A pre-New Captain Scarlet Halloween story

By Lydia Sheridan

‘’Lainey? Can you get up now, please?’

Elaine rolled over, cocooning herself in the duvet. Miles always woke her up too early. It was very annoying. Her bed was warm, and soft, and she was in no hurry to leave it.

‘I’m staying here.’ She mumbled it. Miles strained to hear her.

‘What?’

‘I’m staying here, Miles!’

‘No, you’re not. Come on, ‘Lainey.’

Elaine scowled, but slowly stuck her head out from under the duvet. Her fluffy toy cat, Whiskas, was sprawled on the pillow, just by her head. Miles was standing by her chest of drawers, making her plastic horses trot over the top of it. Despite only being five years old, Elaine had collected a large number of horse items. Stuffed toys, posters, books. She could barely read them, but there were still plenty.

Elaine desperately wanted to learn to read, and Miles was trying to teach her, because he thought the teachers at the school she’d started just over a month ago weren’t very good at it. So far, she could understand some words, but not many, and she claimed the harder ones fell out of her head.

Miles had got her most of the horsy menagerie. Often, he’d come back from town, and would smile, slip a toy horse, still in it’s plastic packaging, out of his bag, followed by sweets and fizzy drinks. Sometimes, Elaine thought he may have taken them without asking, which she didn’t think was a very nice thing for him to do, but maybe he did buy them, she didn’t know for certain.

Miles turned, and grinned at her. ‘Hey, sleepyhead. Just feeding the horses.’

Elaine’s scowl vanished, and she smiled happily. She wriggled her way out of the covers, dragging Whiskas with her by the tail. When her feet touched the floor, she instantly pulled them back up again.

‘Eww…’

A bowl of melted ice cream was on the floor by her bed, and she’d put her feet into it by accident.

‘Miles, why is this here?’

Miles turned. ‘Oh, the ice cream. You brought your dessert up to bed last night, remember? Because Siobhan was being nasty? I don’t know why you didn’t finish it.’

‘Oh yeah, I remember now. And I don’t like vanilla flavour, it‘s too boring.’ Elaine wiped her feet dry on the carpet, then stumbled over to Miles, and hugged him around the waist.

‘Happy today, are we?’

‘I think so.’

‘Guess what?’

Elaine shook her head. ‘What?’

‘Hang on. Whiskas knows. I bet he does.’ He took the cat off her, and made it nod its head. ‘Yes, I know,’ Miles spoke in a squeaky voice, then made a purring noise at the end. Elaine giggled.

Miles dropped the act, and exclaimed, ‘’Lainey, it’s Halloween! A great holiday! Witches and vampires and monsters!‘ He gave a jokey roar, his arms raised. Elaine shrieked, pretending to be frightened. Miles was always doing things like this, and she loved how he could act as so many different people.

‘And…your favourite big brother got you a special present!’

‘Really?!’

Miles nodded, and laughed as Elaine capered around the room, her long brown hair flying behind her.

‘Hey, don’t you want it?’

‘I do, I do!’ Elaine came to a halt, and climbed onto the bed, before sitting with her knees raised, and her pink and white checked pyjama top pulled down over them.

‘Naughty, you’ll wreck that top.’

‘Miles!’ Elaine didn’t care. She just wanted her present. She pouted, upset. Miles sighed. She got upset way too easily, and desperately needed to toughen up. Still, there were going to be plenty of years for her to do that.

‘Okay, okay. Here you go.’ Miles tucked Whiskas under his left arm, and produced a small, plastic bag from his right trouser pocket. He passed it to Elaine. She squealed happily. It contained a toy horse, coloured black with a purple mane and tail. There was an orange pumpkin on its hip.

‘What does that say?’ Elaine pointed to a yellow star shaped sticker on the bag. Miles was a good reader, and, even though he was only eight, he read several books which Elaine considered very difficult.

He sat down by her, and leaned over to see. ‘It says…’limited edition’. That means there’s not many of them around. You got lucky, ‘Lainey!’

Elaine hugged him again.

‘What are you gonna call her?’

‘Erm…what’s a good name?’

‘How about something Halloween-ish?’ Miles raised Whiskas to his ear, made a face like he was listening, then nodded.

‘Whiskas say…Spooky.’

