Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2007-12-17 11:14 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2007-12-17 11:14 pm
Fake News: A Colbert Carol, Stanza I
Title: A Colbert Carol, Stanza I: Stewart's Ghost
Series: TCR
Rating: G
Genre: Uplifting Christmas tale!
Summary: Years after Jon's death, Stephen is still celebrating Christmas with extravagant and overblown decorations, but he doesn't truly understand the spirit of the season until a succession of ghosts arrives to show him.
❄ A COLBERT CAROL ❄
Stanza I: Stewart's Ghost
Jon Stewart was dead. It is a sad fact—to be perfectly plain, it sucks—but not only was Jon Stewart deceased, he had been so for many years, long enough that those who knew him had grieved a healthy period, and recovered, and continued on with their lives.
Colbert knew Stewart was dead. How could he not? True, Colbert was a self-centered, stubborn, egotistical blowhard; but the only person who had been able to put up with all of this and remain his friend was Stewart. After his death Colbert had grown more insulated, more withdrawn, more insufferable. His staff avoided him; his family deserted him; the members of his audience cheered enthusiastically when he was on the set, but tried not to meet him in person.
Stewart's name had never been pulled from the credits of Colbert's show; the two were still listed side by side as executive producers. But Stewart was dead as a doorknob (this is clever foreshadowing, as you will soon discover), and you really must understand that for this story to have the proper impact. Were I the good Mr. Dickens, I would belabor this point for several more pages; as it is, I trust you have absorbed it by now.
The story in question begins on Christmas Eve. Although Colbert considered himself a faithful adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, he reminded his staff at every opportunity that the birth of Christ, holy and delightful though it was, was no excuse to slack off. And so, on this night as on every other, the office was occupied.
Colbert was ensconced in his office, practicing the raising of his eyebrows before his favorite mirror, when there came a knock at his door. "Come in," he ordered absently.
Despite Colbert's focus on his own face, he did observe the identity of the man who entered the room behind him: his stage manager, one Bob Cratchit. "What do you want, Bobby?"
"Well, Stephen," began Cratchit nervously, "we were hoping . . . that is to say, we wanted to ask . . . If we're going to be here much longer, could we turn the heat up? Just a few degrees?"
"Nonsense. It's plenty warm in here."
"It's fine here, Stephen, because there's a space heater in your office."
"And there's a fire downstairs. What's the difference?"
"It's . . ." Cratchit hesitated, as though unsure that any words were sufficiently plain to convey the simplicity of the concept. "It's not a real fire, Stephen. It's a TV screen with a picture of a fire. And besides, it's turned off."
"Well, turn it on. Now shoo. We both have work to do." At Cratchit's hesitation, Colbert turned around and waved him impatiently away. "Shoo! shoo! My pull-squint will get rusty if I don't give it proper exercise."
Cratchit's mouth moved a few times as though he intended to respond; but a moment later he nodded and slipped away without speaking. Colbert hardly noticed, being too deeply absorbed in the complicated business of the angle of his brows.
He had certainly intended to work on that maneuver which so deftly combined removal of the glasses and an intent expression of the eyes; but a few moments later Colbert was distracted by the peculiar tilt of his right ear. Should've gotten that Botoxed long ago, he thought irritably as he pushed it in and released it to see it spring back out again. In. Out. In. Out. The effect was most hypnotizing.
The door burst open without so much as a knock, and Colbert nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Don't do that!" he snapped at the jovial, besuited black man who had entered with such enthusiasm. "I was in the middle of some very intense concentration! Don't think you'll get special consideration just because you're my black friend."
P. K. Winsome—for it was he, having officially ascended to the role of Stephen's Black Friend some years earlier (although the office of Stephen's Jewish Friend remained unoccupied)—smiled, in a way that suggested he would have appeared crushed with remorse if he had been the sort of man who ever stopped smiling. "I'm sorry, Stephen," he said cheerfully. "But I just couldn't wait. Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas," replied Colbert, who had never responded to that salutation with any other and was not inclined to start now, despite the growing feeling of humbuggery in his heart.
"You see," explained the black friend, reaching into the fur-trimmed red sack which he had slung over his shoulder, "I simply could not allow you to miss this limited time offer, which I'm sure both you and your many viewers will appreciate." He pressed a stiff, brightly colored book into the host's hands.
It was really a shame that Colbert was not looking in the mirror at the moment, for he would have been most gratified by the look of scepticism on his face as he received the presentation. "What's this?"
"P. K. Winsome's Children's Christmas Treasury, by P. K. Winsome. It's a heartwarming collection of seasonal tales for kids, narrated by yours truly, P. K. Winsome. Not only that, but it's available right now at a special holiday discount. Not only that, but I'm doing an exclusive signing event tomorrow, at a large bookstore right here in New York! I thought you might like to alert your audience; it's a deal that they won't want to miss."
The pundit flipped through the garishly colored pages, then snapped the book shut and thrust it back at his black friend. "Sorry, P. K.," he said, not sounding sorry in the least. "I'm not a fan of books, even when they do have Jesus in them. You know that. Besides, my show is about something so much bigger than your name-brand merchandising. It's about my name-brand merchandising."
