Obscurum per Obscurius

For many a month hadst I been exhuming fresh cadavers at the good doctor’s behest
For what he so queerly termed, his empirical “tests”

Though in all my employ as his resurrectionist never did it occur,
That I collected such a specimen, so very singular.

In spite of being less than a fortnight immured,
This corse was black as sable,
And withered so,
as if ‘twere a thousand, thousand years interred

Possessing none of those tell tale charnel aromas,
Suffusing the room with rather,
Faint notes of mercury, salt, and sulphur
Without delay I dispatched the paige across the moors,
To fetch the doctor here posthaste, he willingly suffered.

Would that I not dismissed my sole company,
For upon my return to that room wherein the body lied,
Such a turn did I have by what I next espied

That very same corse which was only a moment prior,
as I mentioned,
So strangely blackened,
Wert now stark white- eerily iridescent.

Nearer yet I brought the taper,
To ensure confounded senses hath not erred
Lo, white it was,
upon my soul, as alabaster fair

A jot of bitters would steady my nerves, I so reasoned
Quitting the room for but an instant nary
To mine mantle for mine flask I withdrew,
without tarry
Whereupon the hovels center I gained,
Astonied I was to behold
That body, that body hadst yet again changed
Now nearly sanguine in hue
Though all this time that corse lay stone still-
It didst not move.




Now, it is just such rural environs
Where customs do say
That the murderer appearance causeth
blood to ooze forth from the bones of the slain,
If there be sooth to these tellings,
Which I give no credence
It would scarcely account,
for the whole form incarnadined thus,
As it be witnessed.

Nay there are other agencies at work!
Agencies that would consign me by designs to the furthest reaches of insanity
Lo, what was once a balmy breeze of curiosity, piquing fancies I canst only intimate
art now a maelstrom of the malignity,
Blasting me off the precipice to a most ruinous fate!

My dagger flew to the ready,
to meet mine destiny by blade point!
I vacillating verily-
betwixt composed disbelief and a feral mien
took leave of my senses, and over to reverie gave in.
Imagine, a cultivated man of the age,
Stricken with moral vagaries as those of that cloistered ilk.
Dagger in hand, all in a rage

Yet, as I circled round that hovel with its weird tenant,
An otherworldly sensation pricked my flesh as it had at no other occasion.

From which nether regions, foul airs, or chthonian pit was this corse expelled?
By whom, by what
Be it endowed?
To what end doth it haunt the earth anew, avenger, upon some venial misdeed begotten, long ago committed,
though not forgotten

I threw my hands heavenward imploring exoneration by the celestial machinery
For these mortal remains,
To forebear, O, forebear its ill-starred charge to claim
Ere I couldst give utterance to this, a hand like adamantine
seized my arm
Arresting the feeble paroxysm of protest on my lips

Held fast in that death pale hand all became
golden beyond golden
as my life force withered and waned
Beyond golden
Beyond golden
Beyond golden brightly burnished
I am no more, no more
A psychopomp to the purpose




What felicity I were home when the paige paid call,
The door ajar I entered withal
A gnarled corpse sprawled on the floor I beheld in a ghastly blackened state,
I can only assume, this be the one my grave robber made mention,
And the paige didst relate.

What eludes my reason still to this very day,
Is why the body was so neatly arrayed, baring one finger of the left hand,
Pointing in the moor ward direction,
In the semblance of a final injunction.

Twas to the moors avaunt, I first gazed on that preternatural glow,
As I recount
A radiant golden light bore on the ether overspreading the moors recesses
Keeping vigil aside the night and darkness

When gazing upon this strange sight
these words did into my brain alight
Nay not like a thought
Were these words wrought.
They were psychically summoned
From some primeval fount
I doth redoubt
For weeks afterward I was told, I could do naught but repeat
Interspersed amongst feverish rantings and wails
Nature unaided shall fail, nature unaided shall fail