‘Sitters’ (a short horror story)

Image courtesy of Flickr user Electroholunder https://www.flickr.com/photos/67342500@N00/

INTRODUCTION

This story went through several iterations before it became the tale you see here.

I started it in the early 1980s – exact date unknown; my memory is hazy but I vaguely remember seeing U2’s “New Year’s Day” on MTV while taking smoke breaks from writing. That would put it in the vicinity of 1983.

I based the viewpoint character on a woman I knew from work. She was small and looked frail but was anything but – tough as nails! You didn’t screw with her. Oh, and her name was Rocky, just like the character in this book.

I wanted to write a story about the ultimate horror, at least for a parent: that of losing a child. I was warned to stay away from stories that put children in peril, but I thought “Sitters” might avoid that prohibition by its resolution.

One other feature that’s notable about “Sitters” – if in fact anything is notable about “Sitters” – is that it represents what horror used to be, not what horror is now. I grew up in a time when horror was external – a monster, a supernatural agency, just something out there that presented a threat to you and I.

These days it seems horror is more internal – modern horror stories seem to focus on a vague sense of unease, the suggestion that something may not be quite right, or a feeling of out-of-place or disaffection within the viewpoint character.

Maybe an easier way to say it is that in the past, horror was a monster. Today, horror is a mental illness.

I got feedback from various editors and, through their suggestions, I created the story you’re about to read.

“Sitters” eventually found a home at Northern Horror, a Canadian magazine. They did a good job presenting it.

—

SITTERS

Rocky was sitting on the corner of the mattress, trying to get an earring fastened to her ear, when the kid began bouncing on the bed.

She had it – no, she didn’t, damn it – she almost had it, but a jolt sent the earring spinning out of her fingers. It bounced and rolled across the efficiency’s narrow floor. It disappeared beneath the fold-out card table.

Judi, who was babysitting the kid again tonight, offered a tired smile and settled into the worn-out La-Z-Boy. Judi was youngish, but something about her seemed old, Rocky thought. Maybe it was her clothes. Her jeans were frayed at the pockets and mere threads held the knees together; her sweater was unravelling at the shoulder seam. Maybe it was the rattiness of her clothes that rubbed off on her, so that she resembled a much older imposter, masquerading as a young, down-on-her-luck divorcee.

Misery loves company, Rocky told herself, and got up to look for the earring. God, if she ruined this last pair of pantyhose crawling under there … well, that would be a bitch. Because there was no money to buy a new pair and she needed to look good – to be honest, she needed to look perfect. Because Mr. Deaton liked all his clerks to look perfect. He said a nice-looking clerk might encourage customers to linger, and when customers linger they buy things. And because Mr. Deaton was the manager, what he wanted was important.

“I wanna GO!” the kid shouted. Rocky stretched and groped beneath the table, felt something hard, and came up with the plastic head to a toy robot. She pitched it aside and the kid yelled, “Hey! That’s mine!” His voice was quavering between tears and anger, but he wasn’t whining yet, whining in that tone which always meant he was about to throw a tantrum, and for that Rocky was thankful. She didn’t want to deal with a tantrum. Not half an hour before her shift started at K mart.

She found the earring. She stood and fastened it. She smoothed her skirt.

“I wanna go too,” the kid repeated. She composed a smile and sat down beside him. She mussed his hair. He made a face and rolled away, but when he looked at her again he was smiling too. God, if there was anything that could shine through the despair she’d been feeling these past few months, it was the kid.

Rocky said, “I’m going to work, honey. You remember what I told you about work?”

He nodded.

“I can’t take you to work with me because Mr. Deaton wouldn’t like it, and then he might fire me and we wouldn’t have any money. What would happen to us if we didn’t have any money?”

The kid recited, “We wouldn’t have a roof over our heads.”

Judi sighed.

Rocky nodded. She felt a small ache of guilt that the kid had to learn this kind of lesson so early in life, but circumstances had forced her hand, and she was alone, and sometimes she had to share her burdens, even if it mean sharing them with a 6-year-old.

            “Mommy,” the kid said. “Does Judi have any money?”

