“This is Nathan, your new babysitter. Now I want you to behave yourself. Don’t give him too much trouble.”
That’s my mom’s voice. She’s talking to me, but I’m trying my best not to listen because I don’t think I need a babysitter at all. I told Mom that I can stay home by myself. I’m almost nine, and lots of kids in my class don’t need babysitters. Even Toby Fisher doesn’t need a babysitter, and one time at recess he tried to eat a caterpillar. Mom wasn’t listening to anything I had to say, though. And now I’m stuck with another new babysitter.
I’m staring at my thumbs. First I tap them together like I’m thinking about something, but then the tapping turns into wrestling. My thumbs look like they’re fighting each other. I don’t know which to root for because I’m going to win either way. I think I like my right hand more, so maybe I’ll root for that thumb. You’ve got this, right thumb. Oh no, now I feel bad for my left thumb. Maybe I shouldn’t play favorites.
“Esther, are you listening to me?” Mom asks.
I want to keep making it look like I’m not listening because I still don’t think I need a babysitter, but Mom has that tone that grown-ups get when they’re a couple seconds away from being mad but not quite there yet.
“Yes, Mom,” I mumble.
I can hear Mom’s shoes clack on the floor as she turns around, then she lets out this big breath, like she’s been underwater for too long.
“I’m serious, Esie. Be good for the new babysitter, okay?”
“Okay, Mom.”
Mom’s shoes clack towards me. Mom wears high heels, which I guess are shoes people wear when they really like standing on their tip-toes. I think they look kind of like weapons, like you have knives stuck to your shoes. If I were the floor, I would hate high heels.
“Okay, I’ll see you when I get home,” Mom says, and she leans in and brushes my hair out of my face so she can kiss my forehead.
Then Mom and her sharp shoes clack over to the door, and I hear it open and then close. That’s when I stop looking at my thumbs and instead I look at Nathan the babysitter.
I bet Nathan is in high school. He doesn’t look like he’s quite done growing yet, but he might as well be all grown up. He’s wearing dark jeans with a lot of holes in them. I think I would get in trouble if I wore pants like that to school. His t-shirt says something about a vampire. I wonder if he likes vampires. I like vampires, but I wouldn’t want to be one. Vampires can’t go in the sunlight. Like, at all. I like going to the park during the day and I love recess. I wouldn’t be able to go to recess at all if I were a vampire. But I guess you don’t have recess in high school, so maybe Nathan the babysitter would be fine with being one. His hair is really messy, too, so maybe it wouldn’t bother him if he couldn’t look in the mirror. I heard that vampires don’t have reflections.
Now I’m really excited because I think it would be really cool if I had a babysitter who was a vampire. I think I saw a TV show about that once.
“So, uh, what do you like to do?” Nathan asks.
I’m trying to get a look at his teeth to see if they’re sharp, but he talked too fast, so now I’m just staring at his closed mouth. Oh, wait, he asked me a question. I should answer because otherwise he’ll think that I’m ignoring him on purpose.
“I dunno.”
“Do you like drawing?”
“I guess.”
I like coloring more. It’s easier when the lines are already there.
“What about music? Do you play any instruments?”
I should’ve expected him to ask that. I know you’re not supposed to judge people based on how they look, but Nathan kind of looks like he meets up with a bunch of other teenagers with ripped pants after school in a garage to play in a band with lots of guitars.
“I’m learning the recorder in school.”
Nathan kind of tenses his shoulders like he’s cringing. I wonder if he hates recorders because he prefers electric guitars. Nathan looks like he eats, sleeps, and breathes electric guitars. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just an observation. And I’m not going to tell him that because that might be rude.
“Oh, okay,” Nathan says.
He slides off his shoes near the door and I can see his black and white striped socks. Then he walks into the kitchen and calls out “Do you want a snack?”
“No.”
