I bid you welcome —

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely.
Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!”

Puppet Terror

Of all our fears, there’s none so real
      as the terror little children feel
when something from the closet peers,
      as darkness falls and bedtime nears.

The walking dead,
      a chopped-off head,
            each one instills a special dread.

But yet more frightening than these,
      the thing that makes your marrow freeze,
and haunts adulthood like a theme
      that poisons a recurring dream,

is that which has no life at all.
      The evil puppet—
            the deadly doll.

A creature born to be possessed: so still, until a child’s behest
should animate its sleeping form as from a netherworld reborn,
but only to be tossed aside like flotsam on a lonely tide.
She and all her kindred, bent on vengeance for abandonment,
and mute with deadly vows to keep for troubling their endless sleep,
sit watching, waiting, all their days, with maddening, unblinking gaze.
So shroud the doll with pearl-white teeth and bind her with a garlic wreath,
and seal the dummy in his case with special care to hide his face.
You say you have no fear nor thrill? I say to you, one day you will.
You’ll glimpse a broken manikin with staring eyes and crumbling skin,
or maybe find a china doll propped awkwardly against a wall
and feel within your frozen heart the terror such things can impart.
For in the time it takes to scream, as life becomes a fever dream,
you’ll know that in the midnight gloom,
a doll is creeping in your room.
I leave you this to contemplate:
just wait, my friend – it’s there – just wait.

        — John Louis Koenig

Sentimental Hangman

‘Tis hard to hang a husky lad
When larks are in the sky;
It hurts when daffydills are glad
To wring a neck awry,
When joy o’ Spring is in the sap
And cheery in the sun,
‘Tis sad to string aloft a chap,
No matter what he done.

And sittin’ in the pub o’ night
I hears that prison bell,
And wonders if it’s reely right
To haste a man to hell,

For doin’ what he had to do,
Through greed, or lust, or hate . . .
Aye, them seem rightful words to you,
But me, I calls it – Fate.

Lots more would flout the gallows tree,
But that they are afraid;
And so to save society,
I ply my grisly trade.
Yet as I throttle eager breath
And plunge to his hell-home
Some cringin’ cove, to me his death
Seems more like martyrdom.

For most o’ us have held betime
Foul murder in the heart;
And them sad blokes I swung for crime
Were doomed right from the start.
Of wilful choosing they had none,
For freedom’s most a fraud,
And maybe in the end the one
Responsible is – God.

Robert William Service 1874–1958

You, darkness

by Rainer Maria Rilke

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! –
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

Little Teeth

by John Louis Koenig

“Isn’t she cute?”
Brenda Black held out a hideous, deranged-looking doll for Billy to admire.
It was an old, victorian looking thing, in decrepit, violet silk and lace, with a dementedly frozen smile on a cracked porcelain face. The parted lips revealed tiny, little pearly teeth. They were disturbingly real looking teeth, as if stolen from an infant’s cadaver.
“Um… yeah,” said Billy Brady, with a look on his face that said, Keep that thing away from me.
“My friends collect Living Dead Dolls,” the girl explained, “but I wanted something unique and one-of-a-kind. I found her on Ebay. Someone in Maine was selling her. That’s Stephen King territory, you know. I call her Morticia.”
It was an awkward first meeting for them both. They’d met online. She was BiteGirrrl666 and he was KewlDude88.
She was a goth, and he was just horny.
Her parents were away on vacation. His parents didn’t hear him sneak out. It was just a short ride on his bike to where she lived on Chandler Street.
Brenda had immediately invited Billy to her bedroom, a gesture that he took to portend his imminent salvation from Teenage Virgin Hell.
“Want to watch a movie?” Breanda asked.
“Um… sure,” he said, following her around the bed like a puppy dog to several stacks of DVDs that stood on either side of her little television.
“Let’s watch this, ‘The Bride of Chucky,’ have you seen it?”
Billy shook his head distractedly, following Brenda onto her black velvet covered bed. He leaned back into a pile of mismatched pillows that reeked of Nag Champa incense and stale pot smoke. Brenda pointed her remote at the TV and navigated quickly past the trailers and the disc menu to start the movie.
Morticia the Doll sat facing them, propped against one stack of DVDs beside the TV, seemingly fixed upon Billy with a glassy stare. He was finding it harder and harder to focus either on the movie or on Brenda laying beside him.
“Do you mind if we move the doll?” he asked.
Brenda seemed offended. “Why, don’t you like her?”
She hopped from the bed and gathered the antique doll under her arm, returning to lay beside Billy.
The boy repressed a shiver and pretended to watch the movie, all the while imagining scenarios, one after another, to seduce his new-found friend, while the eyes of Morticia continued to seem trained upon him.
Then as Chucky made his move on Jennifer Tilly, Billy made his. Summoning all of his teenage cool, he rolled over onto Brenda, who sighed compliently and let the scary old doll fall beside her.
Billy looked down at Brenda, intending to kiss her, but her sheer strangeness was beginning to affect him. Being so close to her, he began to see things that had escaped his notice before.
The slenderness that had appealed to him at first now seemed disturbingly frail and skeletal. Her delicate hands seemed rat-like and her pale skin appeared waxen. Her scent seemed sickly sweet.
The boy let his weight pin the fragile girl to the bed, but she made no move to resist. Billy was going to try to go through with this, despite the fact that he could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He buried he face against Brenda’s shoulder and tried to get her skirt up and her panties down, trying to ignore his sense of the girl’s growing impatience at his awkwardness.
Suddenly Billy felt a vicious hickey being applied to his neck. He jerked back, sending Brenda’s doll tumbling off of the bed where it fell against the nightstand, staring up at him.
“What the fuck!” cried Billy, clapping his hand to his neck and feeling the sticky wetness of blood. In his shock, he imagined that Morticia’s lips looked a brighter crimson than before.
He scrambled off the bed, zipping his pants as his feet hit the floor. He heard Brenda’s voice behind him, pleading with him to stay.
“Don’t go, Billy! I’m BiteGirl, remember? We like to bite!”
But Billy was already to the front door, banging it open and stumbling down the steps. He bruised his crotch as he leapt onto his waiting bike and pedalled frantically, craving the safety and normalcy of his room.
Brenda picked Morticia up off of the floor. She sighed as she sank back against the pillows, turning her and the doll’s gaze back toward the television where Chucky and his Bride were electrocuting someone in a bathtub.

