Babysitting 101

A kind and brilliant boy, a strange obsession with dolls, and a story that still gives me chills to this day. My name is Edwin, and here is a scary story. Like with every job I had up until that point, it started with desperation. The homecoming dance was coming up and I needed to get enough money to buy a dress and shoes. And everything I had done up until that point was get babysitting gigs here and there. Normally, these would be friends of my family who would ask me to watch their kids while they went out on date night or during the day when there was a work event where their children couldn't go. But this one was different. Back then, with house phones, we had Mom be the one who picked up the phone all the time. But on this particular night, I happened to Anne from the kitchen. It was for me, not unusual. This is how our friends or anyone really would get a hold of us, except for a few who had cell phones already. It was a woman named Elizabeth who asked for me by name, saying that she had these appointments every Thursday evening for a recurring commitment at work, and that until they got a replacement. They needed a babysitter only until her and her husband got home, typically around seven pm on those days. Would eighty bucks be all right? Of course it would, especially back then this was good money. I would only have to work a day and be able to afford most of what I would need and needed to pay for as a high school kid. There was one bus that would take me there. It drove down one of the side streets by the highway and take me straight to the small valley just over the hill that the entire town could see from pretty much anywhere. Rock Hill, we called it, although it had a name that I only found after getting on that bus, drew Berry Viewpoint, as a driver announced once I got to the stop. But still I kept calling it rock Hill. It sounded better. The house was one of the few in the area, typical rich person home, two stories, porch all around the exterior, and acres of land behind it, trees that created a little forest back there. The inside was modern open space, and the smell of baked breads or cookies seemed to be absorbed into the curtains and couches. When I showed up, the mother was waiting for me by the porch walking up to me as soon as you saw me come through the gate at the front of the property. I hated that awkward walk toward each other, whether it was a friend of mine coming up to me down a hallway or a stranger on a sidewalk. But there we were, trying to decide when to greet each other until she finally did Are you Emma? She asked, yelling, had pretended not to hear her, and then followed up with a oh, yeah, Elizabeth, right, how are you? Both of us yelling at each other, trying to make small talk until we weren't anymore. That was early, so I was surprised that she was ready for me, but I was glad to be able to get inside right away. As he walked in, she introduced me to her husband, who was holding a broom in his hand, sweeping up some large blocks like legos, but the ones that a baby couldn't swallow. He set it off to the side and walked up toward me, smiling. How was the right over you hopped on the twenty four bus, Elizabeth? I should have told me to go get you, he said, not really sure if he meant it, but the bus wasn't too bad anyway. I smiled and tried to say something else, but instead found myself being quiet again. They soon started explaining everything and we got along great. Might always get there early, and they would always pay me right when I after house. Elizabeth and her husband David were kind and very respectful of everything, including giving me money for food, and often asked what I wanted to have stocked in the fridge for me, always welcoming me to bring along a friend if I got bored, and that they had cable TV, which was huge for me at the time. Reality TV shows were more like contests than Mom would never let me watch them, especially the dating ones. But that house, my god, it was quiet with the television off. And oh, the child, how could I forget? The kid was an angel? Well, at least in the beginning. They thought that this is what I wanted to do as a career choice. Baby sitting one oh one, I would joke to myself as I made up what the lessons would be. His name was Chris, seven years old and very smart for his age. He would ask me questions about high school and love talking about the things that he learned in school, what his homework was about pretty much everything. She prepared his own sandwiches and cereal whenever he got hungry. On the weeks, when I finished my own homework and he finished his, he would end up watching television in the living room, the History Channel mostly, But one thing that always bothered me was just how suddenly he would get up and without saying a word, it would go up to his room. The first time, it threw me off. I thought I had said something or that the show we were watching upset him. I was warned about this by his father, that he liked to be alone with his thoughts sometimes. I'm sure you've met some children like these before, some that seem like they are adults already in the way they act or behave. Maybe it's something in their eyes that give it away. But although I've experienced it several times after meeting Chris, it has never been in the exact same way. Chris liked to be alone, except for when he would come down and flick on the television. I don't think he liked watching it alone. His comments on the documentaries, observations on historical figures or theories about the past, the way he would focus. I don't know something about it just made him seem much older than seven. Did you know that the Great Wall of China doesn't actually cover the entire country's border, and that it's broken down in certain parts. I acted like I knew what he was talking about. But the more and more he told me, the more I thought that maybe I should have paid more attention in history class. He told me how the Constitution was drafted, who Benjamin Franklin was, and how the Second World War ended. Of course, he also had his childlike obsessions, just like every other kid, and for Chris, it was drawing. The times I would go up to his room to get him to come downstairs, or to let him know that his parents were home, I would catch glimpses of his drawings up on the walls. He would often replace them, but there were dozens of them, making me wonder how many he would make on any given day. There was one that really caught my eye, and it was of the building the church La Sagrada Familia, which I came to learn was an old church in Spain that took forever to build, along with its many towers. I don't