First part of Spoof based on Charles Dickens Christmas Carol
Preface
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with our country, or with me. May it warn their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Citizen, C.O.
December, 2016.
Stave 1 - Fred’s Ghost
Fred was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the investors, the lawyers, the inheritors, and Fred’s fourth son. Donald signed it. And Donald’s name was good upon Change, for about eighty percent of things he chose to put his hand to. Old Fred was a s dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard the American dream as the deadest piece of idealism in the nation. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for (what’s left of it, anyway). You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Fred was as dead as a door-nail.
Donald knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Donald took part in discriminatory housing practices with his father for I don’t know how many years. Donald blew through his inheritance like nobody’s business and left a trail of destruction in his wake. And even Donald was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but was an excellent man of politics the year of his the funeral, and solemnized it with a bid to run for president on the Reform Party ticket.
The mention of Fred’s funeral brings me back to the point started from. There is no doubt that Fred was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.
Donald never removed “TRUMP” from his ridiculous tower in New York. There it stood, an eyesore, for years afterwards: “TRUMP TOWER”. Sometimes people new to the tower called Donald racist, and sometimes pig, but he tweeted about both names. It was all unbearable to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the Tweets, Donald! a whiny, bratty, annoying, offensive, racist, sexist, xenophobic old sinner! Hard as sharp as a pillow, which no steel made in America was ever used in his buildings. The money he wasted kept his face from falling in on itself, nipped his nose, shrunk his fingers, made his hair nuts, and his whole body a sickening orange color; and spoke with a voice that reminded one of fingernails on a chalkboard. He carried his own orangey hue always about him; his awful spray-on tan shown in the dog-days; and he didn’t change his tint one iota at Christmas..
External heat and cold had little influence on Donald. No sun could tan, and not wintry chill could make him more pale. No tweet reply was more outlandish than his were, no nazi propaganda was too much for Donald. Major news organizations didn’t know where to have him. He would dodge them from his building, refused to hold press conferences, and only communicated via nazi-style rallies and vicious tweet storms. Other men grew up, and Donald never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Donald, how are you? So great to have you making America great again.” No beggars implored him to bestow a penny, no children asked him what it was o’clock for fear they would be dating him in ten years, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired about financial advice for Donald’s debts and bankruptcies were notorious throughout the business society. Even service animals appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “Remember how he mocked that disabled reporter on national television!”
Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Donald sat tweeting in his tower. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: polluted withal: and he could hear the incoming tweets alerts on his smart phone. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light since the 2016 presidential election night: and protesters held candles and signs in front of the building. The polluted air came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although over 97 percent of the scientific community agreed that climate change is human caused and an existential threat to humanity, Donald believed that if he used hairspray and closed his windows, that there was no danger of that, unbeknownst to him that the CFCs harmful to the environment had long been discontinued in his hair products.
The door of Donald’s office was open that he might keep an eye on his most recent campaign manager, who in a darkened corner was responding to emails from Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper. Donald was a notorious liar, but the campaign manager had made her career shamelessly lying for ‘great men’. She couldn’t take it back now. Donald was elected president, and so surely if she uttered one word of truth to CNN’s correspondents, she knew she would find herself on top of the National Muslim registry and be stripped of her citizenship as laid out by Donald’s goons.
“A merry Christmas, father! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Donald’s other daughter, who came upon him so quickly that the secret service had not had time to alert him.
“Bah!” said Donald, “SAD!”
She had so heated herself with rapid walking in the polluted air and warming climate, this other daughter of Donald’s, that she was all in a glow; her face was plain compared to his angelic daughter, Ivanka; her eyes sparkled, and her breath reeked of Tic Tacs.
“Christmas SAD, father!” said Donald’s other daughter. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”
“I do,” said Donald. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re plain enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the other daughter gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What right have you to be morose? You’re orange enough.”
Donald having no surrogates nearby to handle this annoyance, said “SAD!” again; and followed it up with a tweet storm
“Don’t be cross, father,” said the other daughter.
“What else can I be,” returned the father, “when Jill Stein and the Green Party are demanding recounts! When the election is rigged against me and millions of illegal votes are being cast against me! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for you to find that I have not requested for you to have security clearance; a time to find that you are left out of my blind trust; a time for hiding your taxes and paying off Russian oligarchs who got you elected? If I could build my wall,” said Donald indignantly, “every immigrant who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on her lips, should be rounded up in camps, stripped of their money to pay for that wall, and deported. She should!”
“Father!” pleaded the other daughter.
“Other daughter!” returned the father, sternly, “keep democracy in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”
“Keep it!” repeated Donald’s other daughter. “But you don’t keep it.”