‘Oh, yes!’

Elaine pulled the horse out of the bag, and ran her fingers through its long mane. Miles placed Whiskas on the bed between them.

He loved it when she was happy. His sister was a delicate little thing, very gentle and loving, but also very shy. If he took her out, to town or the park, she would hold his hand all the time, and hide behind him if someone he knew talked to him.

There was only one of his friends whom she would talk to. Andy Marshall. She’d always seemed to like him, ever since Miles had met him at school two years ago, and brought him home to play football the same night. With them being six and eight at the time, it had hardly been a premiership match, but it had cemented a friendship between them.

Andy was ten years old now, and Elaine knew he did some bad things, like take money without asking, and go out when his parents said he shouldn’t. Nonetheless, he acted almost as another brother to her, getting her sweets and holding her hand when she crossed the road.

‘I thought you and me could do some Halloween pictures for Mammy.’ Miles never usually called her that, not any more, it was purely for Elaine’s benefit. ‘She’d like that a lot. And you’re a very good little artist.’

Elaine nodded, then got off the bed, and stood on her tiptoes to place Spooky with her other horses. She stayed there, clinging onto the edge of the cabinet, admiring the collection.

‘I’ve got a lot now, haven’t I, Miles?’

‘Yes, you have. Hey, how about a special horsy Halloween pic for Mammy? You could do one just like Spooky.’

‘Yes, later. I’m hungry now.’ Elaine turned round. She rubbed her stomach to emphasize it. Miles laughed.

‘Okay, come on. I think we’ve got some cornflakes left for breakfast. If Shev hasn’t pigged them all.’ They almost always referred to their sister, Siobhan, as Shev, simply because it annoyed her. Almost everything did.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Miles yelled, ‘Race you!’ and took off.

‘Not fair, stop it!’ Elaine made her way down gradually. She was afraid of falling, so she clung onto the banister. Miles was laughing at the bottom.

‘Slowcoach.’

‘I’m not slow.’ Elaine gave him a push in the stomach and ran through to the kitchen to prove it.

The kitchen was a small, rather cosy room with pictures drawn by the children held onto the fridge with colourful magnets, a vases of flowers on the table, and pale pink curtains with a pattern of golden stars. Miles had told Elaine that they were actually bedroom curtains, but their mother, Bridget, had liked them a lot, so that’s why they were in the kitchen. She seemed to spend most of her time there.

Bridget was standing at the sink, staring out of the window. Miles gave her a very gentle tap on the arm, and she jumped.

‘Mam, I got Elaine up.’

‘Thank you, darling.’ She stooped to kiss his forehead. He pulled a disgusted face and wiped at the wet mark her lips had left. She was always kissing him, and he didn’t like it. Kisses were for girls.

Elaine had pulled herself onto a chair at the table. Eleven-year-old Siobhan sat opposite, frowning into her cereal bowl. She’d tied her hair in twin plaits, and the end of one dangled in the milk. When she caught Elaine looking at her, she instantly shouted, ‘Stop it, freak!’

‘Siobhan! Don’t take that tone with your sister!’ Bridget scolded. She hated telling them off, but Siobhan had turned so nasty towards her younger two recently she had no other option.

Miles fetched Elaine a bowl and spoon, then retrieved the orange juice carton from the fridge. It was suspiciously light. Miles shook it, then looked towards Siobhan. She had a glass so full of juice it was right at the top and looked ready to spill.

‘Shev, you stole it all!’

‘I did not!’ Siobhan’s bad temper flared up straight away, and she grabbed the cereal packet to throw at her brother. Bridget seized it as she aimed.

‘Siobhan, don’t…don’t do that!’ Truth was, Bridget didn’t even know how to give a proper scolding. Words always failed her.

If anyone else had said that to her, Siobhan would have hit them, screamed at them, and done whatever bad deed it was anyway. But she stopped and acted sweet for her mother, the only person whom she seemed to care for.

‘Sorry, Mam. I didn’t mean it anyway.’

‘Okay. Now, could you please give Elaine some of that?’

Siobhan grumbled a bit, but poured some juice into another glass, spilling some onto the table top in the process. If Bridget hadn’t been there, she probably would have spat in it, but now she just gave it to her sister, glaring.

