Jimmy allen's Lockbox by JS Apsley

A chilling Glasgow horror story about an antique brooch, a dangerous bargain, and the dark secrets of the Barras Market.

First published by The Brussels Review in their TBR Dark Anthology, January 2026

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Jimmy Allen’s Lockbox

Jimmy Allen looked up from his stall to see a grizzled male police officer and churlish-looking woman. It was a cold December evening, and bitter darkness had fallen upon Glasgow by the chime of four o’clock. The woman’s face was a smirking mask, and her whole demeanour cried gotcha. But Jimmy had been a trader at the Barras Market over long and weary years, and this was not his first rodeo. He had a few tricks up his sleeve, and winning form for dealing with inexperienced officers of the law. His eyes twinkled, and he felt his shoulders broaden. This was sport.


“Mr Allen?”


“Aye missus. And who might you be?”


“Liz Kirk, council enforcement.”


The smirking woman raised an ID badge like it was the Jules Rimet trophy, holding it flat out at Jimmy’s eyeline, leaving it hanging for longer than necessary to underline to the stragglers bombing about the final minutes of the market, those hardy few turning their collars up and tightening their scarves, just how important she was.


The old police officer, somewhat haggard and scratching at his salt-and-pepper beard, stepped forward. He was carrying a roll of evidence bags, and started examining the jewellery. Ms Kirk had to check her clipboard to remind herself of the trader’s name; she cared not. Her focus was on making his life as miserable as possible, and in doing so draw her mind away from her own emptiness.


“Mr Allen. In this authority you need a second-hand dealer licence to buy these items from the public.”


“Well … aye … but the people sellin’ their goods are no’ selling them tae me, Ms Kirk.”


Ms Kirk swallowed, her initial strut and swagger now off-kilter. She had come here to shut Jimmy down, and in doing so relish his annoyance. She had little joy in her own life; so why should others? Flustered, she took her glasses off to clean them. The rain had finally started to fall, first in spits, but soon enough, a torrent. It had been only minutes, but she no longer had an audience of other traders. All else had fled. 


“Mr Allen, are you trying to make fun of me? If these customers have not been selling their wares to you, who have they been selling them to, the Ghost of Christmas past?”


Jimmy dropped his arms to his side in modest recoil. Her flippancy betrayed a clouded judgement. He glanced at the big police officer, who clearly did not want to be here. Jimmy sensed he had his off-ramp.


“Officer, I think we both ken Ms Kirk has nae power tae charge me. That’s up tae you, big man. And I’m tellin’ ye I’m here acting as an agent on behalf of a licensed trader. It’s his money buyin’ these goods, no’ mine. I huv the records.”


The police officer had a sudden memory of a scene from a Pink Panther film. Something about a monkey needing a music licence. He did not fancy being the monkey in this little tete-a-tete, a drenched monkey at that. 


“I think discretion is the better part of valour for today, and I think we can all agree we dinnae want to be out in this bloody rain. Mr Allen, can I suggest you get a lawyer’s letter to back up what you are saying, and we can have this conversation again.”


“You mean you want a ‘To Whom it May Concern’ letter?”


“Aye, Mr Allen, ‘To Whom it May Concern’.”


The officer doffed his cap, and a little stream of rainwater dropped down. Ms Kirk, fumbling with a small red-and-black spotty brolly she had fished from her bag, could barely look at him. The brolly up and with the rain now battering against it, she shook with anger. “To be continued,” she huffed. Jimmy, chuckling, waved them off.


The interlopers now gone, Jimmy packed the last of his wares into his lockbox and he could at last (at last!) snatch a moment to examine his best find of the day. 


A beautiful, most beautiful gold brooch. 


It was a mesmerising piece, an antique he somehow oddly knew would be used to fasten a great-cloak below one’s neck, designed for someone who would travel foreboding nights by horse or carriage. The piece had a weight to it which indicated it was most likely twenty-four carats. But the piece also had some other sort of weight, something much deeper and obscure; an uncanny yet compelling presence. He had bought it for two-hundred quid from some batty old dear, who had no idea what she had. In fact, he reflected, she had seemed utterly relieved to be parted with it.


The brooch had a central, inset jewel which was a deep, blood red. Jimmy could not help but use his loupe to examine the jewel yet again; certainly, a ruby. As he wondered at the vintage of the piece, his mind conjured the curious image of a burly man on horseback with a huge black cloak wrapped around him, the brooch below his chin. 


Jimmy hadn’t noticed that the streets of the marketplace were now not only deserted, but desolate. Jimmy hadn’t noticed the creeping isolation which seemed to gather around him like a fog, clutching at him with wisping tendrils. He hadn’t seen that the grime of the city streets seemed to come alive and infest the pavement and roadside.


He was alone, finally alone, with his brooch.


There it nestled in his lockbox, his brooch, and for a moment he felt as if that ruby was staring right back at him, as if it had a pulse, a desire of its own. Jimmy reached out a slender finger, and caressed it. 


And he saw again an image in his mind, that of a huge, strapping man astride a horse, bedecked in finery and with a strongly-weaved great-cloak of the deepest black, flowing around his broad shoulders. And there, under the man’s ruddy neck, affixing that cloak, sat the ruby brooch. 


