The Security System

Kim had never identified with the despair of a fictional character quite the way she did as she beheld the litter ridden streets of Tooting. She hadn’t exactly been anticipating the gold paved streets Dick Whittington had, but torn apart rubbish, apparently the result of desperate urban foxes, was not what she had been expecting at all. The first niggles of doubt had set in.

Some people migrated to pursue dreams or career, others to escape poor living conditions and some even to avoid political persecution. Kim had migrated because it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

She’d been single, her employment contract had ended and she’d just plain fancied a change. She already had some friends abroad so she’d bought a ticket with the majority of her savings and followed them.

London Town. The Big Smoke.

Kim was a positive soul so as she’d dragged her suitcase along the pavement, trying to avoid baked beans cans and torn chip packets, she’d repeated the mantra ‘everything is going to be okay’.

It had to be. Her ticket had been one way and her bank balance was woefully deficient of the funds it would take her to get back to the sunny shores of Auckland.

Her positivity was tested further when she’d discovered the warm welcome her ex-pat friends had promised apparently had an expiry date. After one week of dossing on their tiny couch, in their tiny flat, the cheerful smiles turned to queries of her move out date. As week two rolled into week three the queries were steadily getting frostier and Kim knew she was endangering her friendship status.

Kim’s mantra was getting worn out as her stress levels increased. She couldn’t find work and without work she couldn’t afford housing and if she alienated the few friends she had in the city, her future looked very bleak indeed.

Her niggles of doubt had turned into outright certainties. Moving abroad had been a bad fucking idea.   

It was the morning she’d woken with a cramp in her back but was too despondent to move as she’d stared unseeingly at the ceiling, that she found the ad.

“Tooting flat - free rent. Only those morally deficient need apply.”

 Kim had genuinely smiled as she’d read it, for the first time in a long time. She appreciated a good sense of humour so she’d used the last of her phone credit to make an appointment. 

It was a terraced house and the very nature of a terraced house was that, bar the paint job, they were generally indistinguishable from the next. Still, as Kim paused on the approach of the second house in the row, she was filled with a sense of foreboding and wished she was about to enter any of the neighbouring houses instead. She was suddenly extremely conscious that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going.  

Kim got her phone out of her bag and texted one of the friends she was staying with. She hit send; T-Mobile hit her back with a no credit message. She was on her own. She tapped her foot rapidly on the pathway, she could go back to the flat she was unwanted at or she could knock on the door that could potentially decrease her cortisol production.

She knocked on the door.

The man that answered could’ve been described as normal, in the same way the house in the terrace resembled the others, the same but not quite.

He was thrumming with anticipation that didn’t marry up with Kim’s expectation of a landlord. His thinning hair was plastered to his head with sweat and the temperature was sixteen degrees at best. Despite her disquiet, when he offered her entrance, Kim took it. She gripped her useless phone in her hand as some sort of talisman as he locked the door behind them with an emotion that could only be described as glee.

“So, you’re ad said free rent.” Kim said as she pressed herself against the hall wall to let him pass.

“You will never pay rent.” The odd landlord grinned and headed off down the hall. As a twenty three year old girl in a stranger’s home, she was concerned, as a homeless person with no other prospects; she was compelled to follow him into the house.  

She found him standing in the centre of a large reception room, empty of all furnishings, and he was rubbing his hands together. It was at exactly that moment that Kim realised she was being the stupid girl from the horror movies everyone always shouted instructions at.

“You know what, I’ve changed my mind.” Kim said as she took a step backwards.

The man’s grin made her blood run cold. “Too late.”

Kim spun around to run, sure that she could make it to the front door before he could catch her. She stopped dead in her tracks. There was something in front of her blocking the door, a smoky black mass that she instinctively knew she didn’t want to run through. Before her eyes the mass solidified until it resembled hundreds of squirming eel-like creatures that were coated in a thick, black oily substance. Razor sharp teeth protruded from their mouths and the black substance dripped from the tips, if she looked down she knew she’d see the black goo pooling at her feet. They writhed against one another but regardless of the direction of their movement their angry red eyes remained on her. They were studying her.

Kim was frozen. In some distance part of her mind she knew she should be screaming or running or even fainting but it was as though she were observing the scene from outside her body with no control of her motor skills.

The thing closed the gap between them and she heard the man behind her squeal in delight. “I want to watch!” He exclaimed as he clapped his hands together.

The things attention immediately switched to him, the red eyed eels seeming to study him intently as they had done her. The sound of its voice was Kim’s undoing. It was an accumulation of all the most terrifying sounds she could’ve imagined and yet as it rasped its message she heard them all individually which heightened her terror.

“Corrrrupppptionnnnn.” The thing advanced towards the man as the sounds of skin rending, eyes popping, bones splintering still echoed in her head. She fainted dead away.

When she woke there was a shard of light bathing her face from a gap in the curtains. She was slow, groggy, wondering why she was laying on the floor when she recognised that she was in a stranger’s house. She saw her useless phone on the floor and jerked upright as memories rushed to the fore. A strangled cry escaped her as she saw the black thing drifting a few feet from her and behind it was a pool of congealing blood. The two walls near the pool had red splatter marks on them and the weird man was nowhere to be seen. She scooted backwards on her arse and the thing followed her. When her back hit the wall she screamed in desperation.

“Sssssttoppp.” Its voice made the word sound like teeth being filed, pins being driven under nails, toes being struck with a hammer and even though it made her need to scream more she stopped as though It’s will superseded hers.

