A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting

by Joe Ballarini

  Liz shoved the mic and headphones into her bag and removed a UV flashlight.

  “We’ll catch up to them,” she said. “Ditch the lights.”

  I didn’t want to be standing in the dark after what just happened, but when she glowered at me, the stud in her flared nostril winked. Very intimidating.

  She shined an eerie, blue light around the room and up onto the wall. Her jaw slackened. Illuminated in the glow and written in large, dripping slime-scrawl were the words:

  THE TIME OF NIGHTMARES HAS BEGUN

  My stomach filled with a cold, messy spaghetti feeling. I snapped on the lights and looked at Liz to see if she thought this kind of thing was normal. But she was staring off, pale and horrified.

  She put her hand out for support, but her knees gave and she sat on the bed.

  “What did that?” I asked.

  She shook her head with a lost, gutted expression.

  “Liz? Miss LeRue?”

  Liz blinked and snapped out of her daydream. “What time are the Zellmans coming home?” she asked.

  “One,” I said.

  She swung her backpack over her shoulders and marched out of Jacob’s room.

  I started to follow her when I saw the picture of the slender, creepy man Jacob had drawn. I snatched it, shoving it into my pocket.

  We sped toward the front door. “What’s a Toadie?” I asked. “Whose baby is that? Is it your baby? I’m not judging if it is.”

  “This is Carmella. I’m babysitting her,” Liz said, never breaking stride.

  “Uh. Okay. Those things . . . ?”

  “Trash Toadies. Of the genus Trollium, subphylum Monsters.”

  I stopped so fast my sneakers squeaked across the marble.

  “Like bad-guys-who-sell-drugs-to-kids monsters?”

  “Like monsters-who-live-in-the-shadows-and-eat-you-in-one-bite monsters,” she snorted, and growled under her breath. “I told them not to go out tonight. . . . I told them. . . .” She looked at her digital watch. “I have four hours and eleven minutes to find this kid. Thanks for nothing.”

  “I should come with. Jacob’s my responsibility.”

  “Then why weren’t you watching him?”

  The sleeve of my sweater frayed in my mouth as I chewed on it. Something glowed on the floor under the couch.

  “My phone!” I rejoiced, scooping it up.

  I lovingly wiped it and checked for scratches. I was still leaving a voice mail to Liz. I hung up, dialed 9-1—

  Liz’s hand snatched my wrist. With a flick, my phone popped out of my grip and sailed into her other hand.

  I blinked. Phone-fu?

  “No cops,” Liz snarled.

  “The police are, like, our only option,” I yelled.

  “I’m our option,” she said, stalking through to the kitchen. “We’ll spend three hours explaining what happened, and they will not believe us. No one really will. Unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes. By the time we yak to the authorities, those Toadies could be all the way to Boston. We gotta move now.”

  She glanced at the bowl smeared with ice cream and candy bits that Jacob had devoured. “You’re an idiot,” said Liz. “You gave a kid like Jacob, a kid with the Gift, that much candy?”

  “Gift?” I asked.

  “Look. Just stay here; chew your hair; play with your phone; and if the Zellmans call, act like everything’s normal. Can you handle that, rookie? Good girl.”

  She stepped outside, tossed my phone at me, and slammed the door in my face.

  Wind rushed into my eyes, and tears welled up. Either Liz was insane or I was insane or . . .

  This is real, Kelly.

  I swallowed, wiped my eyes, and stared at the front door.

  I was free. A professional was going to handle it.

  I can call Tammy, and maybe even meet her at—

  I stopped. Took a breath.

  I lost him. I lost a kid. I have to get him back.

  I twisted open the lock and chased after Liz.

  10

  “Excuse me,” I called out, striding onto the driveway with my shoulders back in my best impersonation of my mom’s power pose. “I’m not an idiot.” I defiantly held her gaze, bracing myself under her stare. “My GPA is three point nine. And I’m on the school newspaper, which means I know how to, like, look for stuff. My algebra teacher says I’m a quick learner. And . . .”

  “Hooray for you,” Liz said, rolling her eyes.

