“…a stranger.”
The clatter of silverware and the low hum of restaurant chatter vanished, replaced by a ringing in my ears. I stared at the phone in my cold hands. On the glowing screen, the woman continued to hum, gently swaying in the vintage rocking chair in our nursery. Her back was to the camera, her dark hair falling in long, stringy waves over her shoulders.
“What do you mean you canceled?” I choked out, stumbling as my husband, Mark, grabbed my coat, threw a fifty-dollar bill on the table, and shoved me toward the exit.
“The sitter texted that she had a fever,” Mark said, his voice trembling as he unlocked the car with his fob from across the lot. “I told her to stay home. I thought you had called your sister to cover. I thought your sister was in there!”
“No,” I gasped, climbing into the passenger seat. “My sister is out of town. Mark, who is holding Lily?”
Mark didn’t answer. He threw the car into reverse, the tires shrieking against the asphalt as he dialed 911 on the dashboard console.
“911, what is your emergency?” the operator’s voice filled the cabin.
“There’s an intruder in our house,” Mark barked, running a red light as we merged onto the highway. “My baby is inside with her. We are ten minutes away.”
As Mark rattled off our address to the operator, my eyes dropped back to the phone screen. The woman had stopped rocking.
“Mark,” I whispered, my heart slamming against my ribs. “She stopped.”
On the small screen, the stranger stood up. She cradled Lily against her chest, swaying gently. Then, slowly, she turned to face the camera.
The night vision washed her features in a pale, eerie green, but I could see her perfectly. Her face was gaunt, her eyes wide and sunken. She wasn’t looking at the room. She was looking dead into the lens of the monitor.
She smiled. It was a wide, unnatural stretch of her lips that made my blood run cold. Slowly, she raised one long, spindly finger and pressed it against her lips.
Shh.
“Hurry!” I screamed, dropping the phone. “She knows! She knows we’re watching!”
Mark slammed his foot on the gas. The remaining miles blurred by in a frantic nightmare of streetlights and engine roars. The 911 operator promised cruisers were en route, but every second felt like a lifetime.
We took the corner of our street so fast the car fishtailed. Our house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, completely dark except for the faint glow of the nightlight from the second-story nursery window.
Mark threw the car into park on the lawn before it had even fully stopped. We sprinted to the front door. It was locked. Mark didn’t hesitate; he backed up and kicked the heavy oak door right next to the deadbolt. It splintered and gave way on the second strike.
“Lily!” I shrieked, tearing past him and bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The silence in the house was deafening.
I hit the nursery door with my shoulder, flying into the room.
The rocking chair was still gently swaying back and forth. The window was wide open, the cold night wind billowing the white curtains into the room like ghosts.
But the room was empty.
I scrambled to the crib, my breath catching in my throat.
“Lily!”
She was there. Tucked perfectly under her blankets, her little chest rising and falling in a deep, peaceful sleep. I collapsed against the railing, sobbing uncontrollably as I scooped her into my arms, pressing my face into her soft hair. Mark burst in a second later, wrapping his arms around both of us, his entire body shaking.
Red and blue lights suddenly flashed against the bedroom walls, accompanied by the wail of approaching sirens.
“She went out the window,” Mark breathed, staring at the curtains. “She left her.”
We held each other until the police rushed in, clearing the house room by room. They scoured the backyard, the perimeter, and the surrounding streets. They found nothing. No footprints in the flowerbeds beneath the window, no trace of a getaway car.
It was an hour later, wrapped in a shock blanket on the living room sofa with Lily safely in my arms, that the lead detective approached us holding my phone.
“Ma’am, we’ve reviewed the footage from your baby monitor,” the detective said, his face grim. “We need to bring in a forensics team to sweep the house.”
“To look for fingerprints?” Mark asked.
“No,” the detective replied softly. He turned the phone screen toward us, hitting play on the recorded footage from right after we had dropped the phone in the car.
On the screen, the woman put her finger down from her lips. She didn’t put Lily down. She didn’t go to the window. Instead, she gently placed Lily back in the crib, tucked her in, and walked toward the bedroom closet. She reached up, grabbed the cord for the attic access panel hidden in the ceiling, pulled it down, and climbed up into the darkness, pulling the stairs up behind her.
The detective looked at us, his hand resting on his radio.
“She didn’t run away,” he said. “She just went back upstairs.”
