By Rod A. White
Silas Grimwald clutched his woolen coat tighter as he descended into the basement of his counting house. The December wind rattled the windows above, but down here, surrounded by towers of ledgers and strongboxes, he felt secure. Money had walls thicker than stone—or at least he liked to think.
The gas lamp flickered as he approached his private vault, casting dancing shadows across the neat rows of account books. Each volume contained records of how he had denied others every possible penny he deserved instead. His thin fingers, gnarled from decades of gripping quills, traced the spine of the current year’s ledger.
Something was wrong.
The ledger sat precisely where he’d left it, but a single page protruded slightly—a violation of his meticulous order. Grimwald’s pulse quickened. In forty years of business, no one had ever touched his private records. The basement remained locked, the key never leaving his person.
He opened the ledger with trembling hands. There, in his own spidery handwriting, was an entry he’d never made:
Final payment due: One soul.
Debtor: S. Grimwald.
Collector arrives at midnight.
Below it, in the same ink, the same hand:
The books must balance, old friend.
– Your partner in profit, Edmund Coldwell.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Grimwald’s breath puffed in the suddenly frigid air.
Edmund was his business partner once, before consumption claimed him. They built their fortune together, squeezing every farthing from desperate borrowers, foreclosing on widows, and turning away beggars who froze on their doorstep. Edmund had died clutching a ledger, muttering about debts that couldn’t be paid with coin.
Grimwald’s eyes darted to the basement windows. Outside, snow fell in thick curtains, and somewhere in the distance, a church bell began to chime. Eleven strikes echoed through the night.
One hour till midnight.
Grimwald slammed the ledger shut and rushed upstairs to his office. His hands shook as he fumbled through drawers, searching for… what? A weapon? An explanation? He pulled out a bottle of brandy he’d been saving—not from sentiment, but because spirits were an investment that appreciated with age.
He tipped up the bottle, and the liquid burned his throat as it slid down. He hadn’t tasted alcohol in years, but tonight, waste seemed a smaller concern than the entry in his ledger, written in his own hand by a dead man.
The brandy loosened Grimwald’s tongue, and he found himself speaking to the empty office. “Edmund, you fool. If you’re truly here, what collector could you possibly send? We paid our debts. We always paid our debts.”
“Did we, Silas?”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Grimwald spun around, but the office remained empty, except for shadows cast by the dying fire.
“What of young Timothy Blake, whose father we destroyed? What of Margaret Ashworth, who begged us for one more week? What of all the Christmas mornings we stole from families who couldn’t pay our interest?”
“Business!” Grimwald snarled at the air. “Merely business! We were paid what we were owed!”
“And now, the final ledger must be balanced. Every cruelty recorded; every mercy denied. The mathematics of a soul, Silas. Even you can’t argue with the numbers.”
Grimwald grabbed the poker from the fireplace, wielding it like a sword against an invisible phantom. “I owe nothing! I’ve harmed no one who didn’t deserve it!”
The church bell began its midnight toll.
On the first strike, frost spread across the windows. On the second, the fire guttered and died. By the third strike, Grimwald could see his breath. On the fourth, his fingers began to stiffen around the poker.
“The collector comes, old friend. Not to take what isn’t owed, but to balance books that have been in arrears for decades.”
The seventh chime rang out. Then the eighth. Grimwald’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
On the ninth strike, the basement door creaked open. Footsteps echoed up the stairs—slow and measured.
The tenth chime. The eleventh.
A figure appeared in the doorway. It was small, frail, and wearing the rags of a child’s winter coat. Timothy Blake, the boy whose father had hanged himself after Grimwald’s foreclosure. Timothy had died of pneumonia that same winter, unable to find sufficient food or shelter.
The boy’s eyes held no malice, only the patient calculation of an accountant.
“Time to settle your accounts, Mr. Grimwald.”
The twelfth chime tolled, and Grimwald collapsed into his chair in a shivering, cowering heap, as it faded into silence.
***
The authorities found Silas Grimwald the next morning, frozen solid at his desk, clutching a poker. The constable noted that despite the bitter cold, no windows had been left open. The basement vault remained locked, untouched.
But in the ledger on his desk, written in Grimwald’s own hand, was a final entry:
Account closed. Balance transferred. Payment received in full.
Below it, in a child’s sloppy script was written:
Books balanced. Collection complete.
– T. Blake, Agent of Final Accounts.
When Grimwald’s other partners went to divide his wealth among themselves, they discovered it had mysteriously disappeared. During that same time, the families Grimwald had destroyed over the years received amounts equaling what they had lost—in the same mysterious fashion—plus interest.
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