Nathan comes back out with a Hershey’s bar. A Hershey’s bar and the list of rules for babysitting. Nathan squints at the piece of notebook paper. Mom isn’t very strict, and my past babysitters weren’t, either, so I think most of the rules are pretty basic. I wonder what he’s squinting at… Oh, I bet it’s the basement rule. Whenever I say that I’m not allowed to go into my basement, people look at me like that’s a weird rule, but Mom says the basement is dangerous. That’s why the babysitters can’t go down there, either.
Nathan folds up the paper and shoves it in his pocket, then takes another bite from the Hershey’s bar. Mom likes to leave extra snacks for babysitters. She says it’s an extra treat for them agreeing to babysit me. I don’t think I’m that hard to babysit, though.
Maybe Mom gives them the snacks as an apology. All of my babysitters seem to go missing, so maybe it’s a ‘sorry that I cursed you by making you babysit my kid’ kind of Hershey’s bar. I can’t tell that to Nathan the babysitter, though. When I told my last babysitter, Samantha, that the past two both went missing, she seemed to get really unsettled and jumpy, and then she went missing anyways so I guess the knowledge that she’s probably cursed didn’t help her very much.
I’m hoping that, if Nathan is a vampire, maybe he’s immune to curses.
Mom says it isn’t a curse. She calls it a coincidence. But nobody loses three babysitters in a row.
One time on the school bus after my third babysitter Samantha went missing, Abby Patterson sat next to me and asked me how my weekend was. I told her that I was sad because Samantha went missing and I wish my babysitters would just stop disappearing.
“No normal kid loses three babysitters.”
That was Parker Cornwell, who was peeking over the seat in front of me and facing backwards. His elbows were on top of the seat, and the bus driver yelled at him to sit down but he didn’t listen. Parker is always getting yelled at by the poor bus driver who just wants people like Parker Cornwell to follow the rules.
“Maybe you’re just a bad kid and they all run away to avoid you,” said Parker.
I didn’t want to believe him, but maybe he’s right. I mean, they usually only get to babysit me twice before they go missing, so maybe I’m just a bad kid to babysit. I try not to be because I don’t want my babysitters to go missing, but maybe I can’t help it.
“Or maybe you’re cursed,”
That was Toby Fisher. He was sitting across from my seat, but he was sitting all by himself. He was looking at me with big blue eyes that kind of made him look like a husky. I like huskies, they’re cute and fluffy. Toby Fisher’s hair is kind of fluffy, too, but it’s light brown. I guess there are light brown huskies, too. But his hair makes him look a little more like a fluffy golden retriever. The point is Toby has bright blue eyes that make me think of puppies so I like Toby, even if he eats caterpillars.
“Maybe you got cursed by a witch or a demon to make everyone who babysits you vanish.”
I don’t think I’ve ever met a witch or a demon, but that would make sense I guess. It would explain why the police are still looking for all my babysitters, because if they got swallowed up by a witch then they’d probably be pretty hard to find. I don’t think the police are used to dealing with witches. Or demons, for that matter.
“Wait, is the curse just for babysitters?”
Abby Patterson was looking at me with big eyes. Not big like Toby’s eyes but big like she was afraid. I guess she was afraid that if she talked to me for too long, she would go missing too.
“I dunno,” I said. It would be unfair to lie to her about my maybe-curse, but maybe I should’ve anyway. She never sat with me on the bus after that.
Actually the only one who ever sat with me on the bus after that was Toby one day when his seat got taken by Devin Rogers. Devin and Parker got into a fight or something so they weren’t talking or sitting together, and Devin told Toby that he wasn’t allowed to sit with him because Toby was weird. Then Devin put his backpack next to him so Toby didn’t have room even if he wanted to sit next to a big jerk like Devin Rogers. Toby asked if he could sit with me and I said yes because I’m no Devin Rogers.