Winsome was undeterred. "Even so, won't you come to the signing? It'll be an evening of fun and festivity, P. K. Winsome style. And if I let it slip on the Internet that you'll be there, your fans will be lining up outside the door within five minutes."
It was true, but the pundit remained unswayed. "No chance," he declared flatly.
The black friend looked almost hurt, his smile almost forced. "Why, Stephen," he exclaimed, "you don't seem to have much holiday spirit."
At last, something at which he could legitimately vent. "No," snapped the pundit, "I do not have holiday spirit! I have Christmas spirit! And any event at a big bookstore is bound to have all kinds of 'multicultural' and 'diverse' decorations—" (he punctuated these ejaculations with quotation marks traced in the air with his fingers) "—in the name of 'tolerance', which we all know is just another word for wishy-washiness, and I want nothing to do with it. Now, take your book—" (he fairly spat the word) "—and be off with you!" And he hustled his black friend, book and sack and all, through the entrance to the office, slamming it closed behind him.
"I'll leave a chair empty for you, just in case!" came Winsome's muffled voice through the door. Colbert diligently ignored it until it departed.
Though he attempted to re-immerse himself in his mirror-aided exercises, Colbert's concentration had left him entirely. Once resigned to the truth that it was high time for him to go home for the night, he opened his laptop for a routine final check of his email.
Most of it was spam. Despite his efforts to the contrary, Colbert had learned a few things over the years, including some about fraudulent email: namely, that rich Nigerian princes, stockbrokers with highly valuable inside information, and purveyors of miraculous manhood-enlarging drugs were rarely what they claimed to be. (The last of these had never in fact taken him in. Stephen Colbert's manhood had no need of enlarging, thank you.)
But a new breed of fraud had hit Colbert's inbox: that which attempted to obtain his money in exchange for nothing at all. With official- and patriotic-sounding names such as the American Red Cross, UNICEF, and the Salvation Army, they promised in all apparent seriousness that if he sent some of his hard-earned salary into their coffers, they would use it to buy useful things for other people.
Scoffing, Colbert deleted the lot, closed the laptop, and left his office. Even if such schemes really benefited the poor, surely he was doing his part already; the Truth which he dispensed every night ought to be quite enough for anyone.
The studio was decorated from rivets to rafters with sufficient lights, bows, holly, and divers other evidence of Christmas cheer to comfortably fill a room twice its breadth. As Colbert entered, Cratchit was holding steady a ladder on which stood Meg Silverman, the former intern who had risen to the level of director by being the only one who didn't quit within six months, winding a string of lights through the ceiling supports to accompany the four already there. Cratchit tapped the leg of the ladder to alert Silverman to the arrival; she looked down, set eyes upon Colbert, and stood at attention.
"I suppose," remarked Colbert after a moment of surveying the decor, hands on hips, "you think this should be enough."
Silverman and Cratchit exchanged nervous glances. Then the stage manager said hesitantly, "Well, Stephen, it's all going to come down in January and the show's on break until then anyway, so it isn't as if anyone's going to see it."
"It's the principle of the thing, Bobby," snapped Colbert, then grew calm again. "Still," he observed, "you have been working all day." He scanned the room. "What about Tad? Where's Tad?"
"The big spruce fell on him yesterday," Silverman reminded him. "He's probably going to be on crutches for weeks. We made him stay home for the time being."
Colbert nodded. "So you two did all this by yourselves?" he asked, appraising the room again. "Very well. You may go."
Silverman jumped down the rungs of the ladder two at a time, exchanged a grin with Cratchit, then smiled with more reserve but genuine warmth nevertheless at Colbert. "Thanks, Stephen. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," agreed Cratchit.
"Merry Christmas, Meg," replied Colbert. "And, Bobby, happy . . . whatever it is you celebrate. You're, what, a Rastafarian?"
"Unitarian. And I actually do celebrate Christmas."
"You do?" Colbert blinked. "I did not know that. I'll remember that next year and give you a Christmas bonus. Well, good night." He turned on his well-polished heel and strode out without looking back.
It was cold and dark outside. Colbert glared angrily at all the unlighted windows, as well as those with inefficient nine-armed candelabras. Didn't they realize that an illuminated plastic Santa would be much brighter?
His mood remained surly as his driver took him home, despite the carols blasting from the limousine's radio and the warm air blasting from its vents. Colbert couldn't understand it, but as he was not an introspective man by nature, he gave no thought to the question of whether some factor beyond insufficient Christmas decoration might be fueling his tightly repressed desire to kick something.
The Colbert Compound was no less underadorned than the studio. The pundit had walked down the street one morning and, upon seeing a person who appeared to his admittedly untrained eye to be Mexican, wrote him a check for the purpose of decking that noble mansion's halls, as well as its lawns and gutters and every last windowsill. When the house was stuffed to the gills with colored bulbs, he had rigged the whole assembly to switch itself on automatically at four o'clock each evening and remain lighted until the same hour in the morning. So when the limousine arrived, nearly on the stroke of midnight, the house was a veritable castle of luminescence.
