My sister Susan had disappeared
At the age of twenty four,
She’d gone on up to the attic room
And she’d locked and barred the door,
We beat, cajoled, and entreated her,
But she never would come out,
I said, ‘We shouldn’t have argued Sue,
I didn’t need to shout.’

My father came with his gravel voice
And demanded ‘Open up!’
He thumped and kicked on the cedar door,
And beat with a metal cup,
But there wasn’t even a whimper
As of somebody inside,
It was like she’d suffered a broken heart
Had crawled in there, and died.

We left her there till the morning,
Thought a night would calm her down,
‘She’ll come out once she is hungry,’
Said my brother, (he’s a clown).
But as the clock struck for dinner time
With not the slightest stir,
My father carried a battering ram
And ran right up the stair.

He stood and battered the cedar door,
He said it gave him pain,
‘I can’t afford to replace it, but,’
Then belted it again,
The door had splintered, the lock fell off
And he burst into the room,
But all that he saw were cobwebs, dust
And an air of deepest gloom.

‘Susan, where can you be,’ he cried,
‘There’s nowhere you can hide,
There isn’t even a window here
So you can’t have got outside,’
His voice rang out through the house and sent
An echo down the stair,
My mother burst into tears to hear
That Susan wasn’t there.

The police came over and climbed the roof,
Dropped into the attic space,
They hunted among the rafters there,
Looked almost every place,
There wasn’t a sign of Susan though
She’d simply disappeared,
‘The same thing happened to Grandma Coe,’
My mother cried, ‘It’s weird!’

‘She locked herself in the attic there
In the fall of forty-eight,
‘They thought that they heard her on the stair
When the hour was getting late,
But never a sign of her came back,
Then her husband, Grandpa died,
We always thought that she must be here
But somehow locked inside.’

We called the local clairvoyant in
And he brought his Tarot pack,
He stared long into his crystal ball
Till we had to call him back,
He chanted into the midnight hour
In a voice both loud and slow,
Till shuffling out of the Attic came
Not Sue, but Grandma Coe!

David Lewis Paget

I said, ‘We’re going to Coffin Cove
For the first weekend in June,
I’ve booked us a seaside caravan,
Under a bloodshot Moon,’
Giselda turned for a moment then
And she looked at me, wide-eyed,
‘I’ve just come out of the hospital,
You know that I nearly died!’

‘Why would you pick on Coffin Cove,
Isn’t that testing fate?’
‘That figure of death is out of breath,
He got to your bed too late.’
She’d had a terrible accident
And they thought she’d not survive,
But for a scar and the wreck of a car,
Here she was back, alive.

Giselda believed in portents and fate,
And something about the stars,
I said whatever the portents were,
She’d been driving the car.
‘We hold our fate in our own two hands,
And yours just slipped on the wheel,
But though you bled, that scar on your head
Has just taken time to heal.’

So off we travelled to Coffin Cove
On the long weekend in June,
The caravan sat there on the sand
While the skies were dark with gloom.
We’d heard a storm was heading our way
Though we’d both be snug inside,
The beach was clear for the time of year
So Giselda swam, and dried.

The wind came up as the clouds rolled in
So we shut and locked the door,
With lightning crackling overhead
She huddled up on the floor,
She hated thunder, and lightning too
Then it rained, and turned to hail,
The noise was deafening there inside
Then the wind began to wail.

The van would rock as the wind would gust
So I held Giselda tight,
The storm just wouldn’t let up, it raged
And roared all through the night,
We could hear the sound of the crashing waves
And they seemed outside our door,
Then the van took off, we could tell as much
By the movement of the floor.

I opened one of the windows just
To take a look outside,
Giselda said, ‘Are we floating off?’
And I must admit, I lied.
The breakers crashed in a sea of foam
And we seemed far from the shore,
I said, ‘Don’t worry, this van is tough,
It could float for evermore.’

As midnight struck on my mantle clock
Giselda jumped, fell back,
‘Who’s that,’ she pointed along the van
To a shape, all dressed in black,
Its hood half covered a grinning skull
And it held a wicked scythe,
Then in a rattling gravel voice,
‘You’ll not long be alive!’

I couldn’t speak for a moment there,
The sight just took my breath,
I said, ‘Just what do you want with us?’
‘I’m here to bring you death!
I reign supreme over Coffin Cove
As you should have known full well,
I waited, knowing you’d wander in
To the seventh circle of Hell!’

The van was tumbling in the waves
And turning round and round,
‘I won’t be using my scythe today,
The two of you will drown.’
But then a thunderous, monster wave
Threw me down on the floor,
And underneath us was solid ground,
We’d landed up on the shore.

