So, I’m a babysitter. It’s not all that lucrative job for a guy like me, especially since parents consider female babysitters or family members. But it pays rent, and I’m good with kids, and in a small town like this, recurring jobs aren’t all that hard to find.
I have a website and stuff and a blog where I post cooking recipes kids like, activities, ideas, and tips for other babysitters.
It’s all good and fine and normal.
But, of course, things don’t stay normal for long.
I had just come home from my weekly session with Jada. She’s a nice kid, but her obsession with glitter had me coming home looking like Elvis Presley.
As I stepped through the front door, my phone pinged with a notification for a booking request on my website. I swiped some sparkles off my shoulder and unlocked my phone to look at it.
The message was short and weirdly formal, but it got the general info across fine.
Greetings Mr. McDade
I am Mrs. Marwood. My husband and I will be gone this Friday night from 7 P.M. to 3 A.M. and will need someone to look after our 6-month-old. We live at (address I can’t disclose for obvious reasons). I will be awaiting a response to this request. We will be paying you three times your hourly rate.
I blinked at my phone screen for a moment when I saw it, wondering if I’d been contacted by a 19th-century duchess, before typing back a response saying that I was happy to look after their kid as long as they left me with the appropriate instructions (and as long as they followed through on their generosity) The times were weird. Still, I’d stayed up later for less.
So, Friday rolls around, and I head out to the Marwood’s house.
They live in a quiet, aloof part of town, where the houses are bigger and the yards span out in sheets of perfectly manicured grass.
The Marwood’s house was… certainly different from the others. Granted, none of the houses in the neighborhood were alike at all, with them all having been built at different times in different styles and at different periods. But the Marwood’s house was an outlier from the bright tones of the other houses, standing solemn with its black paint and red siding.
I walked up the steps and knocked on the door, adjusting my bag on my shoulder as it opened.
A woman, dressed to the nines in a red and black cocktail dress, stood before me. She studied me for a second, letting her eyes slide up and down my marvel t-shirt and baggy jeans before pressing her lips together in a tight smile. “Hello, Mr. McDade,” she spoke. I smiled and stepped through the door.
The inside of the house wasn’t overtly creepy, but there were still too many dark colors for it to be considered homey.
Mrs. Marwood led me down the hallway to the nursery, where a man who I assumed was Mr. Marwood stood over the crib. He was wearing a tux that looked like it cost more than my rent and kind of just… not doing anything. He didn’t move or look up when we came in.
“Did you give him the list, Adrienne?” he asked. The sound of his voice sent a bone-deep chill through my body.
“I will before we leave Morris,” she said, moving noiselessly across the room and standing next to her husband.
The two of them were just off, like they were trying to imitate the behavior of loving parents and failing spectacularly.
They turned around after I cleared my throat, and Mrs. Marwood smiled at me. “Well, before we go, I need to hand you the list of needs for our dearest Damien.” they both strode past me back into the hallway.
The list they gave me was typical for the most part.
The list was printed, so I just assumed they forgot to edit it or something.
I put the list in my back pocket and headed back to the nursery to check on Damien. He was… well he was a baby, chubby and squishy, groping around at nothing and trying to understand the world he was brought into. He was, by all means, a normal kid.
I sat down in the chair next to the crib until 8 pm rolled around, scrolling on my phone and dicking around until Damien started fussing. I took him into the kitchen to feed him the formula they set out and…
Well the formula was there, yeah, but it was black, and I’m pretty sure baby formula isn’t supposed to be black.
I held Damien on my hip with one hand and picked up the bottle to examine it in the other. It was thick and viscous like squid ink, but it was so dark that nothing was reflecting off of it’s surface. It was like holding a bottle of liquid nothingness.
Obviously, I set the bottle down and called the Marwood’s with the number they left me, but they just told me to feed the formula goo stuff to the kid anyway.
So, after psyching myself up (because seriously that stuff was creepy) I held the bottle up to Damien’s mouth and let him drink it. He didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with it, and after a few moments I had him burped and back in his crib. Once he was asleep I turned off the light and moved to the living room.
Overall, despite the creepy couple and the weird baby formula, it was like any other night I spent babysitting.
