Marley turned his head to look at Scrooge. His features now chilled, not by avarice, but by horror. He now suspected the train to be some sort of sign that they had not made it to his home alive and that this train had come to ferry them to the rings of perdition. Now, he was grasped with the fear that Scrooge's ill-timed decision to crack a joke had offended whatever force was driving it and that their journey would be nearly as torturous as the destination.
But how much greater was his horror when, as if blasted by a sudden arctic gale, the iron gates were pushed open, sending the men backwards as, without the aid of any visible porter, the middle door of the middlemost carriage swung violently open. This was quickly followed by a small block of wooden stairs that, held on by latches, fell from the doorway to the street with a dull thud Unlike the illuminations beyond the windows, the door revealed nothing but darkness and nothing else.
The first and foremost instinct of both men, as it very well might have been your own, was to attempt to run from this unknown transportation to the safety of the house behind them, though Scrooge showed this less-so than his terrified partner, although his expression had now altered to one of noticeable worry. Yet, as both men stared into the mysterious light of the doorway, a crazed resolve possessed them both. It purged them of fear and of common sense, leaving behind only child-like curiosity in its wake.
With their mental barriers and Will removed, the men found themselves walking, as if in a trance, out of the yard, across the street and up the wooden stairs towards the blackness of the open doorway. For a brief microcosm of a moment, there was an instance where Marley, who was in front of Scrooge and whose feet were firmly on the top step, regained his senses and might have attempted to jump from the block and run down the street screaming into the mist, had it not been that in that instance, the pure darkness of the inner corridor of the carriage was rapidly replaced, in all sides but the centre, by a vortex of pure light that, as if the horn of Gabriel sent to call the faithful and unfaithful up to the final judgement, leapt upon he who stood with the ferocity of a snake and dragged him by wonderous vacuum into the coach!