A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting

by Joe Ballarini

  Mama Vee sighed. “Fine.”

  She dug around the van and lifted a long, gnarly branch out of the secret compartment. Holding it delicately in her palms, she presented it to me, as if we were in some kind of ceremony.

  “Behold. The most powerful weapon in the babysitter arsenal. The Staff of Destiny. Enchanted by the Ninth Circle of Shaolin Sitters on Shingow Mountain.” She waved the branch around in front of me. “The staff gives whoever holds it utmost power to win any battle.”

  “Why doesh she get the Shtaff of Deshtiny?”

  “Shut up, Cassie,” said Berna.

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “I never kid a kiddo.”

  My hands hummed and tightened around the staff. It felt powerful, almost magical. My muscles tingled. It made a sharp whistle as I swung it through the air. It felt . . .

  “Wow,” I said.

  Mama Vee whisked the black silk from the hidden box, revealing a small, Gothic birdcage with ornate carvings. She tapped three times on the birdhouse’s front door.

  “Neech, Katella, Malik,” Mama Vee called out, opening the tiny gate. “Double-time.”

  The birdcage jumped, and shafts of light darted out between the wooden bars. Three balls of light with see-through hummingbird wings shot out. I stumbled back, mouth hanging open. The glowing orbs circled Mama Vee, surrounding her in a rush of warm light.

  “Recon pixies,” Berna whispered to me. Her eyes were wide and locked on the flying wonders swooping around the white bricks of the lighthouse. “Vee rescued ’em. Pretty cool.”

  Mama Vee whispered something to the biggest, brightest creature and showed all three the circle of glass and Jacob’s drawing of the Grand Guignol. With a loud ring and a rustle of invisible feathers, two golden fairies shot toward the lighthouse like shooting stars. The last one gave Mama Vee an affectionate nip on her nose before following the others.

  The streaks of golden light shot higher and higher, illuminating the fog around the broken lighthouse lantern. Mama Vee watched them with a small pair of binoculars. One of the pixies found a crack in the window at the very top and rang out for the others to join it. A dumbstruck smile appeared on my face as I watched them vanish inside the lantern, which was momentarily set aglow by the passing pixies, making it look like it had been quickly turned on, then off. Over the sound of the crashing waves and hissing wind, a crystal-clear ringing, like a tiny Christmas bell, echoed in the tower.

  “Yep. This is the place,” Vee confirmed.

  The faint halo of light vanished as the recon pixies went deeper into the lighthouse to check things out. I imagined them swooping down drainpipes, lighting up the shadows.

  “Super blood moon’s rising, Vee,” Wugnot said, peering up. We all craned our necks to see that the moon overhead was tinted a bloody, pale red.

  Mama Vee groaned. “This night just keeps getting better and better.”

  Berna threaded her arm with mine and whispered, “Super blood moon makes for a powerful surge in evil.”

  “Means we have twenty minutes before it reaches peak and the Grand Guignol’s at his strongest power,” Mama Vee said, checking her watch.

  “Twenty minutes to save the world?” gulped Curtis as he set the timer on his digital watch. “Suh-weet.” He popped a black beret on his head.

  I looked at Berna like “Are you serious?” and she looked at me like “This is for real serious-serious.”

  Golden light flooded from under the steel door, and three musical knocks quickly followed.

  “Clear,” Mama Vee said.

  I held my staff before me, and the Order of the Babysitters and I marched toward the looming metal door. I saw a lone twisting tree growing from the cracked mud ringing the lighthouse. Shiny black apples dangled from its branches. Some had large bites taken out of them. I felt a strange need to pick them.

  “Don’t touch thoshe!” hissed Cassie. “Could be poishon.”

  I looked to Mama Vee, who gave me a “go for it” nod. I plucked a few and zipped them into my backpack. Pulling my puffy green jacket tighter, I joined the others, who had lined up outside the steel door.

  Mama Vee signaled Wugnot. The hobgoblin backed up. He stuffed his trucker hat into his pocket. He lowered his chunky horn at the door and charged with powerful speed. The door buckled and fell with a clang. Wugnot steadied himself against the empty doorframe and shook the fuzz out of his head as Vee and the others gave him a thankful pat on the shoulder.

