“George Moore is a modern day Scrooge, a
futures trader who drives his staff hard, and won't let his assistant go home
to look after her autistic son on Christmas Eve.
Like Scrooge, he is mean with money, but he
is also mean with his sympathies and his time. He has to swerve to avoid
putting money in a charity box and also crosses the road to avoid a family he
thinks are probably gypsies on his way to dinner at a cheap cafeteria. An old
man sitting nearby looks as if he might be looking for the warmth of some human
contact. George refuses to meet his eye and hurries home.
Various slightly odd, even disconcerting
things happen. He encounters a nun who looks like an elderly child. He sees a
Santa in the window of a department store, who seems to emerge from his Grotto,
look confused, and is then surrounded by small elf-like figures who drag him
back behind the curtains. Finally, when he arrives back in his apartment the
old man from the cafeteria suddenly appears and reveals himself as George's old
mentor in trading and in greed. Bill Hill reveals that he is dead and that he
has come to give George a warning. He warns George he will have three visitors
that night, and then in a flash he disappears…”
What else but The Christmas Spirits by Whitley Strieber (Coronet £12.99),
published in a few days, just in time for the Xmas market.
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