A Dance with the Evil

The hidden and insidious evil began on a sunny summer day in a district of South London, with a mysterious box wrapped in brown paper.

It was around 1:00 pm, and for David, it was just another boring Wednesday, and seven more hours to go before the end of his shift. “At least it’s not busy today” he snorted as he kept cycling on that damn white electric bike along the almost empty streets of Camberwell, wearing that horrible peach pink t-shirt and holding that large insulated thermal food bag on his back. Not that he hated working as a courier, but it wasn’t exactly the goal of his life and anyway it was supposed to be just a temporary solution after dropping out of university. “I just need some more time to figure myself out,” he would quickly reply back to his parents whenever they started to pressure him. It was, in fact, as simple as that: David was 26 and didn’t know what to do with his life yet. He had taken that finance course just to please them, studying something that they chose. It didn’t last long. It wasn’t his thing. So he decided that he would give Uni another go only after finding out what his real ambition was. But a year and half had already passed and he hadn't made up his mind yet. That was the most frustrating thing: knowing that he was resting on his laurels and not doing anything about it.

“There’s no point overstressing” he repeated to himself to interrupt that chain of thoughts. Then he quickly checked on his phone, secured to the bike phone mount, if there were any orders from the app, and since there weren't, he decided to stop in front of an off-license to get some cigarettes. Smoking wasn’t ideal too, but that was also another “situation” that he would fix someday.

“Busy today boss?” asked the cashier, a small middle aged southern Asian man who, completely sure of what David was going to get, immediately grabbed a pack of Marlboro.

“Not really,” David replied, trying to hold a sudden yawn “just very hot” and tapped his contactless red card on the card reader.

“Enjoy the weather until you can, man. You never know in this city when it will rain again” the cashier grinned friendly at him. Well, certainly, what would soon happen nobody would have expected, not even in a thousand rainy days. David had just lit a cigarette, enjoying that familiar burning smell in his mouth, that he glimpsed from afar one of the captains of his company cycling towards his direction. They would randomly appear out of nowhere to check if the couriers were doing their jobs.

“Fuck! Not now!!” David exclaimed, pissed.

So he promptly got on his bike and took the first turn he found. He was now on a long residential street called Urlwin street. Lots of dark roof houses, most of them with small black fences at the front and tall thick trees all along the way. A typical London residential street. Just quiet and empty. Exactly what he needed. With a hint of a smile on his face, he approached one of the trees and finally enjoyed his nicotine addiction.

That’s when he saw it. A box wrapped in brown paper, in the middle of the street, rolling towards him. That was weird, he thought, because it wasn’t windy at all. And weirdly enough, the box stopped just a few steps away from him. David got closer and noticed something written in black pen on it “to A, number 27d Urlwin”.

It was the same street he was in, just a few houses away. It didn’t say from whom it was, but since he was already there and didn’t have anything better to do, David decided to find that house and bring back the box to their addressee. So he put the package in his food bag and started cycling.

There it was, number 27d, a three floor house with white walls and a dark main door. He locked his bike, entered through the small black fence and reached the door. This one was already half open. Very unusual, he thought. Probably they didn’t realize they left it open. Unsure of what to do, David decided that it was best to leave the package there and go, but at the same time the whole situation had intrigued him, for some reason. And by the way, he thought, he had to make sure that the box wouldn’t get lost again.

So he knocked at the door. No answer. He tried again. No answer. He tried one more time and one more time there was no answer. He thought of leaving at that point, he was actually about to. But the insidious evil played unfairly and, just like a sensual romantic song, would do its best to invite you to dance with it.

“Who’s that?” said a female voice coming from inside the house.

“My name is David, I am a courier. I found a brown paper box that was supposed to be delivered here”

There was silence for a couple of seconds. Then a sudden and loud noise as if something had fallen to the floor, that freaked the hell out of David.

“I need help, please. I fell down and I can’t walk. I’m upstairs” the female voice reappeared.

A bit intimidated, David stepped inside holding the brown box in his hands. The stairs were just right in front of him. All around the house looked very tidy, clean and not really furnished.

“Hello?” David asked timidly.

Silence was the answer.

“Are you alright?” David tried again, growing worried. That voice seemed to have disappeared into thin air. David was upstairs now and only then he realized that he should have never come inside that house because something serious was going on. In front of him, along the corridor, dozens of boxes like the one he had found thrown to the ground, empty. The rooms nearby, empty from everything. No one was in that house but himself.

“What the…”

A shiver of fear ran through him like a jolt of electricity when he opened the box he was carrying, and found out it was empty as well.

Then, a rowdy boom closed the front door downstairs.

#####

“A guy on his 26th went missing yesterday while he was working as a courier. Today the bike that he was using was found by the police, thanks to the GPS tracking system present in the e bike, in Urlwin Street, between the house number 27 and the house number 28.

There is no apparent explanation for which the bike was there, since he didn’t receive any order from either houses and no one has seen him”

#####

“A mysterious series of increasing and inexplicable disappearances is terrorizing London for weeks. The police are doing everything they can to shed light on this mystery. In the meantime, it is recommended to be careful for the streets and call as soon as you notice something suspicious”

Detective Burney was having enough of not knowing what was going on and his frustration was increasing every day, as well as the quantity of caffeine he was drinking. He was running out of time and all the clues he had collected were unsatisfactory. But all was going to change when a medium called Carla, a woman in her 40s, called to tell him that she knew what was going on after finding a crucial clue relating to a mysterious brown box.