The Alleyway

It began when a little girl crossed the alleyway.
It was between the old brick apartment buildings on the other side of the street from the school.
When her mother came to get her from school that afternoon, she wasn't there.
She never arrived and nobody noticed her missing.

Then two little boys played marbles in the alleyway.
That was the last anybody ever saw of them.

A group of children were playing hide and seek in the schoolyard.
The seeker went to count in the alleyway while the other children hid.
After a while the hiders came out of their hiding places.
The seeker never came for them.

The fathers of the missing children stood in the alleyway.
They were looking for clues.
All they found was a cereal-box ring and a marble.
And painted in red grafitti letters on the brick
THEY DONT COME BACK

A woman was out walking, pushing a stroller.
In it her baby daughter.
She let go of the stroller to adjust her nylon.
When she looked up the stroller had begun to roll.
As if pushed by invisble hands.
It rolled into the alleyway.
When she got to it her baby was gone.

The janitor for the red-brick apartment buildings was a convicted sex offender.
Someone saw his name on an internet site for such things.
The police questioned him.
But while he was in the holding cell another child disappeared.

Mothers and fathers warned their boys and girls not to go in the alleyway.
On the playground the older boys frightened the younger ones with stories of the alleyway man.
He wore a white trench coat, filled with candy for children.
He had a hook for a hand.
He had a kingdom of dead boys and girls in the sewers beneath the town.

Three sixteen year old boys snuck out one night.
One of them brought his pretty girlfriend who was fourteen.
They spent the night in the alleyway.
They sat in a circle around a candle.
Just below the red letters THEY DONT COME BACK.
At three o clock in the morning the candle went out.
When they relit it the girl was gone.

A pregnent woman walked through the alleyway and fell on the ground.
Later it turned out she had a miscarriage.

The police let the janitor go and he was crying.
He went home and shot himself.
He left no note.

The police questioned every man and woman in the apartment complex.
No leads emerged.
They did uncover the story of one girl.
She lived in the apartment complex.
Her boyfriend got her pregnant and she was scared to have an abortion.
She had the baby herself in the backroom of one of the aparments.
She took the little thing down to the alleyway and left it there.
She got upstairs and regretted it and wanted her child.
But when she went back down the child was gone.
The alleyway took willing sacrifices as well as unwilling.

Mr. Daniels was a teacher at the school.
At recess he saw three ten-year old boys taking turns running across the street and through the alleyway and back.
He went out and asked them what they were doing.
They said they were daring each other.
He forbade them to do it again.
He went back inside and attended to some papers.
When class started, the boys did not come inside.
They were never heard from again.

Eleanor was a nine-year old girl.
One day, her daddy drank too much and hit her.
That night she snuck out and stood in the alleyway.
They never found her.
Her daddy shot himself like the janitor.

Other children heard about Eleanor.
They too snuck out in the night and went to the alleyway and disappeared.

One man had twin sons.
They looked the same but he loved one and hated the other.
He took the one he hated and left him in the alleyway.

A psychic investigator came to town from a university.
He stood in the alleyway and took notes.
He noted how the alleyway was always cold.
He wrote an article for a prestigous scientific journel, but it got turned down.

The mothers of the town researched its history.
They read library books, and talked to the old ladies.
They were looking for some tragedy.
Some murder or fire or unjust execution that happened in or around the alleyway.
Something that would explain why a ghost or demon would linger at that point.
They found nothing.

A boy was sitting in Mr. Daniels class.
He looked out the window and screamed.
Mr. Daniels asked him what was the matter and he said he saw the alleyway man.
What did he look like asked Mr. Daniels.
He wore a white coat and had a hook for a hand and he was smiling and it looked like he had blood in his mouth.
Nobody believed the boy.
The other children mocked him.
But Mr. Daniels let him go home early.
The boy went out onto the steps of the school to wait for his mother to pick him up.
Nobody walked to school anymore.
When his mother got there he was gone.
Nobody saw him wander into the alleyway but he was gone.
Mr. Daniels almost lost his job for not waiting with the boy.

