Every Night, My Mother-In-Law Knocked On Our Bedroom Door At 3 A.M., So I Set Up A Hidden Camera To See What She Was Doing. When We Saw Her, We Were Both Frozen…

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Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three steady, dry knocks pierced the silence of the two-story Victorian house in suburban Seattle.

I jumped, staring up at the dark ceiling. The digital clock on the nightstand flashed a red number: 3:00 AM.

Jason was still snoring beside me. My husband was an orthopedic surgeon, sleeping soundly after twelve-hour surgeries. But I wasn’t. I hadn’t slept a full night in two months.

There she was again. Martha. My mother-in-law.

Martha had moved in with us after her husband died of a sudden heart attack six months earlier. She was a thin, stoic woman, with ashen eyes that stared at me as if judging me, or worse, warning me. Since her mild stroke had affected her ability to speak, she had become taciturn, only making incomprehensible noises.

“She’s knocking again,” I whispered, shaking Jason’s shoulder.

“Huh? What?” Jason stirred, his voice sleepy. “Emily, you’re imagining it. Mom’s sleeping in the room down the hall.”

“I swear I heard it! Three times. Every night, at exactly 3 a.m.”

Jason sighed, wrapping his arms around me. “Honey, you’re stressed about work. Mom’s old and can barely walk, how can she tiptoe to our door every night without making a sound? Go to sleep.”

But I knew I wasn’t crazy.

The next morning, at breakfast, I watched Martha. She sat across from me, her hands shaking as she held the spoonful of oatmeal. When she saw me looking, she lowered her head, avoiding my eyes. But I saw her hand gripping the napkin so tightly that her knuckles were white.

“Mom,” I tried to ask. “Did you need anything last night? I heard a noise.”

Martha looked up. Her lips were moving, her eyes flashing with panic. She was about to say something: “J… Ja…” but then stopped when Jason walked into the kitchen, kissed me on the cheek, and patted her shoulder.

“Good morning, Mom. I’ll prescribe you a mild sedative today, so you can sleep better,” Jason said with a perfect, dutiful smile.

Martha cringed.

That day, I decided to take action. I went on Amazon and ordered a tiny security camera disguised as a smoke detector. I mounted it right in the ceiling of the hallway, pointing directly at our bedroom door.

That night, I pretended to be asleep. Jason had a glass of wine and fell into a deep sleep.

2:58 AM. My heart was pounding.

2:59 AM.

3:00 AM.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The knocking sounded clear. This time, I didn’t wake Jason. I lay still, holding my breath, waiting for footsteps to leave. But there were no footsteps. There was only an eerie silence that lasted until morning.

The next morning, after Jason left for work, I locked the door to my office, and with trembling hands, opened my laptop to extract the data from the camera’s memory card.

I fast-forwarded to 2:50 AM. The hallway was dark, except for the dim light from the nightlight coming from the stairs.

2:55 AM. Martha’s door at the end of the hallway opened. She stepped out. She didn’t use a cane. She was barefoot, moving extremely lightly, a far cry from her hunched appearance during the day.

She approached our bedroom door.

I held my breath, staring at the screen. What was she going to do? Harm us? Was she sleepwalking?

Martha stood in front of my door. She didn’t knock right away. She pressed her ear to the door, listening. Her face in the night vision mode of the camera was white, her eyes wide and alert.

Then she did something that sent a chill down my spine. She turned her back to my door, standing right in front of the entrance, facing the hallway like a guard on guard.

A metal object flashed in her hand. A box cutter.

What the hell?

Suddenly, at 2:58 AM, another door in the hallway opened. Not Martha’s door.

It was Jason’s office door – my husband.

I froze. Jason was sleeping next to me? How could he be in the office?

But then I remembered. The door led to a side passage that led down to the garage and… a secret storage room that Jason always kept locked, saying it was where he kept his sterile surgical instruments.

From the darkness of the office, a figure stepped out.

It was Jason.

But not the elegant Jason of the day. He was wearing blue surgical scrubs, rubber gloves, and a syringe filled with a cloudy yellow liquid in his hand.

I covered my mouth to keep from screaming. My husband hadn’t been sleeping next to me at 3 a.m. He had gotten up, taken a detour, and was now standing in the hallway.

