It wasn’t a call. It was a text message from an unknown, restricted number.
Attached to the text was a video file.
With trembling fingers, I pressed play.
The Video
The video was shot from the exact angle of the hidden camera in the nursery, but the timestamp on the bottom right read Tuesday, 3:14 AM—the second night I was gone.
The nursery door opened. The room was dark, but the camera’s infrared night-vision illuminated everything in eerie green and white hues.
My mother, Linda, walked into the frame. She wasn’t carrying a baby. She was carrying a heavy plastic medical jug—the kind used for distilled water or saline. Behind her stepped a man.
I choked back a gasp, my phone nearly slipping from my hand.
It was Greg. My manager from the warehouse. The man who had begged me to leave town to save my job.
On the silent video, Greg stood by the crib while my mother opened the closet where we kept Noah’s extra formula and diapers. She began stuffing packages into a large duffel bag. But it wasn’t a robbery.
Greg reached out, grabbed my mother by the waist, and pulled her into a hard, familiar embrace. They kissed—not a platonic kiss, but the passionate, desperate kiss of secret lovers.
I stared at the screen, my brain refusing to process the visual information. My mother and my boss.
Then, the video cut. A second file played automatically.
This timestamp read Wednesday, 11:45 PM.
This time, the camera was capturing audio. The sound was distorted, but clear enough to pierce straight through my soul.
Emily was screaming from the master bedroom down the hall. A muffled, agonizing sound of a woman in deep physical distress.
In the nursery, my sister Ashley was sitting in the rocking chair, her face illuminated by the glow of her cell phone. My mother stood by the window, peering through the blinds.
“Mom,” Ashley’s voice came through the tiny phone speaker, sounding nervous. “She’s bleeding a lot. Like, a lot. And the baby hasn’t stopped crying since noon. His skin feels like an oven. We need to call an ambulance. If they die, Ethan will kill us.”
Linda turned around. In the infrared light, her eyes looked completely black, devoid of any human emotion.