  I gripped my warrior’s staff and followed everyone into the abandoned lighthouse.

  “Follow my lead,” Mama Vee said. “And no matter what, stay together.”

  Their flashlights swept a cramped chamber lined with grimy tiles oozing brown muck, streaked with giant tears of dirt. The sound of trickling water echoed from deep within the lighthouse. I stayed close to Berna and choked up on my staff, like I was ready to hit a fastball (or anything that moved).

  The glowing pixies zipped down a drainage grate. Their twinkling bell-like ringing bounced off the pipes and grew faint as they descended deeper underground. Mama Vee peered through the bars. “Something’s down there,” she said.

  A pukey smell, like a zombie’s burp, rose from the drain, and I backed away. There was a fireplace in the corner, an old one, paved with slabs showing pictures of strange creatures with forked tongues. In the center of the creepy images was a brass horseshoe.

  “Lookit!” Cassie shrieked, reaching for the shining horseshoe.

  “Don’t—” Mama Vee started, but Cassie touched it, anyway.

  Click.

  The floor dropped out underneath our feet.

  32

  Screaming, we rushed down an oily slide. Spongy, wet moss and ribbons of seaweed slushed under my fingers as I tried to stop myself from falling face-first down the world’s stinkiest waterslide.

  Spiraling out of control, I cried out for Berna and the others as they whooshed into a different tunnel.

  “Kelly!” Berna screamed.

  Her hand grabbed mine, but our fingers slipped apart.

  I snatched on to a sewer grate on the side of the tunnel. Trembling, I clung to it with one hand and the Staff of Destiny with the other. Water gushed over me.

  SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH!

  Through the sewer grate, I could see into a sea cave where a sludgy funnel spat Mama Vee, Wugnot, and the SITs into an icy pool of seawater. They each let out a shocked howl.

  “Kelly?” Vee frantically swam around wrecked rowboats and the rotted wooden figurehead of a mermaid bobbing nearby.

  “Up here!” I cried out.

  Treading water, Berna and the other kids looked near the chute that barfed them out and saw me behind the grate. I tried to shake it lose, but it didn’t budge.

  “Hang on, kiddo!” Mama Vee cried out.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can!” My arm was shaking.

  A long white stick floated past Berna. No. Not a stick. A bone. Most likely a leg bone. Human. Berna watched, transfixed with horror, as it floated along the waves and bumped into a towering pile of picked-clean skeletons.

  The only way out for them was through the moss-stained mouth of a large, hideous face carved into a faraway cave wall. “Over there!” I said. Mama Vee nodded thankfully up at me.

  “We’re outta here, gang. Let’s move,” Vee said, desperately swimming toward their only hope of an exit.

  Beneath the water, something flittered across Cassie’s ankle. A fish? An eel? Cassie clenched her jaw and squinted into the depths. Panic rose inside me.

  “What’s wrong?” Curtis asked.

  Cassie jolted suddenly and was pulled down below the surface.

  “Cassie!” Curtis cried, diving down after her.

  Mama Vee spun around and grabbed for them.

  Behind the babysitters, the water’s surface swelled.

  “Look out!” I screamed.

  An enormous, human-sized tentacle rose. In its grasp, Cassie hung upside down by her
foot, gasping for breath. Curtis arced over them, swinging from another squid-limb the size of an oak tree. Berna hollered and swung her bat at the ten-foot-tall slithering shape, but her bat stuck in its thousands of little sucker mouths.

  Wugnot and Mama Vee drew their weapons, but another tentacle shot from below and caught their arms with the speed and squeeze of an enormous boa constrictor. Vee and Wugnot were yanked upward, dangling over a fang-filled mouth the size of a doorway. I shrieked.

  Berna looked up at the forest of tentacles writhing over her.

  “Is this in the guide?” screamed Berna.

  “No. But it should be!” said Mama Vee.

  Berna’s bat slipped from her grip. A rumble rolled from the dark depths of the water.