The writhing, oily, eel-like creatures morphed back into the black smoky mass and drifted towards her. Every fibre of her being wanted to scream for all she was worth but apparently she was still under It’s will. The black mass drifted through her and a coldness seeped into her bones that chilled her to the point where she wondered if she would ever feel warm again, if she lived that long. Her eyes rolled up into her head as the thing communicated with her. Knowledge flashed in her minds eye and when the thing receded and drifted in front of her, she knew whole heartedly that It wouldn’t hurt her. It couldn’t hurt her. The certainty didn’t reduce her need to get gone.

As though to reassure her It confirmed her thoughts. “Sssssaaafe.” 

She took comfort in the word despite the fact that it sounded like someone chewing jagged shards of glass. Comfort enough to inch her way up the wall to a standing position.

The thing floated before her as she made her way slowly out of the reception room and into the hall. It followed.

She wanted to run but was uncertain of the boundaries of the apparent truce they had. When her hand gripped the deadbolt she could’ve shouted for joy but instead she cringed as that horrific voice whispered through her mind.

“Sssssaaafe.”

She darted out the door and ran down the street, chancing a glance back to see if she was being followed. The door of the house was slowly closing and Kim thanked God she would never have to see the house or It again.

One week later Kim was back, standing on the doorstep with her suitcase by her side.

With each day that had passed Kim had felt compelled to return to the house and though she’d tried to fight it she had ultimately given in to the compulsion. That had happened at about the same time Kim had convinced herself that the thing in the house wasn’t evil. It wanted to eradicate evil and needed her help to do that and that was why she had been unharmed.  

Only now that she was about to enter did she remember the fear she’d felt in It’s presence and began to doubt herself.

Kim stared at the front door, understanding her initial uneasiness now that she knew what lurked within. As she stared, mumbling her mantra under her breath, the door opened before her. If It had been on the threshold she didn’t think she could’ve entered but the way was clear so she dragged her case into the hall. Every hair on her body stood on end. She couldn’t see It but she knew it was there.

For what seemed like ten minutes she stood waiting but she remained alone in the entrance and eventually made her way into the reception room. The room was empty save for the congealed mass of blood coating the wooden floor and filling the room with a smell that made her want to gag. Kim pinched her nose closed as she surveyed the dark clots on the floor. She was surprised at the lack of flies feasting on the remains of the man but recognised that expectation may have been the blame of many a director’s artistic license. Unable to bear the mess any longer Kim went in search of cleaning products. In the kitchen she came across a large cupboard filled with tubs of baking soda and litres of white vinegar. On the inside of the cupboard door was a printed page from wikiHow with instructions on removing blood stains from hardwood flooring. The sheer volume of supplies in the cupboard coupled with the old stains she’d seen on the floor drove home just how many times It had done it’s thing.  

Next to the cupboard was a wallet and in it she found the man’s driver’s license. The same name was on the pile of bills the wallet was sitting on, including a mortgage statement. The man It had killed was the owner of the house so he’d been providing victims for It for quite some time.

Kim scrubbed at the latest stain and wondered what had gotten the man killed. Had he grown addicted to providing victims for It and had therefore eradicated any goodness he’d had in himself?

Kim had no intention of falling into the same trap. She had a plan. For starters she wasn’t going to be staying around for long, once she had a job she would leave, and she intended to be much smarter with luring the victims. No Gumtree ads for her, she couldn’t be sure who would turn up on her doorstep, no she intended to let the victims come to It. Deserving ones. 

The house wasn’t in a good area so Kim made sure that, every other day when she left the house, the front window was left wide open. Sure enough when she got back to the house a few hours later there would be a pool of blood from the latest would-be thief.

Despite the unsavoury job of having to do clean up, things were looking up for Kim. She still didn’t have a job but the house had proved to be a treasure trove. Not only had she found almost twenty thousand pounds sewn into the spare mattress, there had been multiple heirlooms and antiques she had sold for great profit. 

She’d felt guilty when she’d come across recent letters from his son and realised she was effectively stealing his inheritance, but that feeling hadn’t lasted. She told herself she was saving the son from the knowledge of It. Plus, he would eventually get the inheritance of the house once she left and she was going to leave, just not yet. Sooner or later she would start looking for work again and then she would leave. For the time being she was happy to enjoy London with her ill gotten gains.

Kim returned home one afternoon after having her nails and hair done. When she entered the house she could hear a man’s strangled cries from the reception room.

She paused wondering if she should go back out and return once it was all over with but then she realised she had a chance to see how It did it’s thing. She often wondered as she scrubbed the floors what It did with the bones – did It eat them? Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have a peak?

“Honey, I’m home.” She called as she stepped into the room.

Oily black eels with blood red eyes were swarming over the thief. When he saw her his cries grew louder and more frantic. “Help me!”

Kim shrugged at him. “Sucks to be you, bro.”

The eels immediately ceased their writhing and every set of red eyes darted to her. It relinquished its hold on the man and he dropped to the ground.  

“Corrrrupppptionnnnn.” It’s voice sounded like flesh blistering and boils erupting as It advanced.

Before Kim could run It was on her. The eels squeezed around her limbs mercilessly and where the black oil that dripped from their teeth landed on her skin it burned like acid. The pain that lanced into her as the first set of teeth dug into her flesh was agonizing. Hundreds more followed until she teetered on the brink of insanity with pain.

Her last thought as she was slowly eaten was that she should’ve left when she’d had the chance.

By Dayv Metcalfe