The image was so clear to Jimmy, he felt he could almost feel the barbed wind which swirled around the ominous man, that he could hear the jagged clops of the horse’s hooves, and as the image grew stronger in his mind’s eye he saw – he was forced to see – the face of the dark rider.


He screamed. 


It was a face no one should ever countenance, no one should ever have to see. It was the face of death, the face of pure evil, the face of greed and lasciviousness. It was a face hungry for all that the world could offer, and all that he might convince the world to give him in succour. It was the face of one whose hunger for all the fineries of the flesh could never be satiated. It was the face of one who has dwelled in darkness, and was now abroad the land.


Jimmy stumbled backwards, and realised he was crying. His tongue, as dry as arid bark, lolled from his gaping mouth, and his eyes popped from his skull. He scrambled to collect his senses, grab his lockbox, and escape. He careered down a dark lane, a shortcut where every cobble was known to his feet. Now, however, all around him was hostile, the world a gauntlet. There was a hot and acrid breath upon the nape of his neck, and shadows closed like the clutch of a great, black cape.


His breathing rasped in his chest like the claws of a bloodied beast. Panic filled his eyes and ears. Stumbling across the slick wet cobbles he fell, and his lockbox scattered across the ground. On his knees, he crawled, chittering, to reach his valuables. 


And then he knew dread, as the air itself vanished in fright.


Upon the cobbles was a monstrous rippling shadow, a shadow with a deep red glow which curled at the edges like the flowing ends of a winter cloak. His brain fought valiantly to convince his heart and stomach that this evilness simply could not be. The terrible shadow coalesced, and a great brute of man stepped from it (was it), and Jimmy figured then that he must be dead and on a cobbled path to hell. 


At least, he thought, if he was dead then this torment would cease. But then, the giant man spoke, and Jimmy knew that he was not yet dead, and that he had encountered the devil himself.


“You have something I desire,” the giant burred, his voice scraping across Jimmy like daggers on glass.


“Take it, take everything!” he shrieked, turning his head so as not to face the demon. 


The giant man stomped forward, and his black boots clopped upon the cobbles like nails being hammered into a wooden cross. He swept his cloak aside with one of his mighty arms, and held out a gloved hand, the size of a gravedigger’s shovel.


“Ah, now, James,” the creature growled, licking his teeth with a charcoal tongue. “A man such as you must realise that I am no thief. A man such as you must know that there is always a deal to be done.”


“Then name yer offer and I’ll accept, by Christ! I’ll accept ‘fore this madness takes me!”


The cloaked giant held his other hand out, and raised Jimmy to his feet, legs shaking like thin windchimes. The dark rider was easily two feet taller than the witless merchant, his burly chest like a whisky barrel, his garments giving him the outward appearance of a highwayman. 


Jimmy knew everlasting fear as he raised his shuddering, clammy neck to look the demon in the face. And there, within the eyes of the one who clutched him, he saw the black, unending void of eternal nothingness, the echoing screams of all fallen souls. There, he saw himself falling into that pitiful darkness, scratching and screaming, biting and wailing. 


But then, at the last, he also saw a glint; a flickering shadow, a lick of light, of golden light. It was the greed of the demon, the greed of the devil himself, and it was shaped like a brooch with a blood-red ruby within its terrible heart.


Jimmy clung to that glittering hope, realising that if there was a deal to be done perhaps there was a way out or through this terrible nightmare. “The brooch!” he cried out. “You want the brooch!”


The demon dropped Jimmy to the rain-lashed cobbles.


“And what, pray, what price would you ask of me? For I will not steal it. We must strike a bargain, James. And the bargain must be worthy.”


Jimmy’s mind flitted between despair and the opportunity which might appease this devil, appeal to his sense of contract.

And so, Jimmy spoke, and asked of the devil a most special item in exchange for the brooch. 


The giant man, wrapped in his cloaks and shadows, rolled back those blood red lips to reveal the smile of one whose hunger will always persist, the smile of anarchy, the rapture of chaos. 


Then the devil reached one of those great, powerful fists to his neck and found there, upon his chest, a beautiful golden brooch which affixed his great-cloak around his body. Feeling it there, for the first time in three hundred years, he found his desperation pricked, at least, for now. And so, he retreated back into his shadow, back to some other infernal place. 


And the rain fell on the cobbles, and the rain rattled on Jimmy’s lockbox, drumming like a funerial march.


Jimmy dragged himself along the lane, hand after hand, and foot after foot. He was sodden, exhausted. He opened the lockbox, and there, in place of the brooch, was a letter. A letter, if read by anyone, would somehow convince the reader of whatever Jimmy Allen should wish. He allowed himself a smirk, a greedy, dastardly smirk, and read the first line aloud.


“To whom it may concern …”

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JS Apsley is the pen name of an horror and noir author from Glasgow, Scotland. He won the Ringwood short story prize 2024 and has gone on to publish over fifty short stories around the world. You can find his work at www.jsapsley.com and on IG: @jsaspley_author.”