Conclusion of “The Terrible Old Mr. Roogs: A Twisted Christmas Carol”
by Paul D. Dail
If you’re just joining us, this is the conclusion of a two-part modern Christmas ghost story, my homage as a previous high school English teacher to one of the classics, and given the time of year I wrote it originally–just before Christmas vacation–it was probably something of a cathartic experience as well.
You can read the first part of the story by clicking here.
If you are here after reading part 1 and want to see what will become of the terrible old Mr. Roogs, welcome back. So glad to see you. I won’t tarry any longer than to bring you back up to speed.
From the end of part 1:
All of the cell phones started flashing and ringing in loud, peeling sounds, and Mr. Lamrey cried out, “Benjamin Roogs!” with a voice so fearful, Mr. Roogs dropped to his knees, clutching his ears.
If this was a dream, Benjamin wanted to wake up. But he was starting to doubt that was the case.
“Okay, okay, I’ll eat it,” he said and the room went silent. He reached up and took the apple. He took a bite. It was mealy and sour, but he swallowed the piece. Just as he was about to take another bite, a black worm wriggled out of a hole in the space he had just bitten. He dropped the apple in disgust.
Mr. Lamrey laughed. “That should do it,” he said.
Mr. Roogs felt himself leaving the ground, floating up next to Mr. Lamrey, and he watched in amazement as the classroom changed.
And now, the conclusion of “The Terrible Old Mr. Roogs: A Twisted Carol.”
* * *
Christmas lights appeared, draped from the ceiling of the classroom, and a decorated evergreen materialized in the corner. On the walls, the block letter posters of grammar rules were replaced by colorful depictions of various works of literature and poetry.
It was Mr. Roogs’ first classroom from 25 years earlier. He saw the familiar poster of Emily Dickinson, the only other poster in his modern day classroom besides the rules. Besides Dickinson, the walls depicted stories from Shakespeare to Steinbeck.
Then Mr. Roogs noticed the poster for “Great Expectations.” Charles Dickens. Of course. This had to be a dream. While he knew for certain that the Emily Dickenson poster had been in his first classroom, he couldn’t remember if he had the “Great Expectations” poster. But he was familiar with the novel, just as he was familiar with Dickens’ most well-known work, “A Christmas Carol.”
He had been right when he first saw Mr. Lamrey in believing this all a dream. He had superimposed himself into the classic Christmas ghost story. He wondered how he had ever doubted this? They were flying, for Pete’s sake. Of course it was a dream.
He would have laughed aloud if it weren’t for the fact that he was indeed fascinated by the transformation of his classroom. And the appearance of his younger self. Mr. Roogs barely recognized the man sitting behind the desk, wearing a Santa hat and grading papers. The desk was covered with apples, oranges and other student gifts.
The younger Benjamin graded with a green pen, instead of red. He spoke aloud to no one in particular as he mused over an essay on the desk. “Far from a perfect paper,” he said, “but an amazing improvement from the beginning of the semester. ‘A+’.”
He wrote the grade on the essay, then took one of the apples, sat back in his chair with a smile and took a bite. “That should make Nancy’s Christmas a little better.”
The old Mr. Roogs grumbled. “What a fool I was,” he said.
“Back then, you still cared,” Mr. Lamrey said.
“I say again,” Benjamin said, “what a fool I was. These kids don’t ever change. I just finally realized it. Every year they’re the same. They just don’t care about anything, let alone their schooling.”
“That’s not always the case,” Mr. Lamrey said.
The walls of the classroom shimmered—like projections on a waterfall—then started to fade around them, the scene changing into the living room of an unfamiliar house. The floor was strewn with unwrapped Christmas gifts. Clothes, electronics, toys. And books.
Still floating over the ground, Mr. Roogs could see several classic titles on the floor, even some newer ones which he had to grudgingly admit would probably be classics themselves one day. He heard a familiar voice coming from a hallway just before Robby Thatcher walked into the living room. He stared down at the floor.
Mr. Roogs sneered. “I knew they wouldn’t take his Christmas away.” Then he noticed the miserable look on Robby’s face. “Why is he so sad? What, he didn’t get the newest video game?”
Robby took a piece of paper from his back pocket. “GRADE REPORT” was printed across the top. A man’s voice rumbled down the hallway. “Every last one, Robby.”
“But Dad,” Robby implored, “I worked really hard on my essay.”
“Apparently not hard enough,” the man’s voice said. “Now that you’ve opened them, you can give them all back. Everything’s going back to the store.”
“They actually did it,” Mr. Roogs said, his voice betraying a little guilt. He hadn’t imagined this.
