The ninth day was spent in agonizing discomfort, and not just from the cut in his foot. The computer was gone. For all that, he still expected to see the screen pop up in front of his face, even in ridiculous places like the microwave. When the rational side of his mind told him it wouldn’t happen, he wondered if his stalker would show up at his door at any moment. And what would the stalker do? Murder him with a knife?
This continued well into the tenth day, and the eleventh and twelfth too. By the thirteenth, he at last felt the dark cloud above him lifting. He was far from ready to put his worries to rest, but they were less overpowering now. The bright display from his computer did not show itself, and no creepy messages either. He felt a moment of guilt at having destroyed the present his son had gotten him. But he wasn’t even considering replacing it. He never wanted to own a computer again.
He decided to do some cleaning to occupy his day today. Although he was usually rather tidy, many of the shelves had accumulated more than their share of dust. After a good chunk of his day had gone by, he sat down and wracked his brains trying to think of what else he could do.
Well… the coffee stains were still on the floor, but the thought of cleaning them still turned him off.
The mail! Yeah, there was something. He hadn’t checked his mailbox in an eternity. He dressed up snugly and left his cabin, beginning the long walk down the mountain. He veered off to the side of the road, musing that he really shouldn’t be walking in the middle of the road. Traffic up here was such a rarity, however, that he could probably walk up and down this road a hundred times and never find any.
He searched for the mailbox with his number on it. He so seldom came here, he spent a moment trying to remember which one belonged to him. Failing that, he took his key and tested every mailbox starting with #1. Finally, the third-to-last mailbox opened for him.
His mailbox wasn’t that full after all; there were only four letters. He wished he could say he was surprised. He flipped through them right there. The first two, he could already tell, were junk mail. No need to even bother with opening them. The third letter had the return address from one ‘Darrell Osweld’. It was an old relative of Neville’s. Possibly. He stuffed it into his coat pocket, telling himself he’d look at it later. Maybe.
He got to the last letter, bare white and completely unmarked. All at once, his good mood died and he was afraid. He knew what was coming before it did, and he nearly threw the letter into the wind, to be carried off and never seen again.
He opened the letter.
Dear Neville,
The end is near.
It was strange. Grocery-shopping aside, Neville never visited Clovertown for any reason whatsoever. So much that, when he finally did come down with another purpose, he couldn’t even navigate the town properly. As far as his brain was concerned, the corner of the town with the grocery store in it was the only part that existed.
Until now. After a lot of aimless wandering, he’d finally found the police station. Now that he thought about it, he had been to see Clovertown’s police once, but that was years ago now. He couldn’t remember why. It must’ve been a big deal, whatever it was, if he’d had to go to the police to get it sorted out. But then, if he couldn’t remember, it couldn’t honestly have been that important. There were a lot of things in his life that weren’t as important as they’d once been.
“Can I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked.
He settled back into reality at the sound of her voice, realizing the person ahead of him in line had left. Humbly, he explained himself, including that he’d called the station earlier to book an appointment. With a sickly-sweet smile, she told him to sit down and someone would be with him soon. She conveniently neglected to mention who that someone was.
After sitting impatiently for some time, a tall and rather round, bald man addressed Neville by name.
“Aye, that’s me.”
“I am Constable Antonio Mendez. Please come with me.”
Neville followed the large man through the stately halls of the station until they came to Antonio’s office. Antonio invited him in.
“I hear you’re having problems with an anonymous letter sender,” Antonio said once they’d sat down. “Perhaps you’d care to explain in more detail.”
“Oh, I got details for you.” Neville told the same story he’d spoken about over the phone, but with all the extra information added. He started from the beginning and set out to cover every event of the thirteen days. Antonio’s face was a mask, up until Neville got to the part about the unplugged computer still being on.
“Hold the phone,” he interrupted. “How could the computer have been on if it had no power?”
“I don’t know. But it did, and it scared me half to death.”
Antonio narrowed his eyes. “Does that make sense to you?”
“Listen, I know what I saw. I had that cord completely taped up and away from its socket, and still, my computer was running!”
“You know what you thought you saw. There must surely be a more rational explanation.”
Neville hadn’t known the man for more than a quarter of an hour and already he disliked him. “I know what I saw. I’m not delusional.” I hope.
“Yes, yes. So what did you do with the computer that was running with no power?”
Neville swallowed tightly. “I… uh… smashed it to pieces.” Any chance he’d had of being taken seriously must surely be gone now. Antonio would write him off as a nutjob. But Antonio only resumed his blank, stoic look from before and asked him to continue with his story.
By the time Neville finished, he was wondering why he’d ever bothered to come in the first place. Antonio rubbed his chin once.
“Do you have any of these e-mail messages still in your account?”
“I destroyed the computer.”
“Yes, you told me that. But your account can be accessed from more than one computer, you do realize. As long as you know your address and password, we can have a look right now.”
Antonio flipped open his own computer. Neville gathered around his desk awkwardly. It bothered him that he could not recall what his password, or even his e-mail address was. Antonio was forced to wait while Augustus stood trying to remember, feeling ever more like an idiot as the seconds passed.
When they opened his account, all the e-mails were gone. Yet another chill ran through Neville, on top of him feeling ever more like an idiot. Antonio frowned tightly.
“Did you delete all the messages?”
“Only the first few. I don’t know what happened to the others,” he stammered. “They should still be there.” Neville felt at his jacket pocket. He still had the letter. If it hadn’t disappeared without a trace too. Or if the paper was there, but the writing had faded away. He unfolded the paper to see that it was still there.
Dear Neville,
The end is near.
He shivered. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing it was still there.
“I got this in the mail, after all the e-mails I got in my computer,” Neville said, handing Antonio the letter. “It was only yesterday, in fact. There was no return address.”
Antonio looked at the letter and read the whole thing aloud in his dull, flat voice, making the whole thing seem even creepier.
“I see,” he said. “This is rather unsettling, isn’t it?”
“Unsettling? Yes, I should think so. Especially coming after a long row of e-mails that said very similar things. I might not have them in my account any more, but believe me, they were there.”
Antonio asked Neville some routine questions, such as if Neville knew anyone who might be doing this, and if Neville had any enemies and/or anyone who might wish him harm. Neville, of course, had no clue, and had no helpful information beyond what he’d already said. The meeting ended with Neville giving his contact information, and Antonio announcing in a monotone voice that he’d look into this and see if he or any of his colleagues came up with anything. But Neville had already decid
ed the police would be of no use here, and that he’d wasted his time.
“Don’t let me take up any more of your day,” he said to Antonio before leaving the police station and making his way back to his cabin through the frosted expanse.