"Merry Christmas," said the driver encouragingly, tipping his red-and-white-striped stovepipe hat to Colbert as the latter climbed out of the car.
"Merry Christmas, Sam," replied Colbert mechanically.
The path was nearly as bright as if it were daytime, and the pundit approached his house through a thicket of glowing plastic elves, wicker reindeer threaded through with LEDs, and massive novelty snowglobes. It was almost a relief when he reached the door, which, aside from a tasteful plain wreath hung from the knocker, was mercifully bare.
Now, about that knocker.
Colbert knew it well. He had commissioned it in the visage of his adopted son, the eagle Stephen Junior, but aside from its avian form it was unremarkable: plain, heavy bronze, dully reflecting the light from the multitude of bulbs draped about it.
It was ordinary, it was unchanging, and, most importantly, it was definitely an eagle.
Colbert liked to consider himself a realist, but in truth he held many unrealistic ideas. What tied them all together was his unwavering belief that they were right: he knew things, with the sort of fervor that comes from ignoring all contradictions to them and suppressing all doubts of them.
And he had never even found it necessary to turn his powers of suppression on these two facts: that the door-knocker was an eagle, and that Jon Stewart was dead.
So let any citizen explain to me, if he or she can, how as he was turning his key in the lock Colbert saw, staring at him in bronze from beneath the branches of the wreath, Stewart's face.
The expression on the face was one with which Colbert was intimately familiar, having many a time been its cause: the mouth a helpless half-grin, the eyes resembling nothing so much as those of a hurt puppy, and between them a nose of unmistakable size. In every line and every hair it was the picture of Stewart, and Colbert was so stunned that he momentarily forgot the necessity of respiration.
And then it was an eagle again.
Colbert, his breathing resumed, eyed the knocker warily for a full minute; but as no face other than his son's returned the gaze, he pushed the door open and strode inside with rather more haste than was strictly necessary.
The mansion was huge, brightly lit, and, except for Colbert, deserted. His feet made the only sound to be heard, beyond the dim electronic hum of a hundred thousand miniature bulbs, as they climbed the main staircase. He passed on the way divers portraits of himself in assorted heroic postures: Colbert crossing the Delaware; Colbert raising a flag above a battlefield; Colbert, in an outfit similar to that of his driver, pointing with determination at the viewer. All were meticulously rendered, as well as subtly angled so as to enhance the strength of the subject's chin, reflect a dashing amount of light off of his sculpted hair, and obscure his troublesome right ear.
Near the top of these stairs, all but overshadowed by a dramatic full-length rendering of Colbert against a bright blue sky, there hung on the wall a comparatively miniature magazine cover, preserved behind glass and an opulent golden frame. This cover depicted an enthusiastic younger Colbert, hair still dark brown and face lined only by his broad grin, with one arm wrapped around the shoulders of Stewart, who looked somewhat less exuberant but not displeased. Our Colbert paused a moment to look at this one (something which he had scarcely done for years), half-expecting the image to return his gaze.
It remained static. He took a few steps forward, but the eyes failed to follow him.
"Humbug," he said firmly, and pressed on.
He checked every corner of his chambers, and some of these twice or thrice over, before changing for bed, donning a set of comfortable flannel pyjamas with a stars-and-stripes pattern. He then checked the latch on every window, drew the chain across the door, and settled down on a chair before his fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate.
And then he heard a tread on the stairs.
The rhythm and the cadence of its footfalls was so familiar as to be unmistakable—and painful, if the facts be told, though Colbert had never put much faith in the value of facts. How often had he heard those steps approaching his office, to answer his call or deliver congratulations or merely have a talk?
"It's still humbug," said Colbert out loud, turning his prodigious powers of denial upon the subject. "I won't believe it!"
But even the greatest proficiency in ignoring facts could not have withstood this one: that it walked into the room, without so much courtesy as to open the door first.
It was Stewart, from head to foot. Stewart in his gesture and his gaze, in his height and his expression, garbed in that outfit which he had worn so often in life: a grey T-shirt, humble khakis, tennis shoes. And yet it was no living man, for Colbert observed with horror that his body was transparent; as the Ghost moved closer, the closed door could be seen on the opposite side of those short legs.
"You had the chain on," observed the Ghost, glancing back at the door. "Very wise. That makes a statement, right there: nobody's coming in this room unless they, ah, push." It was Stewart's voice, and one of Stewart's oft-used jokes.
"What do you want with me?" cried Colbert, shrinking into his armchair.
"A lot." —Stewart's wry smile.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I was."
"Don't be such a wordinista, Jon," snapped Colbert, and from that moment there could be no denying that he knew the spirit before him.
"Nice to see you too, Stephen," quipped the Ghost, mercifully unoffended.
"Can you—can you sit down?" asked Colbert, looking doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Then have a seat." Colbert gestured to the chair beside his, and the Ghost walked over to it and settled comfortably down.
