Augury

It was early in the evening when he sat down to check his emails.

It wasn’t a task that he was fond of, because of the amount of junk email that managed to bypass his spam filter. Looking down the list that sat in his inbox, he was surprised to see one that didn’t make sense. It had nothing under From, Date or Size and the subject matter comprised of the single word; Augury. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t open an email that had no sender, or address. There was a lot of malware around and the golden rule is to not open it. With all this in mind, for some unaccountable reason, he did anyway.

A single paragraph came up on the screen.

‘I am your distant ancestor. I have been here for a long time and was made up to angel status recently. I have followed you and admire your charitable work. I am not permitted to interfere. I am allowed to hint. Beneath the stairs, a frayed wire above paper. You have no more than twenty four hours to remedy this. Keep up the good work. This message will delete after thirty seconds. No response possible.’

He sat in a state of shock for a few seconds before scribbling down a quick note referring to the stairs, the wire and the paper. The remaining allotted moments were spent looking at the screen until the item disappeared.

After a few more minutes of sitting in a frozen state of inactivity, he got up slowly and in a daze he wandered through the house. He opened the cupboard door below the stairs and switched the light on. After taking a good look around, he found it. Not easy to see, but it was there nonetheless. He dragged the box containing old magazines out of the way and pulled the plug out of the socket. He had no idea what it was connected to, but disconnecting it was the only thing that mattered. An electrician would no doubt sort it out. He would get one in tomorrow.

Back at the computer, he sat for a long time going over all that had happened.

At the end of the day it’s the same old story… who’s he going to tell?