The Twelve Days Of Christmas

On the Sixth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 6 Ghosts Remembered, 5 Shades of Red, 4 Best of Friends, 3 Day Shift, 2 Miles to Go and a brown leather charm necklace.

25th December 2004-Their Apartment-19:42

"A Christmas Carol will always be a spooky film or book, whether it's done by the Muppets or not." Sara frowned, switching off the TV as the credits began to roll.

"I don't know, can you really be scared when an alien and a rat are telling the story?" He chuckled, pulling her down into the warmth of the covers of their bed.

"Because I hate ghosts and spirits." She replied, brushing her fingers against his 2 day old stubble that had grown on his cheek.

"We all have ghosts." He breathed, lightly kissing her thumb as it passed his lips.

"I feel like I have too many." She sighed, shivering as he brought his hand up to caress her cheek.

"So do I." He replied, running a hand through her dark hair.

"Tell me about them. Your ghosts." She asked, her voice so vulnerable, so emotional.

He was taken aback by her request but he nodded, he was past hiding things from her. She was his best friend, his partner, his life, his lover, his girlfriend, his lifeline, she was his everything.

So he brought her closer, and took a deep breath,

"I wasn't the youngest in my family, about two years after I was born my mum had another baby, it was another girl, she was tiny. She was named Brie but she was born with loads of diseases and illness's and doctors didn't think she'd make it past a week but she did, and she lived for two years until she caught a cold, a cold of all things was the thing that killed her. She was my best friend, we spent every minute with each other. She was only two yet she understood everything I told her and we would play all sorts of games and I'd always let her win so she would smile and I would always look after her, I taught her how to climb a tree and how to make a den. She died two days after my fifth birthday, she had told me that I didn't need to grow up anymore, that I was practically an old man, she said I should give my birthday to her so she could grow up a bit since I was really old already." Nick smiled weakly as he remembered and Sara's gentle squeeze assured him he was fine but that he was doing the right thing and that the woman beside him, understood him and took him for who he was. "I wished I'd have given her my birthday and then she would have been able to say she had 3 years on this planet, instead of 2 years and four months. I wish she hadn't have died at all, she was so little, so perfect, so innocent, she didn't deserve it Sara."

He let the tears fall in rivers down her face and she fought back the urge to cry too.

"Nobody deserves that Nick." She whispered, leaning up and kissing away all of the salty tears streaming down his face.

"You know there's only two spirits in my life that will forever haunt me, Brie and Evangeline." He said, swallowing the lump in his throat, suddenly adoring the woman next to him so much more at her ability to listen to him, to help him, to make him feel so much better with a simple touch.

"Your baby-sitter." Sara said, asking but knowing.

"How did you know?" Nick asked, meeting her chocolate pools.

"Catherine found out we were together a week after we slept together, she's a better CSI than we gave her credit for. She told me to be careful, to not hurt you. I told her I wasn't going to hurt you and then I asked her why and she told me there was some things I should know before anything really started between us so I did some, research. In Dallas, Texas there was an arrest made in 1990, a 24 year old woman had been arrested for molesting eight children, which they knew about. She claimed there was many more but they never found them, she typically molested 9 year old boys. Her name was Evangeline West." Sara explained, "You were nine when she baby sat you, weren't you?"

"How did you know she babysat me?" Nick asked.

"Loretta." Sara confirmed, naming his eldest sister. "When she came down I asked her if she knew Evangeline. They were best friends all through high school, your mother asked her to babysit you for a night because she wanted to be a Nanny when she grew up. They trusted her."

"You know you're the first girl who's done a background check on me." He chuckled, playing with her tousled locks.

"I had to make sure you were okay, I did it wrong though. I should have asked you." She apologised.

"You're the first woman to erase the touches." He announced. "I've slept with a million women Sar, all to try and erase the touches that she did, you're the only woman who I haven't felt her touches, her kisses, her on me. You're the only woman who makes me forget, you're the only one I can make love to without feeling her hands on my body."

"It shouldn't have happened to you Nick, nobody deserves to have their childhood pulled away from them."

"You did. Your story is worse than all of ours."

"It may be worse but Nick everybody sees me as having problems, as being haunted by ghosts. It affects me more than anyone else. You're the bravest here, looking at you, you wouldn't ever think that you're haunted, you're just this happy, funny guy that everybody loves." She explained, locking fingers with him.

"So tell me about them and let them free, a problem shared is a problem halved." He quoted.

"I don't want to drag you down with me."

"Please."

