A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting #1

by Joe Ballarini

  “Check the guide!” they all called out in unison.

  Berna opened her backpack and tossed me her green spiral-bound notebook covered in unicorns and smiling sun stickers. “A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting” looked strange next to all the happy stickers and doodles. I flipped through the notebook’s scraps of information on demons, familiars, and witches.

  I didn’t find a match on the monstrous figure. But . . .

  As I looked at Jacob’s drawing, that faint memory pulled at the back of my skull.

  “When I was a kid,” I said absently, “I had a nightmare about a monster that looked exactly like this guy. . . . It felt so real.”

  “Maybe it was real,” Berna said quietly while she snipped away the Toadie’s trash bag.

  I stiffened, thinking of Jacob’s nightmares. No wonder he didn’t want to go to sleep. Seeing my childhood nightmare come alive would send me screaming for the nuthouse. I swallowed a fearful gulp and shook the horrific idea out of my head.

  His nightmare . . . Jacob’s nightmare . . .

  What was it about? By the ocean. A lighthouse.

  “Jacob was having a bad dream about a lighthouse,” I said, trying to piece things together. “A dead lighthouse. If he has this Gift . . . then, I dunno, maybe he was dreaming about where the Toadies were taking him?”

  Cassie looked up from the Toadie. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her gloved hand. “That’sh actually a good point,” she said.

  Liz thought a moment. “There are, like, fifty lighthouses on the coast. Jacob say which one?”

  “No, but—”

  “So it would be a monumental waste of time to search each one, wouldn’t it?” Liz snapped.

  “You guys,” Berna whispered, signaling us to come look. Berna’s prodding tongs lifted the Toadie’s arm, showing a small, old leathery bag made from some kind of animal hide, with shiny jewels and bottle caps stitched onto its side. It had been tucked into its armpit, and now it reeked like satanic BO.

  “Something’s inside it.” Berna gasped for breath as she fished it from under the Toadie’s reptilian arm.

  She reached out to unbuckle the bag.

  The Toadie’s eyeball was staring right at her. Snaggle was wide-awake.

  Everyone jumped. Cassie’s foot accidentally smashed down on my toes, and I yipped.

  Clutching its bejeweled satchel to its chest, the snaggletoothed Toadie hissed at us.

  “Trash time,” said Liz. “Curtis, you’re up.”

  Curtis wheeled over his glorious, reeking bag of trash, and the Toadie grew very still. Its tiny eyes locked on the black plastic sack full of rotted goodies.

  “Nerm, nerm,” grumbled Snaggle.

  The squashy troll panted and bounced around the cage, stretching his chubby, lizard-skinned claws through the bars, reaching out desperately for the trash. He was starving.

  Liz cautiously stepped toward the hungry monster. “And it’s all yours if you just tell us where Jacob is,” she said calmly.

  “JAAAAA-COOOOOB,” snarled the Toadie in a raspy, terrifying voice.

  While everyone else was focused on the drooling monster, I caught sight of Liz turning her back to the Toadie, removing a piece of gray mystery meat crawling with maggots from the trash. She took out the small, white metallic disk she’d pocketed earlier and squished it into the disgusting flesh, which she then tossed back into the bag of garbage.

  “Talk, you miserable troll!” Liz screamed at the Toadie. “Where’s Jacob?”

  The Toadie snarled angrily and violently shook the cage. In a hunger-fueled rage, its snaggled beak clamped down on the bars. PING! SNAP! The metal broke in its spiny maw, and it squirmed out of its prison. It dove through the air, sank its face into the garbage bag, and proceeded to suck down all the greasy, nasty trash.

  I screamed and ran into the hallway while the babysitters circled the beast like a group of snake wranglers. I forced myself to step back into the lab. If they weren’t running, I wasn’t running.

  “Get it!” Curtis cried, and rushed forward.

  Liz held out her arm and stopped Curtis. She kept her eyes on the feasting troll.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  With sloppy, wet splashes, the Toadie wildly shook its head, like a puppy gnawing a bone. Fish guts and trash sweat flew in my hair. A carton of old, slimy pad Thai noodles (or were they worms?) slopped into Cassie’s braces. She spat and howled, wiping her mouth.

