The Inn sat down in a hollow,
Deep in a grove of trees,
It sat so far from the road, the yard
Was two feet deep in leaves,
It looked to be well deserted,
Except for a single light,
That poured its glow on the porch below
Late on that fateful night.

I’d looked since I found the Grimoire
Sat up on that dusty shelf,
Written in faded longhand
I couldn’t decipher myself,
The ancient scribe in the library
Had helped to decode each line,
And said it spoke of an ancestor
With a similar name to mine.

It mentioned the Seventh Circle Inn
And where it could still be seen,
It lay astray by a country way
Deep in a copse of green,
And Agnes Drue was a name I knew
Though I heard she’d not been found,
After the Mass they held that day
On consecrated ground.

Her coven had raised a spectre
Beside the Inn, in the woods
Near to a marble altar where
An ancient church had stood,
But then it demanded a sacrifice
To give the Devil his due,
And everyone formed a circle then
Apart from my Agnes Drue.

I entered the Inn to find who kept
The Seventh Circle of sin,
I needed to find what happened to
The one who was lost within,
An ancient crone kept the bar in there
Who croaked, ‘I know why you’re here,
You’re far too late for she’s at Hell’s Gate,
Has been, for many a year.’

I thought that I’d find a clue in there
On the fate of Agnes Drue,
And asked the crone was she on her own,
Would she rather there were two?’
A screech came up from the cellar then
Like the wail of a troglodyte,
The crone went down with a worried frown,
‘She only does that at night!’

Then right in the midst of the cellar floor
Was a ******’s wooden chest,
With iron hasps and rusted clasps
And a chain wound round the rest,
I burst it open to shrieks and cries
That seemed to come from within,
And there was the corpse of Agnes Drue
Where the Devil had locked her in.

The staring eyes in her skull had gone
But they seemed to stare the same,
There was no flesh but the woman’s dress
Was torn in a rage of pain,
And held in her frightful bony hand
Was a book that she’d scribbled on,
Deep in the dark of her awful tomb,
‘I knew! One day you’d come!’

David Lewis Paget