Beware the Midnight Wraith
Should you stride alone on the dale’s dark, desolate road,
A low, unacquainted voice shall whisper and forebode.
And the moment you pause, breathe, watch, and listen,
The scarce, sparkling stars may no longer glisten.
‘Whether a phantasy or phantom, who speaks to me?’
Yet you hear nothing and hurry on—reluctantly.
Your steady pace thus quickens and you stumble;
Then, over a knobby tree root you tumble.
‘In vain is my swelling apprehension and fright?’
‘No,’ replies a voice, ‘it is my greatest delight.’
You gasp and rise, but as your fearful eyes narrow,
You see not one, single movement of a shadow.
‘I must flee,’ you sigh as the air grows deathly cold;
‘For this valley is surely madness’s threshold.’
But violet mists of dying stars gather over the knoll
As lightning strikes the very essence of your distraught soul.
A round pumpkin head rests within the form’s pointed hood,
And in his carved eyes are the embers of burning wood.
‘My eve,’ quothe he, ‘shall fall beneath an orange hunter’s moon.’
‘When that night comes,’ you question, ‘will all my fears be strewn?’
The wraith nods and says, ‘A nightmare from which you shan’t escape.’
‘Will your eve,’ you ask, ‘leave me helpless—with my mouth agape?’
But he speaks no more and releases his scorching mirth
While his restless kin stir and wriggle beneath the earth.
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