June 20XX
I’ve literally got fired and denied from every neighbourhood around me for my babysitting services. They would not want to have me associate with them or their children ever again.
I can’t help it if I just recently ended up becoming a magnet for all those ‘unwanted visitors’ around me.
Why, three weeks ago, I was walking Mrs. Rueben’s son Micah home from school when I noticed a black-robed man handing me a brochure of some sort before walking away silently. When I looked at the brochure we were—or to be more exact, Micah was—thrilled to see that a carnival was going to be held at the recently burnt-down building downtown which used to be one of the most successful stock broker businesses in the state. I remembered about the fire back then. It was nasty, I tell you! Fire burning, people screaming and running, trying to escape. I was there among the crowd to see the firemen trying to douse out the flames in vain, and due to the faulty fire escapes and lack of fire safety precautions, 90 percent of the workers there were trapped and burnt alive. I heard that it was because the owner of the company finally went down on his luck when he lost almost half of his fortune during the stock market pitfall, and coupled with his only daughter’s suicide over a broken relationship, he went mad and decided to commit suicide in his own building by committing arson.
Anyway, we were so happy and psyched about the opening of the carnival that I didn’t know what was ahead. The next day, after school, I picked Micah up as promised and took him and the triplets and dashed to the carnival straight away, for Micah didn’t want to miss even one single event in store there. I left the triplets in the care of people at a daycare centre within the carnival and we tried everything; from the merry-go-round to the Ferris Wheel to the roller-coaster to the horseback ride, etc etc… everything! We have had such a good time that we lost track of time. When Micah finally had his fill, I bought him ice-cream and picked the triplets up from the daycare centre. We were about to leave when we bumped into Mrs. Rueben.
“Micah! Where have you been? I have been looking for you everywhere!” she looked genuinely worried, and looked at me as if I had kidnapped her children or something.
“Mom! Did you see me? I was having so much fun! That carnival was way cool! I gotta come here again! Please, Mom, can I?”
“Carnival? What carnival? I don’t see any carnival!”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Rueben, I took really good care of them. You should see what they have in store…” I turned around to point out the carnival but what I saw was beyond belief. Instead of the bright, cheery and bubbly carnival filled with screams of excitement and peals of laughter, there stood the black, sooty old building, burned down to smithereens. Rubble and debris piled everywhere around the vicinity. The ground beneath it was also black with burnt soot. It was so eerie-looking, that I couldn’t believe that it was the carnival I just went. Even Micah was shocked to see the sudden change.
“You mean to tell me that this burnt-down house is a carnival?!” Mrs. Rueben exclaimed. “What kind of sick joke are you pulling here, young lady?”
“But, Mom!” Micah protested, “It was a carnival just now! We were here just now! Look! Steph even bought me one of their ice-cream!” he held out my ice-cream and both Mrs. Rueben and Micah screamed, for what he was holding was actually a batch of rotten flesh stuck onto a wooden stick, and that we realized the triplets’ clothes were covered with black sooty handprints. She grabbed me by the collar and dragged me all the way home and made such a scene about scaring and corrupting her children and it took all of Mom’s willpower and persuasion to keep her from reporting me to the police. After being shouted at from across the hall by Mrs. Rueben to never, ever come near her kids again, I was given a stern warning by my parents not to speak of that carnival nonsense ever again, plus half of my allowance cut as punishment.
That wasn’t the worse part.
Two week ago, I received a call from Mrs. Templeton to babysit her daughter Teresa while she and her husband went out for a company dinner. I did the usual feeding, bathing, watching TV, reading a bedtime story to her and tucking her to bed before I went back downstairs to do my homework while waiting for the Templeton-s to come home. An hour later, Teresa woke up and came to me. She said she thought I was calling her. I told her I didn’t and tucked her back into bed. Another hour later, Teresa woke up again and said someone was calling her name. I told her she was dreaming and as I tucked her back to bed, I, too, suddenly hear a faint voice calling out for the little girl.
“Teresa…Teresa…”
I turned to look and was horrified to see that the voice was coming from her closet! I asked what she kept in that closet, she told me she kept most of her clothes and shoes, and also a doll she stopped playing with long time ago.
