She’s Not My Wife

m a nurse and I currently work nights. It's a total drag but I'm hopeful I can go to days soon since some coworkers are planning retirements. Anyway, I was working one night when just after 3am my son's monitor alerted me to sound and movement. No big deal at all, he probably coughed loudly or sneezed or something. He's three now so he generally sleeps all night. I bring it up on my phone and I see him and my wife sitting on the bed. Again, no big deal. He might have cried out or gotten scared or something.

I was about to close the app when I noticed they were acting strange, almost creepy. And when I say "almost" creepy, I mean creepy as balls. They were sitting on the bed together both of them just staring up at the camera with blank, emotionless stares. The night vision is black and white, so they had white, eerie looking eyes. They didn't move at all aside from their visible breathing, they just sat there staring at the camera.

I close the app and give my wife a call to make sure everything is ok. I never get to call home on lunch so in a way this is kind of nice to get to talk to my family while at work.

It rings a couple times before she answers with a very groggy "hello?" It was like she was dead asleep when I called and she looked wide awake when on the camera.

"Hey. You guys ok?"

"Huh? Yeah. Buddy (my son's nickname) came in like 15 minutes ago. Seemed scared so I said he could sleep with mama."

I'm confused here since I saw them in his room a minute ago. Literally 60 seconds had passed since I closed the app and made the call.

"Wait, so you guys are in bed?"

"Yeah, I fell back asleep right away. Everything ok? Everybody keeps waking me up." She's kind of annoyed.

"Hang on a sec." I put her on speaker and bring up the app, hoping I don't see it. When the app loads I get that pang of intense nervousness in my stomach that I haven't had in a long time, since I was a kid in school and realized while I was eating breakfast a paper or something was due that day and I hadn't done it. My heart leaps into my throat. My wife and son are sitting on his bed looking up at the camera, same emotionless stares.

"Hello?"

"You guys are in bed right?"

"Yeah, we're trying to sleep."

"Well I'm looking at his camera and I see you two sitting on his bed."

"Huh? No. We're in our bed."

"I know that's what you mean, but I'm looking at his bed and you two are in there."

"Hang on," she says. She's quiet for a sec while she brings up the camera on her phone. I hear this guttural, terrified gasp. Like she had sucked all the air in the room into her lungs filling them to capacity. I don't hear this kind of gasp from my wife often, usually only when she's truly afraid like during a jump scare in a movie or one time when we turned her back on our son for literally a second and he was down by the mailbox inches from the road. I hear rustling of sheets and the line goes dead.

Of course now I'm absolutely terrified myself so I immediately call back. It goes to voicemail so I call again. I call again and again with no answer. Finally after about four minutes she calls me. I tell you that four minutes felt like 40 years.

"Hey, what's happening?!" I ask.

She's absolutely hysterical and crying, I can't understand a word she says.

"Stop! Slow down for just a second," I say.

She slows down enough to explain they are in the car and driving to her parents. She looked at the camera and when she saw what was on it she got up and grabbed our son and rushed downstairs and out the door. Didn't even close the garage.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I'll drive by when I get off and close it." We live in a generally safe neighborhood so I'm not too concerned the door is up.

"You will not go in there!" she says.

"Hell no," I return.

"Why are we on the camera?" she asked. "Is it a recording?"

"I don't know," I return. "I'm gonna keep watching it and see if there's anything I can tell. Do our code words with Buddy."

We have code words because we're nerds. We've seen too many pod people and impostor movies, so we decided a long time ago to make code words with each other to be able to tell if one of us was an impostor. We have a couple code words, but we also have a three sentence story we recite together, each saying a different part alternately of each other. I hear her on the phone saying the things we taught our son, he giggles as he says them (he does every time we practice) since he thinks they're a joke and doesn't have any idea of the real meaning. We're both convinced he's our son. My wife then says our part and I'm convinced she's her. We made up these words as a complete joke to ourselves. I never once in my life ever imagined we'd actually need them. Unreal.

She got to her parents safely and it was hard to hang up. I told her we'll figure it out in the morning, hopefully just a glitch. She said she didn't think it was a glitch. When she was running out she had to run by our son's room and the door was open. There's a little flashing light on the back of the camera that indicates its connected to the internet. It gives off just enough light that when she ran by she thought she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a shadowy outline of what could have been an adult sitting on our son's bed. It sends chills down my spine to think about.

Knowing they were safe and out of the house is the only thing that kept me at work that night. It was a long four hours but I kept checking the camera every chance I got. Sure enough, they were still sitting on the bed staring up at the camera with emotionless gazes.

I studied them to see if I could see any pattern, from their breathing to their blinking. Their breathing was steady and looked normal, it was their blinking that would tell me if this was just some kind of bizarre, time looped freak accident video or not. I intently stare at my phone and count the seconds between each blink, telling myself if this is a loop then their blinks should be even and occur at the same time each time.

There was no pattern to their blinking, it was erratic and random, just as a person blinking should be. The passing hours are what finally sealed the deal that this was not a weird looped video of some kind. My son's window is visible on camera and I can see on camera that it is getting lighter outside his room. His curtains keep out just enough light to prevent the camera from exiting night vision, but lets in just enough to be able to tell the sun is rising.

I try to figure out what the hell I'm going to do before I leave work. Calling the police comes to mind, but I talk myself out of it. First of all what am I supposed to say? Someone is in my house that looks like my wife but isn't? Worse yet, what if they \*are\* entities of some kind and the police do go over and it kills them or something.

I decide to tell coworker about it. He's a firm believer in the paranormal and might have a suggestion. I show him the video and tell him the story. His initial response of "that's creepy as fuck" doesn't help much, but he says he wants to go over and check it out. He says we both should to see if Not-My-Wife will try and act like my wife. I tell him absolutely not and he says we should at least go to the house even if we don't go in. I agree on that since I wanted to close the garage.

We got to my house and walked around the perimeter first. Not sure what we wanted to accomplish by that, but it felt like something we should do. The curtains were all drawn since nobody was there to open them in the morning, so we couldn't see anything. I went to close the garage and suddenly had this overwhelming urge to go inside and investigate, it was like I just had to know what was going on. So in we went.

We walked through the kitchen towards the foyer where the stairs are. It's so quiet in our house right now you could hear a feather drop, forget the pin. We stop at the bottom of the stairs and wait a few seconds. I look at the camera again and they are still sitting there. I've never been so scared in my life. My coworker puts his foot on the first step and I suddenly say "stop" loudly.

"Forget this, we're outta here," I tell him. "Come on," I start making my way back to the kitchen.

We hear a loud creak in the floor from upstairs. It's my son's room. He has a very loud, creaky board right in the middle of his floor that's almost impossible not to step on. My wife and are still deciding if we ever want to fix it because it will alert us if he's ever up to no good when he gets older trying to sneak out or something.

"Come on, come on, COME ON!" I yell as I motion for him to move his ass. We're out of the house in about two seconds. Out on the street I check my phone. Now only Not-My-Son was sitting on the bed, same blank stare. Not-My-Wife was gone.

"Holy shit!" my coworker says,

"That was stupid as fuck of us. Do NOT tell my wife we went inside." She would be so ungodly mad if she found out what we just did.

I use my garage door opener in my car to close the door. Before we leave I look at the camera again. Not-My-Wife is back on the bed with Not-My-Son, both staring blankly up at the camera, blinking every few seconds.

* + -

That was all about four days ago now. Not-My-Wife and Not-My-Son are still sitting on the bed staring up at the camera. They haven't moved a millimeter. We obviously haven't gone back to our house. What do we do?