The Village of Helsomewhere

A Poem by David Lewis Paget

The cottage stood at the outer edge

Of the village of Helsomewhere,

It held a slate on the garden gate

That scribbled a ‘Don’t Go There!’

It housed a cat and a resident bat

And something that moved within,

A thing unseen that was quite unclean

With various types of sin.

The folk that entered the garden gate

Had never gone back there twice,

When asked, they shuddered enough to state

‘It’s something that isn’t nice!’

The weeds were thick in the garden, and

Had grown right over the path,

And filled with sand by an old wash-stand

The remains of an iron bath.

Nobody walked the bullock track

That led by the old front door,

To go to town, they’d hurry around

A path that was there before,

The cottage stood like an ancient crone

That blighted the village scene,

A pointing finger, pared to the bone

Reminding them what had been.

At night the Moon rose over the ridge

And it cast an evil glow,

Down through the leaves of the eucalypts

To the cottage, far below,

The windows looked like a pair of eyes

As they stared out through the gloom,

While something was rushing around inside

Like a demon in a tomb.

‘Perhaps we ought to have burnt it,’

Said the senior councilman,

‘It stands alone as our conscience,’ said

The crusty old farmer, Stan,

‘We have to bleed for our own misdeeds,

Including a lack of care,

Each scream was seen as a nightmare dream

When Lloyd was living there.’

When Lloyd was hosting his dinners for

The girls from a nearby town,

Nobody seemed to question them

For Lloyd was always a clown,

But screams would happen at midnight

And would often be heard at dawn,

When Lloyd was digging his garden patch

By the light of the early morn.

And Lloyd would wave to his neighbours as

They hurried along his way,

Give them a cheery greeting, crack a joke

And say ‘Gidday!’

They didn’t suspect that evil lay

Inside in that old tin bath,

The one that is filled with sand, and now

Sits there, outside by the path.

One night the villagers crept on out,

And they took it each by turn,

To set a brand to the cottage, then

Stand back to watch it burn,

But something was rushing about inside

In a black and evil cloak,

While screams had seemed to come in a tide

With the dark and acrid smoke.

The embers were floating far and wide

In the haze of a Harvest Moon,

They set up fires in the eucalypts

That rained in the village gloom,

And every cottage went up in smoke

For the villagers’ part, they share

In the deaths of thirteen innocent girls

In the Hell of Helsomewhere!

David Lewis Paget

© 2014 David Lewis Paget

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Mark

So, Lloyd was NOT butchering the girls and burying them in the garden at night, but they were in fact still ALIVE, and it was the Frankensteinoid paranoia of the villagers that actually killed them?! David, just when I think you can't get any SICKER, you come up with something like this!! You are the unequivocal Master of Weird, my friend!

Posted 10 Years Ago

1 of 1 people found this review constructive.

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Arrinae

I truely love the tales you weave. It is true how fear can lead people into doing drastic things. This is a good lesson for others to learn, lest they make similar mistakes.