The Ghoul of Christmas Past

and holding his wife’s shoe. Yanking his phone out again, he stabbed the screen to rouse it, but nothing happened. The low charge had dropped to no charge, using it as a torch had drained the last of its juice to leave it nothing but a deadweight in his pocket. His eyes darted everywhere, searching for any sign of movement in the darkness and he bellowed her name again.
The sound of his voice echoed across the uncaring water and bounced off the empty buildings, but no answer came. His hands were shaking as his imagination delivered images and thoughts he couldn’t bear to consider, and he ran. Splashing through shallow puddles he didn’t notice his trousers getting wet and wouldn’t have cared if he did. Mary … his Mary, was missing and if she wasn’t in the car, he didn’t know what he would do.
He knew she wouldn’t be, but he had to check anyway, hoping with all his might that she would be in the car singing along to Cliff Richard songs on the music system. She wasn’t though. He rounded the corner of the abandoned factory and could see how devoid of life the car was.
He ran to it anyway, performing the unnecessary check in case she was schooched down in her seat and asleep. Then he was running again, back to the theme park because that was where she had to be. The ghoul had her, and if not the ghoul then it was the Dickens wannabe.
The front entrance looked locked, but he checked it anyway, praying whoever grabbed Mary might have left it unlocked as they struggled with her. They hadn’t. It was locked and solid; there was no way he could get in through it.
He was winded already, out of breath and doing his best to ignore his searing lungs and the pain coming from his knees and back. Gritting his teeth, he shoved away from the doors, propelling himself back up to something close to a sprint as he ran back around the side of the building and down the cut through to the river.
He was going to find Mary and he was going to get them both home and safe.

Mystery Guest. Saturday, December 24th 2246hrs
The ghoul dropped his latest captive into the seat next to Elizabeth Cudmore, the seat intended for Richard Glaagard. It balanced the boat and gave it a certain symmetry which the ghoul’s master liked.
‘Well done,’ the man in the Dickens mask rewarded the ghoul with praise and got a happy, hopeful expression in return. Mary, scared out of her wits, saw the exchange, and tilted her head as she tried to analyse what she was seeing. ‘Make sure she is secure but don’t use the gag yet, I want to know who our mystery guest is.’
‘No, you don’t!’ Mary snatched her hands away, but the ghoul grabbed her skull, one giant hand encompassing the whole thing.
‘I wouldn’t resist if I were you,’ the man in the costume advised her. ‘My ghoul accidentally killed Richard Glaagard when he grabbed him a few hours ago. He really doesn’t know his own strength.’
Feeling like her head might pop, Mary chose to stop fighting but her mouth wasn’t going to behave any more than it usually did. ‘Who are you supposed to be then? Shakespeare?’ she asked the man she could easily identify as Charles Dickens.
The man in the mask choked for a second and thought about having the ghoul snap the unpleasant woman’s neck. His lips even twitched but he wanted to know who she was. ‘You will tell me your name, or I will have the ghoul rip one of your arms off,’ he snapped at her. He made it sound like it was a real threat, not just hyperbole.
Mary swallowed hard, gulping down the fear she felt as she considered lying or just refusing to give him the information he wanted. She tried a third option, asking him a question instead. ‘How did you know I was outside?’
‘Ghoul, take her left arm!’ he was in the position of power and would not be defied by a pensioner.
Mary squealed and tried to duck away, yelling, ‘Mary Michaels! My name is Mary Michaels, okay?’ The ghoul was going to tear her arm off anyway, he’d had no instruction to stop. Feeling his massive hands tense in preparation to pull her arm from its sockets, she wailed.
‘Stop.’ The calm voice made the ghoul check over his shoulder and then step back. ‘Mary Michaels. Wife of Michael Michaels I presume. I guess that means he is here somewhere also. Ghoul, find him.’
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, Mary watched the hulking man with the pasty white face lurch away, but he stopped when his master called to him. ‘Ghoul. Kill him. Understood?’ The ghoul nodded and rasped a word that could not be translated.
Once the ghoul was out of sight, the man in costume clapped his hands together, speaking inside his mask with an engaging, excited tone, ‘I guess we are all here then. Perhaps we should get going before anyone else turns up and tries to ruin things. This took quite a bit of effort to arrange, so I hope you appreciate all the trouble I went to.’
He disappeared into a control booth, did something, and the boat started moving. It didn’t go fast, the gentle current slowly tugging it forward and the ghoul’s master was able to catch up and step into the front of the boat at walking pace.
Seeing that his latest captive, the one he didn’t need, wasn’t gagged he tutted and checked about his person. Finding nothing that would be of use he said, ‘Mary I am going to be giving a presentation on this little ride. The persons seated around you are the shareholders who saw fit to withdraw their funding and send this theme park to