The Nocturnal Visitors

Many moons ago, one of my dreams dreary

crept into a realm ruled by the eerie,

and then came a visitor draped in a dark cloak

to mark its presence in the skies of smoke. 

Amidst the silence, I heard a churning

of the cauldron in a mystifying happening

as I witnessed the nocturnal visitor, surreal

began twirling reality by making shadows kneel.

And then came another perched upon a bust

blood-thirsty and shrouded in a haunting lust

whose eyes then began swallowing my soul

unleashing severe pain as my cries began to unroll. 

I harkened to a phantom fluid and obscure

who howled the laments of the world impure

whose voice seemed to me from a realm unknown

intriguing me where this dream had flown.

Whispers of gloom like tendrils of mist

coiled around me as my sanity they did twist

and threw me into a ballet of illusions so grand

where darkness and light concomitantly expand.

Ghouls danced and swayed in ways grotesque

within the limits of this insane burlesque

with their faces broiled in the cauldron of despair

and painted in the oils of this ominous affair. 

Anxiously, I tried to touch the ghoul's hands

but they slipped out like the shifting sands

and it suddenly vanished in cold ethereal

and melted away like a forgotten funeral.

The room began growing cold and dread

as the visitor churned the cauldron in my head

and slowly, numbness tore reality apart

unveiling horrors to tear my heart. 

In the depths of this delusional reverie

I feared, cried and felt as per the visitor's decree.

Through vestibules of this room, I laid strayed

Caught in a labyrinth where reason decayed.

I hopelessly yearned for a glimmer of light

but the visitor's grip sealed my plight.

I entered a chimaera of an unending illusion

as my derelict sanity mixed with confusion.

But then the raven returned as the day approached

as the visitor vanished, leaving me encroached

but those illusions lingered like a haunting refrain

as I wandered through that mind-numbing pain.

The tendrils of the visitor continue to persist

and horrific illusions that my mind does insist,

as it acts as a reminder where my fears entwine

leaving me a hostage of this visitor of mine.