-12-

"My Mother and Father always fought, big fights over nothing , it would start with shouting, then it was screaming, then he would start to hit, or punch or he'd use anything he could get his hands on. He'd break furniture, windows, bones. Mother never hit him but she got angry, she'd take every beating Father gave her then she'd return her anger to both me and my brother, her hits seemed to be the hardest for Father knew when to stop before he really hurt his, he knew when to stop so that he couldn't be caught, he knew when to stop so that we wouldn't bruise and therefore had no evidence against him." She could remember everything in such detail, the smells, a blend of alcohol, sweat and blood. She remembered short videos of her as a small child, videos of her running, crying, videos of her being beaten.

"Sar." He comforted, feeling the burning anger inside him as he imagined the tiny Sara Sidle, being broken by the people who were meant to protect her.

"And my brother had these games, he'd come in at night and we'd play. Not childish games, he would come in and he would take off my nightgown and he would bring out his pocket knife. He'd learnt from Father, how to hurt someone without leaving a trace. He would pull the knife along my skin, putting the tip in. It always hurt so much, it would bleed so much. I remember lying after he'd gone, covered in the redness, but there was never any scars. Just blood."

"Didn't your Mother notice?" Nick asked, feeling pain everywhere in his body, as if he was getting a knife run over his skin.

"I had to be a Good Girl. He always told me to be a Good Girl, to clean up the mess, to keep quiet, to not say a word to anyone. Ever."

Nick clenched his fists in anger, hearing her story, hearing everything she'd gone through made him so angry, so angry.

"I was put into Foster Care when I was twelve, just after my Mother killed my Father and I found out that the life I had been living was not what everybody else was. I was put into a small family at first but they sent me back, said I was too unsociable, too quiet. By this time I was thirteen and everybody wants little children, the sweet ones. Nobody wants a teenager who don't get on well with anyone. So I was put into a group home until Alaina and Carmine Jackson took me in. My social worker told me I was the luckiest girl alive. I didn't believe her."

"I did what I had done in the other foster homes, I didn't ask for anything, I spent my days in a book, alone. But Alaina didn't like it, she would force me out, grabbing my wrists. I was put into a school for girls and I was fine, until my teacher had a conversation with Alaina, Carmine and my social worker. She said I was smart but the loner-type and that perhaps it would be better if I was to be a little more open and make some friends. Alaina tried to make me fit in with the other girls, inviting them for sleepovers, buying me things to help me fit in but I never used them. That was when she shouted, telling me I was ungrateful. When I was fourteen, new people moved in across the road. They had a foster son, Dylan who was like me and we made friends, until Carmine found out. He found us in my bedroom and he took Dylan out and he beat him, then he found me and he locked me in the cellar that they owned, I was in there for 32 hours until the police came and found me, by this time Alaina and Carmine were gone and Dylan was dead."

"That's why you're scared of the dark." He concluded, remembering the first time he'd gone to switch off the hallway light when they were about to go to sleep.

"Yeah, 32 hours in a box room does wonders to your mental health." She joked, hoping it would make her feel a bit better. "I remember seeing all the police officers surrounding the house, swarming through every room. It made me sure that it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to save people like they'd done to me."

"My sister worked that case." Nick announced, remembering hearing the details over a family dinner from his Mother who seemed to be quoting everything her daughter had told her.

"Which one?" Sara asked, trying hard to remember every police officer she'd met in her adolescent years.

"Maybelle, she moved to Tamales Bay in 1985, you would have been 12."

"Like you." She reminded, there was a month between their birthdays, his September 23rd to her October 8th.

"So we you knew of me before we met." She smiled.

"Knew of you?" He scoffed, "In my last year of high school we were to do a news report of something in the news. I did mine of your case."

"You didn't."

"Wait here." He instructed, clambering out of the coy bed and over to the cupboard, he rummaged in the top shelf before pulling out a folder, he wandered back to the bed and took a seat quickly glancing at the time as he realised they had been talking for hours and it was now nearly eleven'o clock.

"Here." He said, handing her a polly-pocket stuffed with sheets of paper.

'No Place Like Home, Little Sister." by Nicholas Stokes.

"No Place like Home, Little Sister?" She questioned.

"Both were popular songs then." He shrugged, "And when I'd discuss it with my buddies they would always say, if she was my little sister I would pound their faces in or I'd run them over with a truck."

"So do you still think of me as a little sister?" She asked with a smirk on her face.

"Hell no." He chuckled, taking the folder out of her hands and throwing it over his shoulder, leaning in and pressing his lips to hers.