think it's finished yet. His parents had books, a ton of them all along the last hallway near the back of the house. The shelves reached the ceiling, which some of them turned sideways to ensure they filled every space available. Most were in English, but I also remember seeing some in Spanish, Portuguese and French. I often wondered how they kept the place from smelling like an old library, you know what I'm talking about, the smell of old paper and dusty carpets. And all this time I never questioned how Chris knew all this stuff. I could usually see what spot he would put the stool or step ladder he would lean against the bookshelves. He would almost always go for a book with pictures or illustrates, and those were usually the bigger ones. Once he was finished, he would bring them right back to where they had been, and I would sometimes push in the books a little bit more into the shelf, just to tidy it up. One afternoon, I showed up early again and Elizabeth, Chris's mother, walked up toward me when I was going through the gate. How are you, she asked, a worried look on her face. We wanted to stake Chris with us today. I don't think he's feeling well, but he refused. He wanted to stay and wait for you. We were coming into the house by this point, and I was trying to catch my breath after trying to keep up with Elizabeth on the walk up to the porch. David met us at the doorway, greeting me and asking Elizabeth if she had told me. She nodded, be ready. He asked her. Something was a little bit different about them that day, and it wouldn't take very long for me to catch onto what was going on. But it wasn't a problem with them. It was Chris and what he wanted to tell me. The hundreds of drawings all over his room I saw when I walked up to it, and I can't clearly remember it too. I heard laughter from his room, the first time I had heard something like that. So I did my usual knock aty knock knock on his door, and he became quiet. I opened the door. He was sitting on the round rug on the floor, bright green against the rest of it. His back was turned toward me. Chris. I asked him, expecting him to turn around with his usual high and brief smile, but instead he sat still, frozen in place. I could tell by the direction of his nose that he was looking towards the window. His right hand, that held a pencil he was drawing with, was completely still against the spiral notebook. I started walking toward him. Chris, he didn't budge. Chris. He set his pencil down. I looked away from the window. His eyes slowly turned toward me as the chill of the cold air outside started drifting in. Okay, they left, he whispered. I looked around the room and walked toward the window to shut it. The sun was setting, so the sky was a darker blue outside. I looked at his drawings as I always did, but held my breath as I saw his new ones, dozens of them, dolls on a window frame in each of the white sheets of paper, all lined up against his wall. I was standing in Chris's room, trying to decipher what had just happened, so I asked the obvious question, who left? Who are they? He looked at me. I could tell he was already wondering if I would believe the next words out of his mouth, and I got a chill down my spine when I heard him say, with a slight nervousness in his voice, the dolls. I stared at him in silence. This kid was far too smart to joke around like that, enough to know that it would be hard to believe at least the dolls, I asked, not whispering anymore, as I looked toward the window again. Yes, he said, a tear sliding down and around his nose. Can we can we go watch TV? He asked as he stood up. I followed him out of the room and down the stairs. I grabbed the remote and flicked it on. The show The Amazing Race was on. I had so many questions zooming around my brain that I honestly can't remember how long we were watching before he decided to speak up again. I would recall this lesson of babysitting one O one as patience, Wait and listen. They have a game, he said. I lowered the volume on the TV. It's like a secret, he continued, similar to when he was telling me about something he watched or read about. The Last time he sounded like this was when he mentioned the CIA and some of their secret missions that were in secrets anymore. They said, I can't tell my mom and dad, and then he whispered, but they didn't say anything about you. Okay, I caught myself whispering, who are they? And what are you talking about? What? Games? I was impatient. I don't think he had ever seen me like that. Okay, he started the shaking of his voice. Was gone. Four nights ago. A thing woke me up, A tapping on my window. He went on to tell me one of the most terrifying stories I'd ever heard, although I must admit I think it was because it was coming from him, the boy who was so involved in facts and thoughts in his own little world. He told me he was woken up by this tapping on the window, but I hadn't woken him up completely. When he felt the bed sheet vibrating from the left side, the side closest to the window. At first he thought it was just his imagination, but then he felt it tug, similar to when you're fishing. You ever been fishing, he asked. I nodded, even though I had no idea what fish felt. At the end of a line. He sat up, unable to scream, but wide awake when he saw a small ball of dark hair leaning over the edge of the bed. Chris always had a tiny night light on in the shape of a shell against the wall right next to his bed, with his eyes wide open in disbelief. He saw it as it climbed up, a doll, one that would reach up to his knees if he were standing up. He said, it was pretty large. It dragged itself up toward his stomach as he held his breath. It put its hand up to its mouth and shushed him in a distant whisper. It blinked its large eyes, and that's all he remembered. He woke up early the next morning, cold from the window that had been left open from the night before. He drowsily stepped over to it. It was a foggy morning, wet, he said. The window was dirty and with tiny hand marks from the outside. He stopped talking for a second. You can probably still find them. I want to see, he asked, quickly changing his mind, nervous about what he was telling me, waiting for me to tell him something. What did you do, I asked him. I was going to tell mom, he said, But I already knew what she was going to tell me, so I didn't. I kind of understood the mom was a kind that was worried all the time about everything. I later learned that she had threatened to take away the step ladder from him so he wouldn't be reaching for books on the high shelves. Apparently it had all because of the curious things he would say. I'm