Wyckham Road Poem by Richard D Remler

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There is a place up Wyckham Road
Where one should never go.
A dark and grim and fearful haunt
That only shadows know.
It is a baleful time of misery,
Where only fools tread,
And a ceaseless pit of torment
Even for the dead.

Bertie Longshoe never knew those shadows stretching wide.
Those wild hills of blueberry against the countryside.
She did not see the shades that be, nor hear the thrushes song
Warning her to turn around.That there was something wrong.

She did not understand there are things that ought be feared.
But Bertie Longshoe finally did the day she disappeared.
And though they searched and searched about,
They could only hear her cry,
In that tiny voice that echoed in the fog that drifted by.
"Where areyou? " Her words were few,
As last words tend to be.
"I cannot see the lot of you.
Can anyone see me? "

Years passed on, and time tests fate.
It was June the eight, and very late.
A low fog draped the crimson field.
It was hot that eve,
With storms about.
I even think some thunder pealed
From far away,
O're Wyckham's Peak,
The Reverend Poul
Dead just a week,
And Milton Edgars
On the run...
That's how our June day
Had begun.

Sharon Weeves
Was still afright.
She couldn't sleep
Without the light.
She was always
Seeing shadows flicker,
So Doc Rain had prescribed some liqueur.

Maren Loop, who was only ten -
Led Sheriff Oar around the bend,
Her eyes still wet from morning's tears,
She had no time to calm her fears.

Sheriff Oar flashed his light
Into the dark and dead of night,
Up the road and to the right
Where Elmer Dudges kept his watch
While nursing half a flask of scotch.
He held his rifle lazy low,
Haunted by the moon's odd glow.
And he didn't say a single word.
Dudges, he was seldom heard.

Sheriff Oar flashed his light about,
Through the forest thick with green,
Squinted both his tired eyes -
But nothing useful could be seen.
The night wind whistled gently 'round
And played in through the misty leaves.
And Oar sniffed deep and turned away.
He knew these woods were thick as thieves.

On the lumbered through the din,
And passed the sign that read'Beware'
Into the wood as dark as sin,
Low beams flashing everywhere.
'til they stopped, breathless, thrown,
The eve had chilled them to the bone.
They could smell the darkness in the air,
And taste the death rightly and fair.

Cleavon shuddered with a start,
And had to turn away,
Lost his supper well before
He ever had a word to say.
Byron James just shook his head,
And Edger said a swear.
SheriffOar stepped through the blood
That painted every hill and hair.
He stared off into a nothingness
Far as the eye could see,
A darkness far more darker
Than a dark should ever be.

There was Mary Iberson,
Still in her Sunday best.
And there was Willard Ivy,
Immaculately dressed.
Little Cheryl Timnus Lee
Lay near a splintered Buckthorn tree,
Where Filfuz Epp lay grim and deep,
As if the man were lost in sleep.
The rest were torn and shredded bare,
A touch of crimson everywhere.
And Mary Loop, who could not stay,
Had turned and quickly ran away
Into the deep and dark and gray
Where only ashen shadows play.

When twilight showed her weary face,
And morning time had come at last...
When the Doc swept out his parlor room,
And yesternight had passed,
Sharon Weeves claimed Mary Loop
Had wandered deep into her dream.
She'd seen her eyes, so ripe with fear,
And heard the girl scream.
But she never said another word.
She never spoke again.
The weight of every nightmare haunt
Was heavy as a chain.

They never found old Sheriff Oar,
And Cleavon Nedd was never more.
Elmer Dudges, some still say,
Lost his mind and ran away.
And Byron James they say went mad,
Lost his bearings just a tad,
And stumbled off into the dark
And dismal gray of yesterday.

Edger went a different way,
From what the tale-tell legends say.
He watched the dark, the moving gray -
He saw it dance about in play...
It sang to hime, and he sang too,
A song that Edger never knew.
And before the twilight of the day,
It sang the quiet man away.

Wyckham Road, so they say,
Still haunts the mountainside today.
Up the bend, and 'round a spell,
Its scars have held up very well.
Still grim, still dark, still crimson red,
Near a Buckthorn tree and the dragon's head,
Where darkened shadows brave the gray,
And foolish mortals come to play.
And where the wiser ought not go,
If they are clever,
And the know.
Here, the wiser folk are never found.
They take the other way around.



Copyright © MMXIV Richard D. Remler