Cornelius Clark and the Hungry Ghosts of Christmas
Cornelius Clark is a hungry ghost who resides in several worlds. In midwinter, at Christmas time, Cornelius is drawn home to earth; to be precise, Hyde Park in London. Why? Well simply because, as a young boy, Cornelius lived in a large Town House overlooking the Park. His father was Sir Archibald York’s manservant, and the Clarks lived in the servant’s quarters in the basement from 1800 to 1816 — the years of Cornelius’s childhood. Happy years. Years in which he felt at home; before the then unknow disease of Tuberculosis brought his young life to a premature end.
In his childhood, it always seemed to snow at Christmas. Cornelius would play with his brothers and sisters and all the local children. They would have vast snowball fights and build giant snowmen.
Once they built a snow couple getting married. It was Julia’s idea.
Julia was Lord Carrington’s daughter. Everyone, or rather mostly everyone, loved Julia. The boys called her the Snow Queen. Partly because she was so beautiful that the name seemed to fit her, and partly because her father was rumored to have connections to the Royal family. She was certainly posh enough. (A little too posh everyone privately thought, everyone that is apart from Tabitha Rainsford, who did not hide her dislike of the Snow Queen). Tabitha waged war against Julia in every way she could.
In the two centuries Cornelius has travelled between worlds, he has often wondered why Tabitha disliked Julia so much.
“Does it matter Cornelius?” Said Arlington, a nugget of nautical starlight that slipped out of Cornelius’s pocket and sank into the park bench.
“I thought I felt your presence,” said Cornelius. “You know, I could have done with you in here,” he remarked, pointing to his stomach and looking at the snow-covered bench, “rather than in here,” he added, flicking off some snow and knocking on the park bench twice.
“You should be more careful with your precious gifts,” Arlington replied.
“I didn’t know you were in my pocket!” said Cornelius, looking up at the falling snow.
“The most precious things we have are always right in front of us Cornelius, I thought you knew that. Anyway, now I am awake, introductions are called for. I am Arlington. Family of precious mineral, astral stone, blood of the sea and guide to wayfarers of the North. As you well know Cornelius, we are, what some people here, on Earth, at this time, might call God’s AI.
I remained in your pocket after you gave that girl in East Town the largest nugget of starlight, I have ever had the privilege of belonging too. The largest since my consciousness awoke of course. Before that, I have no recollection, obviously.
What’s the matter Cornelius? Am I boring you?”
“What?” Cornelius said distractedly.
“Ah, you’re thinking about East Town,” said Arlington.
“East Town…” Cornelius repeated the name mournfully. “I don’t mind admitting, that world terrifies me,” said Cornelius looking at a flock of geese landing on the lake.
Dawn had now passed, and it was snowing again. Hyde Park was coming alive. A jogger past wearing a pink bobble hat and black ski-gloves, a condensed trail of breath followed him like steam from a train. Several horses trotted along The Serpentine Road. They were being ridden by Guardsmen from Wellington Barracks.
The first pale light was now shaded with golden morning hues. Cornelius watched how the bridles and rein bits reflected jewel-like as the riders galloped past.
“Whenever my path leads into the world of East Town, I cannot wait to leave,” said Cornelius, still looking at the horses as they rode off towards Hyde Park corner.
“Indeed,” said Arlington. “You know, some of your kin here on earth call East Town one of the hell realms. Knowing how difficult it is to leave that place; I don’t disagree with the description.
I recall you gave the nugget I spoke of to that unfortunate child by a lake. An act of genuine compassion. Strange, that lake on East Town does not look unlike this one in front of us …”
Cornelius stared ahead across the glassy surface of the ice-covered Serpentine. He was thinking about that child.
In many ways East Town was a world like any other. Except it was shrouded in a constant depressing fog that carried a loathsome stench of decay. An abattoir, stale death-like smell pervaded the constant fog. The foul smell sank into Cornelius’s light every time Ill fortune led him through the gates of that world.
