A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting #1

by Joe Ballarini

  News flash, Kelly. Kids have nightmares, and so did you.

  I picked up the drawings and slipped them back in the picture book.

  “But it wasn’t real, Jacob,” I said. “And do you know why? Because there are no such things as monsters.”

  “Yes. There are.”

  The ocean wind howled outside of the windows, and the lights in the room flickered.

  “There’s gargoyles and goblins and vampires and alligators that live in the sewers, and giant rats. And . . . broccoli.”

  Jacob’s voice lowered into a foreboding tone. “Broccoli is the worst.”

  “Nice try,” I said. “But they’re just nightmares, little loaf. They can’t hurt you.”

  “Mine can.”

  Jacob pulled his knees close to his chest. He stared at the wall and then hid his haunted face. “I can make my nightmares come true.”

  Riiiiiiight.

  “Well, when I get scared . . . ,” I said, trying to sound chipper. “I mean, when I used to get scared—I don’t get scared anymore because I’m a grown-up—I would bring a teddy bear to bed.”

  I rummaged through a stack of discarded toys and held them up for his selection. Tank? No. Star Wars anything? No. Stuffed purple octopus? Nope. Sheesh, this kid had a lot of toys.

  At the bottom of the pile, wedged between a toy chest and the wall, a brown teddy bear stared up at me.

  Yes! Kids love teddy bears. Well done, Kelly. You are so getting the hang of this.

  I took the teddy by the arm and liberated it from the bottom of the pile. The lower half of its fur had been burned off. Its legs were melted black nubs. Charred white stuffing bloomed from its side, and one of its plastic eyeballs had melted down its furry face, like wax dripping off a dying candle. Repulsed, I dropped it and stepped away.

  “Dude! What is wrong with you?” I blurted out.

  Jacob sighed heavily and wrapped his arms around his shins. “I dreamed Teddy was on fire.” He lowered his face to his knees, hiding his eyes. His voice was quiet and sad.

  “When I woke up . . . he was burning.”

  Icicles slid down my back. This was way out of my league. I snatched the happiest-looking picture book in the pile.

  “Zambrini’s Circus of Fantastic Fleas! Yay, happy story!”

  Jacob looked unsure as I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the book.

  “Promise you won’t leave me?” he asked.

  “Yeah, totally.”

  “And hope to die?”

  Even though his shining emerald-colored eyes were freaking me out, I nodded.

  7

  Bzzt. Bzzt.

  “And that’s how Miss Kensington’s Fantastic Cake Shop was saved by a fifty-foot soufflé and an orphan named Sally.”

  Bzzt. Bzzt.

  “The end.”

  I quietly closed the book as my phone rattled in my pocket. So many incredible things were happening out there that Tammy had to keep texting me every thirty seconds while I was trapped in here reading picture books just to get Jacob to doze off.

  I slowly slid out from under Jacob’s head and slipped off the bed, careful not to disturb him.

  Victory! I reached for my phone.

  “No. No,” he whispered.

  Beneath his eyelids, his eyeballs darted back and forth, like two beetles trapped under a napkin.

  I dropped my phone back into my pocket.

  “Hey, Jacob. You’re having a nightmare, buddy,” I said, gently approaching him.

  “Dead . . . dead . . .”

  I froze.

  “The lighthouse is dead,” he gasped. His arms thrashed under his sheets. His pillow was soaked.

  “Jacob, wake up—”

  The rattling windows flung open. A chilling blast of wind blew a blizzard of Jacob’s drawings around the room as I lunged for the windows and locked them. A waft of seaweed and the stink of murky tide pools lingered in the air, as if the garbageman had just driven past.

  Jacob’s eyes remained shut.

  Like the last leaf clinging to an October tree, a single piece of paper drifted down and settled beside Jacob as he twisted on the bed.

  It was his drawing of the man with hooves for feet. The thick smudge-line smile on the tall man’s face seemed to be leering right at me.

  “No . . . ,” Jacob mumbled in his sleep. “Not him.”

  My skill set is much better suited to bagging groceries at Foodtime, I thought.

