We’ve all heard them. Banshee yodels in the dark. Sometimes rattling the windows. Other times a distant shriek. Maybe an unheard scream building up inside: a peal of effusive all-out joy; a slowly awakening dirge of unleashed sadness turned to madness from the depths of your being. The kind that will tickle your stomach until you have to let it out. Be it laughter or anguish, it’s those night howls that seem to echo on and on.
Most of us have feared the thing in the closet. The Unknown. Perhaps we have trembled at an unexpected, unfamiliar touch. Or wept like a needy nestling all rumpled and peeping, crying out of hunger, beaks gaping like our hearts, waiting for something to fill them. Could it be that we have shared such experiences, if not identical at least similar, that connect us in space and time as a band of humanity much like the rings of a tree; the layers of sediment that compose the natural surface of the planet?
Whether we fear the night, worship it, roam it, or allow our imaginations to wander its murky alleyways . . . we are as much a part of it as we are the daylight. It is a portion of our lives we can do nothing about, even if we leave all of the lights on or live where the sun doesn’t set for months at a time. Conversely, the sun will not rise for months. The darkness will find us. And day in, day out, the night hours are there — the same as a danger will not go away when we close our eyes.
So rather than shun it, why not give the night a hug? Stay up with it and read, write, paint, putter, watch the tube. Enjoy a cozy beverage of choice and breathe in a sense of tranquility. Take a deep listen to the quietude of those wee hours between Midnight and Dawn; gander the stillness. You might just find that the world is a more peaceful place instead of more disturbing.
Of course, if you happen to be reading a truly terrifying tale. If you or your neighbor should crank up the volume of a Heavy Metal ditty with no consideration for the hour. If you reside in a community where inconsiderate members shoot up the streets or drag-race empty lanes. If the couple next door gets into a screaming match. If you watch the Late Late Creature Feature. If you should summon the nerve to actually peek into the closet or peer under the bed . . . then all bets are off.
Some nights there may be a hallelujah choir of sirens. Thunder’s splitting crackle-boom. The symphony of a catfight or feline serenade. There could be the monotonous hollow metronomic tick of the clock, the reverberating echo of your heart, the fervent fevered moan of a silent voice that demands attention.
Would that we could make things different in our lives, or the lives of others, to pacify those moments so we all can get some sleep!
Wraith
(an excerpt from my short story “The Wraith”, available as a single E-book and to be published in my horror collection THE MACABRE MIND OF LORI R. LOPEZ)
There’s a song of solitude
Neath the desolation as night falls
And light turns itself asunder
Then is heard the mournfullest of calls
Out I dare into the drink of dusk
Washed by brume and billow on my cheek
Treading gently so as not to break
The respectful silence that I seek
Accompanied by misery
Wracked by throe and direful twinge
The throngful groanings of dolor
From my private cryptic fringe
A marginal reprieve at best
Where cravings covet and abide
The ramblings of a wayward fool
Long gone the other side
A funeral famine of rain-drenched color
The glummest occasion, mild and blunt
A dearthful chatter of solemn rapport
No twitch of mouth nor joy to hunt
My pulse unbeaten, a vapid throb
Red lips tinged blue, my nails undone
With gliding steps that miss the ground
I’ll have my moonstruck fun
Asway I saunter, jauntering
From all unmorbid and mundane
Clandestined secrets well repressed
My only solace an owl’s refrain
Around the clockhand’s cuspen nose
As hours grew wee, the heavens dreary
And none could pass the tests of time
With eyes too shot and bleary
There stood a man obscured by gloom
In drabness wreathed, a wraith
Who lingered in the world to catch
A briefest glance, a sign of faith
The wretch could not yet bear to lose
What he had won, a heart complete
The depthless fondness of a damsel
However shorn and fleet
As stars would cross, misfortune shine
Their rapture ruptured stark and dim
Too brittle, fragile, kept apart
Upon a fatal whim
This vagrant walked the graven soil
Where once their strides had left a mark
Anticipating her release
From the shrouds and mists of dark
Whether down some brilliant sunlit path
O’er a barren tousled field
In a restaurant they used to haunt
Would his pacing never yield
A life not lived, a love unfading
The glow a searent unburnt flame
How much he yearned for one last glimpse
His mind was not the same
And when his prayers unanswered went
His ardent pleas her failed to save
Conspired did he to resurrect
His beloved from the grave
With the Devil did he barter
Trading more than his own soul
For the chants and potions of a witch
To awake his darling whole
He lured another to take her place
Who must willing lie within the earth
Convinced to sacrifice herself
By filling the lady’s berth
So he lured me as an evil muse
Inspiring my pen toward my demise
Having pilfered hair and cloth for a doll
Thus my leap invoked her to arise
But their wicked plot could not endure
Since I was granted my request
That I be bound to him in death
For an eternal ambit of unrest
Now I find myself within his realm
Adrift in thought where I reside
Just another lonely hollow soul
Like kindred spirits of eventide
And we share this solemn hour of day
This underside when the sorrows roam
On the surface while the blackness comes
It is there the wraith’s at home.
~ Published ~
May 30, 2012
Spread The Word
Tell Someone (you know who)!
Related Books
A part of Poetic Reflections: The Column by Lori R. Lopez