On the screen, Jason walked toward the bedroom where I was sleeping (or he thought I was).

But Martha was there.

His frail, silent mother stood in front of the door, holding a tiny box cutter. She wasn’t afraid. She looked at her son with the eyes of a mother animal protecting her cub.

Jason stopped. He looked at his mother, not surprised, but disgusted and angry.

He muttered something. The camera couldn’t pick up the sound, but I could read his lips: “Get out of the way.

, old fool.”

Martha shook her head. She raised the knife, pointed it at him.

Then she turned and used the handle of the knife to knock on my door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

It wasn’t a ghost or a stalker’s knock. It was an alarm.

Every night, she woke me at 3 a.m. – when people were in the deepest sleep – to interrupt my sleep. She knew if I woke, or moved, Jason wouldn’t dare attack.

On the screen, when he heard the knock, Jason gritted his teeth, his face contorted with rage. He raised the syringe as if to stab her, but then he stopped. He knew if she screamed or made any louder noises, I would wake up and catch him in the act.

He pointed at her face, a cruel, threatening gesture, then backed away, disappearing into the darkness of the office.

Martha stood there, chest heaving, sweat She waited another 10 minutes to make sure he was gone, then trudged back to her room.

I slammed my laptop shut. My world collapsed around me.

My husband—the man I loved, the doctor who saved lives—was trying to kill me.

And the “sedative” he said he was giving his mother every day…wasn’t to help her sleep. It was to weaken her, to keep her from guarding me.

Click.

The key in the front door rang.

Jason was home. Three hours earlier than usual.

“Emily? Are you home?” His voice rang out, sweet and creepy. “I forgot the medical records.”

I looked around frantically. I couldn’t let him know I’d looked at the cameras. But I couldn’t stay here either.

His footsteps were coming up the stairs.

I grabbed my phone, about to call 911. But there was no signal. A jammer? Had he prepared that much?

The office door swung open. Jason stood there. He was still wearing his business suit, but his eyes were no longer gentle. He looked at the laptop still lit on the desk, and at my pale face.

“What are you looking at, Emily?” he asked, gently closing the door and locking it.

“Jason… you…” I backed away to the window.

“I told you Mom was paranoid,” he sighed, untying his tie, wrapping it slowly around his hand. “Why don’t you listen to me? I’m so curious.”

“Why?” I yelled. “Why would you want to kill me? I’m carrying your child!”

Jason burst out laughing. He pulled a syringe out of his pocket—the same one in the video.

“My child? No, Emily. It’s three months pregnant. And it’s the only thing standing between me and the $10 million your father left to his grandchild. According to the terms of the trust, if you and the child die… the secondary beneficiary is your husband.”

He stepped closer. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt. Potassium Chloride in high doses will cause cardiac arrest. Like a stroke during pregnancy. Naturally.”

I threw the lamp at him, but he dodged it easily. He lunged forward, pinning me to the floor. His strength was too great.

“It’s over, honey.” He raised the needle.

POP!

A loud noise rang out. Fresh blood splattered on my face.

Jason’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the side.

Standing behind him was Martha.

The frail mother-in-law held a heavy bronze statuette—Jason’s “Doctor of the Year” award. She was panting, her hair disheveled, but her eyes were burning.

“M… Mom…” I trembled.

Martha said nothing. She dropped the statuette, knelt beside me, and used her skinny hand to wipe the blood from my face. She pointed at my stomach, then toward the door.

“Run.”

It was the first clear word she had said in six months.

I helped her up. We ran out from that hellish house, leaving behind the man I once called my husband lying unconscious (or dead) in a pool of blood.

When the police arrived, they found not only poison in Jason’s secret storage room, but also Martha’s fake medical records. He had injected her with a drug that paralyzed her vocal cords so she wouldn’t tell the truth about the death of my father-in-law – whom Jason had also murdered in a similar manner for the insurance money.

Martha wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t senile. She was a prisoner in her own home, fighting every night with all her might to protect me – the next victim.

Tonight, for the first time in two months, there was no knock at 3am.

There was only the sound of me holding Martha’s hand in the hospital room, whispering two words I should have said long ago:

“Thank you, Mom.”