  Bzzt! Bzzt!

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, my eyes on the curtained windows.

  I rubbed the sleeping pork pie’s back, and he sank into his pillow. I cautioned a look out of the window. The street was dark and empty. The wind shook the bushes under Jacob’s windowsill.

  Bzzt! Bzzt!

  I hate to admit it, but checking my phone makes me very happy. Some textasy was exactly what I needed at that moment.

  I crept away, turned on Jacob’s Iron Man night-light, and left the bedroom with the door open a crack; enough to let the warm light and soft sounds of the rest of the house inside.

  I tiptoed into the living room and called Tammy.

  “Tell me everything,” I whispered into my phone.

  “Why are you whispering?” Tammy shouted over the sound of music and laughing. “This party is awesome—obviously! Everyone is here!”

  Everyone but me.

  “Kell, there are high school kids here. High school! And one was like ‘Hey, Frosh,’ and I was like ‘Yuck!’ But he was wicked hot, not gonna lie.”

  “LIZ!” came the scream from Jacob’s room.

  Great. My source of pure joy and happiness was awake and screaming for his other babysitter.

  “I gotta go, Tam.”

  “No, wait—I gotta tell you about Victor—”

  “I gotta go!” I was already halfway down the hall when I saw that the door to Jacob’s room had been shut.

  I kicked it open. “Jacob!”

  I gently peeled the covers away from his face. “You do realize my name’s Kelly.”

  “Where were you?” he asked. “You promised.”

  A wet blanket of guilt weighed on my chest. He pulled his feet from the edge of the bed.

  “Something’s down there,” he whispered.

  “It’s probably mice, Jake. Mice aren’t that bad. They can’t hurt you unless you’re made of cheese. Are you made of cheese?”

  He pointed across the room to the Iron Man night-light.

  “They turned off the night-light,” he said.

  I cocked my head at the dark night-light bulb.

  “Okay, buddy. Joke’s over.”

  I snapped the night-light back on. A circle of golden light beamed onto the wall.

  “Liz is the only one who knows how to stop them from getting into the house. Her number’s on the fridge. Call her!”

  “Okay,” I said. “But you have to promise you’ll stay here and try to go back to sleep.”

  He nodded emphatically.

  “Deal.” Maybe Liz knew some kind of lullaby or some secret handshake to calm him down.

  I walked to the door and looked back at him. “Close your eyes.”

  He showed me that his eyes were closed.

  “Head on pillow.”

  He rigidly placed his head on the pillow.

  “Hurry, please,” he whispered.

  The fridge was plastered with magnetic frames filled with photographs of the Zellman family, all beaming from various destinations around the world. I riffled through lists of emergency numbers, notes, and takeout menus until I noticed a single business card among the papers.

  LIZ LERUE

  PROFESSIONAL BABYSITTER

  (401) 555-4687

  LizLeRue13@gmail.com

  Who called themselves a professional babysitter?

  Luckily, I got her voice mail.

  “This is Liz LeRue, babysitter,” said a serious voice. “I’m sorry I can’t get to the phone right now.” I had an image of Liz as a sto
cky fifty-year-old linebacker and ex-nun, with gray hair, Reef sandals, and black socks pulled up to her knees. “If this is an emergency and you need to get a hold of me, please dial 912. But that number is for emergencies only.”

  Why would a babysitter need an emergency line?

  “Hi, Liz LeRue? Sorry to bother you—I’m sure you’re out with your friends at a cool party or something—”

  KNOCK. KNOCK.

  “Sorry, no candy!” I called out to the front door and then turned back to the phone. “This is Kelly Ferguson, I’m babysitting Jacob Zellman.”

  I paced around the house as I left the message. “Uh, and he would like to talk to you—”

  I heard giggling from the living room. It sounded like Jacob. Has that little squirt been playing games with me the whole time? But when I walked into the living room, it was empty. I thought I heard raspy breathing, small and hurried, behind the couch. I remembered I was still leaving a voice mail.

  “Uh. If you could please call me back, my number’s—”

  KNOCK. KNOCK.

  This time the knocking was louder, demanding.

