The Candle in the Alley

When I was eight, my family lived in a small town where the biggest excitement was the Saturday night bingo at the community center. My friends and I spent our weekends there, not for the bingo, but for the tiny arcade tucked in the back corner, a galaxy of blinking lights and joysticks. One evening, a kid named Danny told us about the Drowned Bride, a woman who haunts the old mill pond. He swore she’d appear if you stood at the water’s edge at midnight and said her name three times. We laughed it off, but something about the way he described her—white dress, hair like pondweed—made my skin crawl.

Later that night, as the bingo games wound down and our parents chatted over coffee, I dared my two best friends, Marcus and Leo, to go to the alley behind the center. The alley was narrow, brick-walled, and smelled of rain and old garbage. We had only a flickering flashlight from Leo’s dad’s toolbox. We huddled by the back door, a single bare bulb casting a sickly yellow glow. Marcus pulled the string, killing the light, and the dark swallowed us. Leo aimed the flashlight at the grimy window of the adjoining hardware store, fogged with dust, and we chanted in unison: ‘Drowned Bride, Drowned Bride, Drowned Bride.’

I remember the sound of our voices echoing off the bricks, high and wobbly. Then Leo clicked the flashlight on for a split second—just enough to see our reflections in the glass. But in that flash, I saw something behind us in the window: a figure, tall and thin, with arms that hung too long, fingers like branches. It was a woman, but her face was a blur, as if she were underwater. She was looking at the other end of the alley, then slowly, impossibly, she began to turn her head toward us. The light died. We bolted, stumbling over trash bags, not looking back until we were inside the warm, noisy center again.

In the weeks that followed, I felt a constant weight, like eyes on my back. I’d catch movement in my peripheral vision, a flicker at the edge of the streetlight. I told my parents, but they dismissed it as a child’s imagination. I stopped going to the arcade, stayed in my room, but the feeling never left. Then, three months later, my father died. He was a quiet man, a plumber, who seemed fine one day and then, without warning, walked into the cold embrace of the lake behind our house. The police called it an accident, but I knew. I saw the way he’d been staring at the water for days before, his eyes empty, his hands shaking.

I never told anyone about the alley, about the bride I’d summoned. But I’ve come to understand that the Drowned Bride isn’t just a legend—she’s a parasite, a rage that feeds on the grief of those who share her fate. She didn’t drive my father mad; she simply whispered to the part of him that was already drowning, and he answered. I’ve moved far away now, but sometimes, in the reflection of a dark window, I still see her, her head turning, her mouth opening to say my name. I don’t wait to hear it. I run. But I know one day, she’ll catch me.