Point By Numbers: The Babysitter II

Earlier this month, we covered The Babysitter, a quartet of tomes from R.L. Stine for the Point line. And It wasn't too bad actually. Did devolve to a very predictable outcome, but still worked as a good horror tale. So, what's next in the saga of Jenny Jeffers? Let's find out with The Babysitter II.

I'm not as fond of this cover as I was the first one. I felt the first cover worked for a more creepy scenario. This one doesn't have that effect, but still works in selling Jenny's paranoia, especially given what happened last time. So, it's still effective, but less so. 

In our last book, Jenny Jeffers got a job babysitting a young boy named Donny Hagen. His parents come off as nice, though the father, Mike Hagen, seemed particularly paranoid and weird. As Jenny babysits Donny, every night she feels as if someone's watching her. And she gets freaky phone calls promising something will happen to her soon. Eventually, Jenny learns that Mr. Hagen went crazy after his daughter was killed by a negligent babysitter and started to take his aggression on other babysitters. He tries to throw Jenny into a rock quarry before Lieutenant Ferris saves her life. And the book ends with Jenny and her boyfriend Chuck feeling safe and not having to worry about another frightening babysitting gig. But since that would kill this series pretty quick, that was never going to last.

Jenny hasn't been handling the situation too well. She blames herself for Mr. Hagen's death, for leaving Donny now a boy without his sister and his father. She's also been having nightmares about the corpse of Mr. Hagen crawling out of the quarry, body still broken and torn apart, ready to get her. She relays this to her psychiatrist, Dr. Schindler, who she notes looks nothing like a psychiatrist. She also doesn't know if she should babysit again, but she was unable to find a summer job and needs the money. Plus the Wexner family and their son Eli seem like a nice, less murdery family than the Hagens at least. She ultimately decides to go through with it, since there's no way Mr. Hagen's ever coming back. And, I mean, she couldn't possibly get herself into another babysitting nightmare, right? Dr. Schindler suggests sleeping pills, but Jenny knows that they won't stop her nightmares. She leaves after talking with Dr. Schindler's secretary, Miss Gurney.

As Jenny walks home, she hears someone follow her, then gets scared by Chuck, who is still an annoying prankster, despite, you know, his ex-girlfriend's real trauma. Yep, they're not an item anymore. More so on Jenny's side as Chuck still pines for her. But Jenny feels nothing for him anymore. But despite, you know, his creepy invasion of her boundaries, she still blames herself for the breakup. That she isn't the same person anymore after everything that went down before. She leaves Chuck and hops the bus. She finds herself at the quarry, with her head telling her that she can't lose her memories by chasing after them. Suddenly, Mr. Hagen crawls up the quarry and grabs her, when she wakes up at home by her mother. Turns out that indeed she can't escape the nightmares of what happened.

Jenny heads to the Wexner house, which is night and day in comparison to the dilapidated shape of the Hagen household. The Wexner's home looks like the model of a perfect family household with a nicely mowed lawn, clean shrubbery and nothing looking like it's going to fall apart.  We're then introduced to Rena and Michael Wex-wait, ANOTHER Mike? We learn that their ten year old son Eli is a technological genius who is always building things. And if you forget that, he likes to remind you every few minutes. He did build his computer though. He has a 180 IQ and even built his own phone as well. Though he doesn't have any friends except his pet tarantulas. But, despite that incident, the night seems to go pretty fine.

Jenny relays her experience to Dr. Schindler. She was freaked out by the tarantulas, but Eli seemed to love her misery, almost like he's an evil child or something. She also seems to have angered Eli when she, rightfully, snapped at him for the prank. And the Wexler parents later warned her that it's not good to get on Eli's bad side. After relaying this to her new friends Rick and Claire at the mall, she searches through the CD section when she sees a boy about her age with bright spiky blonde hair and an Aerosmith shirt following her. Turns out she just dropped her bill for the session with Dr. Schindler. He introduces himself as Cal and immediately asks her out, and after feeling against it, she decides to give him a shot.