"You don't believe in me, Stephen," he observed.
"I don't," agreed Colbert. "There are no such things as ghosts."
"Stephen, I'm right here," protested the Ghost with a little laugh. "Why don't you trust your own senses?"
"Because this is most likely just a bad dream, brought on by eating something that disagreed with me. Don't you see, Jon—you could be a bad slice of pizza, an undigested bite of banana, a stray crumb of muffin. You're more eggnog than ectoplasm, at any rate."
The Ghost turned those soulful eyes upon him, and Colbert thanked the Lord he was seated, for that look made him feel positively weak at the knees. "Besides," he continued, feeling rather more self-conscious now that he had failed to get a laugh from his companion, "you weren't a Catholic, so the real you would be trapped in Hell right now. Sorry. Nothing I can do about it."
The Ghost sighed. "Listen, Stephen, I'm not supposed to give too much of this away," he began, "but—well, first of all, I'm in Heaven, or was until I came here. It's really a tremendous place. Nothing like you think it is, but still tremendous."
Colbert raised an eyebrow. "If you want me to believe that, why are you in handcuffs?"
The Ghost looked down with some embarrassment at the cuffs on his wrists, connected by a modest silver chain. "Oh. Well. About these. It's a long story. You see, Raven . . . she's one of the strippers . . . no, that's beside the point." He unfastened one and then the other and tossed them aside; they had been as translucent as he when worn, but faded into total invisibility as they landed. "Yeah, Heaven has strippers. And beer volcanoes. Don't look so sceptical, Stephen. It also has eggnog, and great pizza, and really interesting people. I was talking to Lincoln just the other day. And whenever you feel like it—when you're happy enough, which you always are—you can just start dancing, and people don't give you weird looks about it, and sometimes they even join in. It's a little different for every person—but it's wonderful, Stephen. It really is."
Despite himself, Colbert was entranced, fully absorbed by the look of rapture on the Ghost's face. He had the eyes of someone who had beheld Paradise; this despite the fact that Colbert could see the back of the chair through them.
"What's it going to be like for me?" he breathed. "Is Reagan there? And Tolkien? Can I—"
The Ghost had sobered in an instant. "That's why I'm here, Stephen," he interrupted. "It won't be anything for you. If you continue living the way you are, you're not going to Heaven."
Colbert began to tremble.
"You're lying," he said, but the words were hollow even as he spoke them.
"Jon," he tried again, his voice quaking. "Jon, please, there must be some mistake. I've tried to be good, to do right, to help people . . ."
"You haven't." It clearly pained the Ghost to say this, but he was determined; he leaned forward as he spoke, and Colbert leaned in too, holding his breath tremulously. "You hurt people, Stephen. And you don't even know it, and you don't try to know it. You think only of yourself, and you don't learn, nor do you understand how much you need to."
At this Colbert protested, albeit weakly. "But Jon, learning means admitting that you were wrong—"
"You are wrong." The Ghost's voice had grown cold as the grave. "You're wrong, Stephen, on so many levels, and God help you, it's going to get you damned."
"There—there is a God, though," whispered Stephen, clinging to what hope he could find.
"There is. I've met him. Though, again, he isn't what you think."
"Is he merciful? Would he grant me—"
"You're getting a chance to turn things around," Stewart assured him. "That's why I'm here."
A smile tugged at Colbert's lips in spite of his terror. "You're a good friend, Jon," he said quietly.
"Your best Jewish friend, right?" asked the Ghost, returning the small smile.
"My only Jewish friend. I never got another."
The Ghost looked genuinely surprised, then gratified. "I . . . Thank you, Stephen. You've got a shot at this, I know it. But I'm almost out of time."
"Hurry up and tell me what to do, then!" exclaimed Colbert in a quaking voice. "No fancy words now; just give it to me straight!"
"Right. You're going to be haunted. By three spirits."
Colbert's hopes, raised by the prospect of a chance at salvation, sank. "Do I have to?" he asked plaintively.
"Yes. The first will come when the clock strikes one on the first night; the second, at one on the second night; the last, at the stroke of midnight on the third night. And you've got to learn from them, Stephen. That's the key." He stood up as he spoke and began walking back towards the window, beckoning for Colbert to follow, which he did. "You've got to listen, and learn."
When they were within two paces of the window, he looked out at the sky. It was full of stars.
"I won't be able to contact you again," he told Colbert. "But please—for your own sake—don't forget what we've talked about."
That said, he stepped backwards through the window, unfolding as he did so a pair of massive feathery wings of impossible whiteness.
Colbert threw himself forward upon the sill and flung the window open. The figure of Stewart was receding fast; within seconds only the dazzling whiteness of his wings was visible, and then he was just another star, and then something blurred Colbert's vision and when he had blinked a few times to clear it he could no longer tell which star it had been.
He closed the window, then walked as if in a dream to the door of the room. The chain on it remained fastened, just as he had set it.
He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable.
And then, being much exhausted, from the emotion he had undergone or the fatigues of the day or the stress of the season or his glimpse of Heaven or merely the lateness of the hour, he went straight to bed, and was asleep in an instant.