I kind of wish I never told anybody from school about my babysitters because now no one wants to hang out with me. Toby talks to me sometimes but I don’t think we’re really friends and we don’t play together at recess very much because Toby is too busy looking for bugs and maybe eating them. I’ve never actually seen him eat a bug before except for the caterpillar, and he didn’t even end up eating it, just holding it up to his mouth until one of the recess workers stopped him and then he started crying because suddenly he felt bad for the caterpillar.
I sit on the swings alone at recess most of the time. Sometimes I watch what everyone else is doing. It’s like watching a TV show if the characters sometimes got mad at you for staring at them. I like watching TV. My mom says I can’t watch too much TV, though, or else it’ll rot my brain. That just makes me think of fruit that’s been left out for too long, all covered in flies and kind of starting to liquify. If my brain did that, I’m pretty sure it would leak out of my ears and run down my face in a gross brain pudding that only flies would enjoy. I don’t think TV can do that, but I don’t want to get in trouble either, so I listen to Mom.
Oh right, Nathan was eating a Hershey’s bar, and- oh no, he’s reaching for the remote. I don’t want either of our brains to turn into brain pudding and get eaten by flies.
“What kind of things do you like to watch?” Nathan asks me.
I say “I dunno,” but what I mean is ‘you better not get me in trouble or turn my brain into pudding, Nathan the new babysitter.’
Nathan starts flipping through channels, and then he gives up and opens Netflix. I’m starting to get nervous because I already watched enough TV today and if Nathan lets me watch too much more then Mom will probably never let me stay home by myself and I’ll be stuck cursing babysitters forever.
“Can we not watch TV?” I ask.
Nathan turns off the TV without closing Netflix, and then he says, “Sure. Do you… not like TV?”
No, I like TV. I just want to show my mom that I’m responsible enough to stay home alone so that I can stop making all my babysitters go missing. I choose not to say this to Nathan.
“I dunno,” I say.
Luckily Nathan lets it go. Thank you, Nathan.
The cawing of a raven outside makes Nathan turn his head to the window. I’m used to it, though, so I’m still looking at him.
“Well… what about video games?”
What. Video games are magical. I’ve never been able to play video games. I don’t have a phone and I’ve never had a gaming console or friends who want me at their house so I’ve only ever heard about video games. They’re kind of like unicorns or mermaids.
“You brought video games?” I ask. I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped and now my mouth is hanging open like a snake about to devour an innocent mouse.
“Mhm,” Nathan hums, “We can play one, if you want.”
“Yes!” I don’t even care what video game it is, I’ll play anything at this point. The kids on the bus always talk about video games and I can never join in, and not just because they all think I’m cursed. That might be part of it, though.
Nathan reaches into his backpack with all the pins on it, and then he pulls out two computers.
No way. He has two? I wasn’t even allowed to keep the old gameboy I found in the school parking lot.
Nathan sets up the game and then lets me use one of his two computers and suddenly I’m too busy to be jealous of how many computers this man has. Nathan’s video game is the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen in my life. I get to make a wizard!
Nathan laughs a little whenever I gasp in awe. Once I find the perfect hair for my wizard girl I think I squeal like an injured animal, but it’s not because I’m injured, it’s because my wizard looks so pretty! It looks like her hair is blowing in the wind or something. That makes Nathan laugh even more.
Then Nathan checks his phone, and he gets a little scowl, and then puts his phone away.
Once I’m done making my perfect wizard I have to find her name, only my name isn’t an option so I name her Ellie because that’s kind of close to my name.
There’s a big ruckus outside, and I know it’s coming from the big bay window in my room, but all I can think of is this quest that Ellie the wizard is going on. Nathan has his own wizard, only Nathan’s probably been playing this game for years and years because his wizard is level 135 while mine is only level 2 by the time I finish the first quest. Oh, I guess I leveled up.