  She snuck up on a neighbor’s antique Jaguar; looked left, right; grabbed the hood ornament; and twisted it off. I was about to tell her that it was very rude, not to mention against the law, to destroy other people’s property, but her eyebrows were angrily fused together in a determined scowl, and I did not want her to punch me in the nose.

  “Look. I’ve seen quick learners like you die as quick as you learn. You either get eaten, mauled, possessed, cursed, boiled, or turned into a toad.”

  “Sounds like a fun Friday night,” I said, hoping to sound tough even though my insides were Jell-O. She grunted and got onto her clunky wanna-be motorcycle. “Wait!” I exclaimed. “There are prints below one of Jacob’s windows. You’ve gotta see them. Come look!”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You got one minute, noob,” she said.

  I ran to the spot underneath Jacob’s window. Liz hopped after me, protecting the baby like a football.

  I pointed at the muddy hoofprints in the broken bushes. “These don’t match the claws those Toadie things had, and—” I said, trying to remember the night’s events. “And . . . if the troll things came from below the ground, why did it sound like something was also on the roof? That means a different thingy—uh, monster—was here.”

  Liz swallowed a ragged breath.

  “They match the ones in the room,” she said quietly.

  “I know!” I exclaimed, and unfolded Jacob’s drawing. I shoved Jacob’s crayon scribbles of the tall, terrifying man in her face. “And—and—” I stammered. “Jacob said this man was watching him from his window— It could be him. The thing that took him.”

  Liz glanced at the hideous drawing.

  “No. No way . . . ,” I heard her mutter, gently touching Carmella’s head.

  “What? Do you know this thing?”

  She shook her head and ran back to her moped. Baby Carmella started to cry. Liz expertly removed a bottle from her pack and silenced her with it.

  “Look,” I said. “My mom works for Mrs. Zellman, which means she will get seriously fired, and my family cannot afford that right now. And . . .”

  The words choked in my throat. I wanted to say it wasn’t my fault, but I was the one who put Jacob in bed. I was the one who couldn’t save him from the Toadies. Like it or not, I had to get Jacob back, and this odd, blue-haired girl seemed to know what she was doing.

  “That little kid’s life is in danger, and it’s my fault. I’m helping you get him back,” I said.

  “Okay, CSI: Rhode Island,” she said, throwing me a candy-apple-red helmet. “It’s your funeral.”

  11

  The moped rocketed out of Mercy Springs. “Where are we going?” I screamed.

  “Backpack. Front pocket,” Liz called out over her shoulder.

  Clinging to my seat with one hand, I carefully unzipped the front pocket of her pack. I found a red spiral-bound notebook with a cracked, faded cover. Its edges were peeling over from years of use, and the pages were covered in ink splatters (at least I hope it was ink). A piece of duct tape and a rubber band kept it from falling apart.

  “A BABYSITTER’S GUIDE TO MONSTER HUNTING” was scrawled on the front. The pages were crammed with drawings and facts about ghouls and creatures and monsters. There were maps of the different neighborhoods in Rhode Island. A few printed-out, blurry pictures of ghoulish faces were stapled to the pages with Hates high-pitched noises, hastily written underneath Caution: Third claw venomous.

  BABYSITTER’S BACKPACK: THE NECESSITIES

  “Look under M for �
��Mercy Springs,’” Liz said, swerving through the streets.

  I struggled to hang on while flipping to the color-coded tab labeled “M.” Liz might not have had the best social skills in the world, but she certainly knew how to organize a notebook.

  Under “Mercy Springs,” I found a Google Maps printout taped to the page. Red lines were drawn over the map, with the occasional huge red circle.

  “That’s how they get around with no one seeing them,” Liz said. “Like ants. Playgrounds. Ice cream parlors. Kindergartens. And bedrooms, always under bedrooms. They’ve been building a whole tunnel system under the neighborhood for years. We keep trying to shut them down. They keep digging more.”

  “Oh” was all I could say.

  It’s not every day you learn monsters are real and running around under the bedrooms in your neighborhood.

  I flipped through the guide. There were elaborate tracings and markings of Toadie tunnels throughout Mercy Springs. A few of the circles had Xs through them. The wind was blurring my vision, making it hard to see. I squinted at the map. A large red circle was drawn over the corner of Vanderbilt and Sasqanet Lanes. I looked up and saw we were passing Sasqanet Lane.