In the alleyway now it said THEY DONT COME BACK and below that THEIR WITH ME IN THE DARK.
People thought maybe some older teenage boys grafittied those things and it was not a true manifestation of the alleyway's power or intent, if it could be said to have such things.

Then two years after it began the first little girl showed up on her mother and father's doorstep.
She wore a fine new dress and her hair was done in ribbons.
Her mother and father embraced her and cried and sat her on the coach and called the police.
The girl sat there.
She could not speak and never spoke again.
Nor would she write of her experiences or give the police any help or hint of what had happened to her.
Her mother cried and her father cursed, but she would not tell them either.

Now the other fathers and mothers held out hope that their children would be returned.
But none of them were.
A year later, the returned girl went to live with relatives and was never seen in town again.
Or so her parents said, but there were some who said the mother and father could not bear the sight of their changed and deadened daughter, and let her wander back into the alleyway.

Nor did other children stop disappearing.
Though parents begged, warned, spanked, scolded, did anything to keep their children from the alleyway.
There was talk of relocating the school altogether.
There was talk of burning down the apartment buildings.
Afterall, an alleyway is an empty space.
It is not something that you can tear down.

Eventually, four years after it started, one of the buildings did burn.
A couple of fathers started the fire.
Everybody knew who but nobody said.
Or maybe they didn't do it, and it really was just an explosion in the boiler room as it was ruled.
Everybody knew who did it, even if they didn't do it.
In the end, a small portion of the brick wall still stood, and somehow you could still read on it THEY DONT.

After that no more children disappeared.
In all, the alleyway had taken more than one hundred.
A pastor on the local news said they were with God.
She was sure they were with God because God was good and he did not let these things happen for no reason.

One day, Mr. Daniels sat in his classroom grading papers.
He looked up and saw someone across the street standing in the rubble.
It was a man in a white coat.
Mr. Daniels couldn't be sure, but something glinted like it was metal in the place where his left hand should be.
Mr. Daniels ran outside and crossed to the rubble.
Nobody was there.
He stood in the middle of the overturned stones and burned wood.
A small patch of desolation.
Somehow, in the middle of the rubble there was a standing doorframe, with the door still in it.
Mr. Daniels went and walked around the doorframe.
Then he put his hand on the knob of the door.
He imagined opening it and being met with a wall of darkness and laughter.
He imagined that if he dug for long enough in the rubble he would find tiny bones of tiny hands and feet.
In the end, he took his hand off the doorknob and climbed out of the rubble.
He took the rest of the day off and went home.

Tenth

There is no chorus to repeat

Don't hear no sound at all

Except the shuffle of my feet.

I've been wearing holes in socks

And wearing holes in hardwood floors

Wondering just how to get

The pieces to complete

This broken jigsaw puzzle

The remnants of a life

An ox an ass or anything

An end to all the strife.

The Ballad of Nate and Katie

She is high above the plains

Eating sunlight and eating up the rain

Living with the birds

She flies past open windows

She never goes inside in case they close

He's a brother to the bears

Wrestling in the mud and blood and hair

Stomping through the woods

Eating dirt and leaves

Living just as wild as he please

But Nate knew something wasn't right

He just didn't belong

So he went off on his own

That's when Katie came along

She was flying high above

When first she say him her heart was filled with love

She sang him a song

She knew that he'd be listening

He looked up and he found what he'd been missing

And all at once

He reached up and grabbed her

And began to plan their happy ever after

In the middle of Missouri

Starting off the month of May

Nate and Katie here we are

Your wedding day

Your wedding day

Your wedding day

Your wedding day

I Bought A Heart

I bought a heart to

give to you

You'll think it's mine

(and I won't tell)

It cost me almost

twenty bucks

And probably a

trip to hell.