Goblin Bites: Scary Stories 18

Julie considered herself a fairly level-headed and smart person. She was only fifteen, but had been told all her life that she was always very mature for her age. It was this sense of advanced maturity that started her part-time career as the go-to neighborhood babysitter. She had quite a good rapport developed with all the families who lived on her street, and it wasn't long before her reputation as a responsible young adult began spreading to the surrounding streets. She became so busy that her parents put in a separate, private line just to screen her babysitting gig calls. In half a year, she had already made herself a decent little nest egg to grow her college fund upon, which she was very proud of.

One evening, she got a call from a new family that had moved in up the block recently. Mr. Grover, the father, was in the process of starting up a new business in town, and asked if she could watch his young son, Aidan, for a few hours that upcoming Saturday while he finalized his business permits at the town hall. Of course, Julie agreed, and wrote down all the information he'd given her in her appointment notebook. When Saturday came, she walked over to Mr. Grover's house with her head held high, but stopped in her tracks when she reached the address he had given her.

The house wasn't really a house at all. It was a large, white building with columns out front built like a square, occupying the corner lot of the block. Her parents told her a long time ago that the building was once an old funeral home that had gone out of business before she was born. It creeped her out to no end that anyone would actively choose to live there, but she took a deep breath and pressed on her way up to the front door. "It's just an old building," she told herself, "nothing but bricks, mortar and wood. Simple as that."

When she rang the bell, the door was answered by a tall, thin man with a pencil moustache. "Good morning," he said, his gaunt face breaking into a warm smile, "You must be Julia, yes?"

Julie nodded, "I prefer Julie, but yes sir. I take it you're Mr. Grover?"

A pale, shovel-like hand extended to take the one she'd offered cordially. "That I am," Mr. Grover smiled, "you're a little early, but that's alright. Come in, please. I'll introduce you to Aidan." Upon stepping into the building's front room, Julie froze up a little at her surroundings. Heavily padded red velvet carpet covered the entire floor, making every footstep upon it practically soundless. There were a few armchairs and small sofas lining the walls, but the main space in the front room was occupied by at least a half a dozen caskets arranged in neat rows. Soft, peaceful organ music was being piped in from hidden speakers around the room, but otherwise the entire house felt eerily quiet.

Noticing her apparent unease, Mr. Grover placed a hand on her shoulder. "Forgive me," he said, "I should have warned you ahead of time. You see, I'm a mortician, and the business I plan to start is going to be right here out of my home. Aidan and I reside in the apartment upstairs. I understand if you're unsettled, and it's alright if you wish to change your mind."

Julie shook her head, trying her best to stay professional, "No, that's okay. I was just... caught off guard a little. As long as we stay upstairs, everything should be fine."

Mr. Grover seemed relieved and impressed by her resilience, "I'm glad to hear it. Follow me, please; the apartment is this way." He led her to the back of the building, past a partially open door and toward a narrow flight of wooden stairs. As they walked by, Julie couldn't help but sneak a peek through the door, but immediately wished she hadn't. Her quick glance revealed a room covered floor to ceiling in crisp white tiles, with a stainless steel table on wheels in the middle of it. She tried to put the image out of her mind as she followed Mr. Grover upstairs, and was relieved to find the small second floor apartment looked completely normal.

Sitting on the couch in the living area was a small boy in dinosaur pajamas watching cartoons. He looked to be about six or seven, with shaggy blond hair that covered up the left side of his face almost entirely. Mr. Grover tusked and put his hands on his hips in mild disappointment, "Aidan, I thought I told you to get dressed twenty minutes ago." The little boy didn't move or bat an eye, just kept staring at the TV. Mr. Grover sighed and walked a little closer, combing his son's mussed hair with his fingertips. "Your new babysitter is here," he said encouragingly, "wouldn't you like to say hello to her?"

At that, Aidan blinked and looked at his father, then turned his gaze to Julie. She smiled and gave him a little wave,"Hi, Aidan. My name is Julie. It's nice to meet you." Aidan remained mute, but his startlingly blue right eye kept scanning Julie up and down curiously.

Mr. Grover smiled apologetically, "I'm sorry. Aidan is very shy, but should warm up to you soon. Go get dressed now, Aidan, please, and I expect you to be on your best behavior for Julie. Alright?" Aidan nodded slowly, then hopped off the couch and scurried away to do as he was asked. Mr. Grover strode over to the apartment's kitchenette and picked up a satchel sitting on the counter. "I'd better be going now. It's a long walk from here to city hall. The emergency numbers are posted on the fridge, and you can help yourself to anything in it if you get hungry. I should be back around noon at the latest. Thank you again, Julie."