  BANG. BANG.

  The front door shook and bucked violently.

  SCRATCH, SCRATCH, SCRATCH.

  Maybe it was a squirrel. Or a rat. Please don’t let it be a rat.

  I dropped my phone as the banging crawled up the front door and clomped across the roof. I listened, frozen as heavy footsteps thundered overhead. My heart quickened and throbbed in my throat. The thumping stopped at the back of the house.

  Above Jacob’s room.

  Silence filled the house. A shadow crossed over the warm glow of Jacob’s night-light, and it clicked off.

  “KELLY!” cried Jacob.

  8

  When I worked at Mulligan Pizza and Golf, part of my job was throwing out the trash into the dirty, dented green Dumpster that was home to a thousand moldy pepperoni slices and dozens of dead rats. Gallons of bleach had to be poured on top in an attempt to cover up the putrid smell. That acidic stench of bleach-soaked garbage as it roasted in the hot summer sun is what Jacob’s room smelled like.

  I gagged, eyes adjusting to the dark. Three small lumpy piles of rags and trash bags hunched on top of Jacob’s bed. Their angry eyes beamed from slits made in their dirty plastic wrappings. Each fiend had a large beak and tiny leathery talons that held down Jacob’s arms and legs. I froze in horror.

  The tattered creatures stood two feet high, with round, fat bellies that hung low enough to touch the floor. Crudely made tools that looked like hammers and sickles clinked from belts made of soda can six-pack rings.

  One of them produced a small crystal bottle and poured glittering green dust into Jacob’s mouth as they all grumbled happy gibberish. Jacob tried to wrench himself from their grip, but his eyes grew slack. He yawned against his will and then went limp.

  The creatures pulled a large burlap sack over him, like they were stuffing a ham into a pillowcase.

  “Shoo! Get away from him!” I shouted.

  Their heads snapped in my direction. Jacob was unconscious, knocked out from whatever stuff they had poured into his mouth. They cinched the burlap sack shut with a red ribbon, and hissed at me with rabid force. My stomach surged with electric terror.

  This is happening. This is real.

  Their little claws lifted the sack with Jacob inside over their heads and then dropped it onto the floor with a heavy thump.

  “No!” I managed to scream as I lunged toward them. That’s when I heard the growling from behind me, and I realized there were more than three terrors in the room. The fourth nasty sprang out from the toy pile like a cannonball. It bashed me aside and somersaulted into the others, knocking them aside like bowling pins.

  Its buddies snarled and slapped it.

  The four terrors dove into a small opening, wide enough for a child, cut out from the floor underneath Jacob’s bed. A tunnel stretched down into the darkness.

  “Weeee-aaah!” the little monsters howled.

  “NO!”

  I lunged, grabbing the top of the burlap bag. They pulled back in a toddler version of tug-of-war.

  “You will not! I won’t let you—” I commanded.

  Jagged claws shot out and scratched me. “Ow!”

  I instinctively let go and held my bleeding hand. The beasties and the sack with Jacob still in it vanished down into the darkness.

  WHAM! The circle of wood flooring was shoved back into its original place, followed by hammering from below. A gooey, gloppy-like substance oozed up through the cracks and melted into the wood. In an instant, the ragged edges of the opening were gone, and the wooden boards looked like they had never been touched.

  I pounded on the floor, but it didn’t budge.

  “No, no, no. Jacob, you are not gone. No. No!”

  The sound of claws scuttled beneath the floorboards. The terrors’ victorious gibberish grew distant as I tried to follow the sound. . . .

  Across the room. Thumpa-thumpa.

  Into the living room. Thumpa-thumpa.

  Out of the back door. Thumpa-thumpa.

  I scrambled on my hands and knees, following the sounds outside to the backyard, where I crawled across the cold grass. As their ghoulish noises grew fainter and fainter, I ran in the direction it sounded like they were heading, down a set of rickety wooden stairs that led to the rocky beach below and beyond that, the black Narragansett Bay.

  I scanned the shoreline to see if they popped out from anywhere. Nothing. Just waves sloshing against the rocky sand.

