I went down into the alley first, the land surveyor followed after, we lowered ourselves down from my bedroom window from a rope tied to my bedpost.
Being down here, I realized that the alley lay a lot lower than the houses. My bedroom window appeared to be at least 3 floors up, while it was just on the first floor. It was dark and ominous in the alley, cold too. The surveyor was trying to hide his nerves, but not doing a good job.
My house is part of a row of houses built in the early 20s, none of the original owners are left and none of the new owners seem to know the purpose of the alley. Weirder still was that there was no visible entry into the alley, not from any of the houses, not from the side and not from the back of the commercial properties on the other side. The alley seemed weird to me from the beginning, it has its own separate wall which reaches up to the first floor of my house. My kitchen has a window, but it’s blocked by the alley wall, which always seemed strange to me, why would you put in a window if you knew there was going to be a wall on the other side? The house was a bargain though, so I let it slide and paid the asking price before anyone else would.
The alley is very narrow and dark, so I could never see the bottom of it from my bedroom, at night though I heard weird scraping noises coming from down there.
Since none of my neighbors knew anything about it, I looked up the plans of the neighborhood, and it turns out this alley is not even supposed to be there, the domains of me and my neighbors include the land where the alley is on, so I called a land surveyor to determine the size of the alley and the property line, thinking we might be able to get this alley torn down and add yards to our houses.
It took some persuading to get him to climb down the rope with me, but he finally gave in after I agreed to a $150 surplus for “difficult terrain”.
In total, there were 8 houses on this row, I lived in the 4th house from the left, so we wanted to see what was beyond the 3 houses to the left. All the houses are on a nice straight line, but down here the alley seemed to curve, so we couldn’t see the end from where we were standing. We started walking and following the curve, past the 3 houses of my neighbors. Then we passed a 4th house, then a 5th, I decided not to mention it because the surveyor was looking scared as it was, perhaps he figured it out too. The curve never seemed to end, and the alley seemed to grow wider but somehow also darker. We came upon a door in the wall, below the 6th house, it was an old wooden door without a doorknob, there was a small crack near the top, I peeked in but saw only darkness, I wanted to knock on it, but the surveyor stopped me, “no need, we’re not here to get to know the neighbors” he laughed nervously.
“Maybe this alley was used for bootlegging in the 20s” I said, trying to calm him down.
“Yeah, probably” he said as casual as he could, trying to hide his nervousness.
We continued walking and came upon an intersection with another path coming from about the same direction as we came from.
“Let’s be careful here”, I said, “remember that we came from the left side, so when we walk back we have to take the right”.
“Right”, he said, staring at something on the wall. I couldn’t make it out at first, but as I got closer it looked like footholds carved into the wall up the entire length, except the shape was more rounded, like a huge cat’s claw.
“Let’s move on”, I said.
As we continued, the alley became darker and darker, I took out my phone and used it as a flashlight, which helped at first, but as we got further I could no longer see the sides of the alley. Then we started hearing the noises, the same ones that kept me up at night, a scraping sound, soft at first.
The surveyor was becoming more nervous, I could hardly see him anymore, but I heard his teeth grinding.
“I think we need to go back” he said.
“Really?” I asked, “I’m sure we’re almost there”
“Look, I’m going back, you don’t have to pay me, but fuck this.”
He turned around and started, walking at first, then he started sprinting.
“Wait”, I shouted, “hold up”, I started walking back as well, already having lost sight of him.
I came upon the intersection and went right.
“Hey buddy” I shouted, feeling stupid for having never asked him for his name, “are you there?”
No answer.
Then I came upon another intersection, I didn’t remember there being another intersection, so I was confused, this one looked more like the one we came past initially, so I figured we must have missed the other intersection because it was too dark.
My nerves were starting to get to me as well, then I heard his voice: “Hey!”
“Hey, where are you?”, I shouted back because I couldn’t localize his voice, it seemed to come from all directions at once.
“I’m ok, I found the rope”, he shouted, “come on”.
So I continued, I started running now as well as the scraping sound started to surround me from all sides.
Then there was sunlight, and I saw the rope, but no surveyor.
I looked up and shouted: “You went up already?”.
No answer, I looked around one last time, then started climbing.
My hands were burning from the rope by the time I got up.
“Hey man, where are you?” I shouted when I got back to my bedroom.
No answer, I figured he left already, so I went down and opened the front door, but his van was still standing there.
I went back to my bedroom, shouted down for him and waited, I thought about going back down, but somehow I couldn’t get myself to do it.
That was 4 days ago, I still haven’t seen the land surveyor back, I called his company, and they came to collect the van, but they hadn’t heard from him either.
The night before last, I think I heard him shouting, but then the scraping sound came back, louder than ever.
Yesterday I put my house back on the market, I don’t really care what it goes for.