I responded to an ad called “Sitter Wanted”. They meant it literally, and I’m not going to be stupid and break the only rule. (FINAL PART)

As I was typing the previous post, the footsteps got closer, until they reached my bedroom door.

My heart was pounding in my chest with a force that knocked the air out of my lungs. I looked over some comments and I decided to trust my gut. If the real box had been left unattended downstairs, there was nothing I could do now. I was most likely about to die. If the chess box was the actual box which needed guarding, I still had a chance to save myself.

I remained seated and waited, out of breath, for the remaining time to run out.

3:52AM

Fingers tapping against the wood of the door.

3:53AM

A gasp outside.

3:54AM

Multiple gasps, which melted into some sort of exaggerated breathing, loud and wet.

I was literally fucking shitting my pants. I’m not some good storyteller, I don’t know how else to put it. I’m not a writer. I was genuinely exhausted and about to collapse.

3:55AM

A loud bang. The doorknob started turning again. Good thing it can’t open the door.

The door opened.

Slowly, the slice of darkness grew and my eyes desperately took in the shadows, trying to make something out.

3:56AM

The door was now fully open. I stared into the hallway. The whistle came again, long, playful.

A knock on the wall, and then the whistling stopped.

Then came a whisper. “Can I come in?”

My stomach clenched. Jesus Christ. Jesus. Fuck.

4:00AM.

Silence. My sweaty, trembling hands almost dropped my phone as I called the woman. It rang for a while, before she picked up.

“Yeah?”

“Did I talk to you on the phone before?”

“Huh?”

“You’ve got some nerve to be confused. I’ve just been through the worst 4 hours of my life.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Did I fucking talk to you before?”

*”*No, no you didn’t. Why, what did it say to you?”

A wave of relief washed over me. I almost broke into tears. “Did you send me a chess box?”

“…Yes? Why?”

I explained to her what had happened. After a long pause, she admitted that it was getting cleverer at tricking people. “You were right not to stand up. Damn. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“I want you to come over right now and take this thing away from me. I feel like I deserve an explanation.”

“I’ve had a bit to drink, but I’ll call a taxi. Yeah, I’m sorry. Basically, uh-” I heard movement on the other end, then her saying goodbye to some people- “when I was 15 I became friends with some weird people. Type of people that believed in witchcraft and stuff. They were so deep into tracking a cult that had disappeared a while ago… the Custodians, they called themselves – it was nice seeing you… yeah, no, I’m heading home! – and they vanished or just hid from the public eye.

They worshipped a witch. The Marrow Seamstress. They also thought that your soul could be found in your bone marrow, and the Seamstress would sew souls back together, make them immortal or something. I wasn’t too involved in any of that, but I played along. Anyway, one day I get a call from my friend and he says they’re going to do this ritual. He brings in this box and claims that some Custodian killed himself and his soul is trapped inside.

He says Layla, maybe we can train him to teach us how to become immortal. Summon his spirit or something. I was like Dude, you’re nuts, but he explained he got it from some other shady dude and it came with instructions. And then he told me what I already told you. Sit on the box. He said I was stalling it until he was ready to face it. I still don’t know why the packages keep changing, why they come in different shapes and sizes… maybe to trick you. But he tried to train the thing inside.

Talk to the thing.

Well, the first night he tried to talk to it was the night he disappeared. I haven’t heard from him since. The other members of the group took over the mission and they all disappeared one by one, until this girl Kate came to my door desperate. She’d witnessed what happened the previous nights and was absolutely hysterical. She said that whatever was inside the box was no Custodian, no ghost, but a demon with many faces. The Marrow Seamstress was one of its names, but in reality it had no gender or appearance. There was no way for you to talk to it.

We took turns looking over the box. One night – she was the sitter – she called me asking if it was really me outside her home. She disappeared the next day, and that’s when I knew two things: that I was the one who had to look over that shit and that it could trick you. It tricked me once, too, and as I said my boyfriend went missing. It was a whole mess, I had to move states… I was investigated for years. I can’t escape from it, and I don’t know what happens to me if it gets out.”