The evil figure rose up at that
And turned to a greying mist,
Then suddenly he had gone complete
As she and I had kissed,
We burst on out through the open door
And we cried, ‘We’re still alive!’
‘Don’t bring me again to Coffin Cove,’
Giselda said, ‘Just drive.’

David Lewis Paget

Whenever I went with winsome Kate
She’d say, ‘I’m a witch, and that,’
And while in bed, with love in my head,
All she would do was chat.
She’d chatter about the latest spell
She’d found in her old Grimoire,
While I would lie, and dream of her thighs
And hope she’d surprise me there.

And so she did, a number of times
Each time that I’d reach for her,
Like shifting sand, I’d find in my hand
A handful of ***** fur,
The black cat under the counterpane
Would wriggle and spit and scratch,
And I’d withdraw, away from its paw
I’d find it more than a match.

Then she’d go on about frogs and spawn
While up above in her flat,
And hanging down from her ceiling fan
The nastiest looking bat.
‘I hope that’s not going to drop on us,’
I’d say, but she didn’t care,
It often lay on her pillow case
All tangled up in her hair.

‘Wouldn’t you like to make witching love?’
I’d say to her, in despair,
While she would lie, with spells in her eye
And some that would really scare.
She said she needed to concentrate
And would make some terrible moans,
They seemed to come from the mantlepiece
Where she kept a pile of bones.

She called them Fred, he was certainly dead
And he stared at us from above,
She’d cry, and say that there was a day
When he was her one true love.
But he’d fallen into her pickle jar
One day, when casting a spell,
And she’d pulled him out, too late, no doubt,
He’d pickled his way to hell.

I bid farewell to my witching one
Before I suffered his fate,
I’d prayed for love to heaven above
Knowing it was too late.
She’d filled a cauldron with toads and newts
Then turned and reached for my hand,
But I had fled, the moment she said,
‘Now all I need is a man!’

David Lewis Paget

She said she’d only be gone for a week,
I saw her off in the car,
‘It’s not that long,’ she began to speak,
‘It’s not that I’m going far,’
So I waved goodbye and I turned to go,
I wish I could live it again,
For that was the last I saw of Flo
I’m missing her so, Amen.

Her mother phoned on the following day,
‘What have you done with Flo?
She said we’d meet in the market place,
Did she even set out to go?’
I said she had on the previous day,
‘Is she really not there?’ I said,
And then my mind kept racing away,
I thought that she might be dead.

I called the police and the hospital,
And even the Fire Brigade,
No-one had ever heard of her
Or knew where she might have stayed,
Then I saw a clip on the news that night
She was walking along in the rain,
They were filming down at the station as
She was boarding the Melbourne train.

A week went by and I heard no more,
I thought that she might have phoned,
I saw her brother and sister too,
‘I think that she’s left,’ I moaned.
‘They hadn’t heard, not a single word,
Since that man in an overcoat
Had called in, said he was looking for her,
And left her a simple note.

‘Catch the plane at Tullamarine,
I’ll meet you in Istanbul,
Pick up the pack from the man in green,
Make sure that the pack is full.’
‘I thought you were going on holiday,’
Her brother had said to my face,
I said I didn’t know where she was
She’d gone, with never a trace.

The bomb in the old Ramada Hotel
Went off, I saw on the news
The old city part of Istanbul,
They published a set of views,
And Flo was running from smoke and flames,
I saw her, clear as a bell,
And right behind was a man in green
In front of the old hotel.

They said a woman with auburn hair
Had dropped a pack at the desk,
And then had run, she carried a gun,
Was currently under arrest.
The following day, she got away,
Squeezed out through the window bars,
Then jumped in a waiting limousine,
One of the Russian cars.

I heard she went to Saint Petersburg,
Had asked for asylum there,
They’d said, ‘No way,’ that she couldn’t stay,
She replied, ‘It isn’t fair!’
Nobody wanted to charge her so
They flew her on out to Wales,
And that’s when I met her in Cardiff
Where we sat, with a couple of ales.

She said she had won an adventure
All hush hush, in an online quiz,
But had to deliver a package first,
‘I should have asked what it is.’
She said she was sorry not telling me,
I reached out and held her hand,
‘Where did you think you were going then?’
She said, ‘to Disneyland!’

David Lewis Paget

Back in the days of the old gas lamps
When the streets were lit, but dim,
A young lamplighter would tour the streets
And the houses, looking in,
The flickering flame of each lamp would light
The windows in the dark,
He’d see what he wasn’t meant to see
In the light of each flickering spark.