Judi almost laughed. Rocky snorted, “With what I’m paying her? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Well … if you don’t pay her much money, why’s she here?”

“Because,” Rocky cuffed his chin. “She likes you. Now you and Judi are going to have a good time. Isn’t that right, Judi?” She cast an inquiring glance across the room, and Judi nodded yes. Rocky noticed she had her touchstone in hand and was rubbing it absently, as if it were a cat she was scratching behind the ears. Rocky’s gaze lingered on the stone. It was black as anything she could imagine, and polished to a smooth luster by Judi’s persistent rubbing. Judi was never without it. She would not let anybody touch it. She said once that if it ever left her grasp it might lose the magic or charm or whatever it was the thing held over her. She said it was the one thing in life she could rely on.

The one thing in life she can rely on. Rocky turned away. I guess if anybody has a right to feel that way, it’s Judi. Rocky wondered what she would do if her ex-husband snatched the kid on one of his infrequent visitations. Would she be haunting police stations and badgering detectives to find the bastard? Would she be babysitting at night to pad her meager income and take her mind off things? Or rubbing magic rocks to prop up her sanity?

Rocky realized she was shivering.

Judi smiled uncertainly. “I’ll take care of everything.” She said nothing more, and then an uncomfortable silence descended over the room, interrupted only by the sound of their breathing.

“Well!” Rocky announced a little too cheerfully. “I want your fanny in bed early, kiddo. You and Judi can watch TV and then you shag it for the sack.”

“I can stay up late!” he shouted.

“No. You stay up late and I might have to hock your fanny.”

“To the boogeyman,” Judi added.

And I could use the bucks, Rocky thought morosely, but she only said, “That’s right.”

Judi smiled. “I’ve seen the boogeyman.”

The kid’s eyes widened. He said wondrously, “You have?” and Rocky frowned.

“Yes,” Judi continued. “Once. But I can call him back. With this.” She held up the touchstone. “You’ve seen fortune tellers on TV who use crystal balls to contact the spirit world? Well, this is my crystal ball, and with this I can call the boogeyman. Would you like to see the boogeyman?”

The kid looked fearfully at Rocky. He whined, “No.”

Judi was silent a moment. “Then you’ll have to do what your mother says and get to bed early.”

Rocky stared at the woman, unsure for a moment if she should go along with this deception. Something like this could scare the hell out of the kid, give him a complex or something. It could stay with him the rest of his life. So Rocky finally said, “Honey, Judi’s just teasing. There’s no such thing as the boogeyman – but if I come home from work and find you still up, you’ll wish there was.” She glanced furtively at Judi, who was rocking in the La-Z-Boy, then back at the kid. “Now don’t be a little pain and maybe we’ll get ice cream tomorrow.” She almost hated herself when she saw his snaggle-toothed grin. There wouldn’t be any ice cream tomorrow, of course – not when she could barely keep a roof over their heads, as even the kid had learned to say. There was never enough money and she was tired of worrying about it and it seemed she never knew what to do, what was right and best and proper, and if somebody would just tell her what to do, for God’s sake –

No. She told herself to stop. That was no way to think. She struggled to concoct a smile. So. She’d get money, somehow. Maybe the old man would come through with a child-support payment; maybe she’d find a better job and take her kid and move to a new town. Start a new life.

Yeah, she thought desultorily. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and marry Donald Trump.

Rocky got her purse. She stood before the mirror, fiddling with a strand of hair, gave herself a good looking over and headed for the door. The kid had planted himself stomach-down on the floor in front of the old black-and-white TV. The tuner was shot, so the picture faded in and out. Judi was rocking herself gently in the recliner, staring at the TV and rocking, her slender legs barely moving as she stared and rocked. It isn’t her clothes that make her look older, Judi decided, but she said only, “Any word from the cops? About your little girl?”

Judi shook her head. She said, “But one of the detectives told me something I still can’t believe. He said they arrested a woman for selling her daughter so she could buy crack. Cocaine. Can you believe that?” She looked up at Rocky, her eyes red and glistening around the edges. “How could anybody do such a thing?” She looked away.

