Baby-seat

‘This is the baby-seat,’ said the old woman ushering Rebecca into the dusty hallway. The woman sounded foreign, and this made her nervous. It was her first job, and the house scared her. She had walked up a narrow lane, between the woods to the stead at the top of the hill where she could no longer see the town trailing orange in the misty valley below. 

She had found the job on the school notice board: a young family needed a babysitter for Saturday night - willing to pay ___ per hour. It was a good rate.

‘It’ll be good for you,’ said her father, his voice impatient, ‘besides, we won’t always be around.’

He had then turned away, and she didn’t know what else to say.

She had walked for so long through the woods, but then found herself enclosed in the musty hallway, no memory of knocking at the door.

‘This is the baby-seat,’ repeated the old woman when Rebecca had not responded.

‘Yes…right, I’m here to babysit,’ said Rebecca, uncertain whether the old woman understood much English. The woman smiled, her eyes unmoving, and backed away into an adjoining room. Rebecca followed her, and entered what appeared to be a sitting room. Thick curtains draped the edges of the room, heavy on their rails. The only light smouldered from a heap of embers in the hearth. The old woman had backed so far into the shadows of the room, Rebecca had to squint to see her.

‘Sit,’ came a whisper from the dark. The voice had come from somewhere else, and she gripped the side arm of a sofa, her hand dusting green with mould. And in the low glow from the fireplace, she saw the carpet ravaged with green and black fur, and smelled the pungent air. She sat herself into the cold embrace of the sofa, folding her arms for warmth, concerned she wasn’t playing right her part. And shivering on the edge of the cushion, she tried to find the woman in the plumes of darkness.

‘I wonder…’ began Rebecca, ‘where the children might be?’

‘Yesss,’ hissed a voice, ‘they are late, are they not?’

Digging her fingers into her palm, Rebecca shifted her gaze. Her eyes strayed across the wall of darkness and found the woman in another corner of the room creeping in exaggerated steps towards her, but as her eyes came to rest it was clear she had not moved. Blackened tentacles seemed to slide around her aged frame. Rebecca stood on shaking legs, but sank into the floor, which oozed black sludge about her feet.

A knock came at the door, and the old woman broke from the dark, floating by Rebecca who tottered on unstable feet.

‘Baby-seat,’ she said, the smile fixed in place.

Rebecca lurched towards the hallway. She heard the front door open, and the muttering of voices, the exchange foreign and unfamiliar. When at last she presented herself at the doorway she saw a young family cut from a 1950s magazine, twilled together in matching outfits.

‘You must be Rebecca,’ said the mother, looking her over with an unkind eye.

‘How old are you?’ said the father with a twitching grin.

‘Seventeen,’ said Rebecca.

‘Oho,’ said the father.

‘George!’ said the mother, her eyes slit.

At their feet stood two little girls, clinging to the legs of their parents.

‘Right,’ said the mother, ‘it’s not quite what I had expected.’

‘No,’ said Rebecca, ‘me neither.’

‘What?!’

‘It has old charm,’ said the father, ‘quaint, like a lot of these country steads. Dusty, yes, but delightful.’

The air drew close around them as they stood immobile in the hallway.

‘Well,’ said the mother staring at Rebecca, ‘are you not going to show us around?’

‘Me?’ said Rebecca.

‘Have you been drinking?’

The old woman cleared phlegm in her throat, and Rebecca became aware that the mother and father were whispering to each other, flicking glances in her direction. Again there was that foreign tongue and she strained to make out what they said, but the venom was clear. Small hands slipped into hers, and the old woman was leading them back into the foetid sitting room. 

She remembered the striking of the match, but not who struck it or what had preceded the moment, but she sat in an armchair the children at her feet, the fire ablaze in the grate. Whispering still, the parents stood in the shadows to the side of the hearth, the flickering orange of the flames pulsating shadows across the walls.

‘We won’t always be around,’ said the father, his face very close to hers.

‘Sorry?’ said Rebecca, noticing how tired she sounded.

‘Here,’ he said, pushing an envelope into her hand, ‘money upfront.’

‘Be sure you do a good job,’ said the mother her voice disconnected, echoing in the sallow dark of the room.

‘This is not your house?’ said Rebecca.

They stood at the door now, looking back with concern at the two children, dresses already dirtied from the rampant mould of the room.