  “Right here!” I blurted out. Liz swung the moped, squeezing the brakes. The back of the bike whipped around so hard I was flung into the air.

  OOMF! OW!

  I smashed into some bushes and skidded onto the grass, face-first, still clutching the red notebook.

  Liz’s boot flipped down the kickstand as she shut off the engine. I spit grass and groaned, like I had been punched in the stomach by a truck. Carmella kicked and whined. Liz pulled a squeaking giraffe teether out of her pack and popped it into Baby Carmella’s mouth, expertly drawing her away from the edge of frustration and back to calmness.

  We were in a moonlit, eerily quiet playground with a giant plastic pirate ship–jungle gym thing in the center. Liz stepped over me and walked up to the rubber safety mats. “This is the next stop along the Toadies’ main route,” she said, now holding a bottle for Carmella to chug. “Since they’re lugging a forty-pound kid, we’re probably right in front of them.”

  I nodded absently, too engrossed in the pages of the babysitter’s guide.

  “‘Toadies love shiny objects and collect any trinket they can get their claws on,’” I read out loud while Liz poked the ground under a swing set. “‘Toadies savor the taste of trash. Stinkier the better.’ What is this?”

  Liz called back over her shoulder, “The guide is a collection of thousands of years’ worth of monster-hunting wisdom passed down through the Order of the Babysitters.”

  Either someone was pulling the world’s greatest prank and had gone to great, detailed lengths just to film my surprised face or . . .

  Or I was holding something more powerful and amazing than anything I had ever seen.

  By the plastic pirate ship slide, Liz peeled back a rubber mat to reveal a circle of fresh dirt that looked like it had been dug up and replanted.

  “Found it!” she crowed. “Tricky little buggers. They put one right at the end of the slide so when a little kid comes shooting down—WHOOSH! Right into their trap. It’s been pretty mellow, though, since the neighborhood put in these stupid rubber safety mats. They thought they were protecting their kids from falling off the jungle gym when actually they were covering up a much bigger threat. Oh, the irony.”

  “So. These—these things—they’re Toadies?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath, tired of my questions. “Check the guide. Under T.”

  From Liz LeRue’s copy of

  A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting

  NAME: Toadie (toe-DEE)

  HEIGHT: 2’–2 1/2’

  WEIGHT: 50–100 lbs

  TYPE: Troll Level 3

  ORIGIN: Marshlands of the northeast. Some believe neighborhood dump.

  LIKES: Garbage! Shiny objects THE SMELL OF NEWBORNS

  DISLIKES: Daylight

  STRENGTHS: Sharp claws, mouthful of daggerlike teeth, always travel in packs

  WEAKNESSES: Intelligence (not much upstairs)

  SMELL: Acidic whiff of garbage as it roasts in a Dumpster in the hot summer sun, plus bleach GAG WORTHY

  SIGHTINGS: Playgrounds, ice creams parlors, kindergartens, bedrooms—anyplace they can access through their tunnel system

  ALLIES: Toadies are subservient to larger monsters such as Goraxes or Neeches.

  My mind spun. As a young woman of thirteen, I pride myself on getting straight As in science and math. Equations make sense. Sure, when I was a kid, I believed magical, scary things lived in the woods and under rocks, but I also believed Santa’s big butt slid down the chimney every year. I never actually saw them. I just believed. Then I went to school. I studied, got good grades, and I forgot all about the unseen mysteries and the monsters.

  Apparently, they had not forgotten about me.

  12

  Liz sprinkled baby powder on the dirt patch and uncoiled a long wire to form a snare. It looked like something animal control would use to collar a rabid dog.

  “What are you doing?” I shuddered.

  Liz unhooked her BabyBjörn and laid Baby Carmella on a fluffy pink blanket on top of the dirt patch, just out of reach of the snare.

  “Check the guide.”

  BEWARE! TOADIES LOVE THE SMELL OF NEWBORNS. CANNOT RESIST A TASTE.

  Liz kissed Carmella’s forehead. “It’s okay, honey,” she said in a sweet voice.

