She pulled the little boy behind the wall, warped from age like a fun house mirror. He glanced over at Carrie who was holding a baseball bat in her hand. She put her hand on his shoulder, urging him to stand back as she peaked her head around the corner at the open door.  

“Your mom is going to kill me.” she sighed, dropping back against the wall.  

It had all begun not four hours ago when Steve Brady’s parents had left for the night. His father was going to be awarded the accountant of the year trophy tonight at some benefit Steve didn’t care about, so he had been left under the watchful eye of Carrie. Carrie was talkative and persistent which made her a great babysitter for Steve, a TV addicted 9-year-old with a limited social life. She was like an awkward spider, begging him to enter her web of conversation each time she visited the vintage house.  

“All right, there’s left over pizza in the fridge, emergency contacts on the inside of the cabinet and if he won’t go to bed don’t worry about it, we shouldn’t be gone that long. Also- no TV! He’s had enough of that I’m afraid his brain will turn to mush, you know?” Mrs. Brady said while she fixed her bright pink lipstick in the entry way mirror. “and your rates haven’t changed since last time, right?”  

“No ma’am.”  

“Well, that’s about it! We’ll be back around ten!” she crouched down in front of Steve and brushed his blonde hair out of his pale eyes. “Love you honey! We’ll be back before you know it!” she pulled him into a hug. Mr. Brady honked from the driveway, and she hurriedly put her shoes on with a frazzled sort of grace. Her speed and keen memory certainly gave her disorganization a run for its money.  

“Bye!” she shouted as she ran out the door with the strap of her high heel dangling off her ankle. Carrie waved her goodbye and turned to Steve when the door slammed shut behind the frantic mother.  

“So, you wanna play a board game since your mom said no TV?” asked Carrie hopefully. She plastered a smile on her face the rapidly faded as Steve gave her a weird, almost disgusted look and turned his back to her. “Uh okay I guess no board games, what about coloring?” Steve’s interest was piqued, his eyebrows raising like a puppy’s ears at the sound of the word ‘treat’. He turned around and gave her a shoulder shrug. She did a celebratory dance in her head. A shoulder shrug was basically singing for joy in the confusing language of Steve Brady. She had learned early on in their baby-babysitter relationship that he was a 4th grader of few words.  

“Okay great! I’ll grab the coloring sheets from my backpack.” She scrambled around in her book bag. 

 Steve thought to himself that he should’ve been a little less enthusiastic, his excitement was probably a bit overwhelming for the desperate fourteen-year-old who had been trying to get him to color over three years’ worth of parent’s date nights. She pulled out three coloring books: sharks, trucks, and farm animals. He grabbed the shark one and trotted down the stairs to the basement.  

“We keep the crayons down here.” He stated as he waved her down the rickety steps, past the rolled up brown papers and ice skates on the wall. The Brady residence was an old Victorian town home, complete with creepy wallpaper and a weird little door at the foot of the stairs. Steve was convinced that his home was haunted by the spirits of 19th century ghosts with bad taste in wood finishes. “Did you know our house used to be a down home in the 19th century?” questioned the little boy, trying to fill the hole of silence before Carrie could interrogate him per usual. 

“Why no, I did not! How interesting!” replied the over enthusiastic adolescent, trying to keep the conversation going. That short exchange had almost broken their record length for conversation. As aforementioned Steve wasn’t exactly the most socially apt.  

“that’s why it’s so gross and creepy.”  

“Well, I don’t think its creepy, it has character and decades of interesting history!” she scolded as they reached the bottom of the winding stairwell. “Where do you keep your crayons again? I always forget!” She asked, poking around in some of the cabinets on the same wall as that creepy little door. He stuck his tongue out at the rusted doorknob in defiance, he would not be afraid of something so insignificant. “Ah! Found them!” she shouted from across the room. He crossed over to where the sound of her voice was coming and snatched the box of crayons from her hand.  

She pulled out a chair for him at the little table in the center of the chilly basement. He had received the little table for his 7th birthday. It was just his size and had five chairs for his friends or, in Steve’s case, abundant stuffed animals and bossy babysitter, whose knees exceeded the plastic tabletop, so she had to sit in an award sideways position. She flipped open the aquatic coloring book and pointed at a picture of a hammerhead shark. 

“How about this one?” she asked hopefully, though she knew he rarely agreed to the first suggestion she gave him. He shook his head, and she turned the page just for the next shark to be rejected. This went on for a dozen pages or so until he agreed to color a picture of a great white after much convincing.  

