Elisa – Chapter One
“Please, please … don’t,” Elisa screamed.
“Poke ‘er eyes out,” one of the boys yelled in his frenzied excitement. His face was contorted with the prospect of torture and killing.
“Please!” Elisa screamed again, “please don’t.” A second boy laughed in the girl’s face.
“Shut yar mouth, ya witch’s brat,” he sneered.
“My mammy’s nay witch,” Elisa cried. “Please let me go home, ah want me mam,” she sobbed.
“Ya’re nay goin’ home … ever! Ya’re gonna die,” a third boy joined in and poked a sharp stick into Elisa’s cheek. She screamed in pain and recoiled, covering her face with her hands to protect herself from further attack. The four youths, who all laboured on the Addington Estate farm, had happened upon Elisa as she was playing with her new kitten. Jabez, her father, had just given it to his daughter for her eighth birthday. It was from a large litter that one of the farm cats had recently birthed. Finding the girl alone in the barn in that isolated part of the estate, the boys decided to have some sport with her. It quickly turned into something more sinister and dangerous than that.
“Ah want mi mam, ah want mi mam,” the first boy mocked Elisa. “Let’s see if yar mam can save ya. Let’s see if yar mam can stop ya from bein’ killed?” he shouted and then laughed menacingly.
Elisa was cowering in a corner of the barn. The boys had already thrown dirty, wet straw all over her pretty hair and forced her to eat some of it, knowing the sheep had spent the day in the barn having been herded together and counted for shearing. She had vomited up the filthy straw, soiling her new birthday dress.
Jabez had told her to go off and play until he was finished from his day’s work, but Elisa had wandered away too far and ended up in the large barn on the other side of the estate.
“Tis time fer t’ execution,” the second boy announced. Elisa sobbed louder and held her arms up across her head as the boys yelled and charged towards her, as if in some kind of battle attack, stopping just short of where she was huddled. The child was terrified and wet herself. The boys thought this very amusing and pointed to the ground as her urine made a small puddle on the dirt in which she sat.