  The ill-mannered troll guzzled the last bit of garbage before inhaling the entire black bag, tucked his fancy leather knapsack under his armpit, and leaped across the laboratory, sending a microscope crashing to the ground. We scrambled after Snaggle. Well, they scrambled; I mostly made large and important-looking hand gestures while they tried to snare it.

  The Toadie sank its sharp talons into the wall. Tiles cracked and broke as Snaggle climbed up and away from us toward the towering skylight overhead.

  “Don’t let him get away!” screamed Cassie.

  17

  Snaggle kicked through the skylight and scaled out of the jagged hole on its clicking nails. Glass shards rained down on us. It stood on the edge of the roof for a moment.

  “Runk, runk!” cursed the Toadie as he grunted down at us from the roof.

  We ran from the laboratory and down the long hall, and Cassie swung open the back door into the garden. Liz was calmly following after us. Berna pointed to a long, dark hole in the herb garden and a shower of dirt fountaining up from deep inside it.

  Gerf, gerf, gerf. The sound of the angry creature digging deeper and deeper underground faded away, along with our hope of finding Jacob.

  “You guysh let him get away!” Cassie spat.

  “Y’know, Cass,” said Liz, coolly removing her phone from her jacket, “you’ve got a way of making a bad situation feel worse.”

  Liz tapped on her cell and showed us the pet tracker app she had opened. A tiny blue paw symbol was racing along a map toward the edge of the screen.

  “That’s what you hid inside the mystery meat,” I said.

  Liz winked at me. Cassie wiped her lower lip with a dumbfounded expression. Berna watched Liz, quietly impressed.

  “Ferguson and me will follow the Toadie,” commanded Liz. “You three check the monster hot spots. See what you can find. We’ll meet up in an hour.”

  “Yes, sir—ma’am—Liz.” Curtis smiled as he saluted.

  Cassie, Berna, and Curtis dashed to grab their BMX bikes by the statue of the stone lion. As Liz pulled on her helmet, Berna grabbed me by the arm and took me aside.

  “FYI, working with Liz can be dangerous to your health,” she whispered, handing me her business card. “Call me if things get hairy.”

  I nodded and zipped her card into my puffy green jacket pocket. Black smoke banged from the moped as Liz kicked on her engine.

  “She’s . . . intense.” I nodded to Liz.

  “Can’t say I blame her,” Berna whispered again, keeping her eyes on Liz. “Her mom ran off when she was just a kid. She lives with her dad, but . . . Mama Vee said he’s really mean to her. Drinks a lot. So Liz mostly lives here.”

  “But . . . Liz said her parents were cool with her being in the order.”

  Berna pursed her lips and shook her head with regret.

  Liz’s life at home must have been pretty rough for her to lie to me about it. I couldn’t imagine not having my mom and dad around. Yes, they had a tendency to smother, but they were always there for me. I watched as Liz checked the tracker with laser focus. If she was sad or living with any kind of heavy pain, her dark exterior hid it very well.

  “Let’s rock, Ferguson,” Liz said, revving the engine. “Moonlight’s wasting.”

  Meanwhile, Things Were Going from Bad to Worse

  There was an enchanted connection among the people who lived on Edgehill Avenue. They loved the holidays, but they especially loved Halloween. That night, the street was alive with trick-or-treaters, apple-bobbing con
tests, homemade haunted houses, and a parade of jack-o’-lanterns. Mothers became far-off fortune-tellers, and fathers transformed into werewolves. So much candy was given out that the air was dusted with sugar, and the breeze tasted sweet. Days after inhaling so much candy, a trick-or-treater could pick his nose, eat it, and swear he was eating a grape-flavored jelly bean.

  Among the costumes, floppy clown feet, and marching superhero boots, a pair of hooves and a swishing tail sauntered through the festivities. The Boogeyman went unnoticed in the sea of fantastical trick-or-treaters. A Toadie, wearing a cheap Frankenstein’s monster mask and costume it had stolen from a child’s closet, waddled at its master’s side with eager hunger, clutching a large, empty burlap sack. To the average passerby, the man and troll looked like a father and son out for a Halloween stroll.

  “Look at this disgrace,” the Grand Guignol said to the Toadie. “All Hallows Eve used to be a night of demons running wild, monsters feasting on the souls of the innocent. Now what is it?”

  “Ferger derp.” The troll glowered at the crowd of children.