“I have to use the bathroom, but I’ll be back down in a sec, okay?” he nodded, and she hopped up the stairs. This led his gaze to the small door. He shouldn’t have taunted it. What if the rusty doorknob had been biding its time until Carrie had abandoned him in the dusty basement? What if it sucked him into a portal to the underworld? Then not even a great white shark portrait could save him from his doomed fate. He had worked himself into a tizzy of anxiety, so he shut his eyes tight. Out of sight out of mind, he thought. After what seemed like ages, he heard the sink turn on upstairs. The reminder of Carrie upstairs gave him the boost of courage he needed so he opened his left eye ever so slightly. 

His heart was pounding, he was sure he had seen the doorknob move. His pride was not worth this eternal torment, he fled up the stairs exuding a piercing shriek as he leaped upwards, taking the creaking wood steps two at a time. He spotted Carrie exiting the kitchen and promptly flung himself onto her, almost tackling her to the ground. This came as no surprise to her; Steve was a special kid, and this was one of the least special things he had done.  

“Hey! What’s wrong?” she soothed the short kid, patting him on the back as his eyes welled up with tears.  

“The-there’s something behind the little door! I swear!” he gazed at her skeptical expression with a pleading look. She took his hand and lead him towards the stairwell leading to the infamous basement. 

“Listen Steve, that’s just a room for storage- there’s nobody in there I promise.” She assured. “You told me yourself, you live in an old house. Sometimes my house makes weird sounds or freaks me out too but that’s just the foundation settling.” Steve was not convinced. 

“I’m still not going down there.” He stated, planting his feet atop the first step.  

“Okay…” she replied as she searched her brain for anything that would knock some sense into him. “How about this, I’ll go down there with you and open the door, then you’ll see that there’s nothing in there but junk.” She looked at him expectantly.  

“I guess.” Agreed the little boy. He was practically shaking in his boots but if she was going to be brave so would he. Once again, he began his decent, hand in hand with his babysitter, prepared to meet what he had grown to think of as certain death. They passed by the junk at the bottom of the stairwell. 

“I don’t think I wanna do this anymore.” Said the little boy, his pale green eyes gazing up at Carrie, pleading with her.  

“Don’t be silly! You’ll see it’s not so scary in just a moment. She bent down at the knee to open the door. “ready?” she asked.  

“I guess” he replied as she opened the door. He shut his eyes tight and opened them after a few moments. He had been expecting a loud noise or flashing light of some kind but evil came in all forms, so he remained skeptical as he tiptoed towards the petite entry way. He peered in just soon enough for the clutter to pour out of the small room.  

“Cool!” exclaimed Carrie. “Steve! This is a photo album of your parent’s wedding. And look! Here are some of your baby pictures!” She fawned over the memorabilia at the foot of the stair which included a box labeled receipts, a worn baseball bat, a grocery bag full of tennis balls and too many photo albums to count.  

“oh shoot!” she shouted, glancing down at her watch. “it was dinner time like 20 minutes ago! We can look at this stuff later I should probably heat you up some pizza.” Carrie grabbed Steve’s hand once again and led him up the stairs. “See? That wasn’t so scary.” She laughed as they bounded up the stairs. Steve hadn’t been convinced yet. He looked over his shoulder back at the piles of junk. There was still something wrong, he was sure of it. As curious as he was to find out what it was, he would much prefer his parents to be home before he went snooping around in the supernatural. As much as he liked Carrie, he believed she might not be the best protection against demons and the like. When they reached the top of the stairs, he glanced back one more time at the piles at the bottom of the winding staircase. He could’ve sworn he saw a sparkly orb dart around his peripheral, paired with a shrill, snickering laugh but if he said anything Carrie would most likely force him to confront his so-called childish fear for the second time. 

“Pepperoni or cheese?” she asked, looking into the fridge.  

“Cheese please!”  

“Hmmmm… there doesn’t seem to be any cheese left. I’m sorry all you have left is anchovies!” she replied, trying to suppress her giggles. 

“You’re just messing with me!” chuckled the boy. She poked her head around the fridge door. 

“You got me!” she admitted and the two broke into giggles. “Wait- Steve did you hear that?” a serious look fell across her face.  

Steve silenced his laughter immediately and listened intently. They could both hear a shrill sound, almost like a shriek. She followed her ears to the door across the hall, which lead to the basement stair well. His heart began pounding again. She tiptoed across the scratched hardwood and opened the door. Suddenly the strange treble sound stopped and was replaced with a high-pitched whisper. He quietly ran to her side, and they made the silent agreement to descend the stairs to investigate. The voices were made clearer, and they realized they were speaking in some foreign language neither of them understood. As they got closer to the pile of junk at the bottom of the steps the sound stopped completely. 

“Duck!” Carrie shouted as she darted to grab the baseball bat. As soon as Steve had ducked his head down a swarm of what looked to be purple glitter zoomed into the space his head had been just moments before. Carrie wacked the mass with the bat and hopped behind a corner and so they are back where they started. She pulled him behind the wall, warped from age like a fun house mirror. He glanced over at Carrie who was holding a baseball bat in her hand. She put her hand on his shoulder, urging him to stand back as she peaked her head around the corner at the open door.  

