Chapter 2 - The Echo in the Screen
The glow from Ethan’s phone cut through the dark hallway like a cold scalpel.
Sarah stood frozen outside his cracked bedroom door, her breath trapped behind her ribs. Her bare feet were planted against the hardwood floor, still sticky in faint patches where three cans of industrial cleaner hadn’t fully erased the birthday cake’s sugary grease. In the guest room down the hall, six-year-old Lily whimpered in her sleep, her soft sobs muffled by the plush bear she refused to let go of. Lily’s left cheek had swollen into a purplish welt, an ugly stamp left by her own brother’s hand.
*“Mommy saved you again.”*
Sarah stared down at the lock screen. The notification had popped up from an unregistered sender, masked through a rotating burner gateway: *No Caller ID.*
Her thumb hovered over the glass. Her instinct as a mother screamed at her to unlock it, to tear the digital world apart until she found whoever was whispering into her son’s ear. But before her nail could graze the sensor, the screen went black.
A shadow shifted in the bedroom.
Ethan stood on the other side of the threshold. He hadn’t changed out of his clothes. His collar was torn from where Sarah had shoved him into the dining table to pull him off his sister. A thin scrape ran from his ear down his jawline, red and crusty, but his eyes were what made Sarah step back.
They weren't the eyes of the boy who used to build cardboard rocket ships in the backyard. They were hollowed out, bloodshot, rimmed with deep charcoal circles that spoke of weeks without real sleep.
“Give it back,” Ethan whispered. His voice was cracked, raw from the screaming match three hours ago.
“Who sent this, Ethan?” Sarah kept her voice level, fighting the tremor in her throat. “Who is texting you at two in the morning saying I saved you?”
Ethan didn’t answer with words. He lunged forward, snatching the phone from her grip with a feral speed that made her skin prickle. He didn’t check the notification. He immediately shoved the device into his back pocket, his knuckles white, his chest heaving against his rumpled shirt.
“You don’t knock anymore?” he spat, retreating into the darkness of his room. “You throw me into a table in front of thirty people, and now you’re going through my personal property?”
“Your personal property?” Sarah stepped across the threshold, refusing to let him hide behind teenage petulance. She flicked the wall switch.
The overhead light flooded the room, and the breath evacuated her lungs all over again.
Ethan’s room was a ruin. The academic trophies he had earned in middle school were swept off the shelves, shattered across the carpet. His closet doors were off their tracks. But worse than the destruction was the paranoia scrawled across the space: the blinds had been taped to the window frames with black electrical tape, sealing out every sliver of streetlight. Over his desk, his laptop sat with its webcam covered in several layers of chewing gum and duct tape.
“Ethan,” Sarah breathed, the anger draining out of her, replaced by a cold, suffocating dread. “What is happening to you?”
“Nothing!” he shouted, his voice cracking into a high, hysterical register. He backed away until his spine hit the taped window. “Nothing is happening! Lily ruined the cake. She ruined my birthday. She ruined everything, like she always does!”
“She’s six years old!” Sarah took a step toward him, her hands raised, palms open. “She tripped, Ethan! You slapped your baby sister across the face until she bruised! And then you raised your hand to me! You have never—not once in your entire life—raised your hand to anyone! Look at me. Look at your hands!”
Ethan looked down. His fingers were trembling so violently he had to ball them into fists to hide it. A single tear cut through the grime on his cheek, but his jaw remained clenched like iron.
“You should have let me leave,” Ethan muttered, staring at the floor. “If you hadn’t stopped me, if you had just let me walk out that door tonight, none of this would matter.”
“What does that mean?” Sarah pressed, closing the distance between them. “Ethan, talk to me. The text. Who is watching us? Who knew what happened downstairs?”
Ethan looked up, and for a split second, the veil of venom slipped. Sarah saw the terrified, drowning boy beneath the monster. His lips parted. He took a short, sharp breath, as if he were about to collapse into her arms and confess every demon tormenting his mind.
Then his phone vibrated against his hip.
*Buzz. Buzz.*
Ethan flinched as if he’d been struck by an electric wire. The terror instantly calcified into cold, defensive rage. He shoved past her, his shoulder slamming hard into hers, and pointed toward the open doorway.
“Get out of my room, Mom.”
“Ethan, please—”
“Get out, or I swear to God I’m leaving this house right now and you’ll never see me again!” he roared, his voice shaking the drywall.
Down the hall, Lily began to wail in earnest. The little girl’s cries sliced through the house, fragile and terrified.
Sarah looked at her son—her firstborn, the boy she had raised through twelve years of single motherhood after his father walked out, the boy who used to read bedtime stories to Lily when she had night terrors. He was standing there with his teeth bared, looking at her as if she were an enemy soldier.
“I love you,” Sarah said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried more weight than his shouts. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, Ethan. But you do not touch your sister again. And you do not threaten me in this house. Sleep. We deal with this when the sun comes up.”
She turned and walked out, pulling his door shut behind her.
She walked down the hallway to Lily’s room, scooped the weeping child into her arms, and carried her back to her own master bed. She locked the bedroom door from the inside, placed Lily beneath the heavy duvet, and sat down on the edge of the mattress.
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Sarah didn't sleep. She sat in the dark with her back against the headboard, listening to the floorboards creak down the hall, wondering how a mother could sleep in the same house as a stranger she had given birth to.
***
