Back home, Sarah discovers her teenage brother’s hidden USB drive, which reveals shocking surveillance footage of their mother’s strange behavior. Now they must confront her denials and find help before their family falls apart.
The six-hour drive to my hometown left me with a stiff neck and an empty coffee thermos. But I made it because of Mom’s call yesterday.
“Sarah, honey, I need help around the house.”
An elderly woman holding a phone in a kitchen, looking sad | Source: Midjourney
She hadn’t given any further details, but the slight tremor in her voice told me I needed to get going. So I packed a bag, took a few days off from work, and set off before sunrise.
Our suburban neighborhood seemed frozen in time. The same oak trees lined the streets, where houses with perfectly manicured lawns stood.
A house in a beautiful neighborhood | Source: Midjourney
Our old neighbor, Elaine, still had her collection of garden gnomes. Her husband’s classic Mustang sat in the driveway, still awaiting a restoration that would never come. It was heartwarming to see that so little had changed.
The house key was under the ceramic frog, where it had always been. Inside, the familiar scent of Mom’s lavender air freshener mingled with another smell, damp, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in weeks.
“Mom?” I called, dropping my travel bag in the hall.
A woman with her mouth slightly open in a house | Source: Midjourney
She appeared in the laundry room, smaller than I remembered. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, which she tried to hide with carefully applied makeup.
“Sarah! I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” She hugged me, then immediately turned around to straighten a stack of mail on the counter.
The house was eerily quiet. Usually, the sound of my brother’s video games or music drifted in from upstairs.
An empty living room | Source: Pexels
“Where is Caleb?”
Mom’s shoulders tensed. “He’s staying with his dad for a while. We had a disagreement.”
“About what?”
“Oh, you know, teenagers.” She waved her hand dismissively, not meeting my gaze. “Always making something out of nothing.”
“Okay, so what do you need help with?” I asked, looking around a little confused. Despite the smell, the house wasn’t exactly a mess.
A woman in a salon raising an eyebrow | Source: Midjourney
“Well, I need help cleaning up, and then getting some things down from the attic to donate,” my mother explained, and her hands suddenly touched the small of her back. “My back’s been hurting lately for some reason, and I can’t do it alone.”
“Let me guess, Caleb didn’t want to help you? Is that why you two fought?” I asked him.
“Oh, sure. Something like that,” she replied but refused to meet my gaze. “Speaking of Caleb, would you mind cleaning his room? That boy doesn’t do it.”
A messy teenager’s bedroom | Source: Pexels
“Sure,” I agreed and went to get some supplies from the laundry room.
***
Caleb’s room looked like it had been tornadoed, but I guess that was normal. He was 16 now, and I’d moved away for college almost eight years earlier. It was sad not knowing him as well anymore.
A teenager playing video games | Source: Pexels
I knew he liked games, but not to the point of covering all the wall space with posters. He’d also gotten pretty messy, with all his dirty clothes in piles everywhere. Yuck. It also smelled like… teenage hormones.
So I started on the shelf, organizing his scattered manga collection by series. That’s when everything changed. My elbow hit the edge of a ceramic vase depicting an anime character, and it smashed onto the hardwood floor.
A shelf with collectibles | Source: Pexels
“Great,” I muttered, kneeling down to clean up the mess. But among the debris, I saw a small black USB drive.
With a smile, I took out my phone and called Caleb. It rang twice before answering.
“Ooh, little brother,” I teased when he replied. “Guess what I found in your room? Get ready for all your deepest, darkest secrets to be revealed… just kidding…” I laughed, but then explained that I’d broken his collectible and found the USB drive.
A USB drive on the floor next to broken pieces of china | Source: Midjourney
I expected him to grovel, to beg me not to look at the files. Instead, Caleb’s voice became deadly serious. “MAKE SURE YOU LOOK AT WHAT’S ON THE USB DRIVE!” The urgency in his voice made my smile disappear. “I’m not kidding, okay? This is important.”
“What’s going on?”
“Look at him, Sarah. Please.”
“Oh, okay,” I stammered and hung up.
A confused woman holding a phone | Source: Midjourney
I was about to go get my laptop when my mother called me from downstairs. “Sarah! Come help me do something in the kitchen,” Mom said.
“Sure!” I replied and slipped the drive into my pocket. I didn’t think about the USB drive again that night.
***
I woke up to strange noises. The digital clock on my nightstand read 1:30 a.m. Faint voices and footsteps echoed through the house. I lay in my old bed, trying to convince myself it was just the house settling or the neighbor’s cat.
A clock on a nightstand with a woman sleeping in the background | Source: Pexels
But something was wrong, as if the air itself had changed.
At breakfast, I decided to test the waters. “Mom, did you hear anything unusual last night? Just… light noises, maybe?”
The change was instantaneous. Her hand slammed down on the table, and coffee spilled over the rim of her cup onto the tabletop. “Oh, you’re a grown-up! Why are you listening to your 16-year-old brother?!”