Series: TCR
Rating: G
Genre: Uplifting Christmas tale!
Summary: Years after Jon's death, Stephen is still celebrating Christmas with extravagant and overblown decorations, but he doesn't truly understand the spirit of the season until a succession of ghosts arrives to show him.
❄ A COLBERT CAROL ❄
Stanza I: Stewart's Ghost
Jon Stewart was dead. It is a sad fact—to be perfectly plain, it sucks—but not only was Jon Stewart deceased, he had been so for many years, long enough that those who knew him had grieved a healthy period, and recovered, and continued on with their lives.
Colbert knew Stewart was dead. How could he not? True, Colbert was a self-centered, stubborn, egotistical blowhard; but the only person who had been able to put up with all of this and remain his friend was Stewart. After his death Colbert had grown more insulated, more withdrawn, more insufferable. His staff avoided him; his family deserted him; the members of his audience cheered enthusiastically when he was on the set, but tried not to meet him in person.
Stewart's name had never been pulled from the credits of Colbert's show; the two were still listed side by side as executive producers. But Stewart was dead as a doorknob (this is clever foreshadowing, as you will soon discover), and you really must understand that for this story to have the proper impact. Were I the good Mr. Dickens, I would belabor this point for several more pages; as it is, I trust you have absorbed it by now.
The story in question begins on Christmas Eve. Although Colbert considered himself a faithful adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, he reminded his staff at every opportunity that the birth of Christ, holy and delightful though it was, was no excuse to slack off. And so, on this night as on every other, the office was occupied.
❄
Colbert was ensconced in his office, practicing the raising of his eyebrows before his favorite mirror, when there came a knock at his door. "Come in," he ordered absently.
Despite Colbert's focus on his own face, he did observe the identity of the man who entered the room behind him: his stage manager, one Bob Cratchit. "What do you want, Bobby?"
"Well, Stephen," began Cratchit nervously, "we were hoping . . . that is to say, we wanted to ask . . . If we're going to be here much longer, could we turn the heat up? Just a few degrees?"
"Nonsense. It's plenty warm in here."
"It's fine here, Stephen, because there's a space heater in your office."
"And there's a fire downstairs. What's the difference?"
"It's . . ." Cratchit hesitated, as though unsure that any words were sufficiently plain to convey the simplicity of the concept. "It's not a real fire, Stephen. It's a TV screen with a picture of a fire. And besides, it's turned off."
"Well, turn it on. Now shoo. We both have work to do." At Cratchit's hesitation, Colbert turned around and waved him impatiently away. "Shoo! shoo! My pull-squint will get rusty if I don't give it proper exercise."
Cratchit's mouth moved a few times as though he intended to respond; but a moment later he nodded and slipped away without speaking. Colbert hardly noticed, being too deeply absorbed in the complicated business of the angle of his brows.
He had certainly intended to work on that maneuver which so deftly combined removal of the glasses and an intent expression of the eyes; but a few moments later Colbert was distracted by the peculiar tilt of his right ear. Should've gotten that Botoxed long ago, he thought irritably as he pushed it in and released it to see it spring back out again. In. Out. In. Out. The effect was most hypnotizing.
The door burst open without so much as a knock, and Colbert nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Don't do that!" he snapped at the jovial, besuited black man who had entered with such enthusiasm. "I was in the middle of some very intense concentration! Don't think you'll get special consideration just because you're my black friend."
P. K. Winsome—for it was he, having officially ascended to the role of Stephen's Black Friend some years earlier (although the office of Stephen's Jewish Friend remained unoccupied)—smiled, in a way that suggested he would have appeared crushed with remorse if he had been the sort of man who ever stopped smiling. "I'm sorry, Stephen," he said cheerfully. "But I just couldn't wait. Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas," replied Colbert, who had never responded to that salutation with any other and was not inclined to start now, despite the growing feeling of humbuggery in his heart.
"You see," explained the black friend, reaching into the fur-trimmed red sack which he had slung over his shoulder, "I simply could not allow you to miss this limited time offer, which I'm sure both you and your many viewers will appreciate." He pressed a stiff, brightly colored book into the host's hands.
It was really a shame that Colbert was not looking in the mirror at the moment, for he would have been most gratified by the look of scepticism on his face as he received the presentation. "What's this?"
"P. K. Winsome's Children's Christmas Treasury, by P. K. Winsome. It's a heartwarming collection of seasonal tales for kids, narrated by yours truly, P. K. Winsome. Not only that, but it's available right now at a special holiday discount. Not only that, but I'm doing an exclusive signing event tomorrow, at a large bookstore right here in New York! I thought you might like to alert your audience; it's a deal that they won't want to miss."
The pundit flipped through the garishly colored pages, then snapped the book shut and thrust it back at his black friend. "Sorry, P. K.," he said, not sounding sorry in the least. "I'm not a fan of books, even when they do have Jesus in them. You know that. Besides, my show is about something so much bigger than your name-brand merchandising. It's about my name-brand merchandising."