“There’s more,” Mr. Lamrey said, and Mr. Roogs was even more surprised when he saw Robby pick up all of the books and take them out of the room. A young girl came in and started playing with the remaining gifts.
“The books were his?” Mr. Roogs asked.
“That’s all he asked for,” Mr. Lamrey said.
Now the guilt was a little stronger. “Well, I can change this, right?”
“You told him it was too late,” Mr. Lamrey said. “And it is too late. For you.”
The room changed again, growing darker. The living room faded as the walls disappeared into darkness and fog, the nap of the carpet replaced by thick grass. They were floating outside somewhere, and as the mist cleared, Mr. Roogs figured out what the spirit of Carl Lamrey meant when he had said, “You have to see. You have to know.”
On the ground before them was a rectangular plot of freshly turned soil. At the end of the plot was a headstone. Written on the stone was:
Benjamin Roogs
October 12, 1961- December 19, 2014
Mr. Roogs gasped. “That’s today,” he said. “What is going to happen to me? What lies in my future? Is it the storm? Do I die in an accident?” Benjamin tried to backpeddle away from the grave, but he didn’t have any leverage hovering over the ground.
“Is it Robby?” he asked. “Does he come back to get revenge? What can I do? This is still the future, right?” Mr. Roogs started drifting down toward the dirt, but when his feet touched the soil, instead being able to run away, he felt himself being sucked into the ground. He flailed his arms. “Wait, I can still change this, right?”
“It’s too late,” Mr. Lamrey said and started to laugh. The cell phones lit up and started their loud jangling as Mr. Roogs sunk into the grave. “It’s too late!”
Just as his head was about to get pulled into the cold earth, Benjamin Roogs awoke with a gasp. He had fallen asleep with his head on his desk. A bit of drool had escaped his mouth, and he sat up and wiped his face. “Just a dream,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Just a dream.”
He looked down at his desk and saw the essay of Robby Thatcher. He picked it up and started to read. Barely into the first paragraph, Mr. Roogs’s eyes widened. By the second page, his jaw had dropped. He turned back to the first page and started to read it again.
On his computer, he opened up the internet, even though he didn’t believe it was plagiarized. It sounded genuine, but still, Robby Thatcher? After searching his favorite sites, Mr. Roogs accepted the fact that Robby was actually the author of the breathtaking essay on Emily Dickinson he held in his hands.
He started reading the essay again. Yes, it was brilliant. Very well-written and thought out. Mr. Roogs didn’t think he could write something so well, and Emily Dickinson was his favorite author. Robby’s essay was passionate. It was eloquent. It was wonderful. It was… missing a period.
At the end of the essay.
Mr. Roogs looked closer. Sure enough. He must’ve been too stunned to catch it the first time, but there it was. Or rather, there it wasn’t. There was no period at the end of the final sentence of the essay.
Mr. Roogs’s hand slid forward across the desk and clutched the red pen. “How can you forget a period?” he erupted. “It’s the ending. It’s the last bit of punctuation. The thing that says ‘This is the end.’ How can you not remember that? Such a failure. It is too late!”
Mr. Roogs stabbed his red pen down on the essay, breaking off the tip. Ink started to spread out across the paper. “Dammit!” Mr. Roogs pushed himself back from the desk. He swiveled around in his chair to grab a tissue, but when he turned back, he froze, his hand poised over the paper where the red ink blot had formed a shape. The shape of an apple.
From out in the hallways, Mr. Roogs heard the ringing of a cell phone. “Carol of the Bells.”
He jumped up, his heart racing. He grabbed his keys from the desk and bolted out of the classroom. He ran through the darkened halls as the sound of the ringing grew louder and louder. He came around the last corner, to the top of the flight of stairs and only had a moment to register that there was something on the top stair in the instant before he stepped on it, rolling his ankle and sending him careening down the stairs.
He felt something crack in his chest, followed by a stabbing pain, as he tumbled the rest of the way down, coming to a stop at the bottom. He slowly turned his head and looked up to the top stair.
As darkness closed in around Mr. Roogs, the apple teetered and dropped to the next step, then the next.
thunk.
thunk.
thunk…. thunk.
The End.
Paul D. Dail received his BFA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from the University of Montana, Missoula. In addition to freelance journalism and web content creation, he also enjoys writing creative nonfiction and fiction (with a penchant for the darker side of the page). His collection of flash fiction, Free Five, has spent over a year and a half in the top 50 Kindle Horror Shorts Stories since its publication in 2012. Currently he lives on the outskirts of Kanarraville, surrounded by sagebrush and pinyon junipers with his wife and two children.
