for you.’
‘Me?’
Travers stepped back.
‘You are building your own fire, Rupert. Continue as you are and you shall share in my fate.’
‘I’m doing my duty.’
‘Your duty is to mankind!’ Thundered Travers. ‘And you are failing. Expect this very night to be haunted by three spirits, without their visits you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first when the bell tolls one.’
As Travers spoke he stepped back and back before vanishing into the wall with his final word.
Giles was alone once more.
******************
Giles sat rigidly on his sofa, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The phantom Travers bothered him exceedingly. Every time he convinced himself, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again to its first position, and presented the same problem. Was it a dream or not?
Either answer to the question was unsettling in its own separate fashion. For if his mind really had conjured forth such a vivid hallucination, the words, the heat, the flames, then surely that was indicative of a more profound dislocation within himself and he would have to confront the notion that he may not be entirely well. Were it not a dream but real, as real as the rain hurling itself against the windows, as real as the voices echoing out from the radio, were it real than this night promised further supernatural encounters that he had no desire to be a participant in.
Sleep came creeping into the room as soft and insubstantial as a cobweb. When he awoke the lights and radio were off, though Giles knew that he had not moved to make them so. He glanced at the luminous face of his watch, as the second hand reached twelve, turning twelve fifty-nine into one o’clock: the bell began to strike.
‘The hour itself,’ whispered Giles aloud.
‘You know it,’ the voice was singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance, though Giles could feel pressure upon his hand and so knew the ghost to be very near by. ‘Time we were off. Hold on.’
Blinded by a darkness that seemed unnaturally complete, Giles began to fear what manner of spectre lurked within it.
‘Wait,’ he pleaded. ‘Can I see you?’
‘No ’cos it’s dark,’ teased the voice.
‘Please.’
The ghost became light. No beam was trained upon it, nor did it carry any device of illumination, all else remained pitch black whilst the ghost was easily seen, but not seen through, for this ghoul was vastly more solid an apparition than Travers had been. It was a child, then not at all like a child but an old man. At once towering over Giles, then as small as a newborn. It had long flowing locks, then was a bald as an egg. Giles watched as the ghost changed a thousand times and not at all, before becoming a floating being, not a human, not a bird, yet suggestive of both and possessing of all the grace of a dolphin that flew through the ocean borne on clouds of bubbles.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.’
‘Long past?’ Asked Giles.
‘Your past.’
‘Oh dear Lord.’
The ghost increased its hold on Giles’ hand as the room fell away.
********************
Giles found himself standing in the drive of a fine country seat that was filled with cars and delighted shrieks of recognition. Most of the noise issued forth from a swirling mass of boys, giddy with the excitement this time of year brought, thrilling to the prospect of no longer being confined and moulded. Glad to seize the opportunity to definitely thumb their noses at approaching manhood with its many serious and weighty concerns, and give themselves over to the pure, childish joy of Christmas.
‘Go on then, where’s this?’ Asked the ghost, who for all its ethereal appearance had a distinctly earthy way of expressing itself.
‘St Peter‘s,’ replied Giles, conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares
long, long, forgotten. ‘Christmas Eve.’
They moved through the crush of parents heavily clothed against the cold and boys archaic in their pin-striped, frock-coated uniform. One boy threw a book to another, Giles instinctively ducked.
‘Don’t bother,’ said the ghost. ‘They can’t hear you, see you, touch you - nothing. This was all done with forty years ago, we’re just here to watch.’
‘Forty years?’ Giles felt the cold hand of dread upon him. ‘Exactly forty years?’
The ghost did not speak, instead ushered Giles past the mothers with joyful tears in their eyes, past the teachers trying and failing to remain strict unto the last, past the boys drunk on the pleasure of escaping, to the great stone staircase and the small figure sitting on his suitcase halfway up it.
‘You were quite the short-arse back then,’ observed the ghost critically as it floated between the child and the man he would become.
‘I was only eleven,’ murmured Giles, staring at the boy with sadness for he knew himself to be witnessing the final moments of childhood.
Time sped by, the drive was empty, the pale winter’s sun low in the sky, but still the boy sat looking forward, his face alight with expectation.
‘I was waiting for my father. He’d bought a new car, I was excited about being picked up in it,’ explained Giles in a flat voice.
Giles sat down on the steps next to his eleven year old self; a gesture of solidarity that, of course, went entirely without notice.
‘How long must we stay?’
There was no reply from the ghost, as the door opened and a man close to the same age as Giles was now, dressed in a heavy tweed suit partially covered by a shabby and stained academic gown, slowly walked down the steps stopping behind the two waiting figures.
‘Rupert.’
‘Yes, Mr Fisher?’ The youngest Giles jumped to something like attention then turned to face his headmaster. The older Giles could recall the scene all to well so did not trouble himself to move and witness it afresh.
‘It is very cold. You should come indoors now.’
‘My father will be here in a minute, sir.’
The teacher sighed.
‘I’m going to ask you to come inside, Rupert. There is something I must tell you.’
The boy obeyed without hesitation. The final thing Giles and the ghost heard was Mr Fisher solemnly saying. ‘Now I need you to be very brave…’
********************
They were stood - nowhere. For all the times he told the tale afterwards Giles was never able to confirm for his spellbound audiences whether it was a room, a tunnel or a wide open space, or if they were still or in motion. It was dark, though not completely as a gentle radiance shone forth from the ghost.
