A/N: Another chapter. I know that at the rate I'm going I won't be done by Christmas, but I believe that the spirit of the season is still around for a few days after the holiday.

Disclaimer: I don't own either Trigun or A Christmas Carol, only Nightow and Dickens respectively can claim them.

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Chapter 2: Christmas Ghosts to Come

All the houses lining the street were lit but his own when Knives arrived at his place of residence. His was dark and gloomy, and could not be called a home. On the contrary, it looked as if no one lived in the structure for many a year. The grey stone, worn by the years, was cold and uninviting.

He climbed the stairs and fumbled in his pockets for the key to the door. Knives did not immediately notice that the knocker on his front door had started to change. It looked as if a fog was shifting and forming features that resembled something human.

He caught sight of this strange mist out of the corner of his eyes and turned to look. His eyes widened in surprise when, what appeared to be a familiar face, stared back at him. Then he blinked and the vision was gone.

The man shook his head, trying to rationalize what he'd seen. He could have sworn that the face of his old partner, Elendira Crimson, had been staring back at him from the knocker.

Knives pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. It was just not possible that Elendira's face had been on his door knocker.

With a growl, he banished the incident from his mind and unlocked the door.

Knives shivered as he was hit with a blast of ice-cold air that hit him when he stepped inside the building. The only other person who ever stepped inside the house was his housekeeper, and she had left long ago. The night air of the desert had already taken full hold and the temperature had dropped considerably.

The result was that all of the fires had burnt out and the structure was now no more than a large fridge. The night air of the desert had already taken full hold and the temperature had dropped considerably.

Knives felt goosebumps form on his skin as he made his way up the old staircase. The boards creaked below his feet.

The man soon arrived at his bedroom at the top of the stairs and hastily changed into his loose short-sleeved shirt and baggy pants, a robe pulled over himself to keep out the chill. He sat down upon his armchair in front of a fire that he had started in the fireplace. In his lap was a bowl of gruel that he had found in the kitchen. The food was far from appetizing, but it was all he had.

The miser sat there, in front of the fire, alone, and eating his horrible tasting food. There was a deathly silence in the entire house.

Then the quiet was broken.

The distinct sound of chains came from beyond the closed bedroom door. A spoonful of gruel stopped its journey to his mouth as the sound hit Knives' ears. There was no mistaking the sound of metal on wood.

Neither could it be denied that the sound was coming steadily closer. The clanking was making its way up the staircase.

Knives set down the bowl and spoon on the table beside him and turned in his chair to glance at the door. As he watched, the noise reached the entrance to the room. Instead of the stopping at the closed door, the noise continued toward him and a figure appeared to move through the wood. The man's eyes grew impossibly large as he beheld the apparition.

Before him, decked in chains, was a translucent form that resembled his long-dead partner, Elendira Crimson. The tall body and wide shoulders were there, as was the hair he'd worn longer than was fashionable. A few other more feminine than masculine characteristics also gave credit to the identity of the creature.

Not a noise came from apparition as it stood in the middle of the room and stared at him.

Now rarely, if ever, did Knives feel intimidated by anything. He'd stood up to a large number of people that others would not dare cross. But this...this creature that now stood before him, scared him more than he cared to admit.

He quickly turned back in his chair so that he was facing the fire. There was just no way that the figure was real. The thought gave him courage and he looked back, expecting the apparition to have disappeared.

Needless to say, it was still standing there.

As he stared at it with shock and fear written on his face, the figure finally spoke.

"Do you not recognize me, Knives?"

Yet another surprise for Knives. He recognized the voice as that of his dead partner.

Now things were getting out of hand.

Knives was a skeptical person by nature and he refused to believe that the creature before him was anything more than a figment of his imagination.

So he told the thing so.

"Recognize you? I certainly do," his tone was crisp and annoyed. "You are my imagination - or maybe my eyes - playing a trick on me."

His words did not seem to please the apparition. "You doubt what you see before you? Is not seeing believing?" As if to give him a better view of itself, the creature took a few steps toward Knives.

"There are a number of things that could effect one's vision," he argued, rising from his chair. "You could be nothing more than bad gruel." He indicated the bowl and its contents as proof.

The figment of his imagination narrowed its eyes, opened its mouth, and let loose a loud and long wail.

Knives covered his ears in pain as the horrible noise filled the room. Never in his life had he ever heard anything make such a frightening sound. He felt his blood freeze and his breath was coming hard and fast.

"Stop!" he shouted above the noise.

The spirit screeched for a few seconds longer, then closed its mouth. The apparition watched as Knives took his hands off his ears and stood from the position on the floor that-in his pain-he had fallen onto.

"Now do you believe?" Elendira asked his former partner.

"I do," Knives answered in a shaky voice, still recovering from what felt like blown-up eardrums. "Nothing of this plane could make such a noise."

"It is well that you understand that, for I have come with a warning for you," the ghost said in a grave voice.

"A warning?" Knives asked warily. What would a ghost wish to warn him about?

"Yes. I have come to tell you that unless you change your ways, your fate will be as mine." At this the ghost jingled the chains that were wrapped around his body. Attached to the chains were little money boxes that clanked as if filled with coins.

"For my misdeeds I am cursed to wander No-Man's-Land, never to rest." A pained look crossed Elendira's face, as if he was imagining all the years ahead of him.

"Misdeeds?" Knives asked incredulously. "You did no more than anyone else has done. You were a true business man."

"Was I? I swindled people daily, robbed from the poor, and did nothing to help anyone but myself." He shook his head sadly. "For these and more I have been condemned to this purgatory. But it is not my plight that I am here to speak of," he continued. "I have come to warn you that this, and more, will happen to you if you do not change."

Knives was shocked. He could think of no worse a fate than to spend an eternity wandering, of having to watch as other people lived their lives around him. "What can I do to avoid such a fate?"

The dead partner held up three translucent fingers. "Three spirits will visit you this night. Listen to them and there might yet be hope for you."

"Three spirits? Can I not do something else?"

The apparition let loose another long screech, forcing Knives to cover his ears yet again. Then the ghost began to float and with a fast swoop, flew out of the window that had been blown open by some unseen wind.

Knives staggered to the window and looked out upon a sight that he would never forget. There were hundreds upon hundreds of spirits flying in the night air. As he watched, Elendira joined their numbers and then all of them slowly faded away until they had disappeared.

A frustrated growl escaped Knives' throat before he slammed the window shut. Three ghosts, what nonsense! That was the last time he had gruel, he vowed.

After that he prepared for sleep. Right before he got into bed, Knives nonchalantly took a look under the bed and around the room, checking around for the spirits that had been promised.

When he saw nothing, the man berated himself for his foolishness and crawled into his large, four-post bed.

He must have fallen asleep, though Knives didn't remember being that tired, when a bright light woke him. The man sat up in the bed and looked around the room. At the end of the bed stood a glowing figure dressed in white.

The first spirit had arrived.