I grew up an only child, and the one thing I had always wanted as a kid was a sibling. It’s weird, but I had this strong drive to be a mentor. So, at around sixteen, I decided to start a babysitting service. It wasn’t anything crazy, but I made decent money and ended up with a few repeat clients. One of them was Maddie. Maddie was a six-year-old girl with a pair of affluent, artsy parents. They often called me to their big house on the outskirts of town so they could attend their openings and gallery parties.
Like a lot of kids, Maddie had imaginary friends. Her parents encouraged them, though. They called it a “great way for our little girl to express her creativity!” they also said “She’s creating whole people out of nothing! She has quite a future in the art world, don’t you think?” I suppose it was good her parents cared about her, but I had read that encouraging delusions were dangerous. When I said as much to them once, I got a look that suggested I refrain from saying such things if I wanted to stay employed. So, I kept my mouth shut and have since kept one of my best returning clients.
Maddie was a wonderful child to work with, she was smart, observant, and incredibly talented. She also had amazing manners, never screamed or cried, and always had a word of kindness to offer anyone in her home. In all honesty, Maddie was the real reason I kept working as a babysitter for so long. A lot of my other clients’ kids were nightmares.
I looked after Maddie for about a year without incident. Her parents loved calling me because I was always willing to work. I had even ended up staying over a few times to watch Maddie over the weekend. They’d call to check in, of course, but they wouldn’t come home until late Sunday night or Early Monday Morning. We’d play games, color, draw, tell each other stories, and I’d help her if she had any schoolwork or the like she needed to get done.
One day, while we were playing, I saw a small group of chairs set out by the wall, facing what we were doing.
“Hey Maddie? Did you leave those chairs out?” I asked curiously.
“Uh huh, they like it when they can sit and observe.” she said plainly, still playing with her doll.
“Who are they?”
“My friends! They’re really nice to me. They don’t like Mommy and Daddy that much, though. They think they’re stupid.”
“Maddie! You can’t say that sort of thing about your parents!” I scolded.
“I didn’t! They did!”
I frowned and shook my head, I couldn’t tell Maddie her friends weren’t real, or her parents would never hire me again. So I sighed and we simply kept playing, but I’d spare a glance over to those chairs every now and again. Something about them made my stomach drop, like something was very wrong there.
That night, as I was putting Maddie to bed, she lay there combing her doll’s hair with her hand. “They don’t like you either.” she said flatly. “They said you don’t think they’re real.”
I paused as I was tucking her in. “Who said that?”
“My friends! The Gray Men.”
“The…Gray Men?”
She nodded, still looking at her doll. “The Gray Men don’t like you. They said they’re gonna take care of you. That you won’t be a problem anymore! I told them you’re not, but they told me it was ok, and that it would all be ok soon.”
Before this, I had only ever heard Maddie offhandedly mention her imaginary friends, but they all had names. She just called these ones “The Gray Men.” I glanced about the room, looking for something to help me understand this, and I saw the chairs again. They were closer to the bed, still in a perfect row. How did I miss these before? Where they like that when I was putting Maddie to bed? Turning my focus to her I again, I asked “Maddie, what do the Gray Men look like?”
She sat up and reached into her nightstand, pulling out a few sheets of paper she had colored on. “Like this!” she said, handing them to me. The first drawing was of five figures sitting in five chairs. Their forms, while vaguely humanoid, were completely gray. I flipped to the second, two people were on their knees coloring while the strange gray figures hovered over them. It looked like their necks were bent down, almost as though they were watching the happenings beneath them. My breath caught in my throat as I flipped to the last picture, there was a person laying on the ground, the gray figures had them surrounded. Their hands were outstretched, and it looked like they were drawn with claws. Claws that were dripping with blood.
“Maddie…this last picture…”
“It’s just a drawing, silly! The Gray Men told me to do it. They said it would look really neat!” she declared with a yawn. “I’m gonna go to sleep now. Goodnight!”
I offered a nervous chuckle and gave her a pat on the head. “Yeah, of course. Have a good night, Maddie, rest well.” as I closed the door to her room, I held up that last drawing again. “What the fuck?” I murmured, my eyes drifted to the clock, it looked like Maddie’s parents would be home in an hour. I’d show them the last picture then, maybe they could talk to her about it, maybe they’d understand what feeding the delusion could do. I folded the picture and tucked it into my back pocket, then I made my way downstairs to watch some TV while I waited.
I must have fallen asleep with the TV on, and when I woke I could hear Maddie’s parents fumbling with the keys. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes I stopped dead in my tracks, the chairs from the kitchen were sitting in a perfect row. Before I could respond, the door opened, and Maddie’s parents entered.
“Oh! The show was such a bore, we’re home! So good to see you!” I was given a hug by Maddie’s mother and another by Maddie’s father. I was thanked, paid, and as I was trying to explain what had happened I was interrupted and ushered out the door.
I wish had talked to them about it, I wish I had done anything to prevent what happened because to this day I have no explanation for it.
When I got home, my parents had left a note saying they’d be gone for the weekend. It was nothing new, I was seventeen and they trusted me to look after the house while they were gone. I just…I wish they hadn’t this weekend, especially after the weird night I had. I sighed and headed inside, what I needed was a hot shower and a good night of rest. So I made my way upstairs and into my bathroom, started the shower, and let the heat calm my shattered nerves. When I got out of the shower, something caught my eye in the mirror, the bathroom door was opened. I thought I had closed it, in fact, I was certain.