using her own words here. She was trying to get him to stop reading all those books, and I forgot to mention her interesting list of instructions about it limiting TV time, not letting him draw so much, and that if he started acting like a weird kid, she said to just have him tell me a story. Weird advice, I guess, and that's actually how I ended up hearing so many. But this one, well, this one was different. Let's see them, I told him, in a tone that I wanted to sound like I wasn't scared inside, but I messed up and instead sounded overly happy. We walked upstairs again. The door to his room had been left open, and he walked in and over to the bright green rug in the center. I followed close behind. He stretched his arm out toward the window and I could see them. Although I can't say I had ever seen dull hand prints on anything else before, they looked more like scratches and yes, I hated it, but it made sense. Plastic Hans probably wouldn't leave anything other than scratches on glass. Chris, I'm gonna talk to you like I would to have grown up, all right. He looked at me with white eyes, which you're telling me is crazy. But first I want to hear what happened, the full story. You saw the hand marks, and you decided not to tell your mom what happened next this part of babysitting one O one I would call detective techniques how to get the truth. Chris had stayed up for part of the night, this time waiting for these things to come by the window again. The light from under the window shined perfectly against the wall by his bed, and he looked at that near perfect square of light against the wall for two more nights, thinking that he would see the silhouettes of the dolls climbing over the window frame. I would have been too scared to stay in that room. But like I said, this kid was different. The way he told me about what he did in this situation with the dolls, it was like hearing it from a long time writer where an old uncle who lived out in the woods. But anyway, the kid didn't see them again, so they're gone, I concluded for him, but he continued, well, I didn't see them alive, like here in my room. I saw them in my dreams. He paused for a moment, sort of like dreams. I sat down on the floor as he explained what he went through for those remaining nights. He had woken up in an old house, a cabin, he said, and his eye started glazing over everything, as though he was reliving every second. I sat there on a chair as it came up to me, twisted my arms and told me to stay still. One of them in particular, seemed to be the leader of the group. She put an empty cup in front of me on the floor and asked me to drink from it, tilting it up toward my face so hard that I could feel the ceramic against my nose, And when I tried to move, she would yell words I'm not allowed to say, right, Can I say them? I looked at him, not done, imagining what he had just told me. Yes, I said. He struggled to get the words out of his mouth, but to spare you the details, he was called names, horrible things and insults, things that had never even heard my mother say, and that should tell you something. On the second night, he said, he met other dolls, all of them sitting with him on the floor, on chairs, and on risky places like the edge of a table, on shelves. But in all of them he could hear their voices, come play with me, come play with me, and then instructions over and over again for their creepy games, all in their distant voices like adults, blank pretend tea parties, story time, and singalongs. And he could tell by the laughter that would break out in the end, like when an actor breaks character taunting him. I would cry, he said, But then I would be here in my room again. The boy was sad. He looked down with a frown, lost and nowhere no one to turn to for help. Can I tell your parents? What about your dad? Let's lock up your windows? I don't know. Don't stay here, I said, admitting that I believe him now. When I yelled for them over there, the doll said that they were my parents now, and they got angry. They hurt me. I decided to stop asking questions at this moment, but I knew that I had to talk to them to at least let them know of what he had told me. Listening to a kid, one that had no reason to lie like this cry real tears of pain at remembering something was beyond anything I had ever experienced. We both walked downstairs again and sat in silence, the television on volume level two until his dad showed up, greeted us as always, paid me, and walked with me toward the front gate. And the days that followed, I kept thinking of how I could tell them such a story, one that no one would ever believe, dolls that are coming after Chris, and that he has nowhere to turn to. And I was just about to gather the courage to pick up the phone. It took a lot more back then. When I got a call from Elizabeth and a shaky voice, She asked me if I knew of any of Chris's friends hints clues about where he could have gone. David took the phone over and begged for me to please tell him if I remembered anything. The police showed up within half an hour. They were waiting for me outside along with my mom by the front door. I thought I was in trouble. I had heard about this before. If I couldn't help, they would blame me. At least that's what some of my friends talked about. Chris had gone missing after dinner. He went upstairs to finish some of his drawings, and when his parents went up to check on him a little bit later on, they searched all over for him and only found his pencils out of place and the bookmark he was making for himself out on his little table. It was the last that was known of him. I went over to visit them before the year was over. Maybe this time I would tell them about Chris's dreams. I had held on to them long enough, maybe something that would at least explain what the scratches on the window had been, the ones that the police had found. But David got to the door and Elizabeth started screaming, crying when she saw me. She wasn't ready, he said. David started apologizing. I understood. I walked back out over the front gate in silence, wondering what the lesson here would be. Scary Story podcast has written and produced by me Edwin Kobarrubias. Take It in Touch check out the links in the description of this episode, and if you want to support the stories. Try out scary Plus over on scaryplus dot com. You can also drop some stars from me in the reviews, and if you have a true story that you want me to read, email me Edwin at scarystory dot com or use a contact form on our website. Let's see if we can put together a Listener Stories episode. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.