  In an explosion of waves, six enormous tentacles lashed out, snatching Berna and thrusting her up in the air. An ancient-looking sea monster breached the surface, its slimy skin covered in hermit crabs and scuttling shrimp. The Leviathan’s spiky fantail slapped the water, like a happy dog waiting to receive a treat.

  Mama Vee was hanging by her ankle, trying to free her harpoon from the tentacle’s vicious, leechy grip. A throaty gurgle of glee bellowed from the sea monster, shaking its fat, slimy belly. The creature blasted her in the face with its damp, rotten-sushi breath.

  Vee gagged and turned away to see the upside-down, frightened faces of the children she had trained and the hobgoblin she called a friend swaying from the beast’s unforgiving limbs. I thought Vee was going to say something inspiring, like “Don’t give up” or “We’ll make it,” but the sea monster threw back its head, stretched its jaws wider, and released its grip on the babysitters, dropping them into its hungry, waiting mouth.

  I cried out for them, but my fingers slipped from the grate, and I nosedived straight down the sewer-slide into misty darkness.

  33

  I shot out of the edge of the tunnel and plunged into a bank of damp fog.

  WHAM!

  I slammed onto a sandy floor and wheezed, like I had been punched in the stomach. My flashlight fell out of my backpack and clattered across the sand. It shined upon glistening rock walls dotted with spiky starfish, puckering mussels, and clusters of jagged barnacles. Seaweed had taken root in the ceiling, dangling in thick, rubbery clumps.

  I waved my wooden stick through the hanging weeds.

  “Berna? Vee?” I called out.

  The sound of distant, crashing waves was all I heard.

  Through curtains of algae, I could see a faint glow at the very end of the tunnel. I walked toward it, praying it was the recon pixies.

  “You guys?” I cried.

  At the end of the corridor was a monumental door with grotesque, gargoyle-like figures etched into it. Monster chic. It was half-open, like someone was waiting for me to enter. Beyond the bizarre door, I saw what looked like the inside of an underground palace.

  He’s in there. Waiting for you.

  I walked through the arched passageway, carved out from the rock by ancient, expert hands. Behind me, the seaweed stirred down the tunnel’s dark throat. Crashing waves echoed, as if I were standing inside a giant seashell.

  I can’t stay here. The blood moon thing. It’s almost midnight.

  You can do this, Ferguson. You have to do this.

  My sweating palms gripped the staff tighter.

  But he’s in there.

  I cautiously peeked around the stone door.

  That’s why you have to go in there, Kelly. Now be brave, move your butt.

  I ducked through the giant doorway and into a massive cave where a great chandelier was suspended from the rocky ceiling. Hundreds of candles burned in its crystal holders, casting the cavern in a deep, golden glow. The lair was decorated like an old French castle, fit for the Prince of Darkness.

  How charming.

  Along the walls hung old paintings of people who looked like royalty. Not-so-human royalty. One portrait of a man with a stately expression on his face had a third eye in the center of his forehead. The third eye seemed to be following me as I crept around the room. There was also a painting of an elegant woman in a ball gown, posing with a fancy dog in her arms, but upon closer inspection, I saw that the woman had sharply pointed ears and the fancy dog in her arms was actually a furry serpent.

  The seven Boogeymen, I realized, feeling like I had swallowed a snail. Please don’t let them be here, too.

  I scanned the cavernous lair for any sign of Jacob, Liz, or the others as I moved past a long dining table. Silver platters of skewered eels and bowls of broth with bobbing chunks of mystery meat were on the table.

  So this is what Thanksgiving looks like in hell.

  Seven empty dinner plates with neatly folded napkins and glimmering ivory-handled cutlery waited before their chairs.

  Seven plates. The Grand Guignol was expecting company.

  Past hell’s kitchen, a dark, shadowy hole had been dug out of the ground, with rocky stairs spiraling into a hidden chamber. A pale, flickering light twitched from the base of the stairs.

  Totally normal, I thought, trying to laugh my way out of my fear. Didn’t work.

  Footsteps shuffled along the sand-strewn floor. I held my staff before me and crouched behind the dining table. Someone was emerging from the farthest end of the underground palace. I felt dizzy and a little nauseous, like I had just eaten a multivitamin on an empty stomach.

  A person stepped into the light. I gripped my staff even tighter as they walked toward me.

