Chapter 3 - The House That Started Screaming
At first, I thought the changing light was another trick of a mind that had slept badly for a week.
The small indicator near the thermostat turned from green to amber, then settled into a hard, unmistakable red.
A short electronic voice came from the unit above the hallway.
Carbon monoxide detected, leave the building immediately.
I stared at it, unable to connect the warning to anything I could see.
The kitchen appeared ordinary, with a mug beside the sink and a dish towel hanging where James had left it.
There was no smoke or strange odor.
The house was as silent as it had been a moment before, except for the steady rain.
Then James's handwriting rose in my memory.
If they ever turn red, go outside first and ask questions later.
I stood so abruptly that the navy tie fell onto the carpet.
A second warning sounded, louder than the first, and the device began to pulse bright red.
From somewhere beneath the front porch came a deep, rising electronic wail.
The sound did not resemble the small smoke alarms I had heard before.
It filled the narrow hallway, carried through the front windows, and rose above the rain like a warning siren.
I covered one ear and grabbed my coat.
The two black suitcases stood by the door, swollen with everything James had left me.
For one terrible second, I reached for them.
Then I understood that whatever was happening inside the house would not wait while I protected luggage.
I opened the yellow door and stepped out into the wet night.
The porch lights along the row had begun flashing in a peculiar synchronized pattern.
Three houses away, a second alarm sounded, answering ours.
Across the street, somebody opened a window and shouted to ask whether there was a fire.
I looked at my phone and saw a message from an unfamiliar number associated with James's prototype service.
LANTERN NETWORK ALERT, evacuate immediately, emergency services notified, do not reenter.
It was followed by a map marking four houses in red.
The thought of four houses made the situation suddenly larger than my own grief.
Next door, Mrs. Rosa Alvarez was seventy-six and walked with a cane after a difficult hip replacement.
She had lived beside us for nine years, trading tomatoes from her garden for James's increasingly terrible homemade bread.
Her curtains were closed and her porch light remained dark.
I crossed the shared walkway and pressed her bell.
No answer came.
I knocked with both fists and shouted her name over the alarms.
At last I heard a weak voice from behind the door.
Rosa said she felt dizzy and could not find her glasses.
I tried the handle and found that she had left it unlocked, as she sometimes did when expecting a grocery delivery.
The alarm inside her house was louder than I expected, and a small red lamp flashed above the kitchen doorway.
I called her name again without stepping farther than the threshold.
She appeared at the base of the stairs, one hand against the wall and the other gripping her cane.
Her face was pale, and she moved like a person who had just awakened from deep sleep.
I told her to come toward my voice and to leave everything behind.
She asked whether I had seen James, because he always knew what to do with electrical problems.
For a second I could not answer.
Then I said that James had left instructions and that we were going to follow them.
I took her free arm, and together we made our way into the rain.
I did not know whether the air inside had already affected us, and later the fire captain would tell me I should never have gone through her doorway.
At the time, I knew only that I could not leave her there without trying to call her out.
A woman from the next house emerged carrying a sleepy little boy wrapped in a blanket.
Her name was Claire Chen, and her son Benji kept asking why the lights were red.
Two more neighbors hurried onto the sidewalk as the sirens grew louder.
The houses looked strange, their decorative porch lamps flickering above a row of frightened figures.
I pulled Rosa away from the shared entrance and told Claire that the message on my phone said carbon monoxide.
Claire called the fire department, only to learn that an alert had already been registered.
The network, she said, had sent a location and several sensor readings before anyone on the street picked up a phone.
I remembered James tapping a bright blue circuit board with his pencil and saying technology was most useful when it was doing something nobody noticed.
Now we were all noticing.
A low rumble carried up the street as a fire engine rounded the corner.
Its red lights swept across the rain and reflected in the windows of the locked houses.
Two firefighters stepped out wearing breathing equipment, followed by a captain who moved immediately toward our group.
She introduced herself as Captain Marisol Vega and asked us not to approach the buildings.
Her voice was controlled, practical, and blessedly free of the surprise I heard in my own.
She asked which home had triggered the first alert.
I raised my hand and told her my husband had built the system.
She glanced toward the lights, then toward the trembling woman beside me.
One firefighter placed an oxygen mask near Rosa's face while another began taking readings at the entrance.
The meter sounded an alarm almost immediately.
Captain Vega's expression changed, though her voice stayed calm.
She ordered the adjoining homes checked and called for additional medical units.
A second engine arrived while the first crew moved along the row.
I felt cold rain slipping down my neck and realized I had come outside in house slippers without socks.
My phone buzzed with another Lantern notification, showing an expanding red boundary that now included the boarded renovation property at the far end of the row.
It was the house whose construction noise James had complained about before our trip.
A temporary work light shone through its basement window, although no workers were visible.
As firefighters checked doors, an alarm sounded from that building too.
Someone on the sidewalk asked whether the entire block was going to explode.
Captain Vega told us that carbon monoxide was not the same danger as a gas explosion and asked everyone to let the crews work.
Her explanation steadied me for a moment, because it meant somebody understood what was happening.
Then I noticed the strange heaviness behind my eyes.
I tried to tell her about it, but the pavement tilted beneath my feet.
Rosa caught my elbow before I stumbled.
The woman who had been so weak a moment earlier looked frightened for me now.
Captain Vega signaled a paramedic, who guided me toward the ambulance and asked whether I had been inside the affected buildings.
I told him about Rosa and about the note on James's receipt.
He asked me to breathe slowly while he checked my oxygen level and arranged a hospital assessment.
As the rain fell around the emergency lights, I saw our yellow front door standing open behind the firefighters.
The armchair waited beyond it, and James's tie lay somewhere on the carpet.
For the first time since his death, I heard his voice in my mind without feeling that memory was merely another kind of loss.
Go outside first, Ames.
He had given me one instruction, and I had obeyed it.
Then a firefighter emerged from the boarded property holding a portable monitor and called something to Captain Vega.
Her expression tightened as she looked at the readings.
She turned toward her radio and said they needed the utility company and a building inspector immediately.
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This was not an isolated alarm, she told her crew.
Something inside the renovation property had been feeding danger into the entire row.