The next babysitting day arrives and things seem weird with the Wexner parents. Rena and Michael start fighting with Rena feeling like Michael defends Eli too much despite how much of a pain he can be. And sure enough Eli's just watching a slasher movie. Jenny tries to get him to do something else, but he refuses. And Jenny's feeling a bit too creeped out with him watching slasher films given how her life became a horror movie. She leaves Eli to himself before getting a call on the phone. When she answers, the person on the line calls her "babes", just like how Mr. Hagen did. The voice on the other end proclaims that they're back. She begins to panic, remembering her nightmare, when she sees someone in the kitchen. It's Mr. Wexler, checking in. She tells him about Eli watching the movie, but he says they really don't know how to control what Eli does.

Jenny tries to get Eli to do something with her, but he continues to refuse and calls everything babyish to annoy her some more. He also likes to read Stephen King novels. If only Eli had a children's novella series created by the author of those Fear Street books, might be a better suit. I mean this book was released one year before, just saying. After he goes to bed, the Wexlers return home and they're glad that Eli hasn't been that much trouble. As Jenny leaves, she gets grabbed again by Chuck who still really wants to talk to her, despite, you know, again not knowing what boundaries are. She tries to tell him that it's over, and he reacts to that, well, pretty damn awfully. By which I mean he grabs her, throws her to the ground, then screams that she'll be sorry before he runs off. Well, that could have gone much worse. But it makes her think that maybe Chuck was the one who made that phone call. Speaking of phone calls, Jenny gets another call, but this time it's Eli from his homemade phone. 

Jenny and Cal head to a party. It goes okay, but they instead go skating for a bit. When Cal takes Jenny back to her house, they see something rattling in the bushes. Cal chases after the person, with Jenny unsure if it's Chuck, or worse, actually Mr. Hagen. Later that night, another phone call. Not Eli this time, the voice again telling her that company's coming. Jenny has another nightmare where she's in the mall parking lot on a rainy night. She sees Cal's body in bad shape in a clothes pile, but instead, it's the zombie Mr. Hagen with bugs all over him, ready to attack her. She relays this to Dr. Schindler, feeling that this dream felt too real. That this was also the first time Cal was in her nightmare. Dr. Schindler begins to assume that maybe it's Cal who's been calling her, though that confuses Jenny. How would he or anyone know what Mr. Hagen used to say? Unless.. well, let's continue.

So, Dr. Schindler now thinks that maybe all of this is Jenny's overactive imagination. Her trauma from the Hagen incident coming back to haunt her and twist her perception of reality. She asks Dr. Schindler's secretary, Miss Gurney, to prescribe her some sleeping pills. She heads for the bus, but when she checks her bag for bus fare, she finds a dead tarantula inside. Another one of Eli's jokes? She gets picked up by Cal and the two head to play tennis with Rick and Claire. Things go fine, but we see a more aggressive side to Cal. but so far, Jenny hopes that the kinder side she sees more often is the real Cal. 

Jenny babysits Eli again and asks if he was the one who put the dead tarantula in her bag, but he says he didn't. And given all his tarantulas are still where they should be, he seems to be telling the truth, but Jenny doesn't fully buy it, given how he's been acting this whole time. This upsets Eli who cries, which is new for Jenny to see. She leaves him alone for a second, only to hear a loud crash. She then sees Eli covered in blood. She panics, but it's yet another one of Eli's pranks. She's angry, but that's made him the happiest she's ever seen him, making her really wonder just how sick and twisted this kid really is.

Jenny gets another scare, this time by Rick and Claire showing up to see what's going on. Also, Rick seems more interested in Jenny, but when she tells him to stop, he reacts angrily. Also reacting angrily is Eli, not happy with the other two teens in his house. When Rick and Jenny aren't paying attention, suddenly Claire falls down the stairs. But Jenny notices Eli is standing atop the stairs, grinning. She once again tells this to Dr. Schindler later on. Her suspicions were massive before, but now she's no longer mistaking it. She definitely thinks Eli is evil.

