As usual, warnings apply: This is the rough draft of a story with adult themes and situations. If you are offended by bad language and grammatical errors, gentle reader, read no further! For those of you who have decided to stay, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this week's chapter!
The train let off under Waterfront Station, a neoclassical building built a century before, with high ionic columns and the kind of interior space that was unthinkable to modern architects. Sure, it looked nice on the postcards, but what kind of financial return could be expected on the surplus space the open air room occupied? It was a relic of a time when architecture uplifted, and Stirling felt a phantom nostalgia for a time he’d never known.
As he made his way through the building, Magnon let him know that their destination was a brick building at 217 Carrall in Gastown. Since it wasn’t raining, and because he was getting sick of the moistened confines of public transit, Stirling decided to walk the rest of the way. A bit of fresh air would help burn off some nervous energy.
The street outside was busy with people coming and going. It was the last shopping weekend before Christmas, and there was a hint of desperation on the faces of the crowd as they went out in search of those last few presents.
Magnon eyed the clear sky and informed Stirling that he would be going off to scout out the area and maybe see if he could find something is to eat.
“What’s at 217 Carroll?”
“A high-end restaurant."
“I’m not dressed for fine dining,” he said indicating to his slept-in clothes.
“Don’t worry, you won’t be a customer. Wait for me out front, and don’t go into the alley next to the building.”
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t like it.”
“There are lots of things I don’t like. Why is this different?”
“I shouldn’t be long,” said the crow, deigning not to answer. “There’s usually something to eat around here.”
Before Stirling had time to ask more, the crow launched himself off of his shoulder and was out of mental shouting range in seconds.
Stirling was hungry as well but passed by the many food trucks that commonly stopped outside the station in favour of a sausage from a well-bundled street vendor manning a barbecue along the way. He planned to let the crow know that he’d missed out on his very own hot dog in revenge for ditching him.
The buildings Stirling passed were mostly late nineteenth-century red-brick affairs, built after a brush fire with delusions of grandeur became The Great Fire of Vancouver. The blaze destroyed most of the city and killed an unknown number of people, records at the time not being scrupulously kept.
Stirling crossed Richards Street and arrived in the strange six block chunk of waterfront that was known as Gastown. Back when Vancouver was mostly still forest, Gastown sprung into existence for the simple reason that it was the one and only place in all of Vancouver Harbour where you could find a drink.
The Globe Saloon was erected in the middle of the mosquito-infested swamp by Gassy Jack Deighton, a Yorkshireman turned steamboat captain with an eye for making money. Gassy Jack had a deep and abiding love for the sound of his own voice, which is where the “Gassy” in “Gassy Jack,” and the “Gas” in Gastown came from.
Despite the absolute shit location, the promise of whiskey soon drew in sailors, mill workers, prostitutes, loggers, vagrants, and criminals. Alcohol was the boozy little seed that sprouted Gastown from a swampy patch of forest infested with mosquitoes and skunk cabbage in the eighteen-sixties, to the bustling centre of the arts, tourism, poverty, and drug addiction it was today.
Stirling stopped outside of a two-story brick building that looked like an old converted fire hall. He didn’t need to look at the address in the window to know when he’d arrived. A cold feeling that wasn’t just physical permeated the whole block, but its source was inside the building to his right.
The cold was similar to what he felt when he sensed his own power, and he’d noticed it here before. He hadn’t investigated because his own power was to a cold shower what this was to a bidet of pure liquid nitrogen blasting directly at his arcane nethers. Whatever was inside there was bigger, stronger, and could kick his eldritch ass. He was curious about his power, not suicidal.
Number 217 was one of three addresses that shared the same building and Stirling had to double check just to make sure he hadn’t misread the name on a plaque on the corner of the building. He hadn’t, it was right there on a black and white plaque attached to the brick at the alley mouth, “Blood Alley.” The real icing on this very disturbing cake was revealed when he checked the name of the business at 217. It turned out to be an upscale restaurant with a blue neon sign above the door reading, L’Abattoir.
“That’s not in the least bit perfectly fucking ominous,” he said to the window.
Since he wasn’t sure when Magnon would arrive, he decided to walk the street outside the restaurant, mapping out the perimeter of the cold feeling. He discovered that it faded quickly as he passed the north edge of the building, but was strongest at the mouth of Blood Alley. The alley Magnon had warned him not to go into.
A homeless woman further down the alley dressed in layers of old winter clothing, and whose dental state only barely qualified her as a potential mate, called out, “Change for coffee!” to a couple walking past.
He looked into the alley, it didn’t look sinister. After being confined by two brick buildings at the mouth, the alley opened up into a wide open rectangle shape with old granite cobbles. The sun was shining brightly and if Stirling hadn’t been experiencing a full-frontal blast of spooky death energy, it would have seemed like an alright place. Look, there were lamp posts, and even a few trees planted in there. They didn’t look dangerous or creepy. No place could be completely bad with trees and lamp posts.
“Change for coffee!” the homeless woman cried again, this time to the empty alley in general.
He took a step into the mouth of the alley. The ground ahead was a patchwork of torn up red cobbles patched with asphalt. He took another step. The cold he’d been feeling began to hum inside. The cracks between the cobblestones began to darken, a black mist welling up from underneath. Sounds became quiet, the light dimmed, and Stirling pulled back the booted foot he was about to place on the first of the cobblestones.
He looked around, a constant trickle of people walked back and forth along the sidewalk. He was far enough into the alley that he didn’t think anyone would bother him. He bent his knees to look at the ground in front of him, careful not to get too close to the cobblestones. The cracks between the tightly fit stones were darker than the black at the end of time.
“Change for coffee!” He flinched at the nearness of the voice and nearly fell forward. The rag-bundled woman had shuffled over to see what he was doing. Her face was red from the cold and had a look of permanent concern on it.
“Do you see that?” he asked her pointing to the black mist that moved in the cracks.
She looked at him and said, “Change for coffee?!”
He had no change, but in a moment of inspiration pulled out a Starbucks card from inside his wallet. It still had a good five dollars still on it.
He showed it to her and her eyes lit up. “Do you see that?” he asked her again, pointing at the street.
She looked and shrugged. He sighed, stood up and moved a few paces away, holding out the card for her. Whether she could see the black mist welling up from the cracks he didn’t know, but she moved toward him in a way that made her have to step around the affected area. Her path to him wasn’t in a straight line.
He grinned at her. "Thanks." She took the card out of his hand and shuffled away to the corner of the alley.
He felt deep into his jacket pocket and came out with what had once been an orange tic-tac, but was now the same colour as the teeth of a heavy smoker. He tossed it onto the cobblestones aiming for one of the darkened cracks. He missed. It bounced and landed in the middle of one of the brick-red stones. Shit.
He was exploring his pocket for something else to toss when a slender hand worked its way up from between the cracks in the cobbles. It was a woman’s hand, pale with slate blue nails. They were the hands of a drowned person.
The hand groped around on the stones like a spider until it discovered the fuzzy treat, gripped it between thumb and forefinger, and disappeared back under the street.
Stirling straightened and backpedaled at the same time, nearly taking out a family of American tourists in the process.
“Change for coffee!” the vagrant screeched again, shuffling away from him down the street. Stirling thought it sounded like she was laughing at him.
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