The woeful girl Arlington referred to, had indeed captured Cornelius’s attention. She looked so alone and forsaken as he approached her in the icy damp half-light. Despite his resolute decision to avoid eye contact, or any contact whatsoever with anyone when passing through East Town, he found himself drawn to the young girl.
No journey through any world is the same. “Things just happen,” a stranger on a coach once said to him. It was early on in his journey and the stranger must have taken pity on the then boy.
“Some landscapes are as real as fire kid. Others are closer to a superior mirage — you know what that is? It’s an iced dream, cold as hell. The elements aim to keep us here; but you gotta keep moving kid. That’s my advice. Keep moving.” The stranger looked like a frontiersman Cornelius once saw in a circus at Waterloo.
“It’s like you go from one dream to another,” the stranger continued. “You wake and you move. For if you remain still… well, that ain’t good for you kid.”
“What do you mean? And, if you have to keep moving, how do you know which way to go?” Cornelius asked the friendly stranger.
The spirit removed a compass from his inner pocket; but the needle just spun around, first clockwise, then anticlockwise. Eventually, it stilled, then after a few moments of apparent uncertainty, it started spinning as it had before.
The stranger gave Cornelius a look that mirrored a shrug. “I can’t tell you everything kid. My voice won’t allow me. Not because I don’t want to, it’s kinda like I’ve forgotten how… but I think the way we lived influences our journey here. Some of us anyway.
Others, well maybe they’re just here to help. You just have to figure that stuff out. I’ve been wandering from one world to another for so long, I’ve forgotten who I was on earth,” said the stranger, unconsciously touching his breast pocket.
“But there’s ways to move on,” the stranger added, glancing around as if to check if anyone was looking or listening. He then pulled what looked like a scarf from his chest pocket, pulled back the cloth and revealed a brilliant light. “It’s the real thing,” the stranger whispered. “Nautical starlight. Nautical, because these diamond nuggets contain ocean spirits as well as earthly grit. It’s the root of all life kid. The spark. God’s superfood.”
“You eat the rock?” Cornelius asked as he and the stranger stared at the pebble sized mini star.
“No, of course you don’t eat it,” said the stranger, quickly covering the nugget and placing it back in his pocket. “Well, not in the conventional sense anyway,” he continued as he rose from his seat and pulled the chord that rung the bus bell.
“Truth is kid, this is the first time in 100 years I’ve got a hold of a nugget like this.”
“Did you have to dig for it? Like coal?” Cornelius asked.
“No,” said the stranger with a friendly laugh. “Starlight ain’t so much hidden, it’s more awaiting discovery. I found this beauty on the Thornglobe Tundra in the skeleton of a Woolly Mammoth. Heaven alone knows how he came to swallow it.”
“What do you plan to do with it?” Cornelius asked.
“I haven’t figured that out yet; but I will. In the meantime, I’ll keep moving. That’s my advice kid, keep moving. If you remain still too long, they find you.”
“They?” Cornelius repeated, unable to disguise the tremor of fear. But the stranger had now left the bus. Cornelius soon learned of the many gruesome creatures abroad in the shadowlands between worlds; but equally, he learned how to avoid them, and when necessary, to fight them.
The day he saw the young girl, Cornelius felt an urge to carry on walking past the bench she sat on. However, days before this encounter Cornelius had discovered a nugget of starlight the size of a child’s heart. He had discovered it in a swan’s nest on the brumal moon of Caldamin where hungry ghosts are forced to dig tunnels for the inhabitants, who, with the ghosts, live underground due to the permanent winter.
Cornelius hadn’t spent long there, at least he didn’t think he had (time is not always linear, between, and on, other worlds) but he did enjoy his life on Caldamin. He made good friends in the mines, and it was his best friend, Quale, son of the elder ghost Ord, who had taken him to the Swannery on the archipelago. The swans, who happily gave their eggs to sustain the hungry ghosts working in the mines, received a blessing in return.