Mind you, I was listening to this bullshit at 4AM in the darkness. I had a terrible, terrible feeling of being watched.

Layla arrived around 20 minutes later. She took the chess box. “Listen, I know it’s creepy as fuck, but as long as you don’t stand up nothing really happens. I can pay you more to watch over it, if you want. You know the drill now, it could be easier for you. My life is in ruins – I can’t miss a night, I can’t marry, have kids, rest… I’m talking up to 1K for those 4 hours. If you take it for a full week, I could pay you 10K.”

It sounded incredible. I still couldn’t accept, though. I was not going to mess with this shit more than I already had. That whistling was still imprinted on my mind, and I knew I’d hear it in my dreams for weeks after this incident.

“I’m sorry, I really don’t want to be involved anymore.”

“Okay. I understand.”

Before she left, I had one final question.

“Hey, why did it automatically transfer to you after Kate died?”

“I guess it picked up my scent. It can do that, you know. If you witness someone being taken or if there’s two of you and one dies…”

“So if you die…”

Her expression was completely blank. “I don’t know.”

“Right.”

I went back inside and slept for 13 hours.

When I woke up, I went downstairs to have some breakfast-lunch-dinner. On the kitchen counter sat the chess box.

I ran my fingers across it. What the fuck? I’d brought it downstairs while me and Layla talked, but she had taken it with her.

“Hey. Do you, uh… have an eye on the box?”

“The chess box?”

“Yes. Did you maybe forget to take it, or…”

“Oh. Um, yeah. I’m sorry, I got carried away… I could have sworn I had it with me…”

That bitch.

“Well, could you come and get it? Before nightfall? I’m really uncomfortable with having it in my house.”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll be there in five.”

“Okay.”

I waited. 15 minutes. 20. 30. Called again.

“Layla?”

“Couldn’t you just watch it for another night? You really scared me with what you said and…”

“And what? It’s still your fucking box.“

“I know. I’ll just come, I promise.”

She didn’t. I waited for two more hours, then I took the chess box with me and drove to her house. She lived in this small apartment on the 4th floor. As I got to her door, a note greeted me: I’m really sorry. I just got scared.

I called her again and again, but she never picked up her phone. I began to panic and asked around. No one knew any woman with who went by Layla. They gave me another name of the girl who lived there, so I called the police and I reported her missing. As long as I had the box and it knew me, it wouldn’t just magically appear wherever she went, because it had me now.

She was not going to leave me alone with this thing.

It took them three hours to trace her card and tell me she’d used it at some gas station miles and miles away, so I got into my car and started driving. When midnight came, I pulled on the side of the road and sat on the chess box. There I was, in a car with no headlights, parked somewhat illegally, in the driver’s seat with a chess box under me. Car doors locked. No visitors. No surprises.

At around half past midnight, a truck flashed its bright lights at me. It was heading towards my car at a dizzying speed, and every inch of me begged me to run, to get out of the car.

No. It can crash into me for all I care. I closed my eyes and braced for an impact that never came. When I opened them, for a split second I stared into the eyes of another person, inches from my own face. Then – gone. I can’t even describe how they looked. How it looked like.

I heard a baby crying at some point. Out, into the distance. I saw someone in the backseat. Half of the car caught on fire.

I’m not standing up. I might be terrified, but I’m not standing up.

At around 3.40, a police car pulled up behind me. The policeman motioned to me to roll my window down. I did.

“Ma’am, do you know you’re not allowed to park here?”

“Shut up. You’re not real.”

The man paused. I felt a tingle of fear.

“Would you mind stepping out of the vehicle for me?”

“Not now. Wait twenty minutes. I can’t stand up right now.”

“Ma’am, are you on drugs?”

“You’re not real. Stop.”

*”*Ma’am?”

I decided to humor the demon. “I’m not on drugs.”

“Then please unlock your car and step out.”

“I told you to wait.”

I argued with the policeman for a little while, until the clock hit 4AM.

The policeman didn’t disappear.

Mhm. That fear was getting stronger now. I finally stepped out and he had to take me to the station for questioning. I spent the next 18 hours being interrogated on what I knew about the disappearance of the woman and the previous “sitters”. They obviously didn’t believe me. They tested me for drugs and moved me to another station, closer to my house.

They didn’t let me have the box. I went crazy in my tiny cell, begged them to let me have it, told them someone needed to sit on it for a few hours. Cried and said that something bad would happen, and they didn’t believe me.

Eventually, I fell asleep. I woke up stiff around 5AM. The guard was staring at me in an unsettling way, eyes were wide and bloodshot.

“Where’s the box?” I asked him.

“It was… um… at the station near [x], with the car…” he began. “What did you mean by… sitting on it?”

“What happened?”

His voice went down to a whisper. “They won’t tell me. I just know that someone died. That’s all I know. That’s all I know. Wait, I’m getting a call…”

A part of me wanted to scream. Another part of me trembled with anticipation.

As he spoke on the phone, the guard kept looking at me like he was trying to decide whether saying it out loud would make it worse.

“They didn’t tell me everything,” he muttered afterwards, rubbing his hands together. “Just… pieces. Stuff that didn’t make sense.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He swallowed.

“They said the box was in evidence. Just sitting there. Nothing special about it. One of the officers joked about it, I think. Said it was lighter than it looked.”

“Then, around…” he frowned, trying to remember, “uh, somewhere past midnight, people started complaining. Said they heard noises coming from the room. Like… scratching, maybe. Or knocking.”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the bench.

“They thought it was a rat at first. Or something in the walls. But then one of them said it sounded like… pacing. Waltzing… does that make sense to you?”

I felt sick.

“What happened after that?”

“They checked the room. Box was still closed. Nothing inside. They even opened it, just to be sure. Said it was empty.”

Of course it was.

“They closed it again. Locked the room.”

Another pause.

“And then one of the officers who were watching the feed said he saw someone in there.”

My throat tightened.

The guard’s eyes flicked to the door behind me.

“They thought he was messing around. Until another guy saw it too. Then the noises stopped… and one of them went in… walked inside, checked the box, even laughed. Said everyone needed to calm down, then he went quiet and asked, uh, something like When did you get in here? There was no one else in the room,” the guard whispered. “That’s what they said. Door was still open. Other officers right outside.”

My nails dug into my palms.

“What happened to him?”

The guard swallowed hard.

“They didn’t describe it properly. Just said he went to the box, opened it and jammed his head inside until they pulled him away. He then stopped breathing. They did CPR and everything, and nothing worked.”

A long silence.

“And the box?” I forced out.

His face went pale.

“…They said there were marks on the floor. Like someone had been sitting there. In the middle of the room, right in front of the box, and the officer who died… I really don’t get this, they said he went missing? How do you lose track of a dead body?”

“So there’s people who saw what happened?” If it picked up their scent…

“I just told you the station was full, so yes. Lots of people saw him die. What do you mean sit on it? On the fucking box?”

A few more hours passed while I explained what I knew. I could see that he was trying to wrap his head around it.

“But wasn’t the box yours now? You can take it away, right?”

I lied. “No, now the curse was fully transferred. It’s their responsibility to watch over it now.” Eventually, he ran out of questions and I was sent home.

If I was the one meant to watch over it, if the curse was still mine, I would have gotten it back in the mail. That’s what “Layla” claimed happened to her.

It’s been four days and I haven’t received anything.

I might be free, you guys. I know it picked up my scent, but unless whoever has it now makes a mistake, it can’t come back to me. And as the guard said, the station was full of officers. If someone does something wrong, I hope it’ll just pass to whoever was in that room. In order for me to get the curse back, a bunch of people have to die.

I’d say I’m good for now.