Miraculous: Tales of the Unknown

by Krystal McLaughlin

  Miraculous: Tales of the Unknown

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 3

  Miraculous: Tales of the Unknown

  A Paranormal Indie Author Anthology

  Compiled By:

  Krystal George and Amber Streed

  Featuring Stories From:

  Krystal George

  Amber Streed

  Amanda Alberson

  Kate Marie Robbins

  Cheryl Casey

  Heather Kirchhoff

  S Cu ‘Anam Policar

  Donna Kelly

  Lisa Marie Pottgen

  Illustrated by:

  Cheryl Casey Ramirez

  www.ccrbookdesigns.com

  *Each story was edited by the individual Author*

  Formatted by: Krystal George

  For All of the Readers

  This is a compilation of stories written for you…

  Thank you all for your dedication and support of what we do!

  The Babysitter

  By: Krystal George

  ©2013 by Krystal George

  I hate babysitting. There was something about kids that really irritated me. They were smelly, loud, foul little creatures and there always seemed to be something sticky or soggy about them. So when my mom volunteered me to babysit the Anderson kids, I could have strangled her. There were three of them.

  Tessa was the oldest at eleven. She had short wavy blonde hair and big brown eyes. Next was Malcolm at eight. He had brown hair that he wore in a spiked faux hawk. Last was Priscilla. She was only four and the biggest brat I had ever seen. If you spent any time hanging out at the local grocery store, you had surely seen one of her tantrums. Her long blonde hair was always tangled, her face was always red and her eyes were always full of tears. It was enough to cause me a headache just thinking about them… and I was about to embark on an entire night with them… a Friday night… alone… with the Anderson kids… UGH!

  “Call me if you need anything,” my mom said as I walked out of the front door. I rolled my eyes, but she didn’t see me. I was just so annoyed at her for volunteering me like she had. Why would she even think I’d be interested in watching those little monsters?

  The walk to the Anderson house was actually pretty pleasant despite my bad mood. There was a crisp breeze and the smell of rain in the air. I loved the rain. I loved the way it made the ground smell earthy and musky. I am obsessed with dirt. I know that it’s strange, but it’s true, and there is just something about mud that excites me.

  My cell phone was tucked away safely in my pocket and I jumped when it started vibrating against my hip. Then I laughed for being such a sissy. When I pulled it out, I smiled because it was Ben, my boyfriend. “Hi there.”

  “Surrounded by kids yet?”

  “Ugh, not yet. So not looking forward to it.” I groaned.

  “Where do the Andersons live again?”

  I laughed, “no way Ben. It’s going to be bad enough without getting into trouble for sneaking my boyfriend in.”

  “Come on Shaina, live a little.”

  I rolled my eyes once again to myself. “I’ll see you tomorrow, promise.”

  “Ugh, fine.”

  I smiled when I ended the call. I was expecting that he’d be at the Anderson’s within the hour. He wasn’t the type of guy who took no for an answer, especially when it involved an almost empty house.

  It was just starting to get dark when I walked up to the front door. Before I even rang the bell, I could hear the fussing going on inside. Someone was screaming, someone was laughing, and someone was crying. I groaned. This was going to be a long night. I reached forward and rang the bell.

  Carrie Anderson opened the door with an exasperating sigh. “Shaina, thank God.”

  “Hello Mrs. Anderson.”

  She was dressed up in a slinky black dress and bright red heels. Her makeup was flawless and her hair was perfect… almost. There was a gummy bear stuck in the chestnut strands and I had to stifle a laugh as I picked it out and handed it to her.

  She laughed, “Come in, come in! Please come in!”

  It took every ounce of self-control I had to keep my composure. I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t appreciate it if I rolled my eyes or groaned at the thought of walking in to her house.

  “I’m sorry that the house is a little messy right now, but please make yourself at home.”

  The word little wasn’t an adequate description of just how “messy” her house was. There were toys scattered across the floor like a broken battlefield. Clothes were stacked in piles that looked as if at one time they had been neatly folded, but now resembled something along the lines of falling towers. There was a fresh red stain on the carpet by the steps and a bottle of carpet cleaner and a scrub brush lying next to it. Luckily, for now, the kids were nowhere to be seen.

  “What time are you going to be home again?”

  She looked at her watch with panicked eyes. “I have to meet my husband in twenty minutes. We shouldn’t be later than one; I told your mom one o’clock. That’s okay, right?”

  I could hear the panic rising in her voice and smiled trying to look reassuringly. “Of course, I was just curious.” Crap I thought, six whole hours of these freaking kids.