The next babysitting night comes and the Wexners mention that Eli seems to actually like Jenny, which is a surprise to her. Not long into the night she gets another call. Another whisper threatening her. However, when she checks on Eli, she sees him talking on his homemade phone. But he swears that he's not the one calling her. Jenny finds herself in the mall parking lot again, only for real this time. She hears footsteps and fears it's Mr. Hagen, so she runs off, only to run into Dr. Schindler who is conveniently there as well. She then finds Cal and leaves with him, though she notices how scared she was of Dr. Schindler for the first time.

Jenny heads to Wendy's with Cal and tells him about the voices, about Eli, about the tarantula, then she believes she's finally figured out what's going on. It's been Dr. Schindler the whole time. She told him everything that's happened, so he would know where to find her, what to say to set her off, how to scare her. Why, she has no idea. But it can't be Chuck, because for as violent as he's gotten, he wouldn't do any of this to her. And it couldn't be Eli. So, unless it is Mr. Hagen back from the grave, she's got to find out soon. And to do so, she needs to set a trap. At her next session, she tells Dr. Schindler that she plans to head to the rock quarry to settle her issues once and for all. 

After the next babysitting gig, which goes well as Eli hugs her, seemingly worried about her safety, Jenny heads to the rock quarry with Cal, to await Dr. Schindler. But when the whisperer arrives, it's not Dr. Schindler. It's Miss Gurney, the secretary. She was the one doing this all along. Why? Because she thinks that Jenny has been trying to steal Dr. Schindler away from her. She's crazy for the doc, but thinks that his cold demeanor means that he's got feelings for Jenny. So she overheard the therapy sessions and knew everything that Jenny was afraid of and used it against her, hoping to scare her away, but now she intends to finish the job that Mr. Hagen couldn't. She goes to throw Jenny into the quarry, but Cal tackles Miss Gurney, sending them both falling. 

But, thankfully for Cal at least, the quarry's filled with water, so both of them didn't fall to their deaths. But Miss Gurney's still alive, and still tries to attack Jenny. She grabs Jenny and begins to drown her. It seems the end, until she sees flashing red lights. It's the cops who subdue Miss Gurney long enough for Jenny to be saved. Dr. Schindler is there as well. He knew of Miss Gurney's violent side and soon realized who could be going after Jenny, so he called the cops and saved her in the nick of time. 

What I like about The Babysitter II is that it feels like it actually cares about the events of the previous story. And, as someone who has read many a Goosebumps sequel, that seems weird coming from an R.L. Stine book. But, most of the more important events from the previous book matter in this one. And the book focuses on how much of that trauma has affected Jenny. She isn't over it. She blames herself for the death of Mr. Hagen, despite knowing what was wrong with him and what he intended to do to her. And it makes the story work as she now has to piece what's going on. Though it becomes too obvious that given the book being grounded in enough reality, it can't be a zombie Mr. Hagen. And Chuck becomes too obvious that he's not the culprit. Though if there was any shred of likability in him from the last book, that's long gone.

Cal also works a bit well too. Part of me worried that he'd be the culprit. That maybe he was related to Mr. Hagen and thus knew some of the stuff about Jenny and how he harassed her. It also becomes too obvious that it's not Eli either, though the book makes sure to not make him very endearing. He has his moments, but otherwise seems like a kid with a dark side. I mean, we leave the whole "Claire falling down the stairs" thing open ended. Oddly, my suspicions were with the secretary from the beginning, though it wasn't until the reveal that I was certain, but it all works. I also like that we just didn't follow up with Mrs. Hagen or make the villains the Wexlers. But, again, two books left, so no spoilers please. 

Overall, The Babysitter II is a good sequel. Doesn't have the same bite of the original, but still works for a solid enough follow up to what's befalling Jenny this time. It feels like a safe sequel and a sign that Stine definitely planned follow ups. And sometimes safe can work, and it worked here. What freaky misadventures await Jenny Jeffers? We'll find out... eventually. The Babysitter II gets a B+

It was acceptable in the 90s: CDs, Busy Malls, 80s TMNT, John McEnroe references.