Chapter Four: The Last of the Spirits
The figure that Bruce saw was a green figure dressed all in purple, with two large red eyes. The figure was slim, but he stood over Bruce, draping him in the figure's shadow.
"Are you the ghost of Christmas Future?" Bruce asked.
The spirit nodded its head.
"Please speak to me." Bruce requested. "What will happen to Graym Ranzz?"
The spirit pointed several feet away where the Ranzz family was. Imra was standing there solemnly as she comforted her two children, and Ayla stood there as well with tears streaming down her face. As they walked off, Garth stayed, holding the little crutch Graym had used, clutching it tight, and a tear of his own falling down his face. He then set it near the tombstone as Bruce understood what had happened.
"Oh no, dear heaven let it not be." Bruce said as he felt for his poor clerk. "Spirit, I didn't mean for this to happen. Tell me these events can still be changed."
Suddenly, he heard two men laughing. One had dark brown hair and very young and moderately muscular while the other had black hair, a rather plain face and middle-aged.
"I've never seen a funeral like this before." The man with dark brown hair said.
"Yeah." His friend said. "No mourners. No friends to bid him farewell."
"Oh well." The first man said. "Let's rest a minute before we fill it in. He's not going anywhere."
They walked off as Bruce at the spirit approached the grave.
"Whose lonely grave is this?" Bruce asked nervously as the spirit pointed down, and Osborn read on the tombstone his own name, "Bruce Wayne."
Bruce then looked up to see that the spirit had lowered himself to Bruce's level, and Bruce made out three diodes on his head.
"Why yours, Bruce." The spirit said with a wicked grin and a cold, detached voice. "The richest man in the cemetery."
The spirit pushed Bruce in as he grabbed a tree root for dear life as the spirit only starred on. When Bruce looked down, the coffin opened, and red hot fire was spilling out of it.
"Oh no!" Bruce called out. "No!"
Bruce suddenly lost his grip on the root and fell into the coffin while the spirit laughed, and Bruce screamed, "I'll change! I'LL CHANGE…!"
Then, all was darkness.
Well that was short sweet, and terrifying.