Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror by R.L. Stine Page B

pulling on my long ponytail and hoop earrings, and older kids like the silly games I make up after their parents leave the house. Back in my old neighborhood I made a small fortune as a babysitter. In fact, when my dad lost his job, he joked that I was going to have to step in as the breadwinner of the family. With no friends in my new neighborhood, I figured I might as well spend Halloween night babysitting.
    As I was contemplating my luck at finding a babysitting job so quickly, Mrs. Perfect pulled her cell phone from her purse, opened it, and snapped my picture with a single swift movement. “For my children,” she explained, punching a number into her phone with her gloved finger. “So you won’t be a complete stranger when you come over.”
    â€œOh. Sure.” Nobody had ever taken my picture in advance of a babysitting job before. Maybe she’s actually taking the picture as a security precaution since she doesn’t know me well , I thought.
    Well, in hindsight, I know that Mrs. Perfect was telling the truth: The photo really was for her kids. Just not in the way I expected.
    â€œSo we live next door to the Perfects,” I remarked wryly after we said good-bye to our new neighbor. “I guess we’re moving up in the world.”
    â€œIsn’t it funny?!” My mom grabbed a pair of scissors and cut open one of the storage boxes that were stacked in the room. “Here I am looking my worst, and who comes over but ‘Mrs. Perfect’!”
    Oh, it was funny, all right.
    If you like being killed, this whole thing is hilarious.
    It’s hard to believe that just hours ago, I was sitting on a window seat in my new bedroom peering down into the next-door neighbors’ backyard and feeling almost happy as I spied on Mrs. Perfect’s three kids—a girl and boy who appeared to be about five or six, and a baby girl who looked as if she were about one year old. The children were cute, but something about their demeanor seemed joyless and somber—older than their years. Sitting silently in an old-fashioned baby buggy, even the baby struck me as unusually reserved and serious as she sucked on her bottle.
    Surrounding the children were some of the most enthusiastic backyard Halloween decorations I had ever seen. Tiny ghosts made of gauzy material dangled from tree branches, dancing in the wind. The lawn resembled a tiny church graveyard filled with small, fake tombstones. Well, I assumed they were fake. It’s funny how the scene struck me as simultaneously adorable and sad. For some reason, I felt sorry for those strangely forlorn little kids. I imagined myself befriending them: reading funny stories, playing hide-and-seek in the yard, tickling the baby’s toes and making her giggle.
    I must have dozed off while sitting in the window seat daydreaming, because the next thing I knew, all three children had vanished from the garden below. I felt strangely dizzy, so I decided to take a walk and get some fresh air.
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    I quickly realized that it took only about ten minutes to see just about everything there was to see in the town of Entrails—a “dollar store,” a bakery, a McDonald’s, a gas station, a church, a dentist’s office, a bar called Tim’s Lounge, and a gift shop called Sweet Memories that sold sentimental greeting cards, candles, and hundreds of dolls and stuffed animals dressed up in elaborate costumes. A large, vintage-looking sign on the wall in Sweet Memories announced:
    Custom-Built Dolls
    REAL HAIR
    Order Today
    I had never seen so much velvet and lace in one store, and I couldn’t help wondering how a store that sold mostly dolls could stay in business in such a small town. It was as silent as a tomb in the store; I was the only customer in sight.
    As I browsed shelves stacked with floppy-eared rabbits wearing petticoats and dolls with clear-blue glass eyes that stared out of painted porcelain faces, the