Nathan asks what that sound is. I say it’s a ruckus because that’s what Mom calls it, but Nathan doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer. He tells me that he’ll be right back, and I keep fighting ghosts. I want to be a wizard, but I think fighting ghosts is a little rude. I mean, they’re already dead so I think they’ve suffered enough. I would love to be able to do magic, though. Maybe I could magically make myself a pet that doesn’t hate me, or magically bring back all my babysitters. I don’t know if my wizard Ellie can bring back lost babysitters, but sometimes she makes big fire cats appear so I’d at least have the pet thing covered. Every dog I’ve ever walked by has growled at me.
From upstairs, Nathan yells, “What the hell?!”
I pause the video game to go upstairs and make sure he’s okay. I know he isn’t missing yet, but I just need to make sure. I didn’t want to get attached to him because I know he’s going to go missing like my other babysitters but he let me play video games, so what was I supposed to do?
Rats, now I’m going to be sad when he goes missing.
I walk into my room where Nathan is standing against the wall and staring out my window. A whole big group of ravens are crowding around my window and making a whole ruckus. When I walk in, they start hitting the glass with their wings because ravens are the only animals that like me.
Oh yay, the big one is back! I run up to my window and knock on it twice. The biggest, darkest raven perches on my windowsill and knocks back twice with its beak. I giggle because I love this game! I knock again, and the raven answers. I keep giggling. The big raven caws, like he’s giggling back.
Oh right, Nathan seemed afraid. I forgot about that. I wonder why he’s afraid. They’re just birds. When I turn around, he’s looking like he’s afraid of me. Wait, how did he find out that I’m cursed? Did the ravens tell him? No, I’m pretty sure they’re on my side. But then how does he know? I feel like I should say sorry, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to. I can hear the ravens flying away, and then Nathan stops looking so afraid. He takes my hand and says, “Let’s go back downstairs now.”
By the time it gets dark, Nathan has ordered a pizza for us and my Wizard is level 9. One day, I’ll beat Nathan’s wizard. For now, though, Nathan’s wizard just follows mine around and helps me in fights whenever my level 9 wizard spells aren’t enough.
I make sure not to get any pizza grease on Nathan’s second computer. We’re listening to music, too. Nathan is playing a song about gloves and teeth and I don’t know what it means, but it sounds relaxing. Nathan stops to text sometimes, and I wonder who I would text if I had a phone. Probably no one. Maybe Mom.
“Who are you texting?” I ask Nathan.
“Some guy from school.”
In the dark, I can see Nathan’s reflection in the window. Rats. He isn’t a vampire after all.
Nathan puts away his phone to help me fight a big scary boss as our wizards. I almost forget that Nathan is going to go missing later.
Then there’s a big knock at the front door. It’s more of a bang really, and I jump. It startled me. I don’t really feel like I’m in danger, but I’m really worried for Nathan because maybe it’s the witch that cursed me or a demon or maybe a serial killer. Oh, maybe I would be in danger if it was that last one.
Bang! Bang! Okay, that witch demon serial killer really wants to come inside. Nathan seems nervous. I ask him, “Do you think that’s a monster?”
“No, it’s probably nothing,” Nathan tells me. I don’t think he believes that, and the banging is getting louder.
“You can stay here, I’ll go check it out.”
I don’t listen. I follow Nathan as he creeps down the hall to the front door, but I kind of hide behind him. Not that I want the witch to eat him, but I also don’t really want to get eaten myself. I don’t even notice that I grabbed Nathan’s arm until I’m already hugging it like it’s a life raft and I’m drowning in the ocean. I like the ocean.
Nathan peaks through the little window on the front door, and then he says a curse word under his breath and swings it open. I’m thinking, ‘what the heck, Nathan? You’re just gonna let the witch inside?!’ But then I see that it’s not a witch. It’s a teenage boy laughing a whole bunch like he did something really funny. I scowl at him. I glare as hard as I can.
“You aren’t funny,” Nathan grumbles.