  It was a boy.

  “Victor?” I whispered.

  34

  Victor craned his head around the chair and gave me a warm, innocent smile. His big puppy-dog brown eyes made me feel less alone. “Hello, Kelly.”

  I could hardly speak. “What?”

  “Estoy aquí para ayudarte. I’m here to help, silly,” he whispered.

  I nervously adjusted my ponytail and straightened my sweater.

  “But . . .”

  “I followed you,” Victor said, flipping his dark hair away from his eyes. He gently took my hand and rubbed it, blowing warm air on my fingers. “So cold,” he whispered.

  My blood warmed, but my bones were still cold.

  “If you’re worried about the others, they’re here.”

  “Jacob? Liz?”

  Victor smiled at me. “Everyone. Come.”

  I lowered my staff to stand closer to him. He was still holding my hand. He stepped back, guiding me to step with him, and he placed his left hand on the small of my back.

  A brass phonograph nearby whirled, playing an enchanting Spanish guitar song that echoed around the cave. Victor smiled bashfully and let my hand go.

  “I’m sorry. I . . . cannot resist,” he said, and bowed elegantly before me. “May I have this dance, por favor?”

  I laughed. It felt good to laugh. Like everything was okay. Liz and Jacob were somewhere here, and they were fine. I laid my staff on the table, straightened up, and imitated a fancy-pants duchess.

  “You may,” I whispered, offering my hand.

  He squeezed my fingers and took a step to the right. Before I knew it, we were waltzing.

  My head was a helium balloon about to pop.

  “You’re a very good dancer,” he said.

  I felt like water gliding across glass.

  Wait, I thought. This is wrong. I am a terrible dancer.

  No, Kelly, you are a wonderful dancer, said a dark voice in my head.

  No, I’m not! Remember Marissa Bergman’s Bat Mitzvah? I was making wild, sparkly jazz hands to “Firework,” and I hit a waiter who was carrying a tray of Cokes, and they all went flying down Marissa’s dress? Marissa hasn’t spoken to me since. I can’t dance!

  “Stop. This . . . this isn’t right,” I said, feeling like I was about to throw up.

  Victor spun me past a giant mirror. My woozy, stretchy reflection was dancing with a tall slender man wearing furry brown socks.

  Light-headed and dizzy, I looked past Victor’s
shoulder into the mirror and saw that the slender man holding me had black hooves for feet. I looked back at Victor, but in his place was the tall, wretched man from my nightmares.

  “Hello, little girl.”

  35

  I screamed and thrashed. The Grand Guignol’s tail coiled around my ribs, and he held me tight as a noose. His nails dug into my wrists. I fought, kicked, bit, snarled, and spat, but he just calmly held me in a rigid, icy grip pulsing with impossible strength.

  I felt like a cockroach was running through my brain, feeding on my thoughts.

  “Where are my friends?” I screamed.

  The Grand Guignol smirked and then twisted his wrinkled neck to check a grandfather clock leaning against the wall. Seven minutes to midnight.

  “I’m afraid they didn’t make it past my pet Leviathan.”

  I felt my heart slam to a complete stop.

  He smiled like he knew this would destroy me. “That disgusting traitorous slob of a hobgoblin and those weird little kids.” He scowled, waving his hand away. “Goldfish food.”

  “That—that’s not possible,” I said. “Veronica— She—”

  “She’s not here to protect you anymore, Kelly. It’s just you and me.”

  My shoulders sagged. That couldn’t be right. The chuckle gurgling from the demon’s mouth confirmed my horrible feeling.

  The fight began to drain from me, like an unplugged bathtub.

  “And those little pixies. I saved those for myself. Deeelicious,” he said, kissing his fingertips and rubbing his belly. “They do tickle going down, but I’ve worked up quite an appetite.”

  Mama Vee protected me. So did Berna, Curtis, and Cassie (in her own way). They were weird and strange, but they looked out for me. For one another. For the world. All they wanted was a safer place for kids to grow up, and this monster was laughing at their deaths.

  “They were my friends,” I whispered.

  “Bit of an overstatement, isn’t that? You only just met them tonight.”