A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting

by Joe Ballarini

  Dedication

  For my wife

  and for every kid afraid of what is

  lurking under the bed.

  Just so you know, hiding under the

  covers can’t stop monsters from eating you.

  In fact, that just makes you look like a

  delicious, tasty burrito.

  Didn’t know that, did you?

  See?

  This book is for you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  The Beginning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Praise

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE BEGINNING

  “‘Hush little baby, don’t say a word.’”

  The four-year-old girl blinked awake under her quilted blanket. She froze, listening, wide-eyed. A strange, low singing oozed through the slats of her closet door.

  “‘Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.’”

  She had never heard the throaty voice before, but she already knew she never wanted to hear it again.

  The closet door creaked open and the girl’s white-knuckled fists tightened around her teddy bear, nearly strangling it.

  “I’m not a wimp, I’m not a wimp,” she whispered under her covers.

  She closed her eyes and wished the unseen horrors away. The room fell silent. The whispering vanished.

  She drew the covers from her head. The closet door was open just a little.

  She didn’t like it open just a little. It needed to be closed. Now.

  She took a deep breath, slid off her bed, and walked barefoot across the carpet to her dark, open closet.

  Then she noticed the smell. A combination of wet mud, rotten eggs, and a thousand belches. Her socks smelled bad sometimes, but never this bad.

  The hanging clothes swished ever so slightly. Her sweaters parted. A pale hand slithered from the depths, stopping the door from closing. A figure emerged from the closet like an actor stepping through curtains onto the stage.

  “Hello, little girl.” He smiled.

  Fear rooted the girl’s feet to the floor. She stared up at the man’s wrinkled skull. His elegant suit jacket was covered in soot and corpse-dust.

  “Wake up,” the girl whispered to herself. “Wake up.”

  The monster picked a cockroach from the strands of hair cascading down his shoulders and popped it into his mouth, as if it were caramel-covered popcorn. “You think you’re scared?” the man said. “I’ve been in there all night surrounded by your miserable sense of fashion, waiting for you to go to sleep. Horrible, smelly thing you are.”

  He took a step toward her, and she saw he had brown furry legs, hooves for feet, and a ticking tail.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked her, placing his hands on his hips. “What am I saying? Of course you do. Every child knows who I am.” He flashed a vain smile. Bits of half-chewed insect stuck in his mustard-colored fangs.

  “Muh-muh-muh . . . ,” the little girl gurgled.

  “Muh-muh-muh-mommy can’t hear you, my dear. She went out with your daddy.

  “‘So hush little baby, don’t you cry . . . ,’” the creature sang. His eyes sparkled with flecks of gold. It was like seeing the Milky Way reflected in the ocean’s waves.

  The little girl’s eyes closed. She swayed on her feet, fast asleep, and tumbled into a large, burlap sack the man had drawn from behind his back. He tied the end with a long, red ribbon.

  “There we are,” he sneered.

  Just down the hall, Veronica Preston, a sixteen-year-old babysitter, was lounging on the couch, talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend, Todd.

  “I can’t come over, Todd. I’m babysitting,” Veronica giggled, absently pulling at the frayed hem of her jeans. “And nooo, you can’t come over, either, so don’t even try it, buster.”

  Todd was trying to think of a clever, convincing response when Veronica heard a thud down the hall. “Kiddo?” she called out. “You awake?”

  The faint sound of something being dragged across the floor suddenly stopped. She clicked off the phone in the middle of Todd asking her what time the little girl’s parents were coming home.

  The babysitter closed the blue spiral-bound notebook opened on her lap and placed it by her battered orange book bag. She crept down the shadowy hall toward the little girl’s bedroom and quietly opened the door.

  “Kiddo?” she whispered.

  In the darkness, Veronica could see a large lump writhing under the covers. She reached out and pulled back the blanket.

  “Read me a bedtime story?” cooed the smiling face with snakelike eyes.

  The babysitter screamed. The monster sprang from the bed, dramatically whirling the covers away.

  “Ah, yes. Screaming is the highest form of flattery,” crowed the cloven-hoofed demon.

  His claws swiped at her long braid as the teenager scrambled down the hall to the kitchen, slamming the door in his face. He kicked it open and saw the kitchen was empty.

  “Fast little mouse, aren’t we? Where are you, little mouse?” he called playfully.

  As the monster sniffed the air in the kitchen, Veronica held her breath and crawled behind a couch. She hid while the creature stalked slowly into the living room, his heavy, black hooves stomping across the carpet, followed by an angry, twitching tail.

  Her backpack. She needed her backpack. When he turned away from the couch, she reached over and patted the brown cushions. His hand clamped down on her wrist and squeezed with incredible strength.

  “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.” He smiled down at her. “My name is the Grand Guignol. Known to many as the Boogeyman.”

  The Grand Guignol said this with the confidence of a monster that had lived for thousands of years and seen countless poor, helpless souls cower in its presence.