Elaine took the cereal packet from her mother and clumsily tipped some cornflakes into her bowl, followed by milk. It smelt a little strange, a little off, but she decided she didn’t mind.

In the time it took her to eat them, Miles and Siobhan had two more arguments; one about a missing action figure, the other about whose turn it was to wash up.

Bridget collapsed into a chair, rubbing her temples. ‘You kids are making me crazy.’

Siobhan stopped yelling at Miles, and stood behind her mother, hugging her gently around the neck.

‘Sorry, Mam.’

Bridget patted her arm. ‘Do me a favour, will you? Go bring the washing in. And - ow!’ She had made to get up, but her hip had collided with the table. It lurched sideways, the vase of flowers almost toppling over. She shrieked in obvious pain, then clutched her hip.

‘Mammy?’ Elaine stared at her. Miles dropped the plate he’d been drying and it smashed on the floor.

‘I’m okay, I’m okay!’ Bridget smiled, but still looked pained. She sighed when she saw the mess Miles had made, though. ‘I’ll clean this up, I don’t want you to cut yourself, but be more careful next time, honey, right?’

Miles nodded. Elaine noticed him and Siobhan giving each other worried looks. She slipped off the chair and hurried out of the door, and back to her room. No one saw. That was the good thing about being a quiet person. People tended not to notice you.

Later, when Elaine was in her favourite hiding spot, in a small gap between the side of the garden shed and the fence, Miles came looking for her.

‘’Lainey! Lainey! Where are you?’ She heard him wandering about in the over-long grass, searching. It had been a long time since anyone had mown the lawn. Bugs hid in it, snails, worms and spiders, which Elaine was scared of because Siobhan made a point of throwing them at her whenever she found one. Elaine remembered Miles had once found a hedgehog, and it had hurt him with its spikes when he’d tried to stroke it.

Miles looked inside the shed. Nothing there but rusted garden tools. He peered around the side.

‘There you are! Why are you here? It’s dark and dirty and smelly here.’

‘I like it. It’s quiet. And I’ve got toys.’ She gestured to two muddy plastic horses and a doll.

‘Well, I still don’t like you being there. Come on out, please, ’Lainey. I don’t want you to get more mucky.’

Elaine gazed at him, worried, then crawled out. She’d been wearing shorts and kneeling in the dirt, so her shins were covered in it.

‘Oh…you’re already messy. Why were you there anyway?’

‘Hiding.’

‘Why? What from?’

‘Not from anything. Just… hiding.’

Miles laughed. ‘Okay. Want to play?’

Elaine didn’t really want to. Actually, she’d been down there so she could think. Why had Bridget been hurt earlier? Maybe she just hit her hip very hard on the table, it seemed like it. But Elaine remembered last night, when He’d come back from work. He was often away, though Elaine wasn’t sure what He did. He was staying for a week this time.

Last night, there’d been some weird crashes. Elaine had thought Bridget had screamed. Miles had come into her room and hugged her, like he was scared.

Siobhan had put on pounding trance music, which Elaine could hear clearly through the wall. It drowned out the crashes.

Had something happened to Bridget yesterday? Elaine wanted to stay and think about it more, but Miles was helping her up. He grabbed a football and started to kick it across the garden towards her. It caught in the grass, and stopped. Miles laughed. ‘Well, maybe not football! Wanna play catch? I think we’ve got a tennis ball...er... somewhere…’ He gazed around the garden, then shrugged at her, smiling. Elaine shook her head.

‘No, no. I want to…I want to go inside now.’ A sudden thought had struck her. Maybe she could see if Bridget was hurt.

‘Do you want me to -’

‘No! I mean…no, you stay here, Miles.’ She forced a smile, and added, ‘Be a good little boy.’

Miles laughed out loud. ‘I love when you talk like an older sister! You’d make a better one than Shev, I’m sure.’

Elaine kept smiling until she’d got into the house. In the kitchen, she grabbed a paper towel, and rubbed vainly at her legs. She couldn’t get the majority of the dirt off, so she gave up.

Siobhan was sprawled on the sofa in the living room, watching some dull daytime TV show. She turned round and screamed at Elaine when she poked her head round the door.

Elaine withdrew her head, sat down with her back against the hall wall and started to speak softly, under her breath.

