THE RETURNING

I enter the house trudging through the snow,
Wanting to warm my bones by fire’s red glow,
My pipe after dinner following the food,
And a jigger of brandy to lighten my mood.

But there is a sinister feeling, the quiet screams still.
All warmth is gone, lost to winters chill.
The darkness is ominous save the moons dim light,
Being only just enough to illuminate my sight.

I glance about to take in my surroundings,
To try and make sense of these peculiar confoundings.
I find myself bereft of body and spirit,
Accompanied only by void and all the nothing in it.

A grim stairwell creeps up a wall.
Albeit damningly foreboding it beckons my call.
Although an unwilling recipient of this dreadful desire,
I find I am an unwilling participant clambering higher.

With every step my fear and trembling grow,
Afraid of this clandestine fate I do not yet know.
Am I finding insight or my cold dark tomb?
Will it end in peace or just anguish and doom?

And on the air I catch that malodorous smell,
That one that could only come from the bowels of Hell.
It shocks my core and steals my breath,
That noxious, putrescent, stench of death.

My pulse quickens and my senses hone,
My hair stands on end as I’m chilled to the bone.
The stink makes my eyes water and my nose bleed,
My stomach turn and my will beg secede.

I dawdle up the stairs as the smell grows stronger.
I do not wish to continue this way any longer.
But for unexplained reasons I press on,
Not knowing what drives me, since all courage is gone.

I peer my head into the loft oh so slow,
As if to filter the fright, so as to lesson the blow.
Now the moonlight reveals what darkness hides,
My clan-destined fate and where it resides.

And what is this inconceivable vision I spy,
This horrifying sight befallen my naked eye?    
It throws my mind into such a panicked fluster,
By managing that impossible still, only the dead can muster.

Laid out in a self inflicted gruesome gore,
Rotting in a pile heaped on the floor,
A bloody corpse oozing the black of decay,
Moonlit through window for my soul display.

What sin or regret demanded this consummate pay,
That he should meet his mortality in such a way?
All alone suffering in sorrow and pain,
With no one to mourn or grieve or sing a lamenting strain.

I dare to look upon him to know his name,
So I shift his body setting his broken frame.
To my shock I see he and I share the same face!
Now I realize I am the ghost that haunts this place.

This tragedy is too much for my soul to bare,
And my heart collapses under all the despair.
All is for naught so out the window I flee,
Not caring in the least what becomes of me.

As I fall I hear the dead man whisper a haunting verse,
“An uneasy soul shall not rest in peace, this is my curse.”
Struck senseless from my crash below,
Cold and lost, I see a shelter so there I go.

I enter the house trudging through the snow . . .