Winsome was undeterred. "Even so, won't you come to the signing? It'll be an evening of fun and festivity, P. K. Winsome style. And if I let it slip on the Internet that you'll be there, your fans will be lining up outside the door within five minutes."
It was true, but the pundit remained unswayed. "No chance," he declared flatly.
The black friend looked almost hurt, his smile almost forced. "Why, Stephen," he exclaimed, "you don't seem to have much holiday spirit."
At last, something at which he could legitimately vent. "No," snapped the pundit, "I do not have holiday spirit! I have Christmas spirit! And any event at a big bookstore is bound to have all kinds of 'multicultural' and 'diverse' decorations—" (he punctuated these ejaculations with quotation marks traced in the air with his fingers) "—in the name of 'tolerance', which we all know is just another word for wishy-washiness, and I want nothing to do with it. Now, take your book—" (he fairly spat the word) "—and be off with you!" And he hustled his black friend, book and sack and all, through the entrance to the office, slamming it closed behind him.
"I'll leave a chair empty for you, just in case!" came Winsome's muffled voice through the door. Colbert diligently ignored it until it departed.
Though he attempted to re-immerse himself in his mirror-aided exercises, Colbert's concentration had left him entirely. Once resigned to the truth that it was high time for him to go home for the night, he opened his laptop for a routine final check of his email.
Most of it was spam. Despite his efforts to the contrary, Colbert had learned a few things over the years, including some about fraudulent email: namely, that rich Nigerian princes, stockbrokers with highly valuable inside information, and purveyors of miraculous manhood-enlarging drugs were rarely what they claimed to be. (The last of these had never in fact taken him in. Stephen Colbert's manhood had no need of enlarging, thank you.)
But a new breed of fraud had hit Colbert's inbox: that which attempted to obtain his money in exchange for nothing at all. With official- and patriotic-sounding names such as the American Red Cross, UNICEF, and the Salvation Army, they promised in all apparent seriousness that if he sent some of his hard-earned salary into their coffers, they would use it to buy useful things for other people.
Scoffing, Colbert deleted the lot, closed the laptop, and left his office. Even if such schemes really benefited the poor, surely he was doing his part already; the Truth which he dispensed every night ought to be quite enough for anyone.
❄
The studio was decorated from rivets to rafters with sufficient lights, bows, holly, and divers other evidence of Christmas cheer to comfortably fill a room twice its breadth. As Colbert entered, Cratchit was holding steady a ladder on which stood Meg Silverman, the former intern who had risen to the level of director by being the only one who didn't quit within six months, winding a string of lights through the ceiling supports to accompany the four already there. Cratchit tapped the leg of the ladder to alert Silverman to the arrival; she looked down, set eyes upon Colbert, and stood at attention.
"I suppose," remarked Colbert after a moment of surveying the decor, hands on hips, "you think this should be enough."
Silverman and Cratchit exchanged nervous glances. Then the stage manager said hesitantly, "Well, Stephen, it's all going to come down in January and the show's on break until then anyway, so it isn't as if anyone's going to see it."
"It's the principle of the thing, Bobby," snapped Colbert, then grew calm again. "Still," he observed, "you have been working all day." He scanned the room. "What about Tad? Where's Tad?"
"The big spruce fell on him yesterday," Silverman reminded him. "He's probably going to be on crutches for weeks. We made him stay home for the time being."
Colbert nodded. "So you two did all this by yourselves?" he asked, appraising the room again. "Very well. You may go."
Silverman jumped down the rungs of the ladder two at a time, exchanged a grin with Cratchit, then smiled with more reserve but genuine warmth nevertheless at Colbert. "Thanks, Stephen. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," agreed Cratchit.
"Merry Christmas, Meg," replied Colbert. "And, Bobby, happy . . . whatever it is you celebrate. You're, what, a Rastafarian?"
"Unitarian. And I actually do celebrate Christmas."
"You do?" Colbert blinked. "I did not know that. I'll remember that next year and give you a Christmas bonus. Well, good night." He turned on his well-polished heel and strode out without looking back.
❄
It was cold and dark outside. Colbert glared angrily at all the unlighted windows, as well as those with inefficient nine-armed candelabras. Didn't they realize that an illuminated plastic Santa would be much brighter?
His mood remained surly as his driver took him home, despite the carols blasting from the limousine's radio and the warm air blasting from its vents. Colbert couldn't understand it, but as he was not an introspective man by nature, he gave no thought to the question of whether some factor beyond insufficient Christmas decoration might be fueling his tightly repressed desire to kick something.
The Colbert Compound was no less underadorned than the studio. The pundit had walked down the street one morning and, upon seeing a person who appeared to his admittedly untrained eye to be Mexican, wrote him a check for the purpose of decking that noble mansion's halls, as well as its lawns and gutters and every last windowsill. When the house was stuffed to the gills with colored bulbs, he had rigged the whole assembly to switch itself on automatically at four o'clock each evening and remain lighted until the same hour in the morning. So when the limousine arrived, nearly on the stroke of midnight, the house was a veritable castle of luminescence.
