Disheartened, I approached the end of the alleyway. But then to my right, I spotted a steel gate, about six feet high and four feet wide, cracked and warped with age. Beyond the gate was a small square clearing, roughly half the length of a basketball court, unpaved and overgrown with shrubs. Discarded equipment littered the clearing: rusted pipes, metal sheeting and other trash that looked well suited for a colony of stray cats. The clearing was surrounded by the timeworn walls of the brick buildings around it, and I found it strange that a lot in obvious disuse was situated in such a popular commercial area. I was no real estate developer, but it seemed like a waste of perfectly good space.

I leaned into the gate, held in place by two stone pillars, and pushed my face up against the bars to better see the clearing. Though two hundred years had passed since the apothecary might have lived, my imagination grasped at the possibility that the tucked-away, abandoned clearing in front of me had remained unchanged. Perhaps she had walked this very ground. I wished badly the area wasn’t so crowded with shrubs and weeds, because the walls surrounding it looked ancient, too. How long had these buildings even existed?

“Looking for a lost cat?” came a husky voice from behind me. I jerked my head away from the gate and turned around. About fifteen feet away, a man in blue canvas pants and a matching shirt stood watching me, an amused look on his face. A construction worker, possibly. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he offered.

“Th-that’s all right,” I stammered, feeling ridiculous. What good reason could I possibly give for peeking through a locked gate in an inconspicuous alley? “My husband is just around the corner,” I lied. “He was going to take a picture of me in front of this old gate.” Inside, I cringed at my own words.

He glanced behind him as though checking for my invisible husband. “Well, don’t let me stop you, then. Creepy place for a picture, though, if you ask me.” He snickered, taking a pull from his cigarette.

I appreciated that he kept a safe distance away, and I glanced up at some of the windows around me. Surely I was safe; as secluded as the alley felt, it was within sight of plenty of people in the buildings.

Feeling slightly more at ease, I decided to use this stranger’s arrival to my advantage. Perhaps I could glean some information from him. “Yeah, I guess it is creepy,” I said. “Any idea why this clearing even exists?”