The Red Sedan Chair No One Carries at Midnight

Lin Mo rode his secondhand mountain bike, the kind that rattled everywhere except the bell, and wobbled into Huilong Alley. The alley was narrow and deep, like an appendix the city had forgotten. The old arcades on either side had long since emptied out. Their pitch-black windows were like countless sightless eyes, coldly watching this unwelcome visitor. The peeling walls exposed dark-red bricks beneath, resembling clotted blood in the bleak moonlight.

The air was so thick it seemed you could wring water from it, carrying a heavy, strange stench of aged dust, rotting wood, and something sickly sweet and impossible to describe. The alley was terrifyingly silent. Even the noisy summer insects had fallen quiet. Only the clunk, clunk of Lin Mo’s wheels rolling over the uneven bluestone pavement broke the stillness, monotonously striking the silence and making everything around him seem even emptier, even more... ominous. Do not read if you scare easily!!