"Merry Christmas," said the driver encouragingly, tipping his red-and-white-striped stovepipe hat to Colbert as the latter climbed out of the car.
"Merry Christmas, Sam," replied Colbert mechanically.
The path was nearly as bright as if it were daytime, and the pundit approached his house through a thicket of glowing plastic elves, wicker reindeer threaded through with LEDs, and massive novelty snowglobes. It was almost a relief when he reached the door, which, aside from a tasteful plain wreath hung from the knocker, was mercifully bare.
Now, about that knocker.
Colbert knew it well. He had commissioned it in the visage of his adopted son, the eagle Stephen Junior, but aside from its avian form it was unremarkable: plain, heavy bronze, dully reflecting the light from the multitude of bulbs draped about it.
It was ordinary, it was unchanging, and, most importantly, it was definitely an eagle.
Colbert liked to consider himself a realist, but in truth he held many unrealistic ideas. What tied them all together was his unwavering belief that they were right: he knew things, with the sort of fervor that comes from ignoring all contradictions to them and suppressing all doubts of them.
And he had never even found it necessary to turn his powers of suppression on these two facts: that the door-knocker was an eagle, and that Jon Stewart was dead.
So let any citizen explain to me, if he or she can, how as he was turning his key in the lock Colbert saw, staring at him in bronze from beneath the branches of the wreath, Stewart's face.
The expression on the face was one with which Colbert was intimately familiar, having many a time been its cause: the mouth a helpless half-grin, the eyes resembling nothing so much as those of a hurt puppy, and between them a nose of unmistakable size. In every line and every hair it was the picture of Stewart, and Colbert was so stunned that he momentarily forgot the necessity of respiration.
And then it was an eagle again.
Colbert, his breathing resumed, eyed the knocker warily for a full minute; but as no face other than his son's returned the gaze, he pushed the door open and strode inside with rather more haste than was strictly necessary.
The mansion was huge, brightly lit, and, except for Colbert, deserted. His feet made the only sound to be heard, beyond the dim electronic hum of a hundred thousand miniature bulbs, as they climbed the main staircase. He passed on the way divers portraits of himself in assorted heroic postures: Colbert crossing the Delaware; Colbert raising a flag above a battlefield; Colbert, in an outfit similar to that of his driver, pointing with determination at the viewer. All were meticulously rendered, as well as subtly angled so as to enhance the strength of the subject's chin, reflect a dashing amount of light off of his sculpted hair, and obscure his troublesome right ear.
Near the top of these stairs, all but overshadowed by a dramatic full-length rendering of Colbert against a bright blue sky, there hung on the wall a comparatively miniature magazine cover, preserved behind glass and an opulent golden frame. This cover depicted an enthusiastic younger Colbert, hair still dark brown and face lined only by his broad grin, with one arm wrapped around the shoulders of Stewart, who looked somewhat less exuberant but not displeased. Our Colbert paused a moment to look at this one (something which he had scarcely done for years), half-expecting the image to return his gaze.
It remained static. He took a few steps forward, but the eyes failed to follow him.
"Humbug," he said firmly, and pressed on.
❄
He checked every corner of his chambers, and some of these twice or thrice over, before changing for bed, donning a set of comfortable flannel pyjamas with a stars-and-stripes pattern. He then checked the latch on every window, drew the chain across the door, and settled down on a chair before his fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate.
And then he heard a tread on the stairs.
The rhythm and the cadence of its footfalls was so familiar as to be unmistakable—and painful, if the facts be told, though Colbert had never put much faith in the value of facts. How often had he heard those steps approaching his office, to answer his call or deliver congratulations or merely have a talk?
"It's still humbug," said Colbert out loud, turning his prodigious powers of denial upon the subject. "I won't believe it!"
But even the greatest proficiency in ignoring facts could not have withstood this one: that it walked into the room, without so much courtesy as to open the door first.
It was Stewart, from head to foot. Stewart in his gesture and his gaze, in his height and his expression, garbed in that outfit which he had worn so often in life: a grey T-shirt, humble khakis, tennis shoes. And yet it was no living man, for Colbert observed with horror that his body was transparent; as the Ghost moved closer, the closed door could be seen on the opposite side of those short legs.
"You had the chain on," observed the Ghost, glancing back at the door. "Very wise. That makes a statement, right there: nobody's coming in this room unless they, ah, push." It was Stewart's voice, and one of Stewart's oft-used jokes.
"What do you want with me?" cried Colbert, shrinking into his armchair.
"A lot." —Stewart's wry smile.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I was."
"Don't be such a wordinista, Jon," snapped Colbert, and from that moment there could be no denying that he knew the spirit before him.
"Nice to see you too, Stephen," quipped the Ghost, mercifully unoffended.
"Can you—can you sit down?" asked Colbert, looking doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Then have a seat." Colbert gestured to the chair beside his, and the Ghost walked over to it and settled comfortably down.
"You don't believe in me, Stephen," he observed.