*** Back at home, Billy lay in bed for hours sleeplessly, imagining the night’s events. Still a virgin, he thought to himself. He wondered how he would explain the extreme hickey on his neck. He hadn’t looked at it yet, but he was sure his parents would notice it in the morning.
In the comfort of his bedroom, Brenda didn’t seem so bad – kinda sexy, in a strange way. He could have had her!
If he could just get that creepy doll locked in a box somewhere. He had stopped considering the bizarre thoughts he had had about the thing, but he still didn’t want to have to see it ever again.
He got out of bed, turned on his computer and logged on.
There she was: BiteGirl666. She couldn’t sleep either.
He typed her an instant message.
KewlDude88: hi
BiteGirrrl666: hi
KewlDude88: sorry I left like that
Billy waited a full minute for an answer.
BiteGirrrl666: com,e bacjk
KewlDude88: are you sure???
Another long pause.
BiteGirrrl: yess come bac
This time Billy paused before answering.
KewlDude88: you seem different
One last pause…
BiteGirrrl666: thisss iss mmorticia
Billy snatched his hands way from the keyboard as if it were the hateful doll itself. He jabbed a finger onto the computer’s power button, shutting it down cold. Before the monitor had faded to blackness, Billy had already leapt back into bed and pulled the covers over his head.
Meanwhile, Brenda sat at her computer, laughing gleefully as she saw Billy instantly log off.
Billy didn’t move a muscle as a swarm of ‘what if’s’ swirled in his head.

🙝


Frankenstein: Chapter 5. The Monster.

Frontispiece to the 1831 Bentley & Colburn edition of Frankenstein by Theodor von Holst
BY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY,
first published in 1818

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful.

Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.

I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.

I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.

He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs.

I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.

I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!

Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view.

I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky.

I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:

Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

🙝


An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe with Vincent Price.

An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1970) features Vincent Price reciting four of Poe’s stories.
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Sphinx,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”

Dead Man’s Hate

BY ROBERT ERVIN HOWARD
first published in Weird Tales, 1930

They hanged John Farrel in the dawn amid the marketplace;
At dusk came Adam Brand to him and spat upon his face.
‘Ho neighbors all,’ spake Adam Brand, ‘see ye John Farrel’s fate!
‘Tis proven here a hempen noose is stronger than man’s hate!

For heard ye not John Farrel’s vow to be avenged upon me
Come life or death? See how he hangs high on the gallows tree!’
Yet never a word the people spoke, in fear and wild surprise-
For the grisly corpse raised up its head and stared with sightless eyes,

And with strange motions, slow and stiff, pointed at Adam Brand
And clambered down the gibbet tree, the noose within its hand.
With gaping mouth stood Adam Brand like a statue carved of stone,
Till the dead man laid a clammy hand hard on his shoulder bone.

Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell; the red blood left his face
And he reeled away in a drunken run through the screaming market place;
And close behind, the dead man came with a face like a mummy’s mask,
And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked with their unwonted task.

Men fled before the flying twain or shrank with bated breath,
And they saw on the face of Adam Brand the seal set there by death.
He reeled on buckling legs that failed, yet on and on he fled;
So through the shuddering market-place, the dying fled the dead.

At the riverside fell Adam Brand with a scream that rent the skies;
Across him fell John Farrel’s corpse, nor ever the twain did rise.
There was no wound on Adam Brand but his brow was cold and damp,
For the fear of death had blown out his life as a witch blows out a lamp.

His lips were writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend’s on Satan’s coals,
And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls.
Such was the fate of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate;
For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man’s hate.

🙝

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
               Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
               Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
               This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
               Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
               Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
               ‘Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
               Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
               With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
               Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
               Of ‘Never—nevermore.'”

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
               Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
               She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
               Shall be lifted—nevermore!

               — Edgar Allan Poe — 1809-1849

Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?
⁠— Edgar Allan Poe

Terror vs horror …

“Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a higher degree of life, the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.”

—Ann Radcliffe

from On the Supernatural in Poetry, an essay