The Alley

“I’m telling you, I saw it as plain as day. There was a man and a woman, and she led him into this alleyway, you know the one between the bar and the butcher? She led him down there, looking none the wiser following right behind.” Lehman animating the story as he went, waving his thin wiry arms wildly to point. He was tall, lanky, and blonde, but youth kept him in shape. He stood standing over a section of corroded and dismantled railroad tracks in the heart of the city. Horse drawn wagons carrying men and women who wore perfumed clothes passed by, driven by men with funny mustaches and tall hats. His fellow blue collar brothers didn’t care for them much.

“It looked very normal, man and lady, ducking into the shadows for a bit of privacy in the night. Who can blame the man, am I right?” Lehman gestured to his audience, and the couple of men grunted and moaned their agreement. “So initially, I went on my way, as if it was nothing.”

“Until?”

“Until she walked right out, just minutes later. I think to myself, no, somethings off about all of this. So I watched her for a moment, then when I felt like she was far enough, I went into the alley. Looking for the man. But all I found… Was a stain on the ground. A red one.” Lehman finished staring into the ground, a solemn expression on his face. His other crewmates stared at him in silence, looking at each other. Until one of them blurted-

“You must’ve hit your head pretty hard, stumbling out of the bar didn’t you?”

They all laughed at him in unison. Shaking his head, Lehman gathered his tools and wacked away from the rails.

“Fools, all of them,” he muttered under his breath. “You try to help people, and they make a mockery of you.” The sun was setting, and it was almost time for the men to go home. As Lehman was packing his tools up early, a bright flash caught the corner of his eye. He scanned the city crowd quickly, tall hats and wide dresses filling almost all lines of sight. He inched into the road, not noticing the sound of clopping hooves almost trampling his feet. Through the maze of heads and faces, he saw her - the Ruby Haired Woman.

Only looking back once, Lehman went after her. He slipped between passing wagons as their drivers yelled their curses, and he apologized to the city goers as he brushed by them without looking back. As he pursued the Ruby Haired Woman, she slipped in and out of his light of sight. The closer he got to her, the longer the times were between when he could see her. Without even realizing, he was running, and he could already taste the sweat from his upper lip dripping into his mouth. He could feel his heart thumping voraciously in his chest, with both adrenaline and fear.

The streets became more narrow, and less populated, and the amount of turns the woman could take became limited. Finally, Lehman was catching up to the Ruby Haired Woman. He stood at the end of a market street, panting, sweat dripping onto the floor from his temple. With his hands on his knees, he breathed deeply, not even realizing how far he had run, or how long he had been running.

“Wait a minute, where am I exactly,” he said to himself aloud. Forgetting the Ruby Haired Woman for the first time of the day, Lehman spun in circles, trying to get a bearing of his surroundings. His hands became sweaty & moist, and anxiety filled his chest. With every heaving breath he took in, adrenaline surged through his system. Getting disoriented, he began stumbling. His vision was blurred, his knees weak and wobbled.

‘What’s happening to me? How did I end up here?’

He tripped over an empty milk crate, and clumsily spilled to the floor. As he gathered himself to rise, he noticed a burning light. Dim and faint, all the way at the opposite end of the street, the light bobbed up and down lazily.

“Hello! Can you help me!” Lehman called out. No answer. “Hello, please! I feel like I may faint, please I’m a rail mechanic! Can you just point me in the direction of the rail?” Slowly, Lehman approached the light. He got closer and closer, the absolute darkness of the night almost swallowing the person’s silhouette whole. He studied it closely as he approached.

Finally, he reached the person holding the small dim light. A single candle in the night, held by a frail old woman.

“Miss, thank you so much for your help. I was working, and got distracted by-”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” the old woman said. She held the candle in her hand high, so the cowl she wore covered her eyes.

“Excuse me?

“That woman you were following? She went in there.” The woman pointed to an alleyway to her right. It was dark, wet, and had a smell that Lehman could not place, but knew. After rubbing his temples and eyes, and breathing deeply slowly, he finally regained his composure in the quiet alley. Suspicion crept over his face, but he remained silent. Taking each step slowly, he inched into the alley, looking over the brick of the walls and cobblestone of the floor intently.

‘It stinks back here. It stinks so, so very bad. Like rotting meat. Rotting meat and smell I can’t... wait a minute. How did that woman know I was following someone...’

Lehman sniffed the air, searching the layers of stench in the alley. When he looked above his head, suspended in the air between the walls of the shops adjacent to him, was the Ruby Haired Woman. Her limbs were twisted, and her pupils were black. Lehman crumpled to the floor, speechless.

“Ale. The smell you can’t place? It’s ale, from the bar. And meat, from the butcher’s, surely” Horror filled Lehman.

Twisted, and contorted, clinging to the walls above him, was the Scarlet woman. clinging to the wall, her limbs were mangled, her mouth ajar, her eyes, inhuman. Lehman could not move. Until she dropped down.