If R.L. Stine is known for anything in a literary setting, it's Goosebumps. And then Fear Street. And then The Babysitter quadrilogy. Released in the midst of his run with Scholastic for their Point series, The Babysitter is actually one I've been aware of for a long time, but much like other non-GB works I go into knowing little of. All I know is that the fourth book is apparently really bad, so should be fun to get there I guess. But all roads have to have a beginning, and let's see how Stine found a book he could milk for multiple books and without using a ventriloquist dummy to do it. It's The Babysitter.
Original cover is effective. I think it being so simple actually works in our favor. And it's a cover where we're looking through a window and no alien is unmasking. Progress. But what I mean by simple and effective is us looking from the outside in, the POV of the book's stalker, staring at our titular babysitter, Jenny, who also looks afraid and concerned. Even little things like the mirror showing us a seemingly empty outside and the ajar door make for a creepy scenario that actually feels real. Great stuff.
So, how did she land this babysitting gig? Well, Jenny and her cousin Melanie were at the mall when Jenny saw a young boy with pale white hair almost fall into the fountain. She saves him in time and asks where the boy's parents are and the boy, Donny Hagen, doesn't know. I mean, this is a book in 1989, so I can expect this degree of poor parenting. Mike and Mary Hagen, Donny's parents, soon arrive and thank her for saving their kid. They ask her to babysit Donny for the next couple weeks every Thursday and Saturday. After Laura leaves, Jenny arrives at the Hagen residence, which seems a bit creepy, especially with no working doorbell. Mr. Hagen opens the door and invites Jenny in. He mentions that the house is in poor shape because it's a really old house, pre-civil war, and they never got around to fixing it up. Reader beware, your house is in disrepair!
As the Hagens are about to leave, we learn that Donny is big into the original Ghostbusters movie and that he finds it to be awesome, particularly the part where Peter gets slimed. As the Hagens leave, Mr. Hagen mentions that recently there's been attacks on babysitters, with two being hospitalized. So wonderful timing to be taking a new babysitting job, huh? Things go smoothly and Jenny gets Donny to bed on time. However, she gets a bad feeling about this old house, especially with all of the noises she hears. We get our stock cat scare as the Hagens have a cat that leaps at Jenny. She tries to calm down with the newspaper, only to then see that now it's three attacked babysitters. She also checks to see what book she brought from home. A Stephen King book, so that won't calm the nerves.
Suddenly, Jenny hears footsteps. It's Donny wanting a glass of water. She gets him his water and tucks him in, telling a scary story. It's a sweet little scene showing that the two get along very well. As she leaves his bedroom she gets scared by knocks on the door. She answers, seeing it's a neighbor named Willers who thought the Hagens were home. Willers mentions that he believes he saw a prowler in the yard and asks to come inside, but Jenny says that he can't. So, now she's even more worried that this Willers guy might not be as humble as he seems.
The next day, Jenny relays the story to Laura. Particularly about how all the bad stuff was just in her head, but she does think Mr. Hagen is a bit too much of a worrier. Regardless, she'll keep the job. Then, from under the table pops out Chuck who jokes about being under the table to look up their dresses, which they aren't wearing any, but still, joke or not, yikes. Despite being a constant joker, he is at least a bit charming. That is, until he starts bugging her to come over on Saturday while she's babysitting, but she's steadfast against it. Both because the Hagens are already paranoid, and obviously because she still doesn't know much about Chuck to trust him.
Saturday arrives and Jenny once again babysits for the Hagens. Mrs. Hagen mentions that her husband is a massive worry wort, but he's otherwise fine. Though on this night he's worried about Donny looking more pale than usual. The two play hide and seek with Donny hiding. As Jenny looks around, she finds an odd room with a bunch of furniture covered in bedsheets, room full of dust. She searches the pantry and Donny scares her. That ends the game, but as she sends Donny to his room, the phone rings. Jenny answers, but all she hears is breathing. She then sees Donny on the other phone. She thinks that Donny was trying to scare her, but he says that he was just listening. He didn't make the prank phone call. Kid may be weird but he has no inner-Bart Simpson just yet. As she finally puts Donny to bed, the phone rings again. It's a male voice calling her "babes" and giving her the threat that "company is coming".