Although Aidan never spoke a word the entire time, Julie thought the job went fairly smoothly. When Mr. Grover returned that afternoon, Aidan ran to jump in his arms and whispered something in his ear. Mr. Grover's smile widened, "You did? I'm glad to hear it!" He looked up at Julie next, "Aidan tells me the two of you had lots of fun today, and that he likes you very much. If you're available, can you watch him again for me next weekend?" Julie started to answer yes, but the words wandered away from her tongue when she looked at Aidan's face again. Mr. Grover had pushed his son's hair out of his face to kiss his left cheek when he came home, finally allowing her to see it in full. The little boy's left eye was pure white, and the skin around it looked warped and lumpy like melted wax. When he noticed she was staring, Aidan shook his head so that his eye was covered again, then buried his face in his father's neck.

Mr. Grover shushed his whimpering child comfortingly, "Aidan, it's alright. I told you, you don't have to be afraid of what other people think." To Julie, he sighed wearily, "I'm sorry. Let me put him down for a nap, then we'll talk downstairs." She nodded, still a little stunned by the poor boy's disfigured face. She waited patiently on the couch for Mr. Grover to return from Aidan's bedroom, then followed him back downstairs to the tiled room she'd seen on her way up earlier. She tried her best not to stare at the various tubes and containers of chemicals lining the shelves around her while Mr. Grover spoke. "You may have noticed Aidan is a little embarrassed about his eye," he started slowly, his tone deeply riddled with guilt, "It was my own fault, really; after his mother died, I... I wasn't myself. I let him play in the embalming room at my old job, which was beyond foolish, and I wasn't watching him as closely as I should have been. Before I knew it, he'd knocked over a shelf full of chemicals, and-..."

When he trailed off, Julie nodded slowly, "I understand. I'm so sorry, Mr. Grover. It'll take some getting used to, but I think I can handle it. Aidan really is a great kid, and you said he likes me... right?" Mr. Grover seemed incredibly grateful for Julie's understanding, and before she left they had made arrangements for her to babysit again the following week.

Within a few months, business at the funeral home was booming. Julie was asked to babysit almost every weekend, and as promised Aidan did eventually start to come out of his shell around her. This was helped in no small part by the fact that Mr. Grover was on the premises most of the time, working downstairs in either the funeral parlor or in the embalming room while Julie watched over Aidan upstairs. Every now and again Aidan wanted to go downstairs while his father was working, just for a few minutes, and if Mr. Grover gave his permission Julie indulged him. By then she had mostly gotten used to seeing the caskets and the occasional mourners filtering through, but it was still a little freaky when they happened to find Mr. Grover working with a "patient" as he called them. Aidan didn't seem to mind as much as Julie did, most likely because he had become acclimated to his father's line of work from a very early age.

As time wore on, Julie began noticing other small oddities about Aidan. When he spoke, which wasn't very often, most of what he talked about revolved around death. Considering Mr. Grover's chosen profession, Julie didn't think this was too strange, but the way in which he talked about it - so openly and more than often exitedly - gave her the shivers sometimes. Once, when they were playing outside on a fall afternoon, she lost track of Aidan for a moment. When she found him again a few minutes later, he was squatting down near the funeral home's crematorium, poking a dead frog he'd found with a stick. His face was chillingly calm as he did so, studying the poor creature with mild intrigue as it steadily became more and more mutilated by the stick. It took a long time for her to get him to stop, and when he finally did he asked if he could bring the dead frog inside. Julie looked at the boy in disgust, "Aidan, why on earth would you want to do that? It's dead, and it's gross!"

Aidan tilted his head to see her with his good right eye, while his blind left eye glinted like a pearl at her in its warped socket. "To add to my collection," he said eagerly, "Do you wanna see it?" Without waiting on her answer, Aidan scooped up the dead amphibian and hurried inside, giving her no choice but to follow. He led her upstairs straight to his bedroom, which she had never been allowed into before. It looked like a typical kid's bedroom, except for one glaring oddity: on the top of Aidan's dresser was a collection of jars of varying sizes, each with something dead and gross floating in it. She nearly gagged when he dropped the frog into a vacant jar and sealed it up. A smile curled his lips as he rested his chin on the dresser, gazing proudly at the newest addition to his collection. "I'll need more space soon," he decided, "if I want my collection to get bigger." He turned to Julie next, still with that same, frankly unsettling grin, "Papa says when I get older, I can add more fun stuff to my collection, and soon mine will be even bigger than his! He keeps his collection in the basement. Wanna see it?"

Julie politely declined, then suggested they play something else for a while to change the subject. She continued to babysit for the rest of the year, then suddenly one day in late January the mortician and his son just seemed to disappear. Mr. Grover had closed the funeral home and moved house within the span of a few days, giving no notice to any of his clients or neighbors. One day they were there, and the next Julie had learned they had moved out of state without leaving so much as a forwarding address or a letter explaining why.

Rumors had begun to spread around town after they moved away about several people who had gone missing in the area over the last year, and were never found. Julie thought for a moment about what Aidan had said about his father's "collection" in the basement, but chose to keep her mouth shut about it. Deep down, she was glad the moritician and his son had moved away, but she still saw their faces - particularly Aidan's face with his haunting, pure white eye - in her nightmares for years after. They were so frightening that she gave up her babysitting business entirely, and refused to do it ever again.