A Testament of a Withered Soul
When first the hush of twilight fell,
And shadows stirred the sleeping dell,
A flicker crossed the pane and wall -
A phantom’s laugh, a whispered call.
So was I marked, by fate unkind,
A child who kept the dark in mind.
On Lincoln Street the lamplight bled,
While static hissed and daylight fled.
Our living room - a battered stage,
Lit dimly by the ghost of age:
The vacuum’s hum, the screen’s low glow,
Where all the dead found space to show.
My parents sat, the day’s work done,
Their faces softened, one by one.
My brother jeered to mask his dread,
My sister laughed, her knuckles red.
We huddled close, a citadel,
To watch the shapes that rose from Hell.
The Mummy came, in shroud and chain,
Each dragging step a slow refrain;
He moved so proud, so cold, so sure -
No blade could kill, no prayer could cure.
He found me out through every dream,
A monarch of the grave’s regime.
Then Dracula, with courtly grace,
Leaned from the dark to kiss my face.
The air grew thin, the lamplight died -
He smiled to see how well I’d hide.
His breath was frost, his eyes were sin -
I swore I’d never dream again.
The Wolf Man’s cry, the Thing’s cold stare,
The shrieking from that cursed stair;
The Psycho’s knife through lashing rain -
All carved their echoes in my brain.
And still, amid the midnight din,
My family’s laughter gathered in.
For though our hearts beat quick with dread,
We lived more deeply in its stead.
The room’s faint glow, the crackling light,
The warmth that held the edge of fright—
These bound us, blood and breath and bone,
Together in the dark, alone.
The years unrolled; the reels grew bold.
New terrors spawned from celluloid gold -
The priest’s young girl with twisted grin,
Her curse the serpent found within;
And Michael’s mask, as white as chalk,
Patrolled the shadows where I’d walk.
Then Freddy came - my sleep betrayed -
His claw the tax that dreaming paid.
Yet still I watched, through trembling screens,
The art of all my haunted scenes -
Each face of death a mirror’s gleam,
Each horror proof that I could dream.
At Elmira Heights one ghostly night,
We watched The Fog through silver light.
The mist rolled in - the reel was done -
But outside, too, the fog had come.
We laughed too loud, we spoke too fast,
Our breath like candles in the blast.
The graveyard loomed, the lamplight waned -
We joked to show we’d not been chained.
Now age has dimmed the screen and bone,
But still I claim those nights my own.
Each dusk, each creak, each phantom grin -
They are my elders, next of kin.
And when at last I find my bed,
Let shadows crowd and raise their dead;
For I shall smile, though cold and thin,
At all the friends that lured me in.
GBS
2001
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