The house had an evil aspect as
It hung out over the street,
Casting a permanent shadow there
Where the market stalls would meet,
The first floor was half-timbered, with
The ground floor made of stone,
The windows were made of pebble glass
And the window frames of bone.
No one had lived in the house for years
Til the Robinson’s moved in,
A couple, straight from the wedding church
Where they’d cleansed themselves from sin,
They’d listened to all of the rumours that
The house had its share of ghosts,
But the cheapness of the peppercorn rent
Had influenced them most.
The house was built where a charnel house
Had stood in the days of plague,
Where later a debtors’ prison stood
Though its history was vague,
They said there had been a gallows there
With a trapdoor through the floor,
And the arm of the ancient gallows now
Was the lintel of a door.
But the Robinson’s had sailed right in
With a mop and a whisking broom,
‘In no time, it’ll be **** and span,’
Said Sally, within the gloom,
While Brad had opened the shutters then
To let all the light stream in,
‘We’ll flush the ghosts from their waiting posts
With a broom and a pound of Vim!’
They dusted down the old furniture
Left sitting since George the Fourth,
And turned the old oak table round
So the end was facing north,
‘But still there’s a dampness in the air,
And a tension that feels grim,’
Sally said, as they lay in bed,
And she clung, so close to him.
‘Are you sure that they can’t get in,’ she said
‘Now we’ve flushed them out in the street?’
But Brad was trying to understand
Why the bed was cold at his feet.
‘Why are the sheets so damp,’ he said,
‘And they’re cold, as cold as sin,’
Sally was shivering, fit to burst
Though the sun came streaming in.
They sat at the old oak table with
Their bowls of soup, home-made,
And Sally reached out to hold his hand
But he started back, dismayed,
The soup was thick in the serving bowl
It was still three-quarters full,
When a swirl in the murky liquid then
Revealed a grinning skull.
Sally shrieked, but she couldn’t speak
And Brad had held his breath,
‘We’ve got to get out of this house today,
We’re surrounded here by death.’
The shutters slammed on the windows and
The doors flew shut on their own,
And barring the pebble windows were
The frames that were made of bone.
The people out in the market heard
The screams at an early hour,
Looked knowingly at each other, said,
‘They have them in their power!’
And Brad was hung from the lintel when
They finally broke inside,
While Sally was dead by a grinning skull
In the dress of a new-wed bride.
David Lewis Paget