Day five, and the weather remained pleasant. As pleasant as could be considering where he lived. He sat next to his fireplace with another fire set up, all in an attempt to dull away the constant chill that had been with him since yesterday.
He saw out the corner of his eye the glowing computer screen, despite holding true to his resolve not to turn the miserable contraption back on. Had he not shut it off all the way yesterday? No, he had. He remembered very well. That’s what scared him so much.
Rushing forward as if it were a bomb needing to be defused, he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw that his e-mail was opened, and he had yet another message, yet again from no sender. A sane man would have flicked the computer off again without looking at it any further and left it at that. Instead, Neville sat himself down and, his hand shaking, clicked open the message.
You don’t have to be alone. We can be together.
Similar enough to some of the messages before, but what scared him this time was his memory that he’d turned the computer off yesterday. Had he? Then why was it back on? Was his memory failing him already?
He shut the computer off, and wouldn’t let himself make eye contact with the screen again until he saw it go black. He bent down under his desk and unplugged the machine, and only then did he feel better.
He went about with the rest of his day. He sat by the fireplace, he did crossword and Sudoku puzzles, and he even brought out his old harmonica to practice on. No matter what he did, though, he couldn’t get himself to relax. And he couldn’t seem to do anything about that chill creeping down his spine…