The Johnson Kids

I was on the couch, tea in hand, greyhound curled up next to me, about to press play on the movie, when the phone rang. And like a fool, I answered it. It was one of those things you don’t think about, it just happens. A synapse in your brain fires, green button! Quick, touch it! And it ruined my night. 

“Hello?”

“Hey Ella, can you come over? It’s an emergency.” Beep beep beep, silence. 

The nonchalance was odd, but to be fair, so were the Johnson kids. The first time I babysat them, they asked if they could watch TV, then sat completely still for two and a half hours and watched the static. I passed the time googling “signs of demonic possession.”

I gathered my things and left my snoring dog in front of the TV screen saver. Just because Ashley Johnson was calm on the phone didn’t mean everything was okay. The Johnsons were weird.

Adam and Ashley Johnson were twins. Rich twins. Their parents paid me over a hundred dollars an hour to babysit them even though they had a live-in housekeeper and a top of the line security system. And objectively, they were the easiest kids I ever sat. I never had to pull them off each other or take an extraneous punch. I just sat on their forty-thousand dollar couch and watched them weave dolls out of shower drain hair. They were unsettling, but not difficult.

As I pulled out of the parking garage I ran through what a possible Johnson emergency could be. Maybe they couldn’t find the static channel and their parents didn’t want to hear it. Maybe their chihuahua Skippy was missing and on a completely unrelated note they wanted me to try their new homemade chicken nuggets. I merged onto the highway.

A couple years ago, when the twins were seven, I was trying to teach them how to play a board game when Mr. and Mrs. Johnson skittered down the stairs wrapped in towels; whether or not they had anything on underneath is unknown.

I jumped up from my place at the coffee table and they jumped back up a few stairs. 

“You’re not supposed to be here!” yelled Mrs. Johnson. 

“Why do you go out of your way to ruin everything?!” yelled Mr. Johnson. 

They looked directly at me when they spoke and I had no idea how to respond. I stood there with my mouth open for what felt like an entire math class. 

Then Adam and Ashley stood up and said, “Glad that’s over,” and “When am I ever gonna have to remove someone’s funny bone with a pair of buzzing tweezers?” 

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson went back up the stairs. At five on the dot Mrs. Johnson came down, fully dressed, and handed me an envelope of Benjamins. They never brought it up again, and I never found out why they were so upset.

When I got off the highway, I hit a red light and checked my phone, but there was nothing. Was there really an emergency? Adam and Ashley had never called or texted me before.

When I got to the Johnsons’ mansion, the twins were sitting criss cross on the floor, facing each other, having a staring contest. The duration of their staring contests could be considered medical miracles. But that’s not what caught my attention this time. It was the blood, they were both covered in it. 

“What is that? Who’s bleeding? Is this the emergency?!” 

They held eye contact with each other. Adam said, “Mom and Dad are dead.”

“WHAT?!” I stumbled backward, but caught myself on the door. 

The twins didn’t move. 

“Upstairs,” said Ashley. “First door on the right.” She pointed, still not breaking eye contact with Adam.

I stumbled toward the stairs. I’d never been up them before. The kids’ rooms were on the ground floor, and the Mr. and Mrs. made it clear when I was hired: “As far as you’re concerned, this house only has one floor.” From the outside, I think there might actually be five.

I gripped the handrail lightly to slow my shaking, but also because I thought if I gripped it too hard, an alarm would go off and the floor would slide back, leaving me dangling over a massive shark tank. I stepped on the first stair. 

I got the job sitting the Johnsons by indirect recommendation of one of my other clients. Thalia’s mom posted about me in the Grangebuckle Hills Elementary Parents Facebook Group back when I was just getting started. After I accepted the Johnsons’ generous offer, I got a call from Thalia. “You didn’t take the job babysitting the Johnson twins, did you?” there was an urgency in her voice that unsettled me. 

“Yeah, why?”

“No, no, Ella, n—“

“Who is that?” her mom’s footsteps got louder. 

I heard some indiscernible bickering, and the line went dead. I was never asked to watch Thalia again.

The second floor had the same tacky purple carpet as the first. There were bloody footprints leading to the first room on the right, ending near my feet in four haphazardly placed red shoes. 

I was hardly breathing as I made my way into the room. 

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were laying on their bed, bloody and dead. I almost stepped on the two matching kitchen knives on the floor. As much as I wanted to flee the house screaming, I knew I had to check if either of them were still alive. So I stepped closer. 

I’d watched enough crime shows to know not to touch the bodies, and I’d seen enough campy horror films to check and see if the twins were standing behind me. They weren’t.

I held my hair back so as not to drop DNA, and leaned my ear over Mrs. Johnson. Nothing. 

I tried Mr. Johnson. There was a faint wheeze. 

“Oh my god,” I pulled out my phone and called 911.

Maybe if I’d watched any true crime, I wouldn’t be so surprised by the kind of court rulings you can get with a lot of money. Mr. Johnson lived to tell the court his kids didn’t do it. It obviously couldn’t have been Mrs. Johnson, and that left only one other person in the house. Me. It was almost a year before I got to watch another movie. Speed 2: Cruise Control—not worth the wait. Watching it in an audience of orange jumpsuits wasn’t great either. The clanking of handcuffs detracted from the overall experience, if there was anything left to detract. Hell, Keanu Reeves wasn’t even in it. I like to think though, eight states away in my parents’ house, my dog is curled up on the couch and watching Speed 2 on repeat so we can talk about it when I get home.