One of the most common (and overused) setups in horror has to be a young babysitter fending off a killer. The trope existed on and off screen before Halloween, but there’s no denying the 1978 movie influenced countless people to make their own comparable stories about imperiled caregivers. Now, readers will take one look at HarperCollins’ 1995 young-adult series Baby-Sitter’s Nightmares and naturally think these terror tales are nothing more than rehashes of old slasher movies. Looks can be deceiving, though.
Bill Schmidt’s artwork for the first two Baby-Sitter’s Nightmares books show the main characters, both young and attractive teen girls, in familiar scenarios. On the cover of Daniel Parker’s Alone in the Dark, the babysitter clutches a phone handset, mouth agape with fear, and staring out the window. The art for M.C. Sumner’s The Evil Child isn’t too dissimilar in style; the main character struggles to hold a door shut as a phone dangles nearby. All four entries show a man’s outline framing the cover and housing his victims. It all looks very When a Stranger Calls, doesn’t it?
Alone in the Dark and The Evil Child have almost matching setups. Teenagers, respectively Gretchen and Toni, agree to babysit precocious kids, all the while staying in strange homes far away from family, friends and, most of all, help. The differences start to rise immediately, however, when Gretchen receives a bizarre and ominous note on her first night in Parker’s book.
To Adam’s baby-sitter,
Go home. Get out while you can. Nothing will stand between Adam and us. Stay and you will suffer the consequences. The Trail of Blood ends in blood. Adam is ours.
Alone in the Dark is the definition of “well, that escalated. quickly.” Almost as soon as Gretchen’s mother drops her off at the Wollman family’s secluded mansion on a California peninsula, the danger commences. The parents leave in a hurry, and their son and Gretchen’s ward, seven-year-old Adam, reveals he’s not like other kids his age. Or any kid, in fact. The anonymously delivered note obviously scares Gretchen, but even without telling him about it, Adam assures her not to worry. The next day in town, Gretchen runs into her ex-boyfriend Todd and his new girlfriend Dana, and with them is a local named Zander. What is already an awkward moment becomes more so when Adam reveals certain information about Gretchen’s friends, all without ever asking a single question or even knowing them before this encounter.
The author of Alone in the Dark cuts to the chase and confirms Adam is indeed psychic. Or to be more exact, he can look at someone and instantly know things about them. In time, his power grows to where he foretells the future, but only after he endures a small seizure. Gretchen doesn’t have time to freak out because the imminent threat is closing in on their target. The next day, everything goes to hell once Todd’s dead body is discovered in the Wollmans’ jacuzzi. And the police now think Gretchen murdered him!
Adam urges his babysitter to escape because without her, he’s in trouble. An ancient cult called The Order of the Fiery Dawn requires Adam for their ritual. Nearly a millennium ago, the same cult accurately foretold a number of real-world events, and now its Soothsayer wants to seize Adam’s psychic power and distribute it to everyone in the group. This would make them virtually invincible. The ceremony is only viable after the boy turns seven, and following two human sacrifices — the first was Todd, who previously tried to warn Gretchen about the cult — Adam will be killed and his power will belong to the Fiery Dawn.
“They need a sacrifice for tonight—and now that I’m gone, she’s going to be it.”
Gretchen eventually goes on the lam with Adam, evading both the police and the cult, and they’re joined by Zander and former Fiery Dawn member Dana. There are no great twists or turns once the cult is revealed, and even that was made known in the prologue. Nevertheless, Daniel Parker delivers a harrowing and eventful misadventure in babysitting like few others. Fans of Dean Koontz’s The Servants of Twilight may enjoy this similar but different book.
The title of the second Baby-Sitter’s Nightmares book, The Evil Child, practically gives the plot away. Watching it play out, though, is where the fun comes in. Here Toni has moved to Florida from Colorado, and before the furniture has even arrived at her new home in this small beach community, she’s hired to babysit at a mansion outside of town. The infamous Brooklyn mansion, to be more precise. But prior to her knowledge of the house’s dark past, Toni gets to know her clients’ son, an eleven-year-old genius named William.
The Evil Child is more in line with classic horror stories of menaced babysitters than the previous book. For the most part, Toni is trapped at the foreboding Brooklyn mansion, essentially all alone apart from the housekeeper, Mrs. Pettigrew, her husband, and of course William. There is also the biggest staple of this subgenre: telephones. Toni begins to receive creepy calls from someone she suspects to be Mrs. Pettigrew’s husband.
M.C. Sumner’s entry in the Baby-Sitter’s Nightmares series has a slow buildup, especially after the cult business in the first book. The goings-on here are initially meager; aside from the phone calls is the family’s dead cat in the pool. It’s all enough to make Toni’s skin crawl, but nothing warranting the police’s attention, apparently. It’s only when Toni’s first friend in town, Jennifer, stops by with her pals does the protagonist learn about the unsolved murders at the Brooklyn house. William was adopted by relatives, the Southerlands, after his parents, the Brooklyns, were killed not too long after their daughter and William’s sister, Carolyn, mysteriously died out in the nearby swamp.
The voice was quiet for a moment; then there was a short, hard laugh that startled Toni. “I know where you are,” said the man. “I know who you are.”
Like clockwork, a heavy storm comes in, and the housekeeper and her husband are nowhere to be found. Now it’s just Toni and William in the big scary house. It is during the storm that Toni finally realizes who’s been calling her; after gaining access to William’s state-of-the-art computer, the babysitter discovers the boy has software that can mimic people’s voices. William could disguise himself as not only Mr. Pettigrew but also a police officer and a 9-1-1 operator. The discovery pushes William to come clean and reveal his plan; the boy genius tells Toni he “can’t get pleasure the way normal people do.” And the only thing that makes him truly happy is murder.
The Evil Child lives up to its title as Toni becomes William’s prey. He follows her with a gun throughout the mansion, then chases her down outside toward the swamp where Carolyn disappeared. And yes, William murdered both his biological parents and his sister. His adoptive parents, the Southerlands, had an inkling, and were more than happy to get away from the twisted kid, even if that meant subjecting an innocent babysitter to his homicidal tendencies. The bodies start to pile up in no time, some fresher than others, and had it not been for a deus ex machina in the form of a large alligator, Toni too would have become another of William’s victims.
Baby-Sitter’s Nightmares is already off to a wild start, thanks to these exciting two entries. From ancient cults to a tween serial killer, this short-lived series puts a new and exciting spin on babysitting horror. Childcare has never looked so deadly.
There was a time when the young-adult section of bookstores was overflowing with horror and suspense. These books were easily identified by their flashy fonts and garish cover art. This notable subgenre of YA fiction thrived in the ’80s, peaked in the ’90s, and then finally came to an end in the early ’00s. YA horror of this kind is indeed a thing of the past, but the stories live on at Buried in a Book. This recurring column reflects on the nostalgic novels still haunting readers decades later.
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