“Let me tear it to shreds, then,” said Donald. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!”
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the other daughter: “Democracy and Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of election time, when it comes round -- apart from the exuberant donations due to it’s being held, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a patriotic time: a spiteful, resentful, unforgiving, and painful time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the election cycle; when you remember you have another daughter, and not just the infallible Ivanka, and to allow me to have two or three photo-ops where we pretend to know each other’s middle names if called upon to recollect them. And therefore, father, though I do not have an equal share of the Trump Company, I do not own my clothing line, or my own overpriced fragrances, I believe it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
Former presidential nominee and otherwise bag of scum, Chris Christie, who was on his way to speak to the president elect involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he opened his wallet, ripped up his man card, and threw the pieces into the fire place, extinguishing and frail spark of his pride for ever.
“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Donald, “ and I’ll find someone else to bring me McDonald’s and you you will lose your Secretary of State nomination. You’re quite a chatty woman, Tiff,” he added, turning to his other daughter. “I wonder you don’t run for Office, too.”
“Don’t be angry, father. Come! Dine with me tomorrow.”
Donald said that she would see her -- yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said he would see her in the upper middle class first.
“But why?” cried Donald’s other daughter. “Why?”
“Why weren’t you aborted?” said Donald.
“Because you are pro-life.”
“Because I am pro-life!” growled Donald, as if that were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a free and fair election. “I was pro-choice well into the late nineties! Good afternoon!”
“Nay, father, but you have changed your position on that issue and so many others, often contradicting yourself in the same sentence. Why not accept my existence now?”
“Good afternoon,” said Donald.
“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel outside of a divorce hearing, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry Christmas, father!”
“Good afternoon!” said Donald.
“And a Happy Inauguration!”
“Good afternoon!” said Donald.
His other daughter left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. She stopped at the door to bestow the greeting of the season to Kellyanne and the shattered remnants of a man that is Chris Christie, who as dead as he was inside, returned the greeting mechanically.
“There’s another fellow,” muttered Donald; who overheard him: “my man slave, with fifteen thousand a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Florida.”
This lunatic, in letting Donald’s other daughter out, had let two CNN correspondents in. They were camera ready, tablets in hand, and now stood with their microphones out in Donald’s office. They had notes and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
“President-elect Trump, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to the name on the tower. “Have I the pleasure of addressing the founder or his bratty fourth child?”
“Fred Trump has been dead these seven years,” Donald replied. “He died seven years ago when I made my first presidential bid.”
“We have no doubts that his assets are well represented by his inheritor,” said the press members unable to contain a snickering, which Anderson Cooper quickly pretended was a cough. He composed himself and presented Kellyanne his intended questions who had risen from her seat to intervene.
She certainly made the right decision; for Donald had not held a press conference since July 27th. This being due to Donald’s inability to think or say rational things when posed tough questions. Kellyanne shook his hand and handed him the press release that she had been typing up for months now.
“At this unstable time in our country’s political system, Mr. Trump,” said Anderson, taking up his tablet, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight comments for the American people, who suffer greatly at this time of the election cycle. Many thousands are protesting in the streets; hundreds of thousands are obtaining visas and fleeing the country, sir.”
“Are there no Canadas?” asked Donald.
“There is only one Canada,” said Anderson lowering his tablet.
“And the part-time minimum wage jobs?” demanded Donald. “Are they still doing business?”
“They are. Still,” returned the other press member, “I wish I could say they would raise the wages to a living wage.”
“The Obamacare and the Freedom of Speech are in full vigour, then?” said Donald.
“Both very busy, sir. At least till you take office.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred and that I was already in Office,” said Donald. “I’m very glad that I have not been usurped just yet.”
“Under the impression that you will scarcely do anything to change the harsh conditions for the working poor,” returned Anderson, “a few of us press members are endeavoring to hear your policy plans to alleviate some of the worries of a deeply divided electorate. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when credit card debt is keenly felt, and corporations rejoice. What shall I tell the people?”
“Nothing!” Donald replied.
“You wish to be off the record?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Donald. “If the people want to know what I wish, they can follow my Twitter account. I don’t have intelligent things to say and I can’t waste my valuable huge brain on comments for people who are worth less than 10 million a year. I tweet out nonsense regularly: and those who want to know my thoughts must follow me there.”
“Many don’t read your tweets; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Donald, “they had better do it, and decrease the unemployment. Besides -- excuse me -- I don’t know that.”
“But you might know it,” observed the other reporter.
“It’s not my business,” Donald returned. “All I know is what I see on the internet. Its enough for a man to watch Fox and Friends and subscribe to Breitbart News. There alternate realities occupies my feeble mind constantly. Good afternoon, lying press!”
