Blood Alley

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The Highwayman cast no shadow on the mountain.

He stood on the summit of a cragged peak beneath the blood-red crescent of a lunar eclipse. A fierce wind whipped along the ridge but hardly disturbed the brim of his slouch hat or the black duster that cloaked him from shoulders to knees.

Below him stretched his road, Blood Alley, a narrow two-lane blacktop that cut across the desert like a naked scar. It itched and festered in his mind. The Highwayman had felt it gnawing at his slumber. Sometimes he slept for years, longing to forget, hoping to heal. But then, as always, the strangers came. They came spinning tires and belching fumes. And the old wound reopened.

Go away! Go back! You do not belong here!

It was an old curse meant for all who came this way. He cursed them and he killed them. For a time they would fear him, and for a time he would rest. But time drove on, and the legends of the Highwayman were lost—old stories and tall tales dying on the desert wind—and the strangers in the living world forgot once more to fear him.

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