The Babysitter

I wrote this while working on a new persona to share stories on Reddit. I didn’t feel like there was enough interest to keep it going after two stories. This was the first of the two.

The year was 1989. The McCallisters had just moved to the small town of Northfield. Todd McCallister had finally gotten his teaching license along with a job teaching history at the high school. Maria was content to stay home with their two children: Alexis, a rambunctious four year-old, and Franklin, who had just learned to walk. When the children were down for their afternoon naps, she got a little time to herself, which she spent neatly stitching together a variety of plush animals.

The town was quiet and peaceful, nestled in a shady valley, mostly bordered by forest. The noisiest it normally got was when the occasional train passed through on its way to other places. The biggest story the police blotter ever got was a drunk and disorderly.

It’s In The Blood

My daughter has begun seeing things. I don’t know if they’re imaginary, like any child’s mind is prone to creating, or something more, like the things I’ve seen.

I’ve told you all last summer about the stories she started telling me, about the “man” who would come to her window and tell them to her… about the claw marks I found in the sill. I’ve also told you about the attack she suffered almost a year ago when I took the advice of redditors and stood up to a terrifying spirit that was stalking me. To say that she’s been through more than a normal five year old is an understatement.

Uncle Wallace’s Shack

The Original

My Uncle Wallace lives on a parcel of property bordering a dense wetlands in Georgia. To say that he’s isolated is an understatement. The road he lives on isn’t even paved, and his nearest neighbor is a couple miles away. I remember him once saying his real neighbors were the things living in the swamp.

We never visited him when I was young. He was too much of a shut-in. My father said his house, if you could call it a house, generally reeked of lime and alcohol and there was too much shit cluttering up the place for anyone but Wallace to sleep. Apparently he was something of a hoarder.

I met him a couple times when he came out for family funerals. He drove an old, pale blue Chevy that looked about as haggard as he did. Wallace himself looked like a scarecrow in a suit. Combs and brushes probably ran screaming at the sight of him. The first time I met him, he shook my hand and grumbled a polite greeting. For the rest of the day, our dog would scurry away when I tried to pet it with that hand.

A Conclusive Demonstration

First posted to r/nosleep here.

I know this story is going to sound wholly unbelievable and outrageous, but I can’t keep quiet about it anymore. I don’t care if nobody believes me. Maybe some day, some one will read it and recognize that we didn’t stumble blindly into the dark, that there was one person who warned everybody. A modern day Cassandra if you will.

This isn’t about me. This is about my friend Madelyn. Her fate is my fate, is your fate. We just need to learn to accept it. Amor fati if you will. It’s already begun, with a gentle tickling in the right lobe. You might not even notice it. Your eyes see words, the brain translates them, and the process begins.

But where does this story begin? Should I talk about when Maddy and I met? We got paired as roomies last year at UCLA. She was a psychology major. I was shy at first, kept to myself… a recluse. But Maddy… Maddy was different. She was full of a love for life I had never known. And she saw something in me, a spark if you will, that she wanted to fan into a flame. She refused to let me hide in our room on weekends, dragging me to every social function she could get invited to. By the time midterms came and the cramming began, we were inseparable. We shared everything. We were like sisters.

Look What I Did (The Basement)

Find the original r/nosleep version here.

It was many months after the thing chased me through the corn stalks, gotten into my house and left me a wreck that crawled under my bed to sleep every night. The corn had been harvested and the field cleared. It was Spring, bringing a quick thaw and hard rains that soaked the earth and caused our septic tank to fill and back up, flooding the basement. That drove my brother upstairs from his dark, basement dwelling. He claimed my room and I moved in with my younger brother, sleeping in a bunk bed.

Everything was very tense at the time. My parents were on edge because of the flooding in the basement and the cost of repairing the septic tank. My brothers and I were on edge because of our parents. Dinners were quiet, shouting matches often. When things got too heated, we’d retreat to our separate corners to cool off.

There was a performing arts theater downtown of which my parents signed up to be annual members. It was decided that we’d go as a family to see a performance of Oklahoma. The night of the play, I said something stupid, something I shouldn’t have. Something that set everybody off into another fight, and in the end I was left home alone while they went to see the play.