Seeing clearly that the most they were going to get is the nonsense Kellyanne wrote down in the press release and that the secret service were closing in, the reporters withdrew. Donald began a tweet storm with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the pollution and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with glowing smartphone screens and volunteers handed out medical masks to keep children from breathing in the foul air. The reflection of the sign “TRUMP TOWER” reflecting through the darkness off of a nearby building reminded Donald how important he was and that he was working too hard. The cold outside the tower became intense. In front of the entrance, some protesters burned their signs to keep warm. The brightness of Macy’s where holly sprigs and a giant wreath was hanging, threatening to crush the shoppers below if the wind were to pick up suddenly.
The polluted air settled more yet, and colder! Donald did not understand the difference between climate change and weather, so he assumed this was God’s way of telling him how smart he was. A cast member from the Hamilton broadway production came out in front of Trump tower and decided to sing to try and remind Donald that other people are humans, too: but at the first mention of the name of “Pence”, Donald seized his smartphone so fast and began tweeting, that Trump supporters decided to boycott the show as soon as tickets became available in another year or so.
At length the hour of shutting up Donald’s office arrived. With an ill-will Donald dismounted his throne, and tacitly admitted to Kellyanne that she was to tell the press outside that he was in for the night. She instantly picked up her stack of lies to distribute and put on her coat.
“You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?” said Donald.
“If you don’t tweet anything stupid on Twitter, Sir.”
“It’s not stupid,” said Donald, “and it’s not fair. If I was to call the president of Taiwan, you’d think that I was breaking with long-standing bipartisan policy.”
Kellyanne smiled faintly and Chris Christie got up expectedly waiting for some announcement about his upcoming position.
“And yet,” said Donald, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I grip you out of that hell hole in New Jersey where they would have your neck, and have permitted to let you hover about me like bad news.”
Chris Christie observed that once in office he would never have to see his face if he didn’t want to.
“A poor excuse for uglying up my office!” said Donald, buttoning his great coat to the chin, “But I am shopping around still. Why don’t you give Mitt a ring and tell him to meet me for lunch tomorrow?”
Chris Christie looked injured, but promised that he would; and Donald walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and Christie, with his cold, dead eyes (for he had long since sold his soul) walked through the crowd of protesters and reporters without taking questions or making comments. Kellyanne followed behind announcing that Donald was in for the night as his motorcade slipped out the back.
Donald took his over-priced seven course dinner in one of his usual upscale New York restaurants; and having read all the latest news on Breitbart and watching all the latest videos from InfoWars.com, went home to the Trump Tower. His wife Melania was away with his youngest son, Barron, to avoid the constant public scrutiny she and her son had been under since Donald had first announced his candidacy. He lived in Trump Tower, on the top floor, where his father had once lived. They were a gaudy set of rooms, in an eyesore of a tower in the middle of the great city of New York where it had no business being and no one really wanted it there, especially now. The protesters had broken up for the night, but Donald still went through the back with his security detail in case any “lying media” as he called them, would ask him any stupid questions about his plans for running the country. His clandestine entrance was done in complete darkness and Donald groped in the dark to find his way.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the drapes on the windows in the back entrance room, except that they were also gaudy. It is also a fact, that Donald had seen it, night and morning, during his whole campaign as he had been sneaking in and out of that entrance to avoid the press since then. Let it also be borne in mind that Donald had not bestowed one thought on anyone but himself, including old Fred, since his last mention of his seven-year’s dead father that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Donald, groping his way through the darkness, grasped the drapes, saw in the drapes, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change: not drapes, but a hooded face.
A hooded face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in that lower room, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It appeared to a plain, simple, pointed hood with two holes for eyes, but looked at Donald as Fred used to look: with fierce, judgmental eyes. The point of the hood was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot-air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the hooded face and beyond its control.
As Donald looked fixedly at this phenomenon, a body guard touched his arm to guide him to the hallway elevator, and Donald saw that they were simply drapes again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger since infancy, would be untrue. But he followed the security detail into the hallway and got in the elevator.
He did pause with a moment’s irresolution, before the elevator shut behind him, and he did look cautiously behind him, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of the hooded figure. But there was no one but his bodyguard. So he said, “SAD!” and leaned against the wall of the elevator as it ascended the many floors of Trump Tower.
The sound of a retweet echoed through the elevator shaft. Every wealthy resident above and every door man below must have heard it. Donald was not a man to be frightened by an echoing retweet. He glanced at his phone, and exited the elevator and his security detail posted themselves outside of his door.
