Then my sister called. Emergency at work. Could I babysit?
I stood in my nephew's nursery and saw pure white light radiating from his crib.
The voices rose together into a chorus, no longer whispering but commanding: White is the cure. White cleanses black. You need to take his breath until his white light flows into you. Such a small sacrifice to save your mother, to save everyone you've infected. Press your hands over his mouth and the white will transfer. Take the white light. You have to take it now.
I was leaning over the crib before I realized I'd moved. My hands floated above his tiny face. I could see my own black aura in my peripheral vision, those dark tentacles reaching toward the white light like hungry snakes.
My hands were shaking.
The voices became desperate: Now. Do it now. Your hesitation is killing your mother. Every second you wait, the infection spreads.
When I covered my ears with my hands, the voices screamed instructions: Press down. Transfer the white. Cleanse the infection. Take the white.
I yanked my hands away from the crib so fast my knuckles cracked, and I was stumbling backward before I even realized I was moving. My shoulders slammed into the nursery wall hard enough to rattle the picture frames, and I could feel the drywall give a little under the impact. The voices exploded into this layered screaming that made my skull feel like it was splitting open. All of them shouting over each other about how I was weak and selfish and the infection was spreading right now because I hesitated.
My whole body was shaking so bad I could barely stand. My legs felt like they might give out any second, and I couldn't catch my breath. But some tiny part of my brain that was still working right knew I couldn't trust what I was seeing or hearing anymore.
The white light around my nephew was still there, pulsing and bright, and the black tentacles from my own body were still reaching toward it. But I forced my feet to move and got myself out of that room before the voices could convince me again.
I grabbed the door frame to steady myself and pulled the door mostly closed, leaving just enough of a crack that I could hear if the baby cried. And then my legs just stopped working and I slid down the hallway wall until I was sitting on the carpet.
I pressed my palms against my eyes so hard I saw these bright spots and flashes instead of colors. And the pressure helped a little, gave me something real to focus on. The voices were still going, but they'd changed from screaming to this constant stream of accusations, telling me I was weak. And my mother's pink aura with the black veins was getting worse every single second I wasted sitting here.
I could feel my heart beating so fast it hurt. And my hands wouldn't stop shaking even though I was pressing them against my face.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and it took me three tries to unlock it because my fingers kept slipping on the screen. I remembered reading something online once about counting breaths to calm down. So I tried that. Breathing in for four counts and holding it and breathing out for four counts. The counting gave me something to focus on besides the voices.
And I kept telling myself out loud that this was symptoms. This was my brain doing something wrong. This wasn't real.
The voices heard me doing this and they shifted their whole approach, getting quieter and more reasonable. Explaining in this calm teacher voice that the white light transfer was just basic energy exchange. Nothing that would hurt the baby. Just a simple flow from white to black that would fix everything.
It sounded so logical when they said it like that, and I had to shake my head hard to remind myself that voices telling you to hurt a baby are never logical no matter how they sound.
I scrolled through my phone to my sister's number and hit call. And when she answered, I opened my mouth but nothing came out at first. She said hello twice before I could force the words out. And even then they came out all broken up and wrong.
I told her I wasn't safe to be alone with the baby, and she needed to come home right now. And she started asking what's wrong and what happened. But I just kept repeating that I needed help. Something was really wrong with me. I was so sorry, but she had to come home right this second.
I could hear the fear in her voice when she said, "Okay. She's leaving work right now. She'll be there in fifteen minutes. Just stay on the phone with me."
But I told her I couldn't. I had to go. And I hung up because I didn't trust what I might say if the voices got louder again.
I stayed sitting in the hallway with my back pressed against the wall, and I kept the nursery door in my line of sight but I didn't let myself get any closer to it. Every couple minutes I checked my phone for the time, and it felt like each minute took about an hour to pass, and the voices kept switching back and forth between angry commands and this gentle persuading tone.
I could see these faint colored lights bleeding out from under the nursery door—probably just the nightlight in there. But my brain kept trying to tell me it was the white light calling to me, and I forced myself to look at the blank wall across from me instead.
I started counting the little bumps and swirls in the paint texture, giving myself something concrete to focus on, and I got up to 237 before I heard my sister's key in the front door.
She came rushing in and didn't even look at me, just went straight to the nursery, and I heard her pick up the baby and check him over. When she came back out carrying him, I could see she was trying really hard not to cry, and she asked me what happened in this shaky voice.
I told her I'd been hearing voices telling me to hurt him, that I needed real professional help right now, that I thought I was having some kind of mental breakdown, and she needed to call someone who knew what to do.
She nodded and pulled out her own phone while backing away from me, keeping the baby on the far side of her body, and she called 911.
The operator must have asked her a bunch of questions because she kept answering yes and no and giving our address, and she told them her brother was having a mental health crisis and was having thoughts about hurting her baby.