"I don't," agreed Colbert. "There are no such things as ghosts."
"Stephen, I'm right here," protested the Ghost with a little laugh. "Why don't you trust your own senses?"
"Because this is most likely just a bad dream, brought on by eating something that disagreed with me. Don't you see, Jon—you could be a bad slice of pizza, an undigested bite of banana, a stray crumb of muffin. You're more eggnog than ectoplasm, at any rate."
The Ghost turned those soulful eyes upon him, and Colbert thanked the Lord he was seated, for that look made him feel positively weak at the knees. "Besides," he continued, feeling rather more self-conscious now that he had failed to get a laugh from his companion, "you weren't a Catholic, so the real you would be trapped in Hell right now. Sorry. Nothing I can do about it."
The Ghost sighed. "Listen, Stephen, I'm not supposed to give too much of this away," he began, "but—well, first of all, I'm in Heaven, or was until I came here. It's really a tremendous place. Nothing like you think it is, but still tremendous."
Colbert raised an eyebrow. "If you want me to believe that, why are you in handcuffs?"
The Ghost looked down with some embarrassment at the cuffs on his wrists, connected by a modest silver chain. "Oh. Well. About these. It's a long story. You see, Raven . . . she's one of the strippers . . . no, that's beside the point." He unfastened one and then the other and tossed them aside; they had been as translucent as he when worn, but faded into total invisibility as they landed. "Yeah, Heaven has strippers. And beer volcanoes. Don't look so sceptical, Stephen. It also has eggnog, and great pizza, and really interesting people. I was talking to Lincoln just the other day. And whenever you feel like it—when you're happy enough, which you always are—you can just start dancing, and people don't give you weird looks about it, and sometimes they even join in. It's a little different for every person—but it's wonderful, Stephen. It really is."
Despite himself, Colbert was entranced, fully absorbed by the look of rapture on the Ghost's face. He had the eyes of someone who had beheld Paradise; this despite the fact that Colbert could see the back of the chair through them.
"What's it going to be like for me?" he breathed. "Is Reagan there? And Tolkien? Can I—"
The Ghost had sobered in an instant. "That's why I'm here, Stephen," he interrupted. "It won't be anything for you. If you continue living the way you are, you're not going to Heaven."
Colbert began to tremble.
"You're lying," he said, but the words were hollow even as he spoke them.
"Jon," he tried again, his voice quaking. "Jon, please, there must be some mistake. I've tried to be good, to do right, to help people . . ."
"You haven't." It clearly pained the Ghost to say this, but he was determined; he leaned forward as he spoke, and Colbert leaned in too, holding his breath tremulously. "You hurt people, Stephen. And you don't even know it, and you don't try to know it. You think only of yourself, and you don't learn, nor do you understand how much you need to."
At this Colbert protested, albeit weakly. "But Jon, learning means admitting that you were wrong—"
"You are wrong." The Ghost's voice had grown cold as the grave. "You're wrong, Stephen, on so many levels, and God help you, it's going to get you damned."
"There—there is a God, though," whispered Stephen, clinging to what hope he could find.
"There is. I've met him. Though, again, he isn't what you think."
"Is he merciful? Would he grant me—"
"You're getting a chance to turn things around," Stewart assured him. "That's why I'm here."
A smile tugged at Colbert's lips in spite of his terror. "You're a good friend, Jon," he said quietly.
"Your best Jewish friend, right?" asked the Ghost, returning the small smile.
"My only Jewish friend. I never got another."
The Ghost looked genuinely surprised, then gratified. "I . . . Thank you, Stephen. You've got a shot at this, I know it. But I'm almost out of time."
"Hurry up and tell me what to do, then!" exclaimed Colbert in a quaking voice. "No fancy words now; just give it to me straight!"
"Right. You're going to be haunted. By three spirits."
Colbert's hopes, raised by the prospect of a chance at salvation, sank. "Do I have to?" he asked plaintively.
"Yes. The first will come when the clock strikes one on the first night; the second, at one on the second night; the last, at the stroke of midnight on the third night. And you've got to learn from them, Stephen. That's the key." He stood up as he spoke and began walking back towards the window, beckoning for Colbert to follow, which he did. "You've got to listen, and learn."
When they were within two paces of the window, he looked out at the sky. It was full of stars.
"I won't be able to contact you again," he told Colbert. "But please—for your own sake—don't forget what we've talked about."
That said, he stepped backwards through the window, unfolding as he did so a pair of massive feathery wings of impossible whiteness.
Colbert threw himself forward upon the sill and flung the window open. The figure of Stewart was receding fast; within seconds only the dazzling whiteness of his wings was visible, and then he was just another star, and then something blurred Colbert's vision and when he had blinked a few times to clear it he could no longer tell which star it had been.
He closed the window, then walked as if in a dream to the door of the room. The chain on it remained fastened, just as he had set it.
He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable.
And then, being much exhausted, from the emotion he had undergone or the fatigues of the day or the stress of the season or his glimpse of Heaven or merely the lateness of the hour, he went straight to bed, and was asleep in an instant.
❄