This, of course, frightens Jenny, but she also thinks it might be a prank call from Chuck. Or that it may have been Willers, the neighbor. She thinks to call the cops, but Mr. Hagen immediately calls to check in. Despite the call and everything, Jenny says that everything is fine and there were definitely no creepy phone calls. After Mr. Hagen hangs up, Jenny looks around some more and finds a photo of the Hagen family. The parents, Donny, and another child. A daughter. Now she pieces together why Mr. Hagen is how he is. The daughter must have died and since then it's taken a toll on the man, worried about the safety of his family. Though, you know, if he's this massive helicopter parent, it doesn't answer why Donny was left on his own at the mall. At least not yet, I guess. Suddenly Jenny sees something out front. A car with a shadowy figure staring at her. She remembers the phone call and the threat of company coming, and she begins to worry.
But nothing happens I guess as we go to the next day with Jenny back home. Her mother talks with her about suspecting something, which makes Jenny panic a bit, before her mother thinks it has something to do with Chuck. He called her house that night and Mrs. Jeffers gave him the Hagen phone number. So now Jenny's concerns that it was Chuck on the phone the previous night, or was even the guy in the car are even more founded. She talks with Laura a bit, where we learn that Laura stood up her old boyfriend Eugene to be with Bob Tanner. Careful, last time someone got off on making someone suffer from a breakup in one of these books I read, it didn't go too well for the breaker upper.
Chuck arrives as the girls are at a mall store called "Sock World", which sells socks. My god we really left so much of the mall world behind when the internet boomed, huh? He apologizes, not for any phone calls he may or may not have made, but for being an ass on Friday. So he seems to be at least a bit less of a weird jerk as Jenny thought, but her guard is still up. The next Thursday comes and it's another night to babysit. It goes well again. Heck, there's been far less creepy noises so far, save for the grandfather clock. Suddenly, the phone rings again and it's the voice again, threatening once more to show up real soon. Jenny calls the cops, but just gets given the number of a cop named Lieutenant Ferris to call in case something more than a phone call occurs. They also say these type of harassers never actually go out and come to the victim's house. Which would be something if not for, you know, THE BABYSITTERS THAT HAVE BEEN ATTACKED RECENTLY!
Jenny then gets scared by someone at the window. It's Chuck wearing a monster mask, who for someone who really has feelings for Jenny, is doing a really bad job at this. Donny wakes up and is really enamored with Chuck and the monster mask. They get him back to bed and Jenny wants him to leave, but they eventually make out. Chuck begins to tell her that he did call the Hagen residence, which makes Jenny panic a bit before they hear a crashing noise outside. They check outside where Jenny soon sees it was Willers again claiming to have seen a prowler and tripping over Mr. Hagen's log pile. After that, Chuck explains that he did call the previous Saturday. He was the first call, the one that barely made any sound. That's because despite being an original prankster, he's also very shy and awkward, which is why he didn't say anything. But he only called her the one time. That's enough to forgive him for now I guess.
The Hagens return early and Chuck manages to escape in time. Once again, Mr. Hagen is extremely paranoid. However, when Mr. Hagen finds the monster mask and again panics. Mr. Hagen takes her home and says that he has a strict rule against visitors showing up unannounced. He also briefly mentions that they had another child before dropping Jenny off. After volleyball practice the next day, Jenny notices a note in her gym bag. Another threat saying that company is coming soon. She once again assumes it's the work of Chuck. As she heads to babysit the next Saturday, she gets chased by Mr. Willers. But when she arrives and tells the Hagens, they mention that they don't have a neighbor named Mr. Willers.
Of course, Mr. Hagen is now even more worried, but Jenny says that she'll be fine and Donny will be busy watching... POLTERGEIST? My god the eighties were the "parents not giving a damn" Shangri-La. After she puts Donny to bed, Jenny is scared again. But this time it's Mr. Hagen arriving home much earlier than planned. He checks on Donny, but Donny's gone! He is in hysterics, muttering that this can't happen again. But turns out Donny snuck out of bed to scare them. Mrs. Hagen arrives and is pissed that Mike left so soon. Eventually Jenny is driven home and it seems that Mr. Hagen is on the verge of crying. When she gets home, Jenny gets a call from Chuck who says he had nothing to do with the notes. He also says that he'll see her on Thursday, and it will be real special. This already puts horrible thoughts in Jenny's mind.
