Point Horror: The Babysitter III (R.L. Stine)

Jenny really has a sucky life and apparently all her mom cares about is money. This makes the third book where there’s some mention of her mom not having a job/enough money and making Jenny work to help pay the bills. She gets a job at a doughnut shop, but has a flashback where she thinks she sees Mr. Hagan in the mall. When her mom hears about it, she announces that she made plans for Jenny to spend the summer with her aunt and cousin Debra.

Debra is apparently kind of a slut. She has a boyfriend Mark, but keeps calling and talking sexy to Terry, a guy she has a crush on. Her ex-boyfriend stops by and threatens to tell Terry that she’s making the calls, but she laughs him off. Then she bonds with Jenny before taking her to her job, which just so happens to be babysitting.

It turns out to be a pretty cushy job because it’s watching over a six month old baby named Peter, who sleeps almost all of the time. Jenny seems a little nervous and tells Debra the whole story about what happened with Hagan. They hear a noise in the kitchen and find a drunken woman standing there. She says her name’s Maggie and she used to work in the house and eventually leaves. They hear another noise and it’s Mark. He hangs out for awhile and agrees to help get Jenny a job at a horseback riding facility.

Jenny gets the job and things calm down for awhile, but then she starts having problems again. She keeps having nightmares, thinks she sees Hagan following her and one night, thinks Peter’s dead in his crib, when he’s just sleeping. Debra starts getting the same calls Jenny did, but doesn’t tell anyone about it.

When she finally does, Jenny freaks out because she’s sure that he’s back. Debra thinks it’s someone who knew what happened and thinks it was Cal. Jenny calls his house and learns that he ran away from home, which makes him the top suspect. Debra tries to take her mind off things by setting her up with Terry, but then gets jealous on their double date.

Debra ends up babysitting for Peter one night when a storm comes in. She sees Maggie again, then hears noises and tries to call the cops, but the phone is out. Someone bursts through the front door and it’s Cal! He says he’s worried about Jenny because he hasn’t heard from her in awhile. Debra is also worried because Jenny never came home from work.

She goes upstairs and finds that Peter is gone! Cal runs for help and the cops and the mom show up. The phone is now working again and when it rings, the caller says that he’s Hagan and he’s got the baby. Debra says she knows where the person called from and leads the police to the stable, where they find Jenny sitting on a horse with Peter.

Jenny’s lost her mind and now thinks she’s Hagan. She keeps talking about Debra being a bad babysitter and how she needs to watch over the kid. The cops plan on shooting her, but Debra saves the day by spooking the horse and grabbing the baby. As the cops lead Jenny away, she thinks about how it’s all finally over.

What the hell? I mean I can totally understand why Jenny would go off the deep end given what happened to her in the past, but why now? And why when there’s another book about Jenny? The sad thing is that I don’t think they even mention what happened here when she starts babysitting again in the next book!