Rocky stared at her a long moment. She’d heard of women like that, women who beat their children senseless for crying too much, women who gave away their children or starved them to teach them God’s love or stayed married to wife beaters and kid beaters because they didn’t know what to do. Fearful women. Selfish. Women who were crazy.

“I don’t know how anybody could do that,” Rocky finally answered. “I guess they don’t know any better. Or they just don’t care.”

Then she opened the door and stepped out into the night.

—

Later, much later, Rocky was back at the door, trying to fit the key into the lock. It wouldn’t work right, and she hoped she remembered to tell the landlord to fix the damn porch light so she could see what she was doing.

She got the door open. The end-table lamp was on. The TV was watching over the room like a dead, gray eye, nothing but interference crossing the screen. Judi was not in the La-Z-Boy.

The kid wasn’t in bed.

A little sigh of exasperation whistled through Rocky’s lips. She dropped her keys, her purse, just dropped them there at the door, and stalked across the room to the bathroom.

She called to him.

But he wasn’t in the bathroom. He wasn’t under the card table. The closet. Under the bed; he wasn’t there either.

He wasn’t in the apartment.

Suddenly, Rocky had no feeling in her body. Thoughts jumped into her head, each more terrifying than the one before. Her gaze flitted, bat-like, around the room. A note was lying on the end table. It was held in place by Judi’s touchstone – no, it looked like the touchstone. But it was smaller somehow, and dull, its luster used up. Rocky snatched the piece of paper; the stone clattered against the base of the lamp with an awful ringing sound.

The note read: Please I’m sorry Touch the stone youll know what to do.

The note slipped from her fingers. It see-sawed through the air and ticked against the cracked linoleum. Rocky’s gaze wandered aimlessly and unfocused, until it fell upon the stone.

She took it in her hand.

A current snapped from the stone, shocking her, but she could not let it go. The room began to sway – no, she was swaying, careening, toppling drunkenly onto the bed. Weird images fizzled and popped behind her eyelids. She was seeing through somebody else’s eyes. She heard echoes of thoughts and emotions, fading, then gaining in volume, like the sounds of a party drifting across the night. She felt pinches of physical sensation. Judi. Judi’s eyes. Judi’s thoughts. Judi’s body. It was as if some residue of Judi were in the stone, and by touching it Rocky had allowed whatever was there to enter her mind.

It is a night months in the past, and Rocky can see and feel Judi going into the run-down basement apartment she rents, and the place is deserted, the woman who was babysitting her daughter gone, her daughter gone, and only the woman’s touchstone remains, a taunt, a watchdog, something more than a stone. A spike of emotions – confusion, panic, dread – scrambles the image. It returns. Judi is holding the stone. Somehow, it is communicating to her; the past – vague images of an endless succession of women who have held the stone before; the future – what Judi must do. And Judi is thinking, Yes, yes, anything for my child. So she takes the stone and, following its mysterious imperatives, unbuttons her jeans and slides it up into her. Rocky can feel its smooth warmth inside Judi, as if it were made to fit that orifice. The warmth spreads along her nerve endings and the sensation is both repulsive and erotic. She feels it burrowing deeper, the warmth intensifying, her unwilling receptiveness to it sending it deeper still. There are other sensations: friction and sliding and a thick fluid filling her, so that she looks down and sees a black, slimy substance flowing out of her. Ropes of the stuff slither up her arms, down her legs, across her stomach, building upon itself until a shape begins to form, almost human but almost something else. She feels pressure on her shoulders, rough and unyielding, as huge hands pin her to the floor. And then … and then the pressure builds in her, the warmth replaced by scalding heat. Her legs twitch apart as a reflex to the pain and it is too much and she tries to scream, but her muscles spasm uselessly. She thinks her spine is splitting. She knows it is splitting, right down the middle, and boiling water is sluicing up the raw nerves of the spinal cord to explode inside her brain in exquisite agony.

The vision mercifully fades. Others appear and retreat like ghosts on the old black-and-white TV. One quick picture: Judi, lying on the floor, legs apart, body throbbing, simultaneously amazed and sickened to be alive. The touchstone is lying between her legs, and when she touches it she is stung, only this time the transfer is not from stone to flesh. She feels something flow out of her and into it, a reservoir in the odious thing beginning to fill, a spark of energy.