Donald’s entranceway was wide enough to drive his motorcade through; which is perhaps the reason why Donald thought he saw a hearse going on before him.Half-a-dozen smartphone screens wouldn’t have lighted the entranceway too well, so perhaps it was just an illusion in the dark which vanished upon turning the lights on.
Donald continued in as usual, but before retiring to his bedroom, he walked through the many rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the hooded face to desire to do that.
All the rooms were as they should be. A little plate of Tic Tacs had been left out by his kitchen staff,since Donald never knew if a beautiful woman might visit that he may then be forced to start kissing. No beautiful woman under the bed; no beautiful woman in the closet; no beautiful woman in his pajamas, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his power tie and suit; put on his pajamas and slippers and his robe; and sat down before his fireplace to check his twitter.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it since he had already turned off his room light and was using his phone’s screen as the only other source for light. Donald was looking at the fireplace momentarily when he seemed to imagine that each blank stone tile was a copy of the hooded face.
“SAD!” sad Donald; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in his chair, his glance happened to rest on a smartphone, a disused phone, just the spare he had traded in for a better model about a week ago. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw the phone light up and begin to vibrate. At first, it was relatively quiet, just vibrating; but soon it rang out loudly, a ringtone playing ‘Hail to the Chief’, and soon so did every phone in Trump Tower.
This might have lasted a minute, but it seemed like an hour. The phones ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by an elevator ding, deep down below; as if some person were entering the elevator on the first floor, but Donald had never noticed being able to hear it before. He wondered if he were mad since the security detail would surely have rushed in by now after the bizarre ringing.
The elevator door could be heard sliding shut, and then he heard the elevator gliding up the tower. The sound lasted for awhile and Donald knew whoever it was must be going to the top. Perhaps a beautiful woman was coming after all and he reached for the plate of Tic Tacs.
“It’s Miss Universe!” (One of the good ones), Donald said to himself. Could it be his own wife? Donald didn’t think so. Their relationship was really more contractual than anything, and he doubted she would come to his bedroom without appointment.
His colour changed though, when, without being screened by the posted security detail, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him! Fred’s Ghost!” and fell again.
The same hooded face: the very same, Fred in his Klan robe with the hood upon his head. He held a chain stained with blood. His body was transparent; so that Donald, observing him, and looking through his robes, could see the wall behind.
Donald had often heard that Fred had no heart, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folds in the hood about its head; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
“How now!” said Donald, smug and bombastic as ever. “What do you want with me?”
“Much!” -- Fred’s voice, no doubt about it.
“Who are you?”
“Ask me who I was.”
“Who were you then,” said Donald, raising his voice, “You’re particular, for a shade.” He was going to say,”to a shade,” but knew how insecure Fred was about skin color.
“In life I was your father, Fred Trump.”
“Can you -- can you sit down?” asked Donald, looking doubtfully at him.
“I can.”
“Do it, then.”
Donald asked the question, because he didn’t know if even ghostly robes were liable to crease;and felt that in the event that laundry services were hard to come by after death, it might involve the necessity of a long and dull explanation. But the ghost sat down opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.
“I don’t,” said Donald.
“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”
“I don’t know,” said Donald. “All I believe is what I see on the internet.”
“Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” said Donald, “Hillary and the left affects them. A right-wing conspiracy theory tells me they cheat. You may be sent by the DNC or the Green Party. You were probably sent by Obama and the Chinese! Probably from ISIS whatever you are!”
Donald was in the habit of making ridiculous claims without any relevant evidence to back them up. The truth is that he said these idiotic things to distract from his countless short falls.
To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Donald felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s wearing a Klansman robe carrying a bloody chain into his rooms. That was it! This was a trick of the lying press trying to tie him up with the KKK.
“You see this phone?” said Donald, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.
“I do, replied the Ghost.
“You are not looking at it,” said Donald.
“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.”
“Well!” returned Donald, “I have but to post one tweet about this, and be for the rest of the news week CNN, MSNBC, WP, and all the others will hold pointless panel discussions trying to decipher what I mean when I demand they stop sending spectre Klansmen to my tower. SAD, I tell you; SAD!”
At this the phone made the incoming tweet sound. The Ghost unhooded itself and shook its chain with such an appalling noise, that Donald held on tight to his phone, to save himself from dropping it into the fire. But how much greater was his horror, when checking his new tweet, the screen read:
@realDonaldTrump the visitor is @realFredsGhost U are SAD and WRONG! #WhatTheDickens
Donald fell upon his knees, and clasped his phone in front of his face with both tiny hands.