For centuries the birds had nested in the Nebulite fens, hidden and protected from lunar eagles by the arrowhead marshes. Only the most spiritually mindful ghosts, alert, strong, and nimble, were allowed to hunt for the eggs. Few hunters survived long on Caldamin, and yet, it was every ghost’s dream to become a collector of swan’s eggs. Many of the ghosts who were selected for the hunt were swallow by the quagmire. Others were snatched up in the talons of moon eagles who fed the ghosts to their young.
It was on Cornelius’s first and last hunting trip, that he found the starlight nugget. He and Quale had travelled for days to the giant archipelago where the elder swans nested. Though neither Cornelius nor Quale knew at the time, they were later told that no ghosts before them, had travelled so far into the permafrost marshlands.
“No wonder, such a large nugget of starlight has laid undiscovered so long,” Ord later said, as all the miners looked upon Cornelius’s treasure.
Only the finder of a starlight nugget can keep it. It cannot be unfound, because, in the finding, the celestial element and the life force who finds the nugget, form a unique bond. That bond can only be broken if the finder gives the starlight away, and the starlight itself, agrees to be relinquished.
Cornelius knew his fate would change, the moment he laid eyes on the nautical light; and sure enough, within two days, a ferry boat picked up Cornelius and transported him from Caldamin to East Town.
On the world known as East Town, in the bitter frost rimed fog, Cornelius watched the girl on the bench. She seemed oblivious to his presence. It had been a long time since he had talked to an earth-child. He racked his brain for something appropriate to say.
“Best not hang around too long,” he finally said, shifting his boots on the ice and compact snow. He scanned the trees, trying to make out shadows in the fog. He tapped the starlight in his pocket and listened to a flock of swans landing on the lake.
The girl remained silent. She gazed into the frigid air and rocked slowly back and forth. Her clothes were familiar to Cornelius, but he wasn’t sure why. Her white woolen coat that Cornelius thought must have been expensive in its day, was now torn and dirty.
One of the swans made a hissing sound, and the urgency to move drove Cornelius to step away, but suddenly the girl spoke:
“I pushed her into lake Cornelius.” Fog clouds curled around the bench.
The swans rustled their feathers in cold agitation, and time itself appeared to freeze for Cornelius, at the mention of his name. It was as if a delayed avalanche of memories, heartbreak and awareness slowly crashed down on Cornelius. It was his childhood friend Tabetha, sitting on the bench.
“You died before it happened Cornelius. You remember, I hated Julia. She had everything, it seemed to me. Everything I wanted. She was beautiful. You thought so, I know you did. I remember the way you looked at her, as if she was a work of art. A real Snow Queen.
The winter after you died, everything seemed to get worse. My grandma came into my bedroom Christmas day and told me my father had been killed in some nameless war. ‘A campaign,’ she said. Such a strange word. Such an unholy way of telling a child that she no longer had a father.
I ran, ran out of the house and into the snow. The snow looked the same as it had when you and I had played in it, a year before. When I had loved you and my father had been alive. But it wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same. The world was no longer safe as it had been just a year before.
Not beautiful, as it was for Julia, but safe at least.
Now, fate had stolen my safety. You, and now my father, had abandoned me.”
In the distance, wild dogs barked, as if disturbed by demons. A blade of fear run coldly down Cornelius’s spine, and he felt the urge to run; but Tabetha continued, apparently oblivious to the wild dogs.
“I ran Cornelius, as if running would make everything go back to how it was when you and my father was here.
That’s when I saw her, the Snow Queen, by the lake, singing to herself. And with a bitter, impulsive rage, I pushed her into the frozen water. The ice was thin at the edges, but instead of coming to the bank, she was taken into the depths. I saw her Cornelius. I saw her trying to break the ice, but I could do nothing.”