The scene blurs. Others from the months to follow whip past, the threat of the stone continuing to grow, until the near-present swims into focus. Rocky sees herself leaving for work earlier that day. Judi is fingering the touchstone, and it is huge now and alive and crawling with a strange power. The image dissolves and is replaced by another. The kid is lying on his stomach watching TV, a “Blue’s Clues” rerun. Judi’s stare moves from door to closet to window, as if in anticipation of something. “Well?” she asks. “Where are you?” The touchstone lies in her palm like a fat tick, gorged on … what? Blood? No, but some part of her, something more elemental than blood. The kid looks up, puzzled, and mumbles, “Huh?” She hushes him. Then, “Where are you? I’ve done what I was supposed to do. The stone is ready. And I’ve got a fair trade.” Rocky can taste her fear, intermingling with hope and desperation.

Rocky can feel her tired soul.

Flicker. Another scene. The kid is clutching her arm. He whimpers, “I’m scared, Judi. I want Mom,” and she can see the fear crawling in his eyes. The front door bangs open. The kid lets out a piping little shriek. A plague of shadows slithers into the apartment, sliding up the walls and around the furniture in sinuous tendrils of black. The kid sinks his fingers into Judi’s arms. The lights are on but the room is suddenly mausoleum dark. The kid is screaming, screaming, and incredibly, Judi is pushing him away from her, giving him to the shadows, and then Rocky hears herself screaming, summoning all her rage and terror, until the shadows envelope everything and the image fades.

Lights, again. The TV is babbling. A little girl is standing in the doorway. Judi’s little girl. A line of spit is about to drip from her chin. Judi sucks in a breath and chokes. Her joy, her anguish are like a punch in the stomach. She exclaims, “Oh! Oh God!” The image becomes grainy. Whatever of Judi is left in the stone is waning. Judi rushes across the room. The connection unravels. Now only fragments of images come to Rocky. Judi scribbling the note. Judi leaving the stone. Judi hurrying down a poorly lit sidewalk, the girl dangling from her arms. A bus, somewhere, wheezing to a halt. Judi climbing aboard. Gone.

Rocky opened her eyes. She felt a tear slide down her cheek and catch at the corner of her mouth. The TV hissed in the background. Her heart thumped irregularly, like a piece of machinery about to break down.

The touchstone was lying next to her, on the bedspread. She raised a limp finger to touch it, but hesitated, her instincts battling with reason.

Eventually, she did what she thought she had to do.

—

“Rocky? You sure you’re up to this?” the woman asked, spooning another egg into the saucepan of boiling water. “You look like hell, if you don’t mind me saying.”

The woman’s name was Lisa. She was a cocktail waitress at a downtown strip joint. She had a son, Bobby.

“I’m all right. I was up all night,” Rocky lied.

“It’s OK if you don’t want to bother,” Lisa said. The kitchen table was littered with squeeze bulbs of food coloring, a bottle of vinegar, and bowls. “I can get him some of those candy Easter eggs and a chocolate rabbit – God knows he’d rather have that stuff anyway instead of this,” she said, indicating the pan on the stove. “But the money. …”

“No. Really,” Rocky said. “I don’t mind. I’m just a little tired. The cops, they – they – “

Lisa’s frown was full of sympathy. “No luck, huh?”

Rocky shook her head. She hated herself. All these lies.

Lisa snorted. “God! I hope they find the creep. I hope you get your kid back. Your ex – he must’ve been a real shithead.”

“Yes,” Rocky agreed.

“If my ex-husband ever tries that shit, I’ll – I’ll – “ She feigned a right hook. And then she was collecting her car keys and purse and jacket.

“Now don’t give Aunt Rocky a hard time,” she shouted into the next room, where Bobby was watching TV.