Cautiously, I approached and opened the door. I must’ve heard something slide because I took a step back, and I’m glad I did. A knife fell from the top of the door and clattered onto the bathroom tile in front of me. I paused, looking at the kitchen utensil before slowly stepping around it. I quickly glanced about the hallway, looking for any sign of what might have caused this, but I saw nothing. “Hello?” I called out, doubling back, picking up the knife, and cautiously stepping from the bathroom. The house seemed normal, nothing was out of the ordinary, but my stomach was doing backflips.
I was being watched, I could feel it. As I slowly moved through the house, I said nothing else. If there was some kind of intruder, they weren’t going to get the drop on me. I crept into the kitchen, knife in hand, but I dropped it as soon as I entered. Five chairs sat in the kitchen in a perfect row. They weren’t chairs from my house like they were at Maddie’s, they were different. They looked old, and rotting, like they had been sitting out in the rain for years to decay. “What the hell…?” I murmured under my breath, reaching back down for the knife. As I collected it, a sound drew my eyes under the table.
There, crouched among the tiny forest of chair legs, was a creature. It wore no clothes, skin was this mottling of shades of gray that seemed to seep into each other and blend like water and paint. It stare at me with tiny pinprick holes for eyes in its face that sucked inward when it blinked. It didn’t move toward me, it just stared. Eyes locked on the strange thing, I slowly picked up the knife and scooted away. As I rose, I was greeted by the sight of four more of those things sitting in the old, rotten chairs, just staring. They had no mouths or necks, their heads just sort of molded into their bodies, their arms had no elbows and they had no discernable hands, just strange little nubs. Their feet were the same, kneeless and without feet, like a child’s clay sculpture of a person. These weird facsimiles didn’t move toward me, they didn’t really move at all, save for the strange sucking blinks of their holes for eyes.
Nervously, I raised the knife and spoke. “Y-you guys must be the Gray Men.” I choked out. “Uh, W-welcome to my home?” they still said nothing, they just stared. I could feel their gaze, even if I couldn’t see their eyes. That wasn’t all I felt. The sinking feeling in my gut was stronger now, it was like I could feel the rage and hate permeating off of them. “I’m uhm, I’m sorry if I offended you all in any way. It, it wasn’t my intention?” still they said nothing, staring at me with those stoic beady little eyes. I backed away, slowly raising the knife to my chest defensively, never taking my eyes off of the four I could see in the kitchen.
That was when the fifth must’ve tripped me.
I stumbled backward, landing hard on my back and striking my head against the linoleum. Sparks rocketed through my vision, and as the world teetered between the light and the dark, I saw their forms move into my vision. Weakly, I shook the cobwebs away, and I could see them clearly. Their pinprick eyes had developed a new feature, eyebrows slanted down in a sort of angry glare. They stood over me as I slowly reached behind my head to feel something warm and sticky, bringing my hand back into view I noticed I was bleeding. The gray men didn’t move, they just kept watching. I tried to push myself up, but something sharp poked into my shoulder, forcing me back down. One of the Gray Men moved into my vision, its strange ever-shifting monochromatic skin blocking the rest of the house from my field of view. It pressed its strange nub of a hand into my forehead and slowly pulled it away. I want to say what happened next was like a punch, but it felt like getting hit with a sack of wet towels.
The creature jerked its hand back and slammed it into my face, and while its attack didn’t really cause any damage, my head bounced off the tile again. I cried out, but before I could react in any other way it struck me again. The world flashed white, my ears started ringing, and suddenly it felt like I was drifting away from my own body as this thing punched me again and again.
I don’t know how many times that weird little creature struck me, just know that I blacked out around the sixth. When I came to, I still lying in the kitchen, the floor now stained with my blood. I rose weakly and rubbed my head, looking around for any sign of the Gray Men. Their chairs were gone, and so were they. I was left alone in my house once again, wondering if anything I had just experienced was real. I went back up to the bathroom to get my phone, which I had stupidly left in my pants. It was sitting on the bathroom counter, and my pants were gone, along with the pictures of the Gray Men that Maddie had drawn. Was that what this was about? Is that why they didn’t like me? I told Maddie’s parents her imaginary friends weren’t real, so some of them came and beat me up? Just writing that makes me feel like I’m crazy.
I was at the point where I didn’t care if her parents didn’t believe me anymore, I wasn’t going back to that house. I called an ambulance and told them I had fallen, I was seen for a minor concussion and recovered after a few weeks. My parents felt terrible for leaving me alone. They blamed themselves, said I could have died. Maddie’s parents called me the day after the incident to see if I was alright and told me to take some time to recover, after I had, I told them I wouldn’t be doing any more babysitting, that I was closing up shop to pursue other interests.
Surprisingly, they were understanding, but there are times I still think about Maddie and those chairs. I wonder if anyone else ever experienced anything like that. I wonder how you’d fight it. Could you? I didn’t even think to at the time, and in some ways I hate myself a little for that, but I still don’t even know if what happened to me was real. The only piece of evidence I still have is in the doctor’s notes on the incident.
They had mentioned bits of dried gray clay in my hair.