  “Precisely, my darling,” said the Grand Guignol, waving his hands across the street. “Kids dressed up in things they bought from a bloody pharmacy, begging for candy. ‘Oooh, look at me, I’m a comic book hero.’” He spat and stomped his hoof into the ground. “They’ve missed the entire point of the holiday. Fear. Horror. The good stuff—I mean, would you look at this one.”

  A little girl dressed as a sparkly angel-ghost skipped happily down the sidewalk. Her big blue eyes stared out from the holes she had cut into a white sheet that had been covered in rhinestones and other fake jewels. She wore a halo made from pipe cleaners. The Grand Guignol took one look at her and threw up his hands in defeat.

  “And they say I’m repulsive,” he said with a sigh.

  The Grand Guignol’s wiry tail snaked out and sliced open her candy bag. Luscious treats spilled quietly from the corner of the bag as the oblivious child rushed off to meet her friends. The Toadie swept up the trail of candy and shoved it under its Frankenstein’s monster mask. Gormph, gormph, gormph!

  The Grand Guignol sniffed the air, long scraggily nostril hairs quivering. Following the scent, he removed a brown scroll. His hooves scraped and grinded over the asphalt as he stalked toward the house at the end of the block.

  “We’ve been hunted by those wretched babysitters so long we’re almost extinct. I mean, they took poor Snaggle. Curse his heart,” said the Grand Guignol as he marched with renewed purpose, Toadie scuttling alongside. “But now that we have Jacob, a child with a gift that comes along once in a thousand years—the ability to turn dreams into reality . . . that’s money in the bank!”

  He looked around the colorful street. Speakers on a nearby front lawn blasted audiotapes of spooky screaming, clanging castle dungeons, and moaning ghosts. Children’s laughter filled the sugary winds.

  “At midnight, the world will be crawling with millions of Jacob’s Nightmares, and these pathetic humans will know the true meaning of All Hallows Eve.”

  The Grand Guignol unrolled the cracked-parchment scroll. The names of boys and girls crossed the page along with their addresses. His fingernail scratched out “Jacob” and then poked into another boy’s name: “Timothy.” The Boogeyman read Timothy’s address and rolled up the scroll.

  A pair of little girls dressed like fairies skipped past the cloven-hooved man and his strange, small partner. The reek of a dead petting zoo wafted from the Grand Guignol’s fly-encircled tail.

  “Ewwwwwoooo!” the little girls said.

  “If you think I’m scary, you should see the monsters under my bed,” he said to them, raising his eyebrows.

  The two girls swallowed and darted away. He sighed with a light pang of loneliness in his heart. Yes, he was a monster, but it also hurt when little girls screamed in his face and ran away when he was just trying to make a joke.

  He shook his head and pressed forward. There was much to be done tonight. Emotions could not get in the way. “The nightmares will devour mankind. And finally, after all this time, it’ll be Halloween forever,” he said in a hushed tone, and slowly hunched down to the Toadie’s eye level.

  “Goo na, na, na.”

  The Grand Guignol sneered at his little friend. “Yes. And then maybe my sister will finally speak to me. You didn’t have to bring that up,” fretted the Boogeyman.

  The Toadie apologized. A swift hoof knocked it off its feet. The Grand Guignol’s tail shot to his mouth and dabbed a bit of foam from the corners.

  The Grand Guignol stretched out his arms and inhaled deeply, savoring the smells of autumn trailing across the neighborhood. He cherished the toxic air pollution, the dead squirrel stuck in a power line, and the salty tears of a woman with a broken heart serving candy to children. But most of all, the Boogeyman savored the scent of a fearful child that wafted from within a house. To him, it was like standing in front of a bakery making fresh bread.

  “I do love this time of year,” he sang.

  The Grand Guignol pinched his coattails, and his nimble hooves danced up the walkway to his final destination: the house at the end of the block. The Toadie bounced after him, singing along with his master’s song.

  “Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush . . .”

  Knock! Knock!

  A mother dressed like a vampire answered the door with a bowl of candy and her third glass of wine. The Grand Guignol and the Toadie smiled at her.

  “Ick-o-eeet!” growled the Toadie, thrusting out his empty burlap sack.