  The babysitter, however, had a much different reaction.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m the babysitter. And you’re not taking that child.”

  The Boogeyman blinked for a confused moment. This was supposed to be the part where she screamed in terror. Veronica was holding two ancient Egyptian daggers with emeralds on the hilt. Then she lunged at him.

  She ducked, sliced. He dodged her swings and slashed at
her with his long, grimy fingernails. They battled across the living room: claw, hoof, snapping tail against two blades and a ponytail.

  The Boogeyman’s smile raised the hairs on the back of Veronica’s neck. His tail lashed out and whipped around her throat. She choked. It pulled her close. His damp, eggy breath huffed against her cheek.

  “I’ve feasted on your kind for a thousand years,” he said. “I am the chill down your spine. The nightmare that wakes you, screaming. I’m also a gentleman, but no one seems to care about that.”

  The babysitter gasped for breath. The scratchy tail coiled tighter around her neck with boa constrictor–like strength. Windpipe crushing, Veronica could feel her face flush purple. With each wheezing breath, she tried to pull away from him.

  “Ahaaa. The sweet smell of fear,” he whispered.

  The girl clenched her jaw and cannoned her fist into his gut. Plumes of dust wafted from his black jacket. He gulped and doubled over. She unwound his twisted tail from her neck and spun away from him, like a professional tango dancer twirling across the dance floor.

  Flashes of metal shot from her hands.

  The Grand Guignol sidestepped the flying knives and was already clicking his teeth in disappointment as the two blades thunked into the wall beside his head.

  “Silver daggers? Really?” he sighed. “Do I look like a werewolf? Amateur.”

  He clomped toward her. She ran from him, snatched her backpack, and trampolined off the couch. She dove out the window and into the backyard.

  In one swift leap, the Boogeyman followed.

  Veronica tumbled onto the grass, landing awkwardly on her right side. A sharp pain coursed through her arm as she rummaged for something in her backpack. She found a glowing vial and worked quickly to uncork it.

  Dark hooves slammed down before her. The Grand Guignol towered over her, pinning her to the ground with a cloven hoof on her back.

  “Did you not just hear my speech about me being an utterly brilliant, awesome, and magical creature?”

  Pressed against the grass, Veronica struggled to look up at him. “Actually, I did. That’s why I came prepared.”

  As the monster paused to consider the statement, Veronica rolled from under his hoof and swung her arm in a circle. He saw that the babysitter had poured a ring of twinkling blue powder on the ground, and he was standing directly inside it.

  “Is that—?”

  “Ring of Angel Fire? Your only weakness? Believe it is,” she said with a smile.

  She lit a match and rolled away as the powder caught fire with dazzling sparks. A tornado of ethereal, sapphire flames spiraled around the cloven-hoofed monster, trapping him inside its ghostly vortex. The Grand Guignol slammed his fists against the shimmering, supernatural wall.

  “You can’t kill the Boogeyman, babysitter,” he warned.

  Veronica’s grin glowed in the rippling propane-like waves that separated them. The enchanted tornado whirled faster around the Grand Guignol, picking him up off the ground.

  “I—I’ll return!” he howled. “And you won’t be able to protect her!”

  Veronica watched the Ring of Angel Fire ascend into the sky, stretching into a twisting funnel of light. With a faint whoosh, the vortex vanished into the dark clouds. A cool breeze blew across the grass. The babysitter glanced around the suburban backyard, making sure there were no witnesses. Explaining things to the neighbors was so boring.

  It was half past eleven on a cold night in Rhode Island. Everyone in this sleepy side of town was most likely in bed.

  The babysitter reached into her backpack for a Luna bar and winced. She had definitely sprained, if not broken, something in her right shoulder.

  Exhausted, she went back inside to put the little girl to bed.

  “Shh, just a nightmare,” she whispered, soothing the little girl to sleep with her gentle tone.

  As the child nuzzled into her pillow, Veronica inspected the Boogeyman’s burlap sack. Fortunately, it was empty. There was no way she could deal with more kids tonight. She shoved the coarse sack into her backpack, then pulled out her blue notebook and flopped onto the couch.

  Inside the notebook, elaborate notes were scribbled around a drawing of the beastly Boogeyman. One of the notes, circled in red, was:

  Possible weakness: Silver daggers. Angel Fire.

  Squeezed into one of the last open spaces, she wrote:

  Silver daggers NO BUENO. Angel Fire BIG WIN.

  The lock on the front door clicked open, and the little girl’s parents entered with the glow of two adults who had just consumed a moderately tasty dinner without the interruptions of a toddler.

  “Sorry we’re late. How was she?” asked the woman.

  “The best,” Veronica assured them with a kind smile. As the parents pulled off their heavy coats, the babysitter caught a glimpse of her two silver daggers sticking out of the wall.

  “We read,” she said, creeping toward her knives. “She fell asleep. I attempted algebra. Pretty chill.”