A woman with a cup of coffee, sitting at a kitchen table, looking angry | Source: Midjourney
I stared at her, confused. “What? Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does this have to do with Caleb?”
“First him, and now you’re in on it. This is really not funny!” His voice rises abruptly, his face reddening.
“What move? I don’t understand.”
“That’s enough! I don’t want to hear ANOTHER THING about the night noises, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” I replied.
A woman sitting at a kitchen table raising her hands in surrender | Source: Midjourney
Five minutes later, I called my brother back, but it went to voicemail. That’s when I finally remembered the USB drive and rushed to my laptop.
Dozens of video files filled the screen, all dated within the last month. Each showed different parts of our house at night, like the living room with its familiar floral sofa, the hallway with its family photos, and the kitchen with the dishes still drying on the shelf.
I clicked on a few of them and nothing seemed unusual. I wondered when my brother had installed cameras in the house.
Clicking a mouse | Source: Pexels
Then, in a video from last Tuesday, around 1:45 a.m., I saw movement: a shadow in the hallway. I leaned closer to the screen, my pulse pounding in my ears.
Someone stepped into the living room and my mouth fell open. It wasn’t an intruder. It was Mom.
She stood perfectly still in the center of the room, her head tilted at an unnatural angle. Her movements were slow and mechanical, like a puppet on strings. She remained by the coffee table for several minutes, then turned, hitting the small of her back, and walked into her bedroom.
An elderly woman in pajamas standing in the hallway of a house at night | Source: Midjourney
My phone rang, startling me. Caleb.
“Have you looked?” he asked without greeting.
“Yes.” I swallowed hard. “Did you show this to Mom?”
He laughed bitterly. “Are you kidding? She didn’t even let me try. That’s why I left. She kept saying I was making things up, overreacting.”
A teenager on a couch talking on the phone | Source: Pexels
“Yes, I heard the noises, and I hadn’t seen the videos yet, so I asked her,” I sighed. “She went crazy and wouldn’t explain.”
“But you saw it, didn’t you? The way she moves? It’s weird, but she hurts herself too. By accident.”
“Yes,” I replied. That’s why Mom had asked for help and why her back was hurting. Who knows what else might happen during the night? “We have to do something.”
A worried woman sitting on a bed with a laptop | Source: Midjourney
I spent the rest of the day researching sleepwalking and its possible treatments. An hour before dinner, I found her in the kitchen, aggressively stirring a pot of sauce.
“Mom, do you ever sleepwalk?” I said, not seeing the point in beating around the bush.
She scoffed. “Again? No. Don’t be dramatic. You and your brother are making things up.”
“Mom, I have proof,” I said, opening my laptop.
A worried woman in a kitchen holding a laptop | Source: Midjourney
“I don’t want to see the nonsense in this machine,” she said, shaking her head and concentrating intently on the sauce. “I’m getting old, I’m not crazy!”
“Mom, please,” I begged, backing her into the corner of the counter and pushing the laptop toward her face. “Just watch.”
She couldn’t avoid it anymore.
As the video played, I watched her face closely. The color drained from her cheeks, and her hands began to tremble. She covered her mouth with trembling fingers.
An elderly woman in a kitchen, shocked and scared while holding a laptop | Source: Midjourney
I realized this wasn’t the reaction of someone hiding something. It was pure, genuine shock.
“I don’t remember that,” she whispered.
“There are more, Mom,” I revealed. “There are tons. Caleb set up cameras because he was worried about you.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” she said in the smallest voice. “I thought he was just being insolent.”
“Don’t worry,” I continued, wrapping my arms around him. “Caleb is coming home tomorrow, and we’ll sort this out.”
A woman hugging her elderly mother in a kitchen | Source: Midjourney
***
Caleb arrived, and Mom apologized to him for their disagreement. Over the next few weeks, we attended several doctor’s appointments and had sleep studies. We learned about sleep disorders, their triggers, and treatments.
The cameras rolled off the shelves when Mom started therapy and medication, but something else grew in their place: trust. She learned to confide in us about her treatment, even Caleb.
A home surveillance camera | Source: Pexels
She was used to taking care of herself, but she needed us now. I was confident this situation wouldn’t be permanent; the first rounds of treatments went wonderfully well.
But I had to make a choice. I called my job and asked for a transfer. Luckily, they had a branch much closer to my house, so I decided to commute. I didn’t move back home because I was young and still wanted independence; instead, I took an apartment five minutes away.
Being much closer made me feel better. Caleb could call me in an emergency. It may be a cliché, but family always comes first.
A smiling woman in an apartment | Source: Midjourney
Read also: I heard my husband and mother-in-law whispering at night, and it completely changed my life
This work is inspired by real events and people, but has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the story. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The author and publisher make no claims regarding the accuracy of events or character portrayals and are not responsible for any misinterpretations. This story is provided “as is,” and the opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.
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