Kate-Mail

Micheal sipped his tea and checked his e-mail. It was his early
morning ritual before he went to work. He only had one message today,
it was from someone called Kate. The subject was 'Goodbye.' He wasn't
sure who Kate was. Maybe it was someone he had met at a party and given
his e-mail address to. Maybe it was a friend he had forgotten about,
someone who was leaving the country or something. Micheal clicked on
the message, and opened it. The screen seemed to take ages to load up,
and when it finally did, it was just a blank screen. He shook his head
and logged off the net, then switching off his computer went to use the
toilet before he made his way to work.


As he stood there over the toilet bowl, a strange wind seemed
to blow through the bathroom making him shiver a little, suddenly the
mirror fell off the shelf landing with a crash on the floor, smashing
into many fragments of silvery pieces. Micheal stood there for a moment
feeling a bit unnerved. He carefully stepped over the fragments of
glass and decided he would clean them up when he got home later. He
went into the living room to get his coat. And as he picked it up off
the back of a chair he became aware of a strange presence and heard a
slow tap tap tapping on the window. He looked up to see a young woman
with a pale face stood at the window staring at him. The room went very
cold suddenly and Micheal wrapped his arms around himself, to keep
warm. He felt the blood leave his face, and fear pulse through him,
throbbing through his temples. The girl continued to stare at him in
silence, her gaze very dark, unnatural. Then she turned and walked
slowly away, becoming a mist that disappeared.


The phone began to ring suddenly. Micheal looked at it,
hesitating, brushing his fingers through his hair a few times.
Eventually the answer machine got it, but when Micheal heard the voice,
he wished it would start ringing again. The voice that spoke through
the answer machine was wierd and creepy; it was electrical, distorted,
a bit like the screeching of a modem, but what sounded like a
skincrawly whisper spoke through it : "Goodbye?
goo..d..b..y.e?.g..o?o?db?ye.." and then the phone went
dead.


Micheal stood there, paralysed with fear. Ok, he was
hallucinating, there was no other logical explanation, he must be
having a flashback; but even on acid he'd never tripped out like that
before, and the wierd thing was he didn't feel trippy, he felt normal;
but what else could it be? Was his house haunted? He took a few deep
breaths and made his way to the car to drive for work. He'd be alright
soon when he calmed down and found a rational explanation for what had
just happend, he vowed he would have a rest from drugs for a bit
though. He sat in his car for some time before he started the engine,
and then began to drive slowly and carefully to work. He went to put on
some music to try and keep himself sane, and also because he needed
something to break the ominous silence and mood he was feeling. He
didn't have any CD's in his car, and cursed himself for forgetting to
bring them with him again; he decided to tune into the radio. But found
he couldn't get it to work properly and gave up after a while, deciding
he would just put up with the silence.


He felt the temperature in the car lower considerably and
switched on his fan heater to keep warm. He became aware again that he
was not alone and looking in his rearview mirror he saw the
half-skeletal face of a zombie woman staring coldly at him. He felt his
heart flutter, and suddenly the radio erupted into a mass of white
noise that shocked him into momentararily losing control of his
steering wheel, sending him through the railing at the side of the
road, and onto the busy motorway below.


***


It was 5pm.. Jessie was about to finish her day of work, she
went to quickly check her e-mail before she left the office to go home.
There was only one message tonight, from someone called Kate. She
wondered who it could be.. she couldn't think of anyone she knew called
Kate. Though the name felt familiar to her. The message in the subject
box was: "Goodbye"


She clicked on the message.. the screen seemed to take ages
to load.. and when it finally finished loading there was no message
just a blank screen. Strange.. She shrugged her shoulders and logged
off the internet. Then grabbing her coat left the office to go home.



As she got into the elevator and pressed the button for the
ground floor, she got a strange feeling about it, the elevator became
very cold suddenly and the light began to flicker, she grew concerned
that maybe the lift was malfunctioning. She tried to step back out so
she could take the stairs instead, but the doors closed in her face and
the elevator began to move. She felt uneasy and anxious as the elevator
descended slowly, but could do nothing now, she stood there shivering
and kept thinking she could feel someone breathing down her neck, but
everytime she turned round there was noone there, suddenly her mobile
phone began to ring, she reached into her handbag to get it.



"Hello." she answered.


The light suddenly flicked off and there was total
darkness.


"Hello, " she said again nervously, "Who's
there?"


From the phone hissed wierd electrical noise, that became a
diembodied voice distorted and eery as if it was talking from a far
away place.. then it became a whispering


"K?a?t..e.." it said? "K..a?t..e"


Then the elevator began to descend very quickly, too fast,
way too fast, something was wrong. She saw the lights on the control
panel count down one by one till they went passed the basement level,
but still the elevator went down, down, down, down. Was it possible to
go so far down? She didn't have much time to scream when she realized
the answer?


***


Detective James Davids looked at the dead body of the woman
lieing on the floor of the elevator. Her broken body and face was
frozen in absolute terror. She seemed to be part of an ongoing series
of freak accidents, which he was beginning to suspect as being murder,
for every one of these people had recieved a strange email from someone
called Kate. This dead woman had recieved an email from her, as had the
young man he had found dead in his car in the tragic road accident this
morning.


He knew it was probably just some wierd coincidence, but the
thing was, shortly after these people's deaths, the email seemed to
forward itself to a random contact in the victims address book like a
computer virus might; and to all intents and purposes it behaved just
like a computer virus, only a fatal one.


All the victims had known each other in some form or other
and must have at some point exchanged email addresses. But it didn't
explain the motives behind the killer, if there was one. For if someone
was behind these murders, they would have to be a computer genius; to
know whose email address the virus had reached and to act so quickly.
He figured it must be something to do with opening the email, which
triggered something that alerted the killer. But noone could act that
quickly after the email had been opened, it just wasn't possible;
unless each of these people had already been booby trapped by the
killer in some way, and all he/she had to do was press a
button?


This was too bizarre, and perhaps he was letting his
imagination go out of control; he of course couldn't tell anyone about
his theories on this case, cause they would laugh him out of the force;
but detective James Davids was open minded and knew that in this world
of improbability and mysteries nothing was implausible.


Perhaps his thoughts about this were becoming too farfetched,
but in his guts he knew the email and the murders were connected
somehow. He had been studying this case now for over two months. And he
was sure if he could understand the connection between Kate and these
strange accidents he would find the answer.


When he got home he poured himself a bourbon and sat at his
desk. He flicked on his computer and whilst waiting for it to boot up,
realized the young lady he had found dead in the elevator, reminded him
of someone. Hadn't she been in the police station the other day? He
sipped the bourbon, savoured the strong fiery taste for a moment.



His computer kicked in, and he checked his email, he had one
new message. His heart nearly stopped when he saw the name : Kate. And
then a thought came to his head, the virus had forwarded itself to him,
he must have given that young lady his email address. But it was too
late, in autopilot he had clicked on the message to open it as soon as
he had seen it, before registering what he was doing.


Above him the lights began to flicker and a strange wind blew
the curtains of his study. He was feeling something within? an emotion
he wasn't used to feeling : fear. The message finally loaded on the
screen and the page was blank. There was a loud crashing sound from
behind him and he turned surprised to find his bourbon decanter in
pieces on the floor. He mopped the cold sweat from his
brow.


Just the wind he said to himself, just the wind, maybe
there's a storm brewing tonight, explains the lights flickering a bit
and the tension in the air, better close that window he thought. As he
got up off his chair to close the window, the phone began to ring?