Bloedsteeg
October 14th, 1889
Bloedsteeg, Amsterdam
The Netherlands
The air was heavy that morning, a damp weight pressing down upon the city. A ghostly mist clung to the canals, so dense the gas lamps along the Zeedijk were nothing but trembling halos in the gray. My shoes clung wetly to the cobblestones as I entered the alley, Bloedsteeg. The air reeked of horse manure, rotting timber and something colder, metallic, a scent I knew too well though I wished I did not.
Blood!
On the corner of the Monnikendwarssteeg, two constables stood rigid beside a pale shape upon the ground. The sheet they had thrown over it was drenched, dark crimson blooming through the cloth until it resembled a shadow more than fabric.
“You finally made it,” rasped a voice from the mist. Detective Hendrik Vos emerged, a man in his fifties with a weary mustache and eyes that had seen far more gin than sleep. His hat sat low, as though even the morning weighed too heavily upon him.
“Detective Vos,” I nodded.“Cees, my boy,” he said, with a smile that was no smile at all. “Step closer. This is a fine lesson for you. Nothing teaches faster than a body torn open.”
My stomach churned, but I obeyed. The sheet stirred faintly in the draft sweeping down the alley. When one of the constables lifted it, the sound was of wet cloth peeling from stone.
She lay as if discarded, a doll dropped by a cruel hand. Her dress, once a simple cotton blue with a faded floral trim, was split from collar to hip, the fabric drowned in mud and rainwater. The blue had bled away into black, into the crimson tide that claimed her.
Upon her chest yawned a wound so savage it seemed the night itself had torn her open. Her ribs protruded like pale fingers reaching helplessly for heaven. Behind them, something glistened wet, red and black together catching the frail glow of the gaslight. It was not the work of a blade alone. It was as if brutal hands had torn her very being apart.
Blood mingled with the rain, trailing into the gutter in dark veins. Rust brown stains bloomed across the folds of her dress, while wet fabric shimmered in the fog like a painting of ruin. Mud and blood streaked her body, brushstrokes of a merciless hand upon cold stone.
Her arms lay limp at her sides, white as porcelain. Dirt clung to the nails of one hand, as though she had clawed at the cobblestones in her final moment. Her mouth hung half-open and frozen mid-breath, as if she still sought to whisper a word the mist had stolen. And so she lay, in that dreadful palette, the drowned blue of her dress, the black of the street, the glimmering red of her broken chest. Not merely a victim, but a canvas the night itself had painted in blood.
Behind me, the youngest constable gagged and retched against the wall. The stench of vomit joined the iron tang of blood, thickening the air into something unbreathable.
Vos drew his coat tighter, his face unmoved.
“When was she found?” I asked, my voice thin. “Early morning,” he muttered, hands buried deep in his pockets. “A drunkard nearly stumbled over her. We sent him away before he lost his stomach too.”.
Silence fell, deafening in its weight. Only the distant lap of water in the canal broke it, along with the bark of a faraway dog, a door closing somewhere in the maze of streets.
“She’s young,” I whispered.
Vos nodded slowly. “Yes. Young. Torn. Hollowed out. But not for coin. Her purse was untouched.”. He turned to me, eyes narrow in the mist. “What do you think, Cees? A thief… or something else?”. I breathed deeply. “It is my first case, Detective. I will find the truth.”
Vos gave a crooked grin and clapped my shoulder. “That’s what I wanted to hear. A fine school indeed.”. But as I gazed at the soaked shroud, I wondered not if this death would teach me but whether it would break me.
My thumb traced the chain of my pocket watch, a nervous habit I could not restrain. The cold metal clicked softly against my vest, a rhythm betraying my unease. This was no robbery, no drunken brawl. This was murder.
My first murder.
I drew my notebook, the paper trembling as I wrote, “Female, young, chest torn open, discovered in Bloedsteeg on the corner of Monnikkendwarssteeg, Monday, October 14th, 1889, morning mist. But my words betrayed me. Bleeding into images, ribs like fingers, a dress drowned in red and black.
A sudden click, a flash of blinding light. I looked up. The photographer, a gaunt man behind a heavy wooden camera, was capturing the scene. Smoke from his magnesium powder curled skyward, merging with the fog and thickening the alley’s spectral air.
Vos stood unmoving. “Take plenty,” he growled.
The photographer touched his cap. “As many as you wish, Detective. Though I’d rather frame a wedding than this.”. “The world chooses for us, boy,” Vos muttered. “Never the other way around.”.
I barely heard him. My thoughts lingered on her face. Who had she been? A maid hurrying home with bread? A daughter who promised her mother she would not stay out too late? Or just another nameless girl swallowed by the city’s mist? Her life silenced in one brutal stroke and I did not even know her name.
The chain of my watch coiled between my fingers as I turned to Vos. “That drunkard, last night,” I asked quietly. “Who was he?”. Vos squinted, exhaled slowly, “One of the city’s many night rats. He had just enough wits to raise the alarm, but too much gin on his tongue to speak sense.”.
“But perhaps he saw something?” I pressed. Vos’s gaze sharpened. “Perhaps. But remember this Cees, a drunk sees three phantoms where one man stands. three knives where one wound bleeds. His memory is as clouded as the canal after a storm.” He paused, nodding toward the body. “But if there is even a thread of truth in him, we’ll find it. Even a frayed thread may lead us to the hand that cut her down.”.
His voice was iron, cold and resolute. This was no game for him. This was war.
I nodded, though in my chest something burned brighter. The conviction that the drunkard held a key we could not ignore. As the photographer struck another blinding flash, as the alley burst into ghostlight, my grip on my pen tightened.
This was my first case. And whether Vos willed it or not, I would learn who she was.
When the last photograph was taken, when Vos dismissed the constables, I lingered. My hand found the chain of my watch again, the metal colder now, as though it tethered me to reality.
The mist thickened, flowing like smoke between the stones. And in that silence, just as I closed my notebook, I thought I heard it a footstep, faint, further down the shrouded alley.
My heart hammered. I looked up. Nothing but fog and stone. Nothing but the shroud, bleeding red, whispering in the wind.
And in that moment, I knew... this was only the beginning.“