Telling her to stay in bed, I walked over tentatively towards the closet and reached for the doorknob. I was not prepared for what was in store in front of me: A pair of sad, old-looking eyes brimming with tears with a face of cracked porcelain and dress torn beyond recognition stared back at me, with the rest of the body cracking as it moved towards me. It was the doll Teresa had mentioned, standing right there in the middle of the dark closet which was as tall as Teresa, with hair so long it formed a carpet along the floors of the closet. It moved slowly and steadily towards Teresa who was screaming and cowering at her bed, crying as it reached its hand towards her.
“How could you…” the doll cried. “How could you throw me in here and forget about me…? I grew up with you…How could you…?”
Adrenaline kicked in and replaced my shock as I heard Teresa screaming in her tears. I quickly picked the doll up and threw it back into the closet, slamming the door shut and putting my weight against it to prevent it from coming out. It banged at the door and wailed a cry like those banshees you see on TV, screaming “How could you” over and over again. After what seemed like forever, it stopped and when I opened the closet door to investigate, the doll was gone, dress, hair and all.
It goes without saying when I landed myself into another trouble when Teresa cried in her parents’ arms and simply REFUSED to sleep in her room for the rest of her life (well, that’s what she said) and I was accused of telling scary stories to Teresa and gave her nightmares when Teresa and I told them otherwise. Again, they made a big fuss with my parents and I was again denied allowance for two months solid.
But even that wasn’t the worse part.
Just a week ago, Mr. Carlson—single father and a travelling salesman—called me to look after his son Barry while he went out to one of his usual jobs. Barry wanted to go catch fireflies so that he could sell it to his fellow classmates at school. It thought it was cute for a kid his age to start earning money like his father, and it was a good way to get my mind off Mrs. Rueben’s case, so I agreed to take him out to go firefly-catching. He said the denser and darker the forest, the more fireflies there is, so I took him to the best forest I could come up with, which was located behind the town cemetery, and of course, I made sure we went there at broad daylight. Once we were inside, we immediately saw bluish little lights surrounding the trees as we moved in deeper. We were ready with our nets and Barry was so happy at his luck and his future fortune.
I made the first catch and when I checked my net to see how much fireflies I’ve caught, I was met with an eerie glowing face of a cat! It was smiling creepily at me like a Cheshire Cat would, only much scarier than that. I screamed and threw away my net. Barry responded the same when he caught a glowing face of a rat in his net. Suddenly, without warning, there were more and more of those ‘fireflies’ appearing out of nowhere, and I realized they were actually popping out from branches of trees and raining on us like dropping missiles. One of them dropped onto Barry’s arm and scalded him badly, and some of them were not glowing faces of animals, but of people! I picked Barry up in my arms and quickly made a run for it, took him to the hospital to be treated and end up being accused by Mr. Carlson for abuse.
This time, he really took it to the authorities and wanted the police to put me behind bars, and simply REFUSED to listen to my explanation and REFUSED to believe Barry’s story, saying that I made him told that wild story just to cover up my mistakes, and even though the doctors confirmed that the scalding of Barry’s arm was not caused by my doing, that perhaps it was caused by something other than abuse, he still insisted that I get arrested, to the point where he himself was throwing tantrums like a little kid. The police, after reading the doctor’s report, decided to let me off the hook, but my parents did not. They told me never to baby-sit again and grounded me for the rest of the month.
And that was before I found out that the forest behind the town cemetery was a place where children bring their dead pets to be buried, thus known by the kids around the neighbourhood as ‘Pet Cemetery Forest’, and way back before both the pet cemetery and the town cemetery, the forest used be a place where they bury convicts after hanging them in the gallows. The possible reason for this phenomenon is probably because, as I read in the book of supernatural incidences, was that the trees has fed off from the decomposed minerals of the bodies buried six feet under and at the same time, absorbed their souls as well, resulting into them falling down like fruit when they “ripen”.
How the hell am I supposed to deal with this? It’s not fair! I wasn’t the one at fault here! It’s those ‘things’! They keep showing up wherever I go and whatever I do, other people end up getting dragged into the mess!
It’s…just not fair…
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