Argleton, Chapter 9: Internet cafe
Charlie finally admits to Matt that she's been getting strange emails.
Read Chapter 8 first or start at the beginning.
A cold hot chocolate sat congealing next to Charlie as she tapped away at a clunky old keyboard. The beverage had been of a similar vintage to the computer she was using: way past its sell-by date. But this was the closest internet cafe to home, so they had braved its school classroom decor in order to get online.
“Have you got our case number there?” Matt asked, filling in a claim form online. Charlie passed him a scrap of paper and scrubbed at her face with her palms.
“God, this is depressing.”
“We still need to think of ourselves as lucky. We weren’t hurt, and although it’s inconvenient, laptops are just laptops. Our data is safe, thanks to you. You were a bit prescient with the back-ups and security updates!”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
The pair lapsed into silence again as they continued picking up the pieces of the previous night’s break-in. Forms and emails and notifications and changing passwords just in case.
“Oh no,” Charlie said, her hand covering her open mouth.
“What is it?”
“Another email.”
“What do you mean, ‘another email’?”
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Subject: You didn't listen
From: Thoeris <no-reply@nospam.com>
To: Ch4r1i3 <Ch4r1i3@geekmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
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You didn't LISTEN, did you? Well, perhaps last night will serve as a WARNING you'll take SERIOUSLY now.
STOP SEARCHING.
You'll never find it, but if you do, it'll be the LAST THING YOU EVER DO.
---------------------------------------Matt sat quietly as he read the message on her screen.
“You said ‘another’. How many of these have you had?”
“This is the third.”
“Can I read the others?”
“It was them,” Charlie said after Matt had finished reading. “These people sending me these emails, they were the ones who broke into our flat. How else would they know?”
“We don’t know that,” he said, calmly, his mind racing to find a plausible explanation. “We’ve been pretty open with the fact that we got burgled last night. We’ve told people publicly what happened, so it wouldn’t be hard for anyone following you online to know we’ve been turned over. It doesn’t mean that they had anything to do with anything.”
“But, Matt, this is an email address I hardly ever use. They must have dug around to find it.”
Matt read through the emails again, considering them carefully before finally reaching a conclusion.
“No normal person uses capslock so often, Charlie. This person, whoever he or she is, is a troll. And frankly, it’s more likely to be a he, someone who just sees a pretty avatar and decides to give the person behind it some shit. Don’t let him upset you.”
He reached over to put a reassuring hand on her arm, then noticed that tears were silently falling from her eyes, leaving wet trails down her cheeks.
“It’s OK, Charlie. It’s OK. You know how mean people can be to strangers online. That’s all it is.” He moved his chair closer and leant over to wipe a tear away. “Really, it’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know, Matt. I just don’t know. This is just wigging me out. I think we should stay away from this, this… thing, whatever it is. I’ve been trolled before, this is different. This is scary.”
If you want to read Argleton all in one go, download the free ebook now. And why not try The Gates of Balawat or The Lacemaker as well!