He saw what he thought was an angel
Through a window in Lygon Street,
Sitting in front of a mirror,
Looking down, and washing her feet.
Her hair trailed over her shoulders like
Some golden ears of corn,
Then she looked up, and her bright blue eyes
Made him feel he was new-born.

Her lips were set in a steady pout
And were red and ripe to kiss,
Her brows were raised as she looked his way
And his heart felt instant bliss,
While she looked through her window pane
At the face of an angel boy,
Who, breathing mist on her window glass
Had scribbled his name there, ‘Roy’.

Their eyes had locked with each other when
He framed his lips in a kiss,
And she stood up and approached him,
Then she put her lips to his,
They stayed so long that the glass had warmed
But the mist spread round about,
Till neither could see the other it
Had blotted each vision out.

Then every night he had lingered there
With his taper to her lamp,
And shivered out on the footpath for
The nights were getting damp,
He hoped that she would be sitting where
She had sat, before the kiss,
But nothing had moved within that room
From that day until this.

He didn’t know but she’d had to go
To stay on her uncle’s farm,
To breathe the purer air out there
Than the fog that did her harm,
She still spat blood in her handkerchief
But she thought about the boy,
Who’d kissed her once through a window pane
And the thought still brought her joy.

David Lewis Paget

What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You went outside in the storming,
The lightning flashed and it struck you dumb,
You couldn’t get up this morning.
I tried to give you a sweet caress
But you discharged on my finger,
I fear your voltage grows more, not less,
There’s no good reason to linger.

I wrapped a cable around your toe
Ran it to earth in the garden,
Your toe as well as the cable glowed,
I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.
There’s lightning flashes behind your eyes,
Your tongue is all of a sizzle,
The storm has gone but the rain keeps on
Although it’s only a drizzle.

I took you out to our ******* bin
The neighbours thought I was fooling,
And sat you down on the surface tin,
I thought that it would be cooling.
But soon the bin was a glowing red
I hauled you off from the garbage,
As flames and smoke took the garden shed
And put an end to our garage.

I thought that I’d better hose you down
When water hit, it was frightening,
The bolt ran over the garden hedge
And burnt it down with its lightning.
What shall I do with you, Mary Anne,
You know that I love you dearly,
But I’ll never sleep in our bed again,
Till you are discharged, and feely.

David Lewis Paget

I’d taken my friends way off the shore
In my small, glass-bottomed boat,
The weather was clear, the sea was calm
For the sturdiest boat afloat,
I wanted to scan the hidden depths
Watch all that lived on the reef,
But Peter my friend, just wanted to fish,
And so did his brother, Keith.

They busied themselves with their fishing rods,
Were bent on baiting their hooks,
When suddenly something beneath the boat
Made me take a second look,
It only appeared a shadow at first
Came on with a sinuous glide,
It wasn’t a fish I had seen before,
‘Hey, just look at this,’ I cried.

They both turned around and peered below
But then the shadow had gone,
‘What did you see,’ said Peter P.
‘It must have been twenty feet long!’
‘Oh *******,’ said Keith, ‘beyond belief,
There isn’t a fish of that size,
Not even the great White Pointer Shark,
You must have mud in your eyes.’

‘I know what I saw,’ I said again,
‘It had the most horrible teeth,
It seemed to be looking for prey down there
Across the top of the reef.’
‘I’ve fished these waters for twenty years,
I think I’d have seen it by now,’
Said Peter P. with a smirk at me,
‘Watch us, and we’ll show you how.’

They knew I wasn’t a fisherman,
I wouldn’t know Cod from a shark,
I just liked to watch the fishes swim
Through the glass-bottomed boat in the dark,
I’d rigged up floodlights to light below
That eerie, mysterious deep,
Where seaweed swayed in the land they played
With the rest of the world asleep.

The guys continued and cast their lines,
While I sat reading a book,
We’d be there hours, and that was fine
I took the occasional look,
We drifted over a patch of blue
The sand was clear below,
When back there came that sinuous shape
I said to the guys, ‘HeLLO!’

This time it headed up for the boat,
Less like a fish than a snake,
A massive head with reptilian teeth
And suddenly I was awake.
It shot straight up, right over the boat
Snapping its massive jaw,
And took Keith’s arm from his shoulder blades
Right into its mighty maw.

We just couldn’t stop the flow of blood
It filled the boat as he died,
And Peter P. was distraught as he
Sat helplessly, and he cried.
‘That must be some prehistoric beast
That lived on the ocean floor,
I’ll never go fishing again,’ said he
As we headed back to the shore.

David Lewis Paget