‘…Imagine you’re above the clouds, flying higher and higher… imagine you’re above the clouds, flying higher and higher…’

She kept repeating it, over and over. She’d first heard it on TV, and had memorised what the overweight presenter had said. To a certain extent, she thought she understood it. It was about making yourself feel better. The only thing she knew for certain was that it always soothed her, helped her relax. She could imagine flying alongside the birds, her arms out at her sides like wings, then settling down in a large birds nest to go to sleep.

In the lounge, Siobhan was screaming at the TV, insulting the woman who hosted the show. Elaine let her voice rise from a whisper to a murmur.

All throughout the day, Elaine kept thinking of the expression on Bridget’s face when she’s hit her hip. When she was watching TV, the pained expression was on every actor. When Miles fell over in the garden, she expected him to look like Bridget, in great pain, even when he bobbed up again, laughing, unhurt.

Initially, Elaine had wanted to just outright ask Bridget what was going on, but she found she hadn’t the guts. Plus, she didn’t understand entirely. Maybe her mother really had just hit her hip hard.

Maybe she should ask Miles? He’d know, he knew everything. But she might make him worry, and he was always so happy, she didn’t want to make him sad.

Later, when she was in her room, crayoning a picture for Bridget - Miles was downstairs, watching cartoons, and he’d said he’d do his later - she plucked up the courage to do something, though she still wasn’t quite sure what. Leaving the picture, Elaine tip-toed along the landing from her room to her mother‘s, and occasionally, His, when He was around. Could she just go in and ask questions? Did she dare now?

No.

She’d spy. She’d heard Miles and Andy talking about it, and they’d said that you had to act like you were playing a really good game of Hide and Seek, and not let anyone see you, or hear you.

Elaine felt nervous; it was awful, spying on her own mother, but she needed to find out what was wrong. Slowly, careful not to make a single small sound, she crept to the door of her mother’s room, and looked through the open gap. She couldn’t see her at first. She could just see the curtains, drawn even though the sun was shining outside. Then Bridget moved into her line of sight, and Elaine just about managed to stifle a gasp. She knew something was very, very wrong.

Bridget was in her underwear; she had been in the process of changing clothes, and was walking over to the wardrobe on the other side of the room. She’d tied her hair up, exposing her scarily thin neck. The strands that she hadn’t managed to catch hung down to her shoulders, the sandy blonde very delicate and pale, against…

Against the sick colour of her skin. Purple and red competed for dominance over her back, her stomach, her chest. Bruises, like gruesome flowers, bloomed on her body, all over. It was hard to find patches that didn’t have them. Her feet, hands, neck and head seemed the only parts free. They’d be the only parts anyone could see. The rest would be hidden when she got dressed.

When she turned towards the wardrobe, Elaine saw new, bright red marks, very fresh. The ones from this morning, the ones the table had done. They were laid over older purple bruises. As she opened the wardrobe, one of the doors scraped Bridget’s hip. She winced violently, as a few beads of blood blossomed over the graze. She ran her finger along them, collecting them, trying not to cry.

Elaine was still watching her, feeling sick, when someone pinched the back of her neck, hard. Before she squealed - it had hurt a lot - a hand clamped around her mouth.

‘Shut up, you little cow!’ Siobhan whispered angrily. She didn’t want to alert Bridget, so she dragged Elaine to her room, then threw her facedown on the floor.

‘What were you doing? You’re gross, you are! Spying on Mam!’

Elaine sat up. Her forehead hurt where it had hit the floor, and she rubbed it. ‘Mammy was sad and I went to look for her.’

‘You should have left it to me! You’re so stupid! And it’s Mam, not Mammy!’ Siobhan sneered, and brought her head close to Elaine’s. ‘Baby.’

‘I’m not a baby…’ Elaine mumbled, slowly standing up. Siobhan gave her a shove, and she fell over onto her backside.

‘Yes you are. Baby, baby, baby! Stupid baby!’ Siobhan had closed her eyes, singing the words.

‘I am not! I am not a baby! You don’t know nothing!’ Suddenly, Elaine kicked out with her right foot. Her leg caught Siobhan’s, and Siobhan fell over, swearing. Elaine knew she only had a few seconds, so she got up quickly, leapt over her sister and out of the door.

