With a start, he leaped out of his chair and backed up against the wall, eyes wide, as he saw the ghosts of Elizabeth Distrusst and her favourite chancellor floating towards him, dragging ephemeral spreadsheets of red, negative numbers behind them.
"What the duck do you two want?" he croaked, cursing the day he installed auto-correct on his work computer.
"We're here to warn you to learn from our faiiiiilllll", the duo wailed. "We're so unpopular we can't even get onto I'm A Celebrity."
McHunt threw his bottle of scotch at them, but the incorporeal couple advanced still, wagging calculators at him. Both calculators said: 8008135. Or, as Reassured's Phil Jeynes has reminded me, 5318008. Thanks, Phil.
"Get away! Get away! I have nothing to learn from you. You guys suck. I've saved the economy", he yelled, and slithered behind the coffee table.
"When the clock strikes 12, you will be visited by three ghosts this Christmas Eve", they mourned. "Pay heed to them and learn the lessons they teach you, or all will be lost at the next general election."
They faded into the thin air, but just for a laugh, the ghastly apparitions suddenly shouted "Boogadyboogadyboo!" before laughing their way back into the spirit world.
"Blazes", McHunt said, and stormed into his bedroom, stopping to take off his corporate-branded slippers before sliding into bed and pulling up the covers.
But it was not long before Big Ben chimed 12.
The Ghost of Budget Past
A light appeared in the corner of the room and grew in brightness, as McHunt rubbed his eyes. The light became a figure of a young man in medical scrubs. A lanyard was around his neck.
"Are you the first that I should be expecting?" McHunt said in awed tones.
"Yes", the spirit replied. "I am the spirit of NHS past. My name is Dr Patel and I was a junior doctor."
McHunt gulped. He would be in for an interesting ride.
The spirit whooshed him up the chimney and out across the streets of London. The starlight shone bright as they flew, faster and faster, back to an old university campus, covered with society sign-up stalls.
McHunt saw a young lad waiting to join the Young Conservatives. "Why, that's me! This is my old haunts! I joined the YC on Christmas Eve and never looked back" he said. "Quite", said the spirit archly.
The scene shifted to a scene in Africa, where McHunt was handing out presents at a school.
"Of course! Before I became an MP, I set up a charity to help AIDS orphans in Africa", he said. "This was one of the best Christmases ever."
