The Hound

In my ears there sounds the nightmare baying of the hound
It is not a dream or madness this I cannot doubt

Heaven/ forgive/ our sin/ and this/ dark fate
May pass/ if I/ return/ the cursed amulet

Bored with current intellectual systems of belief
We sought out the decadent and diabolic scenes

Hideous/ extremes/ human/ outrage/ abhorred
Shocking/ decay/ frightful/ we chose/ grave robbing

We began collecting trophies to adorn our dark museum
And excite our jaded senses shelves a universe of horror
Skulls of aged Kings and daemon carvings of basalt and onyx

Statues – paintings - fiendish drawings from the hidden vault of Goya
Nauseous instruments of music dissonant and ghastly sounding
Tomb-loot of perversity and madness made our prized collection

With St. John my partner leading we were feverish and sated
When a perfect exhumation yielded a novel treasure
We were more than common ghouls – our quest for novelty unending

Dark kaleidoscopic dances, death portrayed in red precision
Blasphemous, unthinkable the items we displayed so proudly
Of the work we saw ourselves as pioneers of charnal art

Then one day St. John declared a Holland grave our goal
Laying there 500 years the greatest ghoul all told
We arrived with spades and candles Churchyard in full moon
Breaking through the earth and rotting wood too soon

Then I saw a canine featured amulet of Jade
This became the treasure for the journey we had made
As I grabbed it we could hear a distant baying hound
But we’d come too far to be dissuaded by mere sound
I beheld a shadowed gibbous shine of charnel moon
Quickly we re-covered and reburied that old tomb

As we ran to leave the churchyard I looked back and saw
Clouds of bats descending to the grave that we had robbed
Studying the amulet I realized its source
In the Necronomicon (a pictograph of course)
The corpse eating cult of Leng would blindly worship it
Next day we secured a passage on a freighting ship


Standing on that deck in wind
Thought I heard that Howl again
Feeling haunted by a voice
Shook it off … I’ve no choice
Back in England safe and sound
We dismissed thoughts of the hound

Amulet now on our wall
Feeling hunted after all
Constant scented candles burned
Troubling facts on research learned
If Alhazred’s book have voice
We had made an awful choice

Terror struck one night St. John attacked while walking home
Torn to ribbons by a shadow left for dead alone
I ran to his side and asked what happened - this he said
Holland you must go replace that damned amulet
Then my ear detected a faint baying of a hound
Could I still escape my fate returning to that ground?

I returned to Holland to plead mercy from the ghoul
Then some thieves descended stole the amulet, my doom
Still I went - dug up the grave -to beg the corpse my life
No longer a pile of bones he now seemed half alive
Always where I go there is a baying close behind
In despair - my only friend has claimed my frail mind

Madness rides the star wind…
Claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses…
Dripping death astride a Bacchanale of bats
From night black ruins of buried temples of Belial
Now, as the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows loud and louder…
In the stealthy whirring and flapping of those cursed web-wings
Circles closer and closer
I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge
From the unnamed and unnameable…
I see the Hound!