Bridget leant out of her room, careful to hide the swelling and bruises behind the door. ‘Girls, are you all right?’ But Elaine didn’t answer. She tripped down the stairs, to the living room. The TV was buzzing loudly.

‘Miles! Miles!’ Elaine flung herself at him, then wormed her way behind him, pushing him almost off the sofa.

‘Where is she? Where is the little bitch!?’ Siobhan burst into the room, her face red. Elaine started crying. Siobhan started shouting.

Miles hated when things got chaotic. He preferred slow and relaxed. He stood up.

‘Shev, calm down. Elaine -’

‘She kicked me! And she was spying on Mam!’ Siobhan was furious. Miles stepped toward her, hands up as if in surrender.

‘She wouldn’t kick without provocation. You know that.’

Elaine kept crying. She normally wouldn’t have hurt Siobhan, she didn’t like hurting people, but she’d really got to her for some reason this time.

Miles managed to placate Siobhan, by telling her she could have any CD in his collection she wanted. She went back upstairs, making sure that she made as much noise as possible; stomping up the stairs and banging Miles’ bedroom door as she went in to choose.

Miles turned down the volume on the TV, then got a tissue, and dried Elaine’s tears.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault, like she said.’ Miles hugged her. Elaine couldn’t keep it inside anymore. She had to ask. She had to know.

Elaine pushed away from him.

‘What’s going on? Why is Mammy hurt? I was looking at her because of her being hurt today, but she was all over covered in these red marks! Does she walk a lot into things?’

Miles stiffened, then sighed. He hated having to tell her this. It had been Siobhan that had told him, when he was five, and he knew now it was his little sister’s turn. He hoped she understood better than he had. He hadn’t truly, fully understood until he was about seven.

He looked at her. He could see in her eyes that she was frightened.

‘’Lainey, don’t move away from me. Come here.’ He held out his arms and she slid into them again, resting her head against his front.

How could he tell it? How had it been told to him? He thought and thought. When he’d been told, Siobhan, even though he knew she disliked him, had told it gently, in a soft, level voice. The thing that made it even more difficult was that he was sure Elaine wasn’t that bright. She might get extremely puzzled.

‘Sometimes…’ Miles swallowed. ‘Sometimes, when a very, very, very bad person gets angry, or they have some weird drinks or something, they’ll hurt people to get rid of the anger. Like… like letting fizz out of a bottle. And this person may think that’s the only way. It’s not, but they think like that because they’re not willing to think of other ways.’

Elaine was still confused. Miles was older than her, he may be making sense to himself, but she didn’t get it.

Miles saw that she was trying to understand what he’d said. Her brow was furrowed, one small hand gripping his T-shirt. He’d noticed before that she did that when she was puzzled; gripped something very hard, as though it would help her think.

He couldn’t stand it. She needed to know now.

Suddenly, like someone had turned a tap on, full power, inside his head, Miles‘ eyes started leaking. The crying turned to actual sobbing. Elaine pulled away, startled.

‘Miles? Miles!’ She hated when people cried. It always made her sad as well. Sure enough, tears started dripping down her face. ‘Miles, what’s wrong?’

‘He’s… He’s hitting Mam, Elaine. He’s hitting her, and He’s hurting her, really, really badly.’

‘He… hits her? But you said hitting’s bad!’

‘I know! But He won’t stop!’

A snake of different emotions slithered through Elaine. Why? Why was He doing this? Had Mam done something wrong? What did this mean? Would she get hurt as well?

‘Don’t ask me why He does it, Elaine.’ It was as if Miles had read her thoughts. ‘I don’t really know. I think it’s because He wants to feel powerful. And getting drunk doesn’t help at all.’

‘But has Mammy been bad?’

‘No.’ Miles shot the answer back as soon as she’d asked the question. ‘No, Elaine, she hasn’t done anything bad, at all. I want you to understand something.’ Gently, he pushed her back, and put his hands on her shoulders so that she was looking directly at him. ‘Only really, really nasty people, who want to hurt others, should ever be hurt back. Nice people, like Mammy, who have always been nice, shouldn’t be hurt. Ever, ever. Remember that. It’s important.’

It sank in, and stayed there.