Thankful that the Marwoods gave me access to their T.V, I spent the next few hours vegetating on their sofa and watching Netflix. The baby monitor was silent the entire time, and I checked several times to make sure it was on and that the volume was up. Every hour I uprooted myself from the couch to actually check on Damien and he was fine.
Then, at around 2:30, I heard something. At first I thought it was a water heater or the AC unit or something, but then I realized it was coming from the monitor, a soft rythmic sound. I stood up from the couch and moved down the hallway toward the nursery, but when I opened the door everything was as it had been the entire night.
I ran a hand through my hair and chalked it up to me being tired before leaving the room. I was nearly sat back down on the couch, but there it was again, a soft rythmic sound from the baby monitor. I jolted up from my seat, but then I stopped. If it was some burglar or creep or something, they might have hear me coming the first time. So, I crept quietly down the hallway, keeping my breath even as I approached the nursery door way.
By the time I peered into the blackness of the room, the noise had stopped again. I squinted and looked around the room when something caught my eye.
Two bright white dots, shining through the bars of Damien’s crib.
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at, or if I was being looked at. The dots flickered, once, twice, then rose past the bars of the crib and up towards the ceiling. Damien hadn’t babbled or cried or anything, so I began to think I was just hallucinating, but that didn’t make me any less creeped out.
I backed out of the room, still peering at the white dots hanging up by the ceiling. I could feel my face screw up in a nervous grimace as they floated down from above Damien’s crib and out into the middle of the room.
I stepped even further into the hallway, but they kept coming closer, and I was starting to think that I was actually crazy.
But then, as they floated into the brightness of the hallway, the lights… the lights that were Damien’s fucking eyes faded.
He was hanging some 5 or so feet off of the ground, eyes staring forward and mouth hanging open with and small limbs outstretched in a way that looked just… so awful and painful and wrong, because limbs aren’t supposed to twist that way, and babies aren’t supposed to fucking float.
After I collected my jaw from the floor I reached up to tried and grab Damien, gritting my teeth and planting my feet on either side of the door frame, but he didn’t budge. Then his mouth started flapping, and the noise I hear at the baby monitor filled my ears like cotton.
“Ipse nos liberabit. Perducet nos ad paradisum. Serviemus ei. Corpora nostra sunt eius. Animi eius sunt. Eius vitae sunt.”
My hands flew up to my ears and I tried to keep whatever he was saying out of my head, but it didn’t work. It was like he had crawled through my ears and into my skull.
I grasped at the wall as Damien continued with whatever horrid shit he was doing and ran down the hallway towards the living room. I reached the front door, fumbling with the stupid lock and throwing the door open, only to be met with Mrs. and Mr. Marwood coming up the walkway.
I pulled the door shut, and the chanting echoing through my head cut off. I tried to compose myself as Mrs. and Mr. Marwood made their way up the steps to meet me.
“Is everything ok Mr. McDade?” Mrs. Marwood asked. I, still gasping for breath, pointed towards the door. The two of them shared a look before moving past me and towards the door.
I felt a scream tear itself from my throat as the door opened to reveal…
Damien, sitting on the floor and babbling and doing what normal babies do.
Damien, not floating in mid air and chanting in Latin.
I spluttered as Mrs. Marwood scooped Damien up into her arms.
“I hope he wasn’t too much trouble.” she said, turning and cradling him behind her shoulder. Mr. Marwood dug into his pocket and handed me a wad a cash that was, in fact, way more than 3 times my normal rate. I pursed my lips and walked inside with them to grab my phone. “No no he was fine for the most part just…” I paused, pocketing my phone and slinging my bag over my shoulder.
Mrs. and Mr. Marwood turned to look at me. I swallowed.
“Does he normally um… like float and shit?” I asked, not caring about how I sounded.
The two of them looked at each other, then at me.
“Yes, that’s what the extra pay was for.” Mr. Marwood spoke simply. I blinked, then nodded. “Well, I hope you two have a good night.” I said, backing towards the front door. They both turned and walked down the hallway. Damien looked at me from over Mrs. Marwood’s shoulder. Even from where I was standing, I could see that his eyes were swirling with a knowledge that a baby shouldn’t have.
He held my gaze for a moment…
Then emptied his black baby formula onto the floor.