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Faro’s Ring
Part One
By: Samuel Hayne
The journey to
Arkham Alley took less than ten minutes. There were no signs with street names
here and in his thirty-four years living in San Francisco, Nick was
sure he had never stepped onto this street before. However, he knew it was the
right place. He couldn’t quite figure it out, but the character of the narrow
street was different than others he had been down in the past. He buried his
hands in his pockets.
Maybe it was
his imagination, but the temperature on Arkham Alley seemed colder than
in the rest of the city. He wondered where the people were. There were no
after-hour’s drunks wandering around or bums passed out in the doorways. Nick
was alone and the street was dark. None of the streetlights were burning. Only
the powerful glow of a full moon, casting a ghostly white sheen on
everything it touched, enabled Nick to see his way around the alley. He
gripped his pistol for reassurance, but the metal had faded from warm to cold,
and the weapon didn’t provide the same comfort as it had
earlier.
Nick cautiously
sauntered through the shadows of the unlit alley. His walk told anyone
watching that he was confident and unafraid, but inside he was filled with
dread. Something about Arkham Alley was not right. There were three old cars
parked on the left side of the street, but none of them appeared to be
drivable. Some buildings lining Arkham Alley were partly restored, while
others were totally in ruins. All of them seemed forgotten. The feelings that
crawled through Nick’s gut as he walked down this street were akin to
something one might feel when walking through an ancient graveyard with
two-story headstones; Death lived there.
The night air
was thick with a lingering odor of rot and the unending silence of the grave.
The stillness was disturbing. It was as if Nick had somehow mysteriously
slipped into an otherworld; a place that was in every way exactly like San
Francisco, but a darker, more grim reflection of the metropolis.
In the
nightmarish bubble of Arkham Alley, all of Nick’s senses dulled. He listened
for wind blowing through boarded windows; for the wails of ambulances or
police sirens racing through the streets, but there was only quiet. Even the familiar sight of sewer rats
scavenging for food in the gutter was absent. Life was afraid of this place
and had abandoned it long ago. Aware that no one, other than himself, occupied
this dark strip of Purgatory, Nick sensed hungry, carnivorous stares chewing
into his flesh from the cold night. Maybe knowing how Faro’s goons dealt with
his enemies had clouded Nick’s sanity, leading him to believe this fantasy,
but he didn’t think so. Something with a taste for death prowled in the
blackness.
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