[II 01] • A Christmas Carol II · Contagion

**Much has changed since the three ghosts came to visit—kindly Scrooge and bad-tempered Cratchit are now partners, Tiny Tim is a drunkard jailbird, and the dead are walking the streets, in this affectionate satire** On Christmas Eve, seven years to the day after the unexpected arrival of three grim apparitions, another fell visitor calls on Ebenezer Scrooge. In one, a pair of hands had risen from the earth and were placed palm-down on the snow as thought to haul the rest of their invisible body up by force. Turning to look for an escape in the opposite direction, Scrooge came face to face with a cadaver blackened by rot not six feet away, arching its back out of the ground from the waist up, its mouth open in a silent scream, whether from the effort to extricate itself or from some deeper spiritual agony, Scrooge did not wish to discover. At every turn in every corner, shapes were pulling themselves up from the earth. The graveyard was rising.