Rocky slid her hand into her jacket and grasped the touchstone. Thankfully, it took nothing from her. Lately, she hadn’t been sure she could give any more. But it was fully alive now, throbbing with power. It was ready to be … it was ready. It occurred to Rocky that a few hours from now, Lisa would probably be hearing these thoughts. She wondered if she should apologize. Maybe not. Any woman who truly loved her child would do what Rocky was about to do. Lisa would understand, wouldn’t she?

“You give Aunt Rocky a hard time, mister, and I’ll – I’ll – “

Hock his fanny to the boogeyman, Rocky thought dejectedly.

Lisa snorted again. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she yelled. “But you won’t like it, mister.”

The kid grunted in reply.

Lisa rolled her eyes in apparent disgust and left. Rocky locked the door behind her and went back to the kitchen. Water gurgled sluggishly in the saucepan and a column of steam gathered into a fog bank beneath the range hood. Bobby shuffled in and took a seat at the table. He said, “Can we start doing the eggs now?”

“Not yet,” Rocky answered. “They’re not cooked.” She checked the burner and turned up the heat. The water seemed to boil a little more vigorously.

“I don’t like being alone all the time. Why won’t Mommy take me to her job with her?” Bobby asked, and Rocky’s heart sank when she started to give him the same answer she’d given her own kid a few months before. God, it had been a thousand years since he’d … been gone, but in a little while, just a little while longer, she’d have him back and the problem would be in somebody else’s lap.

Lisa’s, she reminded herself grimly. How can I do this to Lisa?

“I like Mommy,” Bobby said, absently tapping the vinegar bottle with a spoon. “Don’t you?”

Rocky started to say yes but the word caught on something in her throat. She pretended to stir eggs. She wondered when it would end, this passing along of misery and fear to women who already dealt with more than their share of those things on a day-to-day basis, and she wondered if anybody would ever have the courage to say no, to sacrifice their sanity and possibly the only thing they loved in the world to break the lineage of pain. She wondered if she could do such a thing, and her soul flinched at the thought of it. She wondered if she could stand to live with herself for having done such a thing. Probably not. But she wondered how she would cope with the alternative.

“I like you too,” Bobby said, with the earnestness of a little kid. “But I think I like my mommy a little bit more.” He pinched a paper-thin slice of air with his thumb and forefinger. “This much more,” he explained.

Rocky stared at without seeing the boiling water. It was raging now, and a caul of foam had collected at the top. She didn’t know what to do, and it seemed she had never known what to do, even when the choices were clearly laid out for her, and maybe that was why she had fallen into this predicament. She fingered the touchstone and it felt soft and diseased and overripe, so much unlike the hard little pellet Judi had left for her.

“Aunt Rocky? Do you hear something?” Bobby said uncertainly.

The water was boiling and the foam was spilling over the side of the pan and flashing into steam as it cascaded over the burner. The eggs bounced in the turbulence, their shells clicking together like little teeth snapping.

“Aunt Rocky?”

Foam and scalding water flowed down onto the burner. Rocky fingered the touchstone and thought of women who sell their babies to buy cocaine. She didn’t know what to do.

“Aunt Rocky,” Bobby said, his voice a squeaky whisper. “I think I hear something. Outside.”

Her fingers formed a cage around the touchstone. She thought of women who beat their children senseless –

“Somebody’s outside, trying to get in!” Bobby insisted breathlessly.

 – women who give away their children because they no longer love them –

“Somebody’s trying to get in, Aunt Rocky!”

– women who starve their children –

“Aunt Rocky! Aunt Rocky! Somebody’s – “

– women who stay married to their wife beaters and their child beaters because they don’t know what to do –

“I want Mommy!”

– and all the women who aren’t like that –

The saucepan was a volcano of steam and foam. Rocky snatched the touchstone from her pocket and held it above the hissing cauldron – Here you go, bastard – and started to let it drop.

            She heard, rather, she felt the word NO whistle past her ear, seeming to grind through her body, and then every window in the place exploded inward, every light bulb detonated like a rifle shot, and something darker than the sudden night brushed by her, a shadowy, sinister touch that chilled her to the bone, and snatched the touchstone from her fingers.

Then Bobby was wailing for his mommy, and from the living room another small voice, achingly familiar, began calling for his mother too.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .