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.

I’d done babysitting jobs before. Quick way to make some cash without working too much. When I saw the ad on some forum, the high pay attracted me immediately.

Sitter wanted. Friday night from midnight to 4AM.

I liked that the hours were fixed in the offer, so I wouldn’t wait too much for the parents to come home and end up staying longer than we initially agreed on. Some parents were fucking scammers, man, always promising to come home earlier than they did, refusing to pay me for the extra time. The ad was simple, but mentioned nothing about the kids.

I called the number mentioned and, upon being asked about the children, the voice on the other end went silent. “Um, there’s no child, ma’am. I just want you to sit on this chest for a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, sit on it for 4 hours so the thing inside doesn’t come out. Do you believe in demons?”

“No, not really.”

“Even better. I was cursed a while ago and I keep getting chests or boxes in the mail since. If I open them, there’s nothing inside, but if they’re not… blocked… something weird comes out of them at night. That’s how my last boyfriend went missing. I didn’t believe in that and I woke up one day to find the chest opened and empty and him gone. I really don’t know what else to tell you because that’s all I know. I’ll just mail the package to you. You don’t even have to come to my house. You can literally mail it back in the morning. You won’t have to sit on it every night, just when I’m going out and can’t sit on it myself.”

I honestly thought it was a little funny. We met in some park and she showed me the chest. I inspected it, opened it (it was empty), turned it around to look for hidden cameras / mics / anything that might be shady. It was a simple, wooden chest with nothing to show and nothing to hide.

I took it home.

I sat on it shortly before midnight, on my phone. I was a little curious, but I wasn’t going to fuck around. I would sit on it from 12AM to 4AM for the 200 dollars. End of discussion.

“Oh, and it might try to trick you. Your phone might ring, or doorbell… anything like that. Just to make you get up. Don’t listen.”

Sure. Easiest $200 ever made.

I sat down on the wooden lid and watched Reels on my phone. The chest was oddly warm, and at some point around 1AM, I could feel a murmur inside. It vibrated slightly. It was a little exciting, I won’t lie.

Around 2AM, I heard a knock from the inside of the chest.

I turned off my phone. Had I imagined it? It didn’t come again, but it still made me feel uneasy.

I was beginning to doze off, so I played some bullshit game on my phone to remain awake. At around 3:44AM, I got a text from the woman who posted the ad asking me if anything strange happened.

no, it was fine.

okay, well, you can get up now.

I wanted to wait until 4AM hit, just to be sure. I did well, because the next day the owner of the chest claimed to not have sent any text at all. Surely enough, I checked and the text I’d supposedly gotten that night was gone. Had I hallucinated it?

Wow. It had tried to trick me to get up earlier? Smart.

Over the next 5 months, I sat (not babysat) fifteen other times. The woman explained that sometimes she got another chest in the mail and that’s how she knew she could throw away the old one. If she tried to throw it away before, it just kept getting mailed back to her house.

I had to sit on shoe boxes, closed baskets (a little uncomfortable). Once, a sealed suitcase that made a wet shifting sound whenever I adjusted my weight.

The freakiest experience I had was around gig 7 or 8, when I heard a loud thud upstairs. I live alone and it was roughly 2AM, but I couldn’t investigate for obvious reasons. I just sat there and waited for 4AM to come, so I could finally see what was going on. Nothing was out of place when I checked. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Another time, I heard my cat meowing from inside the box. Well, Sam, I remembered thinking, if you’re really in there you can wait for another hour. You won’t die.

After the time was up, I opened it to find nothing inside. See, I became immune to the tricks. Nothing would make me get up. Something truly demonic was going on, something I couldn’t explain but I was smart enough to not disobey.

She redirected the last package to me, so I got a delivery. Inside of the package was a tiny chess box, with weird paintings on the side, the kind that opens into a board. Inside, I found some chess pieces. The kings and the queens had sinister faces painted on them, and their eyes freaked me out so much that I shoved them back inside and closed the lid. It’s getting creative, I remembered thinking.

Its size allowed me to sit on it while in bed, so the effort was practically nonexistent. I took it upstairs and got to “work”.

Around 2AM, my doorbell rang. Nothing out of the ordinary. It rang and rang, then I heard desperate bangs on the door, then silence. Then, footsteps downstairs.

I knew it was trying to trick me, but it was still freaky and odd. Thump, thump, thump. Up the stairs.

I was glad I’d closed my bedroom door. It somehow made me feel safer, even if I knew that the real threat was inside the chess box I was sitting on.

The footsteps stopped in the hallway. In the silence, I could make out breathing. Harsh breathing. I don’t know why, but it sounded like someone trying to contain their excitement. Jesus.

Calm down. The threat is not real. It won’t hurt you as long as you sit down.

The sound of fingers tapping against my bedroom door. Blood was pounding into my ears, my chest hollow. Every breath felt like pushing a boulder up a hill.

May 4AM come faster. For the love of God.

My doorknob turned, but the door didn’t open. This was one of the worst hallucinations I’d ever had.

The footsteps moved downstairs, in a way that reminded me of a weird, demented waltz. ONE TWO-THREE, ONE TWO-THREE…

Fuuuck me. I began breathing heavily. I called the woman. “Hey, this might be the last gig because it’s just getting a little too real.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone is waltzing downstairs, man. They were right at my bedroom door. I know this is all a hallucination, but it fucks with my head a little too much. I’ll finish this gig and then I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that. Okay, then. Well, you have another hour to go.”

“Yeah. You having fun at the party?”

“Yeah, but you can still call me if you’re freaked out. Just don’t get up, please. No matter what.”

“I mean, it’s not an uncomfortable position since I’m literally laying in bed right now. Sort of.”

A pause.

“You’re… laying in bed?”

“Yeah.”

The rhythm downstairs increased.

“But… how? You put it on your bed?”

“I mean, it’s a chess box. It’s small.”

Another pause.

“What do you mean it’s a chess box?” came the choked out question.

“That’s what you fucking sent me.”

“No, I sent you a carboard box.”

“Well, that was the package, you can’t just send out a chess box, the post service wraps it up…”

“NO, it was a carboard box with nothing inside. It was small, but definitely not a chess box. I don’t know what you found inside, but I sent it empty. When did I ever sent you the real thing in another bigger package? Please, for the love of God, tell me you didn’t fall for it…”

Blood rushed into my cheeks. The waltzing downstairs continued, mockingly, loud and proud.

“You can’t mail a chess box by itself.” I responded, suddenly uneasy.

“YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO RECEIVE A CHESS BOX! What the fuck? Please tell me you didn’t leave the carboard box unattended.”

“It was the packaging…” I replied, on the verge of tears.

“No, no, no, no…” she was almost hysterical. The waltzing downstairs stopped.

I remembered the carboard box that came in the mail. It was roughly the size of the chess box inside. Every single thing I’d sat on before had been empty.

I was suddenly unsure of what I’d been sitting on for the past 3 hours.

What if I’d hallucinated that the real box contained another one inside? That had never happened before. Was I truly sitting on nothing now?

A long, teasing whistle broke the silence.

I suddenly got the urge to lock my bedroom door. If I’d left the real box unattended downstairs…

Shit.

Or is it a trick? Did I hallucinate the call? Is it trying to make me get up? Time’s almost up, but now I can hear someone going up the stairs.

What do I do now? What do I do?