The next Thursday, Chuck arrives with Laura and Eugene, who are back together. This makes Jenny panic, given Mr. Hagen's warning of not wanting other people in the house while she's babysitting. As Chuck goes to check on his headlights, Jenny remembers some incident when she was six with her parents arguing around the time of their divorce. She also seems to remember her mother chopping up something in the kitchen and a bit of blood on the floor. But her mother says it was just a thumb cut. Jenny calms down and relaxes with Chuck. For way too long as the Hagens arrive, Mr. Hagen not happy about there being strangers in his house.
As the other teens leave and Mrs. Hagen tries to calm down Mr. Hagen, Jenny goes to get her jacket from the Hagen bedroom, only to find a box filled with newspapers. Newspapers mentioning babysitters who were negligent and accidentally killed the kids they were supposed to watch over. Each babysitter's name written in red marker. Jenny is starting to clue it together that perhaps it was Mr. Hagen who was responsible for the attacks. But before she can leave, Mr. Hagen decides he'll drive her home. But he doesn't drive her home. In fact, he floors it at 85MPH and utters that company's coming. Jenny then finally realizes that it was Mr. Hagen all along.
Mr. Hagen says that he had a two year old daughter who died because of a negligent babysitter. And now, it's Jenny's turn to die just like his daughter. He takes her to the top of a rock quarry and is about to throw her down into it when someone comes along with their pistol drawn. It's Mr. Willers, or to be more precise, Lieutenant Ferris. Mr. Hagen tries to throw Jenny into the quarry, but she avoids in time, causing him to fall. Ferris takes Jenny home and tells her everything. Two years ago, the Hagen's daughter mysteriously died. Mr. Hagen blamed the babysitter and assaulted her. He got off due to his mental state and moved to another part of town with his wife and surviving son. When the attacks on babysitters started again, Hagen was the prime suspect. And sure enough, that seems to have been the case. Ferris takes Jenny home where her mother and Chuck are waiting for her. Later, Mrs. Jeffers tells Jenny she's been offered another babysitting job, but Jenny chooses to pass on that. She's had enough babysitting for one book. But not too much as she'll be babysitting again soon, because Stine sees more sequels already.
The Babysitter is a good book. By all means not perfect, but is one of the better mysteries that Stine's pieced together. He does make it a bit too obvious that it's not Chuck, nor Willers, and that Mr. Hagen's paranoia makes him the prime suspect, but it's never written too bluntly obvious. What I like the most is the general feeling of this book. A feeling of fear that surrounds Jenny with each night she babysits. Growing more and more each time, giving her reason to fear somebody possibly coming for her. And I think I like that. It's rare to have a Stine book make you feel uncomfortable in a right way.
Jenny's a likable protagonist, albeit rather dull and plain. Not a bad thing mind you, as it makes her more relatable, but nothing super dynamic either. The other characters all work fine, though Chuck reaches a point of too annoying and too much of a creep. Donny is an okay kid character, though a bit bratty as things go along. Laura is superfluous. And Mr. Hagen works as the villain. A sign of someone not handling loss well to the point it poisons his mental health and makes him take vengeance on the neglectful. A bit of a Pamela Voorhees type. And he does get a rather disturbing death by falling to his death in a rock quarry, so that works too. Though I wonder that if the whole "Donny being left alone" thing at the mall was a two-person job. I mean, we know about how the death of the daughter affected Mr. Hagen, but how did it affect Mrs. Hagen? I hope I didn't just spoil the next book. No spoilers please.
So, to sum up, The Babysitter is good. Not exactly super fresh in its concept, but still strong enough a book to take those more dated ideas and flesh it out to a very easy to read through 160+ pages. And it does leave me wondering how things go from here. And with three more books to go, we may soon find out how much worse things get for Jenny Jeffers. The Babysitter gets an A-.
It was acceptable in the 80s: VCRs, Busy Malls, Walkman, Schwarzenegger references, letting kids watch Poltergeist with no issues.
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