  “Aren’t you cute?” Vampire Mom said, and then looked up and down at the Grand Guignol. “And what a scary daddy,” she purred. “Can you guess what I am, Mr. Scary Man?”

  “A sad panda?” he replied, already weary of her sunshine smile.

  “A vampire, silly! Watch out! Hiss!” she snorted, clawing the air.

  The Grand Guignol drummed his fingers on the doorframe and exhaled heavily. Sometimes it was just too easy. “Madame, have you ever met a real vampire?” he said, peering down his skeletal nose at her.

  “Can’t say I have.” She guzzled her drink and then said into the cup, “But if they’re single, send ’em my way.”

  The Boogeyman and his troll stood there, staring blankly at her pathetic snickering. He leaned forward and whispered darkly, “Come midnight you will meet one. And you won’t like them one bit. The vampire, however, will love you to pieces, Francine.”

  Vampire Mom’s plastic fangs drooped as her smile slowly dipped. She took a step back.

  “How . . . do you know my name?” she asked with a sudden chill.

  The Grand Guignol looked over his shoulder at the festive street outside. No one was coming up the path, but they would be soon.

  “Puis-je entrer?” he asked, gesturing to the inside of her house.

  She nodded, transfixed by his eyes. The Grand Guignol stepped across the threshold, followed by his Toadie sidekick, and onto the well-vacuumed pink shag carpet. His tail gently closed the door and locked it. The Toadie instantly started shoving porcelain dogs, ashtrays, and an heirloom silver tea set into its burlap sack.

  “Timothy?” The Grand Guignol’s nose twitched as he carefully walked around the house. “We’ve been shopping for the most frightened children we can find,” he called out, savoring every pungent odor of fear in the air like it was a delicious block of old cheese. “And I could smell your fear a mile away. So where are you, Tim? I want us to go on an adventure.”

  Timothy’s mother stepped forward in an attempt to stop the tall creature, but he simply waved his hand. Her wide, spellbound eyes locked on the Boogeyman’s alluring stare, and her shoulders slumped forward, as if his gaze were a string holding her up. The side of her mouth cracked open, and drool spilled down her chin.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The sound of a rapid and frightened heartbeat was like a symphony to the Grand Guignol.

  A door handle clicked open. A littl
e boy named Timothy, wearing a pumpkin sweater, peered from his bedroom. Timothy squinted, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

  The tall man with strange legs at the end of the hall was calling and waving to him.

  “Timothy! Oh Tim,” called the man.

  The door handle rattled in the boy’s shaking hand. Something short and stocky joined the man. It was holding a large burlap sack with knickknacks clanking inside. The crooked Frankenstein’s monster mask slung across its face steamed up from the small thing’s hot breath.

  The creature’s hiss was muffled behind the moist plastic mask.

  “Teemozeeeee.”

  18

  “It’s moving again!” I yelled to Liz.

  “Where?” she shouted back at me.

  I held on tight while gripping Liz’s cell phone. The blue dot on the pet tracker app zipped left, right, wound in circles, and then shot off to the left.

  “Left down Edgecliff!” I blurted out.

  We shot down a busy street filled with pirates and pixies and devils. HONK! HONK! Liz swerved the moped through the crowd, barely missing a Dorothy, a Tin Man, a Cowardly Lion, and a Wicked Witch.

  “Move it, Toto!” barked Liz, waving her hand for everyone to get out of the way.

  “Sorry!” I yelled to the angry mob quickly receding from our view.

  “Where now?” Liz said, unfazed.

  I checked the tracker. “Looks like it’s straight ahead, but there’s no road there, so . . .”

  Liz fiercely drove the moped off the road and up the sidewalk, and barreled straight for a large hedge.

  “HEDGE! HEDGE!” I shouted.

  A rush of leaves. Snapping branches. We crashed through the bushes and bumped through backyards, whipped around sandboxes, and ducked under clotheslines. I held on, screaming.

  A shocked family rushed to their window to watch us shoot past as Liz smashed through an old wooden fence, launching us off a steep hillside and into the air. I grabbed on to Liz and buried my face in her shoulder.

  We slammed down in a burst of sparks. My bones crunched. I bit my tongue hard. Liz skid-stopped the moped, the tires burning a black mark onto the street. She grabbed back her cell phone from my trembling hand and checked it. I touched my stinging tongue to see if it was still there.