‘After that you turn your foolish back on all the splendour of Christmas,’ said the ghost, clearly shocked that there existed an individual capable of such a thing. ‘And spend the next seventeen years, studying, rebelling, conforming and running away from anyone who tried to get close to you. Until…’
It was Christmas time once more, limbless classical statues had had their dignity assaulted by the placing of garish party hats upon their noble heads, forbidding circles of swords and muskets had their latent menace doused by great ropes of silly string, and the potential exhibits’ neat labels had been replaced by scandalous in-jokes whose contents were provoking peals of delightedly shocked laughter. The storage area of the British Museum was playing host to its staff’s Christmas Eve party.
The room was full of music and dancing, sparkling drinks and exotic food, quick-fire banter and slow, lustful looks. All was merriment as hierarchy, status and petty work-place rivalries were abandoned. For in this jovial atmosphere, so befitting to the season that inspired it, a man may look on his colleagues and see friends.
Away from everyone, one person had not surrendered to the celebration that raged around them. He was leaning against a sarcophagus, watching the festivities, the boredom showing plainly on his face. Only one acknowledgement that the working day was over had been made in the undoing of his tie, so that it now hung loosely about his neck.
‘You miserable sod,’ opined the ghost.
Giles ignored him, and gazed enviously at the reluctant party goer who had dark collar-length hair and whose contemptuous gaze was not shielded behind glasses.
‘I don’t even remember being that thin.’
‘But you remember her.’
Both the Giles’ eyes went wide with desire, she was stunning. The brightness of the dress that clung to a most shapely frame and darkness of the smooth skin it covered combined to create as compelling a vision of beauty as he had laid eyes upon. She favoured the only Giles she could see with a dazzling smile.
‘My name is Olivia and I’ve been told yours. I saw you standing here all alone and decided that I simply had to know all about you.’
A brief look of concern crossed Giles’ face, then he smiled and leaned closer to her.
‘It would be customary to shake hands at this point, however,’ he raised an eyebrow at the mistletoe above them, dangling from a massive tusk that once belonged to a creature who’d lain in the ground for millennia.
‘I suppose we must observe the tradition.’
‘Absolutely,’ confirmed Giles in a low voice as he bent his head for the kiss. ‘There’s nothing more important than tradition.’
********************
‘She made you happy?’ Queried the ghost as again the darkness surrounded them.
‘Very,’ confirmed Giles.
‘Shame it went tits up then.’
Giles was older now; his face had not the lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of stress and age. He was standing in an artfully and expensively decorated lounge checking his reflection in the gilded mirror that hung above the mantelpiece. Deciding that his tuxedoed self would present an agreeable enough image to the world, Giles then turned his attention to his watch giving a sigh of exasperation when learning the hour. The doorbell rang.
‘That can’t be the taxi,’ yelled an anxious voice from the bathroom. ‘It’s not supposed to be here until half seven.’
‘It is half seven,’ called back Giles as he went to open the door.
The porch did not contain a taxi driver, but an unwelcome surprise.
‘You’re needed, Rupert.’
‘Merrick! What‘s going on?’
The man, considerably senior to Giles in age and title, gave only the briefest of explanations.
‘Townsend’s dead. There’s a chance that there is some sort of portal still open with God knows what coming out of it and enough bodies are mounting up that even the local plod are getting interested.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Well said.’ The man was shivering, his battered raincoat providing only a meagre defence against the icy wind.
Giles darted an anxious look over his shoulder in order to satisfy himself that no one else would hear him ask:
‘And the Slayer?’
‘They got her as well.’
The two men lapsed into a moment of respectful silence broken by Olivia, poised and elegant in evening dress, appearing behind Giles.
‘Will I do?’
Both Giles and his unseen, closely observing other self looked at her sadly.
‘You look sensational.’
Olivia beamed at him, then glanced warily at the man stood in her doorway when he said gruffly:
‘Time to go, Rupert.’
‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
‘Liv, this is Merrick Jamison-Smythe. We work together,’ said Giles with the weary resignation of one who knows that events are about to spiral beyond their control. ‘I have to go into work - now. Believe me I don’t want to, but there really is no choice.’
‘Are you crazy? It’s Christmas Eve, Corrine and Jack are expecting us.’
Merrick withdrew to afford the couple some privacy.
‘I’ll be back…’
‘When?’ said Olivia her voice rising in anger. ’Tonight? Tomorrow? In a few days? I’m sick of this. You vanish then reappear, talking crap and covered in bruises. Stop lying to me.’
‘Liv…’ said Giles in his most placating voice as he made to touch her, however she twisted away.
‘I’m not stupid,’ there were tears in her eyes now. ‘Though you treat me as if I am. You’re not only a museum curator, who are you?’
Merrick coughed significantly.
‘I’m someone who loves you with all his heart, and who has to go.’
‘What you wanted to do there was tell the truth,’ advised the ghost over a decade too late.
Olivia took a deep breath before saying in a firm and steady voice:
‘If you leave I won’t be here when you get back.’
The colours around them faded once more.
‘I’d like to go home now,’ said Giles quietly. ‘Haunt me no longer.’
‘Fair enough.’
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. Giles barely had time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep
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