In the genre of recounting horrors
There’s nothing sacred in invention.
Though corny, gory, trite, or tasteless,
The sell-out beats the solemn mention
Of those unlucky rendezvous
The storyteller knows are true
And are of our own dimension.
When first I spoke my story, as a salesman,
The intention capped at provocation,
For conversations persuading others to unnatural belief
To raconteurs of skill denote a profitable connotation.
“You should have seen him!” I declared
And shared the panic of my station
To an audience of thumping hearts
Whose wallets proved my expectation
That learning boogeymen exist
And nightmares with good cause persist
Drives tippers to elation.
The consequences filled my purse.
The punishments were handsome.
So boasted I to colleagues,
“Oh, the fortunes of my phantom!”
“But do you borrow trouble, friend?”
The baldness were I Samson.
“Do you not fear the prize you’ve won
He’ll bill you as your ransom?”
Deflated, I walked home alone
And startled at the hansoms.
The sidewalks I recalled were graves.
A murder haunted every mansion.
And not too far behind me crept —
Invisible, though heavy stepped —
The big fish of my dread’s expansion.
I moved. I changed vocations. I’d forgotten
Associations in-laws reprehend.
In Sunday-best I stunned as in a dream coat
And prayed as one the cloth would recommend.
Then harvesting the freshest fruit among them,
I promised all her honor to defend
And settled her espoused into the country
Where frequently we aimed her to distend.
When shortly neared our parcel to erupting,
As pregnant pink as eyes could comprehend
My wife awoke one midnight to a fever
The doctors nor the ministers could mend.
Sweat like blood drops beaded on her forehead.
Her eyes were haggard, and her cheeks had thinned.
I bundled her in blankets as she shivered,
But guessed not what this illness might portend:
A presence cold as Christmas snow
And familiar as a candle’s glow
Nearing like a holiday upon a timely wind.
She never screamed, her stoicism stubborn,
And muscled three more meals than me per day,
Asleep in every hour God allowed her
While at her side I failed to close my eyes to more than pray.
For seven nights, the remedies betrayed us,
And I stared in exhaustion at the gray
Of undiluted starlight in the fields of autumn harvest
Until at last I spied him in the hay,
Moving like a scarecrow owed
A share of all the crops we sowed,
Collecting long-due interest on his pay.
When first I saw my specter, as a schoolboy,
The city stank of gasoline and gin,
The tourists stumbled gaily to the gutter,
And I grew ever curious of sin.
I loitered after curfew where I oughtn’t,
And when the doormen turned, I slithered in
To steal unfinished sips from hardened spirits
And flee with drips of evil on my chin.
I liked relighting cigarettes and arguments.
I liked to watch the women show their skin.
I learned that men treat all things as a gamble,
And what makes losers lose and winners win.
An officer pursued me on occasion
But never caught me, much to their chagrin.
The cemetery sealed its gates at sundown,
But bars are wide and I was spry and thin.
The tenants’ hospitality? Uncertain,
As none made protest e’er I wandered in
Except one figure standing ‘mid the tombstones
Without his eyes but not without his grin.
He wore the moonlight through his coat,
A length of rope around his throat,
And moaned like someone tuning a broken violin.
No locals see full-body apparitions!
Most tourists eat up legends long-since stale.
So, not some patch of cold nor muffled whisper,
I struck my claim upon this ghostly grail.
A point of pride and intrigue over profit,
I stalked him like a paranormal whale
Sometimes from the churchyard to the harbor
But gathered next to nothing of his tale.
I took the girls whose dresses fit too tightly,
For in my arms, no honor could prevail,
But stage fright made him show for but a moment
And soon he ceased appearances wholesale,
‘Til some years passed I spied him in a window.
His powdered wig was mussed; his skin, more pale.
The next week, he was wading through civilians,
Unnoticed from beyond the mortal veil.
He saw me, and we stared a while,
And then he vanished, spirit-style,
And with this, countless patrons I’d regale.
Perhaps he claimed the riches earned
Or planned to steal my bride!
The timbers creaked as he approached.
A shadow fell inside.
I saw my breath before my face
And heard his lumbering stride.
I could not budge to block the door,
As though my limbs were tied.
And so he entered unopposed,
His eyeless sockets wide,
And stood within a foot of us,
Looked down at her … and sighed …
And just like that, her fever broke,
And my healthy pregnant wife awoke
To an empty house in a lonely countryside.
© 2020 Nathan Gregory Cook
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The Favoring Wind 