The Visitor

By: Hunter Christian

A peculiarity of hagridden happenstance paid me a visit last night,

When the rhythmic sounds of 19th century floorboards creaking underfoot,

Awoke me from a midnight slumber with alternating footsteps heard first hard then light,

By a barefooted intruder whom tracked from room-to-room a blackened trail of stale chimney soot

With no prior invitation nor invocation might I add,

The incantation of a sinister variety freely stirred about my home,

Never before had such a thing happened in the house wherein I've lived since I were a lad,

From one room to the next, then upstairs, then down, without restriction the visitor did roam

I did nothing, how could I?

I sat there, I listened

A voice in my head prayed, “Dear God, please don't let me die!”

Lay undone were all the good deeds done since dear mother had the old Victorian home christened,

'Round every corner and behind every door,

The truth about lies,

I could no longer ignore,

Lie before my astonished eyes,

For good, for all time, and forevermore

Then, so lurid in its guise,

My midnight caller stalked my calm for weakness,

He spoke naught, dignified no shape - He shone no eyes,

His calculated gait, his misdirection, served to confuse me by way of deliberate obliqueness,

He was and he wasn't, all in one breath:

“If you call me anything, you may call me Death!”

His words rose and fell like thunder,

Spoken so violently within blaring silence,

The visitor's words shorn the night’s stillness ghastly asunder

I sat atop my bed alone, beholden to a heartstricken affright,

As a strange paralysis of unknown circumstance rendered my limbs useless from head-to-toe,

With labored breaths, and my chest vise grip tight,

To the abyssal intrigue before me, I wantonly surrendered in hopes to atone

An immeasurable torment lurked just beyond my outstretched arms,

Temptation tumbled within my center,

Whose knots tightened around my windpipe,

The message was delivered with harsh clarity

So, I yielded as ordered,

No face, no name, no shape could've been assigned to my pending captor,

He just lay in wait,

Impending agony blanketed my body in a menacing torrent of confusion, terror, and then acceptance

I welcomed resolve,

I welcomed my station,

I am to be the vessel,

I am to be the courier,

My itinerary had been penned in blood,

No bloodletting may commute my sentence now,

I must do his bidding,

I must carry his deathly parcel,

To destinations known and unknown,

Unearthly, undead, unnamed, unnatural,

For now it's my turn to roam,

Unaccompanied and alone

To repent, I had to relent,

Freed from the paralysis that jailed me,

I turned from the faith that's forever failed me,

I turned,

Away I turned,

And, then I became,

One and the same,

With my captor whom had no name,

I am,

The visitor.