Red LED

It was another hot night, very hot, too hot.        

I was trying to sleep in my parent’s new house.  

My room was on the top floor. It was actually the only room on the top floor.

My parents have a room on the second floor, along with one other bedroom and a bathroom.

The main floor had the living and kitchen and dining areas along with another bathroom.

The basement was mostly just storage with a room for heating and cooling and an electrical room.

My parents just rebuilt this house after the tragedy two years ago.

They had lost so much money with the farm having to be shut down for a season.    

Yes. We live on a farm. In a rural area. We drive everywhere. There is no bus out here. No subway. Taxis will even rarely want to come out here.

However, we enjoy one thing that the ‘Citiots’ don’t get to enjoy. Quiet.    

There is a little village about ten minutes west. They have everything one would need. A gas station, general store. They even have their own fire truck. One truck. Although they have been having a problem lately with kids calling in false alarms. 

I had been helping dad all day trying to get the new irrigation system to work. It was located in a small shed just a short walk from the house.

He had just recently installed a new system that was automatic. It is set to come on at about three in the morning and run for about 20 minutes.

It didn’t work properly. It would not start. You know the sound a pump makes when it first starts?
Then once it gets going it sounds ‘normal’.

Well, this one made that start-up sound for a long time. It struggled to start, and would never start.

All day we were trying to figure out why it would not start, but couldn’t. So, my dad decided to have someone come out to look at it tomorrow. Rather, today, as it was very early in the morning now. 

Well. New house equals problems.

I am sure we will get everything working soon.

I looked at my watch, ‘3:08'.

I was very thirsty from it being so hot, so I decided to get a drink of water.

I walked down the steps to the second level, but for some reason I decided to get my drink of water from the kitchen faucet instead of the second-floor bathroom.

I started my way down the stairs and to the kitchen.

All the while I had this really strange feeling that something was not right.

You know that annoying ‘sixth-sense’ feeling you sometimes get?

Yeah. That one.

It was hard to see with just the dim light from the moon shining through.

I decided that I had better turn on the kitchen light.    

I flipped the switch, but nothing happened.

It was right at that point that I had realized what was wrong.

No power. We were in a blackout.

No big deal. I don’t really need a lot of light to pour water.

I grabbed a cup and started to fill it.

I looked out the kitchen window and across the fields I could see our neighbour’s farm.

They had some horses that I could see partially illuminated by the moon and by a light they had on the side of the barn.

I had turned off the faucet and began to drink my water, and that is when I noticed it. A small screech. No. Not a screech. It was more like a long beep. Like from some out-of-control electronic device.

I looked toward where I thought I heard the sound.

It was coming from the side door.

There was a door off of the kitchen with kind of a storage area with a door leading out to the side of the house. Just beyond that was the door leading to the basement. The whole area was enclosed with glass.

I peered through, and could just barely see a tiny red light.

I opened the door to the room and the beep definitely became louder.

The little red light somehow drew me closer.

The light was an LED on the recently-installed alarm panel.

It was lighted above a label that read, ‘ALARM’.

Adjacent to that was an LCD panel. It had a display on it as well.

It read, 

‘ALARM 001 OF 001
SMOKE DETECTOR
ELECTRICAL ROOM’

I had to think for a minute that this could not be a real alarm. Why was there no siren to alert us?

Was I dreaming or was this just another one of the many problems with this new house?

All the time I was thinking about this, I never noticed that the beep had stopped.

I looked at the panel.

Nothing.

That’s what I thought. It was nothing.

That’s when I noticed something not quite right.

A very distinct smell.

For some reason that small prompted me to focus my attention to the basement door.

From what I could see in the little light available made my heart beat faster.

I saw what appeared to be smoke coming from around the door frame.

Confused at this point, the only thing I could think of doing was to tell dad.

I ran up to my parent’s room only to hear my dad yelling, ‘Knock it off!’

He was yelling at the dog and cat who were both pacing across and jumping on the bed as if to alert my parents of something.

I was happy at that point to not have to be the one to have to awaken my dad out of a good sleep.

I then told my parents what I experienced in the kitchen, and my dad calmly said, “Did you call 9-1-1?”

My parents did not believe in mobile phones. They only had a landline that was not yet connected.

I ran up to my room and grabbed my Samsung.

I called, and provided all the information she requested, but then she told me that she could not dispatch the fire truck from the local village as it was already out on a call.

“I will dispatch a truck from the next closet town”, she said.

I knew that these trucks could not travel very fast on these curvy roads at night.

I knew that the next closet town with a fire truck was at least 25 minutes away.

I did not tell my dad that. I just told him that they were on their way.

Then, as we looked towards the house, we saw the flames lapping up from the basement.

Then, suddenly, the kitchen was in flames. The very spot I had been standing just a few minutes before was now an inferno.

I could not help but to look over at my dad, and saw something I had never before seen.

His eyes glossing over. A small tear began to run down his cheek.

I could not help thinking, ‘No. Not again. This can not possibly be happening to them again.’