  She looked down at her watch again and then smiled at me apologetically. “I guess I should go and get the kids and make sure that you all are alright together.”

  She said that, but I could tell she wanted nothing more than to just get out of here, so I let her off the hook. “Don’t worry about it Mrs. Anderson. I’m sure that we’ll be just fine.” Yeah and the pay better be worth my time, I thought.

  “Are you sure?” She asked, visibly sighing in relief.

  No! I wanted to scream, but instead I nodded and plastered a fake smile on my face. “Yup, I’ve got this.”

  She grabbed her purse and car keys off of a table next to the front door and smiled at me, “thank you so much Shaina. We really appreciate this,” and then she was gone.

  It was like they sensed the moment their mother was gone. The house exploded with noise. A radio somewhere in the house blared to life and someone started singing along with it at the top of their lungs. Somewhere else in the house, a television was turned up and an action scene complete with squealing tires and shots being fire echoed through the downstairs. Then to add even more noise to the already chaotic sound, someone started screaming.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and then began chanting to myself. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Six hours… I can survive anything for six hours.

  I chose to deal with the television first since I was already downstairs. Following the sound of crashing and glass breaking, I found my way into the rec room where Malcolm was standing on the couch and cheering for the bad guys. He had a stick of licorice hanging from his mouth and when one of the bad guys was shot and killed he started yelling at the screen.

  “What the heck you idiot!!! You so could have gotten away.”

  “Malcolm?”

  He turned and looked at me before pulling the sticky licorice out of his mouth after biting off a huge piece. Then with his mouth full, he asked, “who are you?”

  I smiled even though inside I was thinking about where I could potentially lock him up for the night. “I’m Shaina, the babysitter.”

  He plopped down on the couch cushions and sat his sticky treat down next to him… on the couch… on the fabric of the couch cushion. I wanted
to scream at him for being such an idiot… but I didn’t. I kept my cool.

  “I don’t really need a babysitter, you know.”

  I looked around the messy rec room and raised my eyebrows, “oh no? Really?”

  “Nope, I’m sort of the man of house, actually. My dad works a lot.”

  Before I could answer him, something sounding like a crash echoed upstairs. “I need to go and check that out. Do me a favor, would you, and turn down the volume on the TV?”

  He rolled his eyes, but grabbed the remote and turned down the volume.

  “Thank you.”

  See, that wasn’t so bad, I told myself… one down and two more to go. I can do this! I walked up the stairs and into the bedroom where I thought the crash had come from. Once there I stood in stunned silence at what I saw.

  I can’t do this…

  “It’s a slide! See,” Priscilla said pointing at her bed and dresser.

  She had pushed her dresser down onto her bed at an angle. I wasn’t even sure how she had managed it, but now she was using the back of her dresser as a slide. The front was facing the floor and the drawers that weren’t blocked by the floor or the bed had slid open and all of the clothes had fallen out of them.

  “Wanna try?” She asked.

  I closed my eyes and prayed for a little patience. I just needed enough to get me through this night. That’s all I was asking for.

  “We need to pick this up.” I told her slowly. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Those were the wrong words.

  Tears began spilling down her reddened cheeks, her lips began to tremble, and then a horrendous scream tore from her throat.

  “I… don’t… want… to…!” She cried.

  I took a deep breath. “Priscilla, I’m sorry, but we have to get this mess cleaned up. If you don’t want to help, you’re going to have to sit in the corner until I’m finished.”

  She cried, she pouted, she refused to help and in the end, she sat watching me from the corner with tears still streaming down her face and hatred blazing in her eyes. I allowed myself the satisfaction of the small victory that at least she was sitting where I told her to sit.

  When the dresser was finally pushed back into place and the room picked back up at least most of the way. I turned on her TV and put in a movie to calm her down. With any luck, and I wasn’t really counting on any, she’d fall asleep while watching it.

  Once I was back in the hallway, I strained my ears to see if the TV was still turned down downstairs, but I couldn’t hear it over the blare of the radio coming from down the hallway. Two down and one to go, I told myself. I looked at my watch. I’d already been there for an hour. I can do this… I can do this… I can do this. I can survive anything for five hours.

  Tessa’s bedroom was at the opposite end of the hall as Pricilla’s had been. I knew which one it was right away because the stereo was so loud that it was practically shaking the closed door. I knocked out of courtesy but I knew that she couldn’t hear it so a few seconds later I turned the knob and walked in.