  Then she ran into the bushes and waited anxiously, wire in hand, as tiny Carmella suckled on her milk bottle.

  “One of them pops out looking for a snack— ZIP! Got ’em!” Liz said with a wicked smile on her face. “Then we’ll force it to give Jacob back.”

  Liz was using the baby as bait? Not logical! I moved to grab Carmella, but Liz yanked me back down by the arm. Hard.

  “Not my first rodeo, Red.”

  I watched poor, helpless Baby Carmella’s feet wiggle in her thick, woolly socks while Liz jammed her microphone into the ground and listened with her headphones.

  The merry-go-round, pushed by the cold wind, slowly creaked in circles, making a rusty shriek.

  “How do you know all this stuff?” I whispered, gnawing on the end of my sleeve so hard, it threatened to unravel.

  “I’m a babysitter. It’s what I do.” Liz cracked open a fluorescent green can of Monster energy drink and downed it in a few heaving gulps. She never took her eyes away from the baby.

  “I mean like . . . is every sitter like you?”

  “Like what? A butt-kickin’ UFC warrior?” She crushed the can in her fist.

  “A deranged psychopath,” I said.

  Liz smirked. “Most people go their whole lives having no idea what kind of cosmic horrors lurk in the shadows. But the horrors are out there.” She nodded. “That’s where we come in. We protect kids so they can grow up and change the world. We protect children from monsters.”

  “Like a secret society?”

  “Yep.”

  “Holy cowbells. I was joking. That’s a thing?”

  “Most sitters are just regular kids trying to earn a buck,” she whispered. “But if you’re lucky—or unlucky—enough to encounter a monster and live through it . . . that’s when you’ll find the real sitters. Or we’ll find you . . .”

  I laughed nervously.

  “The Art of Babysitting has been passed down through the ages, going as far back as . . . well, the ages,” said Liz.

  Cold mud soaked through the knees of my jeans, but I was too amazed to wipe it off.

  “I mean, someone had to protect King Arthur when he was a baby. If a dragon ate Baby Arthur, there would be no Camelot. No Camelot, no Great Britain. Throughout history, babysitters have been the guardians of good. Y’know, like the Knights of the Round Table. Or Navy SEALs. But for kids.

  “Just like a babysitter protected Baby Abe Lincoln, Baby Martin Luther King Jr., and Baby Obama, it’s our duty to watch over the Baby Jacobs
of the world. Babysitters make sure kids get through the night safe and sound, so they can grow up and change the world for the better.”

  All of a sudden, I realized just how very unqualified I was to be in this situation. I was just looking to make enough money to ride horses next summer. The last thing I wanted was to join some Almighty Order of the Chosen Sitter Clan.

  “Don’t worry. You won’t be asked to join,” Liz said.

  Even though my heart was doing an impression of a jackrabbit, what Liz did sounded really brave and insane and fascinating. The only other time I’d felt this mix of curiosity and wonder was when I first heard about Camp Miskatonic.

  “She’s a really cute baby, by the way,” I whispered.

  Liz nodded. It was the first thing we’d agreed on all night.

  “I always thought babies screamed and cried all the time.” I tried continuing the small talk to work out my nervous energy, but Liz tensed and touched her headphones.

  “They’re coming!” she whispered.

  I gulped and leaned close, trying to hear what she was listening to: static-filled warbling, the chilling sound of grumbling, scrapping, digging, sniffing.

  The patch of ground sprinkled with baby powder trembled. I tried to swallow, but my tightening throat refused.

  “When I say, you run and grab Carmella,” Liz said, planting her boot heels firmly into the ground. She looked like a prize fisherman.

  I ducked into a runner’s crouch as the muddy patch bulged from below. Blood throbbed in my jugular vein, making everything brighter and sharper.

  A webbed Toadie talon shot up from the ground.

  Wearing cracked safety goggles, a Toadie peered up from inside its little tunnel, shaking the sand from its garbage bag–covered head. It wiped the dirt from its glasses.

  I felt like I was going to faint. Liz narrowed her eyes and wrapped the wire around her gloved fist. Carmella started to cry and roll around on the ground. I went to run, but Liz grabbed my arm.

  “Wait for my signal,” she hissed.