  Jacob was gone.

  “This can’t be happening,” I told myself as I wandered back toward the house. “I did not just see four little trolls, dressed in tattered plastic, steal the little loaf.”

  No, my bleeding hand was proof something terrible had happened. This was all my fault. He tried to warn me.

  But really, who pays attention to a five-year-old who is scared of the dark?

  How was I going to explain this to his parents? To the police? How would I explain this to the thousands of news crews that were going to surround the house in an hour, or to the warden at the insane asylum they were going to send me to?

  And, I know this is going to sound selfish but, was I still going to get paid?

  As I walked back to the house, I noticed a nearby bed of flowers had been trampled. I stepped closer to investigate. Muddy clumps had been stamped into the ground.

  Hoofprints?

  I followed them around the perimeter of the house, all the way to a spot underneath one of Jacob’s windows.

  A gnashing engine roared toward the house, startling me.

  The lone headlight of a moped shined onto the driveway.

  A boot slammed down the noisy red motorbike’s kickstand. A girl’s silhouette slid off the saddle, pulled off her helmet, and strode toward the porch. I ducked back into the house and peered out of the window to get a better, safer look.

  “Open up, Ferguson.” The girl banged on the front door. “OPEN UP!”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  She slammed her business card against the window.

  LIZ LERUE

  PROFESSIONAL BABYSITTER

  (401) 555-4687

  LizLeRue13@gmail.com

  9

  A set of big dark eyes locked on me from under a tussle of choppy, blue-and-black hair that looked like the girl had cut it herself. Her nose was small, dotted with freckles. A tiny diamond stud winked on her left nostril. She was older than me—by at least a couple of years—and she looked like she belonged in detention for punching someone in the stomach.

  “You’re Liz? The babysitter?”

  “Professional babysitter,” she said. “You called. Open up.”

  I unlocked the front door, and she rushed inside. That was when I noticed she had something lumpy tied to the front of her: a BabyBjörn. Inside of it was what looked to be a happy ten-month-old baby, its chubby little legs dangling from the saddle.

 
“You’re Liz?” Stupid question, I know, but I just wanted to confirm. I’d had enough strange visitors tonight.

  “Yeah,” Liz grunted.

  The baby giggled. Liz shoved her scuffed-up helmet in my arms and stalked through the house. She was wearing an Eastman backpack covered with graffiti, punk band buttons, and air force patches over her shoulders, the straps pulled tight.

  “How did you—”

  “You left me a very long voice mail,” she said. “Heard every word you screamed.”

  “My phone!”

  I patted my pockets. Gone.

  Life was over. Probably so was poor Jacob’s. My mom would be fired for sure. My dream of Camp Miskatonic definitely squashed.

  I followed Liz down the hallway into Jacob’s room, where she threw her backpack onto the bed and knelt down to inspect the dusty space beneath it. She gently cradled the baby’s head to make sure it didn’t bump against the floor. She sniffed the air.

  “Toadies,” she grumbled.

  Liz ran her fingers over the wood. She knocked. It made a hollow sound. Liz let out an angry sigh and glared up at me. She unzipped her backpack. I thought she was going to dump out books or science homework, but instead, the inside of the bag was filled with an amulet, two baby bottles filled with formula, a long loop of wire, an antique brass tube engraved with a dragon breathing fire, a high-powered microphone and headphones, a collapsible cattle prod, and who knows what else.

  “Weapons. Sure,” I muttered. “Because that’s exactly what I carry around in my backpack. Right next to my Lunchables and Spanish II workbook.”

  Liz put on her headphones and plugged them into the high-powered microphone. Like a doctor listening for a heartbeat, she held the mic against the wooden floor.

  “It sounded like they went that way,” I said, pointing toward the backyard.

  Liz shot me a “why didn’t you say that in the first place” look and sprang to her feet.

  “I . . . heard them go toward the back of the house. They went, um, northeast, I think?”

  “You think or you know?”

  “I was outside. The water was in front of me. The sounds vanished to my left and behind me. That’s north.” I squinted at the coastline. “And if not totally north, then definitely northeast.”