At the popular request of literally twos of people, I have for you a little Halloween tale.
I hope you enjoy it!
There are streets in Chicago you probably shouldn’t go down. And there are alleys in Chicago you definitely shouldn’t go down.
These are the alleys with lights that somehow always flicker. First, when they were gas and they all did that; then when they were sodium, and the orange would flash and then go out with a pop.
Even nowadays, the glaring blue of the LEDs somehow still shudder every now and then, as though nudged by something you don’t want to see.
If you go down one of those alleys, there’s a good chance you won’t be coming back out.
On the North Side of Chicago, a bit west, where the yellow and red brick blocks of apartments mingle with classic bungalows, where there are some neat lawns and sidewalks filled with evening strollers, where the neighbors greet one another whether they know each other or not, there is a strip of chain link fence.
Beyond this fence, there’s some open ground where the grass is patchy when it’s time for grass and the snow, in the winter, covers it like secret.
For decades upon decades, probably more than a century now, there’s been talk of new development. The plans come and go, the developers come and go, and the years go by and nothing happens.
You see, right beyond this little strip, in the part that’s not grass anymore but stubborn shrubs, stands one of these alleys, ending in a sudden, sharp line.
If you go near it, and if you feel such things, there is a strange heaviness to the air. In fact, there are people who have driven on one of those slanted triangle roads not too far from the alley who’ve felt a shiver as they drive past.
I should know.
I’m one of them.
Now when the developers would get to talking about townhouses or more apartments or modern bungalows, the neighbors would catch one another’s eyes, and give a little head shake. They usually figured it out for themselves, these developers, because something always, always went wrong.
Off they went, no worse for the wear, perhaps a few dollars down when the holes for foundations mysteriously wouldn’t hold or scans showed empty pockets where there should have been clay.
Until the developer from New York.
The developer from New York was a brash, overly confident man, one who carried himself as though he came from nothing and built an empire, when, in reality, he came from a lot and lost a lot and still had a lot.
I’m sure you know a number of people like that.
This developer would not be deterred. Even when the projections weren’t great as the property values in the neighborhood went stagnant, he stood firm.
When the excavator got within three feet of the alley and the engine died and would not be restarted, he fired the operator and promised to sue him for breaking it.
Shovels would snap in half, heavy loads drop as though the cables were cut, and one guy quit after he swore, while he was eating his lunch near a pit they’d managed to dig for a foundation, he saw someone watching him from a few feet beyond the edge of the asphalt.
Fewer and fewer people showed up to work, and when the foreman reported to the developer that it was because of this uncomfortable weirdness from the alley, the developer laughed, called them derogatory, sexist names, and said he’d take care of it himself.
This is where the story gets fuzzy, and there have been many versions over the years. The most probable is he, like the developers before him, abandoned that strip behind the chain link fence, and moved on to other things so mundane, he was never brought up in conversation again.
That’s the most probable.
But that’s not what the people in that little North Side neighborhood, too tiny to have its own name, believe. There aren’t that many people who lived there then who are still around now, and it’s fair to say not all of their memories can be trusted.
But.
Here’s what they say, when the topic comes up and they’re feeling talkative. The story they tell to neighbors only, the young ones, the ones who need to know that they can never take that shortcut, can never walk the dog there, if the dog will even agree to go, because the dogs know and they refuse.
That developer from New York did, indeed, arrive one crisp, autumn day in a ridiculously long black car with tinted windows. He waited for the man driving to walk all the way around that monstrosity, and open the door for him.
He made a move as though to button his jacket, though it was a gesture only, as it seemed no one was willing to tell him the suit did not properly fit, and strode off through the soggy, rotting leaves, past the half-finished holes and broken caution tape waving in the wind.
When he got to the edge of the alley, to the strange, cut-off asphalt that no one ever took, he paused. One neighbor who was a kid at the time said she saw him tilt his head, like he heard someone talking, but couldn’t quite make it out.
She didn’t know for sure, she didn’t hear it herself.
Then she told me with the pause of someone used to not being believed, of a child who’d been told to stop making things up, that as he walked half a step further, his foot not even on the asphalt but above it, a claw a size she’d never seen on a creature, let alone one in Chicago, grabbed him.
It was enormous, this claw made of twisting smoke with talons of fire, and it engulfed his entire upper body, the sizzling orange and red razor curves clutching over each shoulder, a third talon with its impossibly sharp point under his chin, forcing his head back. And for a moment they were still, the developer and the claw, even as it held him there, suspended above the ground.
She doesn’t remember which happened next, the exact order of things, not anymore, especially since she was a frightened little girl staring through a small hole in her bedroom lace curtains, but she heard a laugh like she’d never heard before or since. Deep, and menacing and not at all human.
And then the claw snapped back into the alley and out of view, snatching the developer into that strange dim light it had even in the middle of the day. As he was yanked forward, something fell.
“Look,” she told me as she placed her teacup on its saucer and slowly got up from her chair. She went to the creaky wooden armoire on the other side of the room and pulled a small, plain cedar box from a drawer.
With her gnarled fingers, she tried to pry the top loose.
“May I?” I offered, extending my hand for the box.
“I wouldn’t,” she told me, her tone firm. She worked it until finally it opened, careful not to spill the contents. “Look,” she said, “look but don’t touch. You never know.”
She tilted the box so that I could see. Inside lay a single cufflink, the initials grimed over with now ancient bits of leaves and dirt.
“That was all that was left,” she said, “he never came out again. The man in the black car waited for hours, and then left after it was dark.”
“How did you get that?” I asked, wondering at the brave little girl who would run into that lot, inches from the alley where at the very least she believed she saw such a thing.
She smiled, and suddenly that little girl wasn’t very long gone at all.
“When I woke up in the morning,” she told me, “and I opened the curtains, there it was, outside my window. A warning? A gift? A request?”
“A request?”
“To let it be, whatever it is, wherever it’s from. To just…let it be.”
As I said, maybe he just moved on to other things. Maybe she was dreaming, like her uncle told her she was. But her mom wasn’t so quick to dismiss it.
She too, could feel such things.
One day he was a bigwig developer, and the next day he was gone. I’ve tried to find out what he did, where he went, but there’s nothing.
Not even about what he did before, besides one tiny article with him standing outside of a grocery store he’d built in Montague, New York.
And that strip of grass behind the chain link fence is still a strip of grass, leading to the abrupt end of that alley that will not stay alight, that goes nowhere. At least nowhere we know.
So do be careful, my friends, especially today when those things that surround us that we cannot see are at their strongest. And beware of alleys.
***
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I hope you have a lovely and safe day, and a wonderful weekend.
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