  Her room was decorated in true pre-teen fashion with posters of celebrities torn out of magazines papering the walls. She had a fuzzy hot pink rug covering the majority of her wooden floors, and her bed was covered with stars and peace signs. It was on her bed that I found her. Sprawled out on her stomach, chewing gum and flipping through a book. She looked up when she sensed I was watching her and rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Without even waiting for her to hear my request, I walked to her dresser and turned down the volume of her radio. “Well your parents disagree.”

  The look she sent me was so angry and so full of attitude that I almost started laughing. I couldn’t help it. She was this little girl who was just coming into her own as far as starting to grow up and she thought she could out do me when it came to the ‘tude? I don’t think so.

  “I’m going to go downstairs and make something for your brother and sister to eat, are you hungry?”

  She shrugged and turned her attention back to her book, “I don’t know… maybe.”

  Awesome, I thought. “Okay well I’ll call up here when it’s ready so please leave your radio turned down so you can hear me.”

  Her only response was a thumb up. I took that as an okay sign.

  Back downstairs I was happy to see that Malcolm still had the TV at a decent volume, but Priscilla was down there with him and both were covered with gooey sticky licorice. There was read sticky residue from their hands smeared on the couch, and after stuffing a particularly long piece into his mouth, Malcolm had thrown up red stained vomit on the floor… and hadn’t bothered to clean it up.

  “That’s disgusting,” I told him.

  “Oh well,” he told me.

  I could have strangled him. Instead I grabbed the carpet cleaner and the scrub brush where they were lying by the first red stain, which I now assessed, was probably more licorice induced vomit, and handed them to Malcolm.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” He asked.

  “Clean up your mess,” I told him, “or you can skip dinner.”

  He cried, he complained, and he told me his stomach hurt too much to clean. I stuck to my threat and eventually he got down on his knees and started to scrub. That was when my cell phone rang again. It was my mom.

  “I can’t believe you signed me up for this,” I told her in way of a greeting.

  She started laughing, “It can’t be that bad.”

  So I told her everything that had happened so far. “Wow, I guess it has been a little more than I expected.”

  I groaned. I was going through the cabinets and there was nothing to eat. “I guess you’re lucky because you only had me to deal with. I couldn’t imagine having three awful children.”

  “You weren’t always so easy,” she told me again laughing. “When you were about four I hired a specialist to work with you. It was amazing. Literally overnight you were a different child.”

  For some reason her statement gave me goose bumps. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Well you were still young honey.”

  I strained my brain, but nothing was there. No memory of working with someone at all. “Still, I have absolutely no memory of that.” Then I brushed it off, “maybe I should give Mrs. Anderson that same advice.”

  “I think I still have the company’s name that I used. I’ll text it to you and you can pass on the information. Be polite though Shaina, some people don’t like to be told they have awful kids.”

  “I know mom,” I told her before hanging up.

  A few seconds later and my phone lit up with her text message.

  CHANGED – 555-784-6589

  I smiled and decided that this was just what poor Mrs. Anderson needed. Then I jumped when there was a knock on the kitchen window. With my heart racing, I peered out through the blinds and… nothing. There was nothing there. Frowning, I started rummaging through the cabinets again until there was another knock, this time louder than the first.

  There was a door leading out to their back porch from the kitchen and I hurried over to it before I could chicken out. My heart was pounding, adrenaline was pumping through my veins, and I held my breath in fear. I pulled the blinds to the side and pressed my face against the cool glass. It was too dark to be sure, but I was almost positive that there was nothing out there, but again as soon as I turned away, the knock came again.

  Several options ran through my mind then. Did I call the police? Did I grab the kids and make them stay with me in case there was an intruder? Did I call the Andersons? Then I shook my head and laughed at myself. If there was an intruder, they wouldn’t be knocking, and it wasn’t like I believed in things that went bump in the night… so pretty much I was just freaking myself out over nothing.

  Strengthening my resolve, I flipped the switch for the back porch light and unlocked the door. Then, still trying to be brave, I opened the door and stepped out onto the por
ch. It was cold without my jacket on and I hugged my arms around myself to try and warm up.

  “Hello?” I called tentatively. “Is anyone out here?”

  Then a thought occurred to me. “Malcolm? This isn’t funny. If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working!”

  Arms circled around me from behind and a hand came across my mouth to stifle my scream. “Who’s Malcolm?”

  I elbowed him in the stomach and spun around to face him when the force of my attack loosened his arms. “Ugh! That wasn’t funny Ben!”