The House of Dread

A Poem by David Lewis Paget

The house had an evil aspect as

It hung out over the street,

Casting a permanent shadow there

Where the market stalls would meet,

The first floor was half-timbered, with

The ground floor made of stone,

The windows were made of pebble glass

And the window frames of bone.

No one had lived in the house for years

Til the Robinson’s moved in,

A couple, straight from the wedding church

Where they’d cleansed themselves from sin,

They’d listened to all of the rumours that

The house had its share of ghosts,

But the cheapness of the peppercorn rent

Had influenced them most.

The house was built where a charnel house

Had stood in the days of plague,

Where later a debtors’ prison stood

Though its history was vague,

They said there had been a gallows there

With a trapdoor through the floor,

And the arm of the ancient gallows now

Was the lintel of a door.

But the Robinson’s had sailed right in

With a mop and a whisking broom,

‘In no time, it’ll be spic and span,’

Said Sally, within the gloom,

While Brad had opened the shutters then

To let all the light stream in,

‘We’ll flush the ghosts from their waiting posts

With a broom and a pound of Vim!’

They dusted down the old furniture

Left sitting since George the Fourth,

And turned the old oak table round

So the end was facing north,

‘But still there’s a dampness in the air,

And a tension that feels grim,’

Sally said, as they lay in bed,

And she clung, so close to him.

‘Are you sure that they can’t get in,’ she said

‘Now we’ve flushed them out in the street?’

But Brad was trying to understand

Why the bed was cold at his feet.

‘Why are the sheets so damp,’ he said,

‘And they’re cold, as cold as sin,’

Sally was shivering, fit to burst

Though the sun came streaming in.

They sat at the old oak table with

Their bowls of soup, home-made,

And Sally reached out to hold his hand

But he started back, dismayed,

The soup was thick in the serving bowl

It was still three-quarters full,

When a swirl in the murky liquid then

Revealed a grinning skull.

Sally shrieked, but she couldn’t speak

And Brad had held his breath,

‘We’ve got to get out of this house today,

We’re surrounded here by death.’

The shutters slammed on the windows and

The doors flew shut on their own,

And barring the pebble windows were

The frames that were made of bone.

The people out in the market heard

The screams at an early hour,

Looked knowingly at each other, said,

‘They have them in their power!’

And Brad was hung from the lintel when

They finally broke inside,

While Sally was dead by a grinning skull

In the dress of a new-wed bride.

David Lewis Paget

© 2014 David Lewis Paget

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Cryingkate

I hope I can sleep tonight, Home alone is scary enough but it just happens about an hour ago my sister asked me :"please don't sell the Old Oak Table" right now with the leafs set aside it is round. I am moving my stuff aside so when my sister gets back from ca she can have this house. Hmm.