“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”
“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”
“I do,” said Donald. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”
“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and not just march with the KKK in Memorial Day parades; and if that filthy rich spirit goes not forth in life, then it is condemned to exist a white middle-class American after death -- oh, woe is me! -- and stand in Starbucks lines complaining about the service!”
“White middle-class?” asked Donald. Why not a minority or working-class American?”
“Satan has a heart, you fool!” cried the Ghost, shaking its chain and wringing its shadowy hands.
“You carry a chain,” said Donald, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I hold the chain I carried in the Memorial Day parade of 1927,” replied the Ghost. “I carried it with me and cracked the head of one of Mussolini's fascists. Is my attire strange to you?”
Donald trembled more and more.
“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “that multiple newspapers covered the story of the riots and the arrests of seven Klansmen, including myself? There were photos and everything!”
“Father,” he said, imploringly, “Old Fred Trump, you were merely a part of the parade and got mixed up in the confusion.”
“We both know that is nonsense,” the Ghost replied. “My spirit is never permitted to lie, so I must wear this robe to expose my true self; and oh what weary confessions lie before me!”
It was a habit whenever Donald was losing interest, to check InfoWars for any updates. Pondering when this ‘Inconvenient Truth’ might get lost, Donald observed, “You must stop being so slow about your purpose. My time is extremely valuable.”
“Your time!” the Ghost repeated.
“Seven years dead,” mused Donald, “And you decide to pay me an unscheduled visit, now that I own the world? You might have had the decency to check with my transition team before barging in like this.”
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and swung its chain so swiftly, that drops of phantom blood flung off and flew straight through Donald’s face and then through the walls. Donald wondered whether the secret service would observe these droplets and check on him. Why hadn’t they stopped this armed Ghost in the first place? They had not noticed the Ghost and they were unaware of any phantom droplets now passing through them and the upper floor of Trump Tower.
“Oh! cowardly, complacent, and tiny-handed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any goodly spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet how I lied! Oh! how I lied!”
“But we were always good men of business, father,” faultered Donald.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “I was a good man of business. You just lounged about and squandered my leavings!”
It held up its chain at arm’s length, pointing at Donald as if to accuse and expose him for what he really was, and then flung it heavily upon the ground again.
“At this time of the election year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings taking advantage of them, lying to them? Were there no homes in my properties that could not be rented to persons of color without court orders forcing my hand!”
Donald was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”
“I will,” said Donald. “But don’t take all night, and don’t criticize me, father!”
“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. You haven’t the ability to understand basic light reflection and refraction, so it will be a waste of both of our times to explain the rules of quantum mechanics.”
Donald yawned and checked the time on his phone. Almost eleven.
Sensing he was losing his audience, the Ghost pursued, “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have a chance and hope of escaping the doom of America and the world. A chance and hope of my procuring, Donald.”
“You were always bailing me out of messes,” said Donald. “Thankee!”
“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, by three of your wives.”
Donald’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.
“Kidding. Kidding.” The Ghost went on, “Tonight, you will be visited by three Republicans.”
Donald screamed.
“Just yanking your chain,” laughed the Ghost holding up his chain demonstrably. “Okay, okay,” he said composing himself. “Tonight, you will be visited by three Americans.”
“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, father?” he demanded, in a faltering voice.
“It is.”
“I -- I think this is the kind of thing Priebus usually handles,” said Donald.
“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “the country and world cannot hope to shun the path to destruction. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”
“Couldn’t Priebus or Christie take them? Yeah, Christie, he’s got no use in life as it is,” said Donald.
“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for the world’s sake, you remember what has passed between us.”
“It just so happens,” announced Donald, “that I have the world’s greatest memory.”
The Ghost shivered upon hearing these words, and re-cloaked his face, as before. Donald was looking at his phone trying to set an alert for his new meetings. When he ventured to raise his eyebrows, he found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
It beckoned Donald to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Fred’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Donald stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of filibusters, campaigning, and lobbying. Now, however they were speaking truthfully, unable to present falsehoods. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Donald followed to the window; desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and sputtering out facts as they went. Every one of them was either a politician, a corporate lobbyist, or a banker from wall street. Many had been personally known to Donald in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, with a monstrous pipeline chained to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to be heard by a woman with an infant, whom it saw below, trying to convey the dangers of the pipeline he had lied about in life to enrich himself and his investors, pleading with her that the pipe would leak and poison her infant. The misery with them all was clearly, that they sought to convey the facts in economical, political, and environmental matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into the polluted air, or the polluted air enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he had arrived home.
Donald closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered, slipping past the security detail. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He checked his twitter account and the previous tweet from @realFredsGhost had vanished. He tried to say “WRONG!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without taking his robe off, and fell asleep upon the instant.
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