The wild dogs were closer now, their growls and hyena like laughter told Cornelius these were not creatures of earth. He touched the starlight nugget in his pocket and his heart and mind called for help. As he did this, the fog veiling the Serpentine, parted revealing the flock of swans, all who stared fixedly at the two spirits on the bankside.
“What do you do when someone gives you the keys to heaven?” Cornelius’s father once asked him.
It was the winter the Thames froze, and the hackney cab taking them back to Hyde Park had stopped outside a workhouse in Camden. The cabbie was yelling. It was snowing heavily, and the horse traffic and crowds had brought the whole borough to a standstill. It was so cold that, despite the horrors of the workhouse, a long line of homeless families sought shelter within its walls.
“I don’t know father. Do we leave the door open for all?” Cornelius replied, staring out at the desolate families in line, catching the eye of a frail young girl who looked like she lacked the strength to utter a single word.
“No, my son, because the selfishness of mankind would ransack paradise and within days there would be no sanctuary.”
“So, what do we do with the keys to heaven father?” Cornelius asked, his eyes still fixed on the girl’s hollow stare.
“We give them to those less fortunate and more in need,” his father replied.
The line to the workhouse jolted forward and the girl disappeared, swallowed up into a dense grey tangle of disheveled rags.
“Father, how do we determine who is the most in need?”
In over two hundred years, walking abroad in the shadows between worlds, Cornelius cannot recall his father’s full response. He can only remember the look his father gave him, a startled look; and then his father mumbling something like “mouths of babes” as he turned away.
The wild dogs and the evil creatures accompanying them, were now terrifyingly close. Cornelius knelt down by Tabetha and handed her the starlight nugget. Its brilliant light instantly burned a hole in the fog, either startling the flock of swans into flight, or commanding them so.
Within the beat of a wing, Cornelius and Tabetha, were flying with the swans; and though he could not see her, Cornelius knew Julia was with them.
Cornelius closed his eyes. He was asleep. A comatose sleep that Cornelius recognized as the sleep between worlds.
When he woke, he was on an underground train pulling into Hyde Park.
Tabetha was no longer with him. He did not know where she was although he had a feeling she was with Julia, her father and the swans. Although Cornelius recognized it was no more than a feeling.
Sat on the old bench, with layers of snow and distant noises, Cornelius opened hie eyes.
He was in his favourite place. Sitting on the same bench overlooking the Serpentine. This world was now far warmer than he remembered it. It rarely snowed at Christmas; but on this one occasion, it had. A feeling of immense peace came upon Cornelius. He knew, this was his last visitation. It was almost like the driver of the train had stopped, just for him to say goodbye.
He listened to people laughing and talking. Music came from somewhere. The aroma of mulled wine from a vendor on the lakeside mixed with the scent of cold air, sunlight, moonlight, candlelight, frankincense, pine and citrus. So much had changed, yet so many things remained the same.
He saw a swan with a row of cygnets on bird island. It looked like the cygnets were playing while the pen, ever protective, was also enjoying the fun.
“This is why you love it here Cornelius, isn’t it? Nostalgia. Home fires and nonsensical hope?” said Arlington, the small chunk of nautical starlight still speaking from within the snowy park bench.
For a long time, Cornelius remained silent. He simply soaked up his time in contemplative joy. Eventually he smiled, touched the wrought iron armrest and nodded, “Yes, my friend, that’s exactly why I love it here,” he replied.
People came and went that day. Couples in love. Couples parting.
Happy old men. Sad beautiful women. A vagabond sat and talked to the air. A businessman talked on his phone. A flock of geese landed on the thin ice, breaking it into flat glass-like islands.
“It’s time Cornelius,” said Arlington, as a whooshing sound filled the air, not unlike the sliding doors of a train opening, or the breath of surf on beach reclining.
“I know,” replied Cornelius, knocking the bench twice as he rose.
Copyright DMM
Photo by: Alexey Avdeev