  The little girl’s dad closed the hall closet door and smiled. “I’ll drive you home.”

  Behind her back, Veronica discreetly pulled the two blades from the wall and slipped them into her backpack before following the dad out to the car.

  Had the little girl’s parents peered inside Veronica’s large, scuffed orange JanSport, they would have seen it wasn’t filled with schoolbooks and notes to friends, but rather with exotic weapons, the shard of an enchanted crystal, ten vials of mystical potions all arranged in alphabetical order, and the blue spiral-bound notebook. Written on its cover were the words:

  A Babysitter’s Guide to

  MONSTER HUNTING

  1

  The cold autumn breeze twisted my frizzy red hair into my face as I ran past pumpkins with carved grins.

  “Of course you forgot your hair band, Kelly,” I growled to myself.

  I tucked my hair under my white scarf and pulled the ends of it tightly under my chin, which made me look like a cartoon character with a toothache. I didn’t care. The hair situation was now under control.

  But the yellow school bus of doom was already rumbling away from the corner.

  “Stop!” I cried, chasing after it, waving my arms. “Larry! Please!”

  The bus stopped and the door flew open. A wheezy smoker’s laugh greeted me as I ran up the stairs, gasping for breath.

  “Looked like you could use the exercise,” said Larry the Toothless Bus Driver.

  Hilarious.

  The bus thundered down the cold, suburban street, passing the rundown movie theater, which was showing eighties horror films all night long for Halloween. I slumped onto the green pleather seat beside my best friend, Tammy Alvaro.

  “Could be worse,” Tammy said.

  She leaned over to one side and showed me a bright neon splotch of gum stuck to her butt.

  “I sat in gum,” she admitted.

  “Oh no, Tam.” I covered my mouth and laughed. “Let’s move seats.”

  “What’s the point?” she sighed. “If anyone asks, I’ll just say I ate an alien and then pooed myself.”

  Everyone thinks Tammy whispers because she’s too shy, but really, it’s because she’s saying something hilarious and doesn’t want to offend anyone. So while everyone else thinks she’s this discreet, coy creature, she’s actually a raging comedian in the body of a thirteen-year-old mouse.

  “Where’s your costume, K-Ferg?” she asked.

  “I’m wearing it. It’s called ‘despair.’”

  I reached into my backpack and removed a notebook labeled “CAMP FUND.” Inside were dollar tallies and a colorful brochure for Camp Miskatonic. The images of cabins and horses took me to my happy place.

  Camp Miskatonic.

  Magical Camp Miskatonic.

  I first heard about “Big Camp Misky” from Deanna. Okay, so Deanna didn’t tell me directly. I overheard her talking to the Princess Pack during lunch about this incredible place she went to one summer. She rode
horses and kissed a boy and won the camp talent show. The camp itinerary even included beach time. How awesome does that sound?

  Deanna said Camp Miskatonic was where she “found her truth.” She said this as she inhaled through her nostrils deeply, as if smelling the memory of the pine trees. Or maybe it was because she needed to take in more oxygen to relieve her overwhelmed brain from all the mature and deep emotions rushing through it.

  The Camp Miskatonic website hypnotized me with images of lush lakes, fields, stables, and fabulous teenagers doing Arts and Crafts. I imagined myself sailing down a zip line through evergreen trees, riding on a pony named Freedom, and trading my deepest and truest secrets with my bunkmates while making box-style gimp friendship bracelets.

  And then, once summer had ended, having “found my truth” (wherever it’s been hiding), I planned to make my triumphant debut in the vast halls of Willow Brook High School as a newly arrived freshman. It was there, with my tanned chin held high and my spirit brimming with worldly wisdom, that I would no longer be Kelly the Short, Invisible Ginger Girl. From that moment on, I would be known as Kelly the Teenager, who had shed the shackles of eighth-grade obscurity and blossomed into the coolest ninth grader in Rhode Island. All thanks to Camp Miskatonic.

  And, for the record, I don’t want to be Deanna. I want to be me—but like the coolest version of me. I believed that a once-in-a-lifetime experience at camp would help achieve these goals.

  But it costs four thousand bucks to go to Big Camp Misky for one summer.

  Four thousand dollars is a lot of cheddar for a thirteen-year-old. Especially one who cannot ask her parents because they are not rolling in the dough. However, I, Kelly Page Ferguson, worked and saved up a total of $3,000.32, which is now locked away in the Life Savers bank in my closet.

  I was $999.68 short, and I had already done every job a teenager can do before child services gets involved. No lie. Last summer, I was the CEO of my own lemonade stand. In the autumn, senior rain gutter cleaner and VP of grocery bagging at the Foodtime. In the winter, I was an executive snow scraper. In the spring, lawn mower in chief. And this past summer, head bouncer (aka ticket taker) at Mulligan Pizza and Golf.

  If I was going to make the deadline to get into camp next summer, I had to fork over payment by the end of November to save my spot in Bunkroom C.