“Did I scare ya?” The boy asks. He has a stupid letterman jacket and his pants don’t have any rips in them at all.
“Yeah, actually. I told you not to come here, what is wrong with you?”
“Ah, come on, loosen up, Natey.”
The boy with the jacket shoves Nathan and walks inside. Um, excuse me, this is my house and that is my soon-to-be-missing babysitter.
“Can you make him leave?” I ask Nathan. I’m still holding his arm and I don’t know why. I feel something really bad coming on.
Nathan doesn’t say anything, but he looks nervous again. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what this feeling is. Something is going to go wrong. I need to make him leave.
Nathan isn’t doing it so I guess I have to.
“Can you get out of my house?”
The ravens are at the window again. They’re so loud.
“Sorry kid but no can do,” He says to me. He puts his hand on my head but I don’t want him to. Nathan swats his gross hand away from my hair but doesn’t say anything.
Then Nathan’s friend from school tells me, “And you better not tattle on me being here, or else Nate’s gonna get you in trouble with your parents.”
No, no way. I look at Nathan and I feel like I’m going to cry, but Nathan doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t say anything. Stop being so quiet, Nathan!
Something bad is coming. I can feel it. And the ravens are getting louder. They’re pounding on the window now. The two boys keep glancing upstairs, but I guess neither of them want to check on it.
Nathan’s friend opens the fridge in my kitchen. I want Nathan to stop him. He’s making me feel uncomfortable, or maybe it’s the feeling in the air making me feel that way. It feels different. Not like I’m being watched, but like someone is going to die. Or maybe is already dead.
“There’s nothin’ in here!” Nathan’s friend moans, “Do you think they keep it in the cellar?”
“No,” Nathan says. Finally! And then, “I think you should leave.”
Nathan’s friend (or, no, maybe they aren’t friends) glares at him. I glare back.
“C’mon, it’s so hard to have fun anymore. Let’s just check.”
“You aren’t supposed to go in the basement,” I warn him. Even I’m not supposed to go in the basement. It’s off-limits. Mom says it’s dangerous. She always has.
“This kid’s kinda creepy,” Nathan’s not-friend says. It’s like I’m not even here. If I was a wizard, I would blast Nathan’s not-friend away with a fire cat.
He looks around for the basement door, and he finds it fast, only it’s locked. I get in front of it. I am not letting this guy get me in trouble. Besides, I feel like something bad will happen if he gets the door open. Something really bad.
“Just leave it alone, you can get drinks anywhere,” Nathan insists.
That’s all he wants? Nathan’s stupid not-friend is going to kill us all for a couple of drinks?
I don’t know how I know that he’s going to kill us all, but the whole house feels like death. I don’t think Nathan or his friend feels it.
They start arguing and then they start yelling. I hate the yelling. Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up, just be quiet! I cover my ears and stand in front of the door to the basement. Nathan’s not-friend pushes him again, and then they keep arguing and yelling and none of them feel the darkness that I do.
I’m not thinking. I just blurt out, “Stop it! Stop it or you’re going to die! We’re all going to die!”
They go quiet. They aren’t arguing anymore. But as soon as they stop, Nathan’s not-friend stares at me like I’m a monster.
His legs tremble, and then he drops to the ground. He starts mumbling and blubbering, and he kind of looks like an ant after you spray it with water. He’s struggling on the ground, and then he starts clawing at his eyes. He keeps clawing and clawing until he bleeds, and then he’s squirming and bleeding, and Nathan screams. Nathan runs past me, towards the basement. But the door was supposed to be closed.
I don’t know how it opened, but Nathan rushes down the stairs like he’s trying to get away from something. His friend is writhing on the ground still, like an ant. I follow Nathan because I still feel like something bad will happen to him. Something really bad. Why is he running into the basement? I chase after him, and I find him, but it isn’t him that makes me stop and stare in horror.
