just_writing | Xmas Ghost Story - Can you guess the song / lyric?

The figure at the end of the bed had not disappeared despite my attempts to ignore it. When I had first detected its presence I had assumed that it was a figment, a shard of dream poking into my waking world as I emerged from sleep in the darkened room. I had attempted to ignore it; rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but I could sense it's baleful glare staring into me even as I lay there with my back turned.

In the end I rolled back over to look at it and decided that whether or not I was going crazy the only way to rid myself of its unsettling presence would be to engage it. I was, of course, expecting it to disappear when I asked;

“Who are you?”

I had not been expecting for a dim light to slowly start to build around the figure, illuminating an indistinct visage and a crooked smile;

“I am the ghost of Christmas Never Come, and I am here to show you the life that you will never know that yet you could have known.”

I flinched, suddenly feeling a little uneasy as to what shameful memory I was torturing myself with, tot he extent that I was imagining a visit from a quasi-Dickensian ghost. The ghost reached out a hand towards me and despite all of my instincts to the contrary I leaned forward and took its cold hand in my own.

Suddenly the word began to fold in on itself and I was catapulted from one reality to another, and I was back in the house on Dremmond Street. The house was full of light and sound, and as I stood there in my pyjamas watching Gilly and Robin opening presents from under the Christmas Tree as a younger looking me filmed them with a camcorder that I didn't recognise and Tabitha watched from the doorway. My heart leapt up into my mouth as I realised that this must be in the past, a scene I had forgotten; after all Gilly and Robin would have been in their late teens by now. I opened my mouth to speak to them all and the ghost tapped me on the shoulder as I realised that I could not make any sound. In my mind I could hear the ghost speaking to me;

“You cannot speak to them. They cannot see you, they do not know you are here. This is not a scene from your past, William, this is a scene from the past if things had been different, but then a part of you knows that, don't you?”

Suddenly I was back in my darkened room, the ghost was gone, and in the back of my mouth there was a familiar metallic tang as I started to re-live the moment when I woke up behind the wheel and the car was already tumbling over and over along the road, my family all around me.