Chapter 7 - THE DIGITAL GHOST AND THE AWAKENING
With my thumb pressed against the transmission button on the side of the recorder, I sent the emergency beacon ping straight to Marcus’s phone and directly to the local police dispatch server with a pre-set automated priority alert labeled: CRITICAL DANGER - ARSON / ATTEMPTED MURDER AT 742 BENNETT STREET. As the flames consumed the foot of the bed and the smoke detector on the ceiling began a high-pitched, ear-splitting screech, I scrambled toward the bedroom window. The glass was blistering hot. I grabbed a heavy wooden bedside table lamp, hoisted it above my shoulder with a final surge of adrenaline, and smashed it directly into the center of the double-pane glass. The window shattered outward in a brilliant cascade of sparkling shards, letting in a massive rush of cool, fresh night air that pushed the suffocating smoke back for a precious few seconds.
I climbed up onto the sill, coughing violently, scraping my arms against the jagged glass frame as I scrambled out onto the slanted shingle roof of the porch. Below me, the front yard of the Bennett Street house stretched out under the amber streetlights. The front door burst open, and I saw my mother and Jessica step out onto the porch with practiced expressions of horror, holding damp washcloths to their faces, ready to play the grieving, shocked relatives for the incoming neighbors. But the sirens were already wailing in the distance—not five minutes away, but right around the corner, screaming through the quiet suburban streets with deafening intensity. Three police cruisers and two massive red fire engines rounded the corner of Bennett Street simultaneously, their emergency strobes painting the white siding and manicured hydrangeas in violent flashes of blue and red.
My mother froze on the porch steps, her expression of manufactured grief cracking down the middle as the first police cruiser jumped the curb and slammed to a halt on her pristine lawn. Two officers leaped out of the vehicle, hands resting on their holstered sidearms, their flashlights cutting through the smoke. And there, standing right behind them, was Marcus, having tracked the emergency GPS beacon straight from his laptop in downtown Columbus. I slid down the sloped shingle roof, dropping awkwardly onto the soft hydrangeas below, landing hard on my knees in the dirt. My mother turned, her eyes widening in absolute terror as she saw me standing there in the front yard, alive, breathing, and holding a cracked leather work boot in my hand like a weapon.
"Caitlyn! Oh, thank God you're safe, darling!" my mother cried, rushing forward with her arms outstretched, her face twisting into that familiar mask of maternal concern. "The poor girl, officer, she must have lit a candle in her room and lost control—"
May you like
"Stop right there, Deborah Monroe," an officer commanded, stepping directly between my mother and me, his hand raised. "Step away from her."
Jessica stood by the front door, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, her Lululemon leggings covered in soot from when she had helped lock the door upstairs. Marcus rushed across the lawn, dropping to his knees beside me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders while I coughed out the last remnants of smoke. I looked up at the woman who had spent my entire life trying to make me disappear, held up the old leather boot with the digital recorder clutched safely in my hand, and smiled.