‘Baby seat,’ came the old woman’s voice, ‘they bring the children…’

Rebecca woke to the front door slamming shut, her head groggy. The fire dwindled in the grate, black soot puffing out and onto the carpet. With a surge of panic she wondered where the children had gone. Looking down she saw one of them - did she know their names? - clinging cold to her leg, her hair matted and dress fraying at the seams.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Rebecca, her breath as mist.

The cold head nodded but never looked up. Rebecca stood, the child another limb, and pulled in the direction of the door, the sky beyond the window liquid night.

‘Come,’ she said to the child, ‘it must be late, we must find your sister, it’ll be past your bedtime.’

With rat-like motions, bones cracking, the little girl clambered up Rebecca’s leg fixing herself onto her back, digging her boney fingers into the rivets of her ribs.

‘You must be tired,’ said Rebecca, walking like a stick to the door.

The girl said nothing but tightened her grip. They shuffled as such into the yellowed glow of the hallway, the space somehow different to that afternoon. The floorboards creaked above them, and dust shook from the rafters coating their hair. Rebecca coughed, seeing a snippet of the inside of her throat, red and raw, twisting deep into her guts where something tickled her within.

‘We shall have to fix you a bath,’ she said to the silent figure on her back who withered with each step.

Coughing still, Rebecca climbed the stairs, each step higher than the one before, rising above them like a dark tower.

There was a creak on the boards which startled her, and turning, she saw the old woman on her hands and knees climbing the stairs, her bony fingers clawing at the splintered wood, a grin fixed to her gnarled face. Rebecca hastened her pace.

‘What are you doing?’ she called back over her shoulder.

The old woman wheezed a laugh, hurrying up the stairs behind her. Rebecca reached for the next step, high above her head, leaning outwards as if on the face of a mountain. The landing was in sight as a faint patch of light at the summit, but it would take all she had not to fall. The old woman scrabbled and scratched at the wooden stairs, splinters digging under her nails. As Rebecca looked back, she caught the frantic grin of the woman looking up at her, who reached a bony hand out to grab Rebecca’s foot. The nails on the hand had grown in size, and scratched Rebecca’s ankle, pulling at her shoe.

‘Get off me!’ screamed Rebecca, and on her back the child started to cry. 

The old woman bore her gums at Rebecca, and she saw inside a mouth vacant of teeth, and bubbling up from her throat, an inky liquid. As the ooze cascaded down her cheeks, the old woman began to cough and splutter, her words nonsensical. Rebecca reached her hand into a crevice of the stairs, pulling herself and the wailing child onto the last plinth underneath the overhang of the landing, which loomed high above them. She peered over the edge, and saw the woman’s tarred face, her eyes the only visible part of her, rolling in her head. Gasping for breath and retreating from the edge, Rebecca removed the sobbing child from her back and lay her down upon the step which had opened up to perhaps a mile in width, so far Rebecca could no longer see the banister at the far end. As soon as she put the child down, it scampered away into the darkness.

‘No, wait, come back!’

But there came no response, and she watched as the child vanished from sight. Down below she thought she could hear the old woman moving somewhere in the shifting house, but she was too tired to do anything but slump down and fall asleep on the edge of the wooden mountain. Laying her head down, she fell asleep in a cobwebbed corner, the house darkening around her.

She awoke to find herself at home in bed, the reddened tinge of the alarm clock glowing three am. In the gloom of her room she thought she heard a whisper, and sat herself up in bed, her lower back aching. It was with some effort she found the bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing. Something about the place looked different, and it was difficult to discern what had come to pass in the preceding hours, or days. She tottered to the top of the stairs, and peered down into the hallway below. She kept quiet not to wake her parents, and edged onto the first step, worried she would lose her balance. Someone knocked at the door. Who could it be at this hour?

A girl, no older than sixteen, entered the hallway, looking behind her, looking about her, nerves twitching her face. She knew this girl but it took a moment before the penny dropped.

‘Baby-seat,’ she murmured, almost under her breath.

‘Right,’ said the girl, slowing her words, ‘I’ve come to babysit.’

She studied the girl’s face, who shrank away from her, and something gurgled in her throat.

‘Baby-seat,’ she said to herself, turning away from the girl, walking into the gloom of the sitting room, ‘they bring the children.’