The smell hits me so strong, I wonder how I’ve lived above it for so long and never smelled it before. I feel sick. It’s everywhere, and it’s no secret what’s causing it.
My babysitters are. Their bones are piled up in the center of the room, with the rest of them disassembled in a circle around the bony centerpiece. It kind of looks like how Mom sets up the dining room table, but it makes me want to throw up. I don’t think I would’ve been able to tell who they were from just the circle. But there’s something else, something that makes it easy to recognize them, mounted on a table behind the circle.
Nathan falls over and throws up all over the floor. I think he’s lucky, because it means he misses the thing that creeps out of the shadows towards the back wall and towards us.
I’m shaking. I’m afraid. I’m terrified, and I know I’m crying. I’m crying because my babysitters are dead and Nathan might get killed too, and I’m even crying for his jerk friend who’s probably already dead upstairs. I’m crying because there’s only one person who’s allowed to go in the basement, because it’s the same person who told me that she’s sorry that all my babysitters go missing, that it’s just a coincidence. Crying and shaking and terrified, I stand in front of Nathan and I whisper to him, “Don’t look.”
The thing that I’m staring down isn’t something that I think he could take. Looking at it makes me think my brain really is going to melt into pudding. My eyes don’t really want to see it.
When you see things, your eyes talk to your brain. They say ‘hey brain, this is what I’m looking at,’ and the brain says, ‘okay,’ and then you know what your eyes are seeing. But whatever this is, it’s making my eyes speak a language my brain doesn’t understand. For a second I wonder if it’s death, but that isn’t right. It’s something else, something that I can’t understand. And trying to is making my mind go in circles.
But I can look at it. It feels kind of familiar in an odd way. I’m still shaking but I’m not crying anymore. I want to look away because it’s still too much, it’s a mess of strange things that shouldn’t exist and things that can’t exist wrapped together in some kind of fishy, fleshy thing. But I keep staring it down.
I think I can feel Nathan’s fear behind me. He’s afraid, too, and all I can do is mentally yell at him to not look. It’s the kind of impossible thing that makes your mind twist and snap. Don’t look at it.
My knees want to give up. I don’t let them.
The thing stays another second, or maybe a minute, and then the creature lumbers back into the shadows and takes its death energy with it. Then I can check on Nathan.
“It’s gone now,” I tell him, but my voice is shaking and I don’t think I’ve ever sounded younger.
“I’m sorry,” Nathan coughs, and I’m just relieved to hear him talk because I was worried he was going to start writhing around like a suffocating fish like his not-friend is doing upstairs. I don’t know what he’s apologizing for. He repeats it again, though. “I’m sorry.”
Nathan calls the police once we manage to get upstairs. The smell is everywhere now. I have to sit outside in the garage. I like the smell of cars. I especially like it more than the smell of death and corpses and vomit like inside the house. Nathan sits with me after a while. He brings me a blanket.
The police show up before my Mom, and once she does get here, they put her in handcuffs and she goes right into a police car. She goes with them easily. I wonder if she knew this would happen. I wonder when I’ll be able to see her again. I wonder when I’ll want to.
Nathan’s not-friend is taken out on a stretcher. I don’t know if that means he’s alive, but I kind of hope he is. He was a jerk who wanted to steal my drinks or something but I still don’t think he deserves to die like a drowning ant.
I don’t know what will happen to me or Nathan. I don’t think he’ll disappear like the others, but now something else is bothering me.
Whatever the thing in the basement was, it didn’t make anything happen until we went downstairs into its territory. I guess it didn’t want us there. I don’t know.
But I know that I felt something when I was in front of it. And I know that I didn’t feel anything like that when Nathan’s not-friend started squirming like a fish or an ant. I can’t stop thinking about the way he was looking at me. At me.
And I know that Nathan didn’t see it because he was busy throwing up and not looking at the basement monster, but there was more than just my old babysitters’ heads on that table downstairs.
Right in front of them, there was a picture of me.