“Your mom is going to kill me.” she sighed, dropping back against the wall.  

“For that to happen you’d need to be alive to begin with and by the looks of it we are about to be murdered by purple, glittery…” his sentence trailed off, not knowing what to call them. He called back to when he had first seen it. The tiny thing had looked like a fairy or mythical sprite. “purple, glittery pixie.” He decided with a satisfied smile, which promptly faded as he realized that defining the species would not be so helpful in this battle.  

“Okay well you’re the one who watches all those fantasy TV shows. What do these pixies like?” He thought about it for a moment. In his favorite show, “Detective Magic Pants”, the detective would use his possessed pair of slacks to travel through dimensions and defeat evil creatures from fantasy realms. His thoughts flew around his head like the Detectives pet dragon as he tried to remember the pixie episode.  

“Well pixies love dancing. But in the episode of Detective Magic Pants, he planned a pixie prom and then scooped all the pixies into a mason jar while they were doing the worm. We don’t have the time or funding for that.” Suddenly, Carrie’s eyes lit up. 

“I have an idea.” She ducked down to his height and whispered the plan in his ear. He couldn’t have come up with a better idea himself (which is true- he had been stumped moments earlier).  

Carrie jumped out from behind the wall and began dancing. Unfortunately for her she was a terrible dancer but fortunately for the pair, this just confused the pixies. They couldn’t fathom that someone would be any less coordinated than them. Good thing the pixies were judgmental because it gave Steve just enough time to crawl behind them and retrieve the old radio and turn it on.  

70s music blared from the speakers, waking the pixies out of their stupor. They began to dance towards the speaker with perfect rhythm. It was almost entrancing, watching these spindly, lavender glitter pixies kick line over to the radio. They did the waltz and the tango, the sprinkler and the lawn mower, Steve thought he noticed some Chorus Line choreography slip its way into the whimsical, grape colored, frenzied dance party. They formed into a dance circle and began shoving their brethren into it to show off their moves. That was the prefect opening. While they were distracted Steve dumped the receipts out of the cardboard box in the corner and handed it to Carrie who dropped it atop the pixies who had migrated away from the radio to make room for the macarena. Steve cleared out the little storage room and the space in front of it so Carrie could slide the box into place without dislodging any of the boogying pixies. They placed the rest of the junk on top and in front of the box and closed the door. The pair let out a sigh of relief and sat against the door.  

“So- ice cream?” asked Carrie with a smile on her face.  

“I think we’ve earned it” agreed Steve. She leapt to her feet and pulled the child to his feet by his elbow. 

“I know your mom said no TV, but I think you deserve it, TV saved our lives today. Plus, your mom won’t be home for another hour and Detective Magic Pants should be on in a few short minutes. 

“Sounds good to me.” replied an eager Steve. They walked up the stairs together and for the first time Steve was responding with some substance, near death experiences must bring people closer together.  

“All right turn it to the right channel!” said Carrie as she walked over to the couch, two bowls of mint chip in hand. Steve pressed the on button and changed the channel.  

“Hurry its starting!”  

“I’m coming!” laughed Carrie. She sat down beside him and pulled a blanket over her jeans. The detective appeared on the television screen. 

“Good evening and welcome viewers. Today we will be traveling to the fantastical realm of the dancing pixies.” Steve turned to Carrie and shook his head solemnly. She grabbed the remote and turned the TV off.  

“Yeah, no way. Puzzle?” she asked.  

“Sure.” He answered. She grabbed a puzzle from a hall closet, and they sat down to piece it together.  

“It just occurred to me- what the heck are magical pixies doing in your basement storage room?” asked Carrie with a curious expression, scrounging around in the puzzle box for a corner piece. “If I lived here that’s something I would want to investigate.”  

“Well, my grandma used to say that we were cursed and whatnot, but she also believed that the government had implanted a tracking chip in her brain so I’m not sure if I believe her.” 

Soon the comforting sounds of the garage door opening traveled to the ears of Steve and his babysitter. He rushed to the door and thrust his arms around his mom as she entered. 

“Hello to you too!” laughed Mrs. Brady. “I assume things went well?” she asked, turning towards Carrie with Steve’s small arms still tangled around her waist.  

“Yeah! it was pretty good!” she replied, giving Steve a small smile. 

“Well, here you go.” Said Mr. Brady, handing her a crisp fifty-dollar bill. 

“I’ll get going now if that’s okay.” Said Carrie. “See you later Steve!” she said as she gave his head an awkward pat. She walked out the door and laughed as she heard Mrs. Brady ask “Steve- is there glitter in your hair?” She chuckled softly to herself and closed the door.