Algharib

   The night was cool - once more - and the air was moist with a cold, Winter rain that was set to chill even the most warm and joyful souls to their bone. My pubescent mind awoke to the sound of the rasping wind against my window. The nights - nay, the whole of days - had been writhing with weird and queer peculiarities for the past two fortnight as Winter's icy-grip strangled the last breaths of life from New England. As I arose, withdrawing my curtains, I could see the moon's lunatic gaze cast down upon the rear of my peripheries, the Dog Star high-above twinkling with its eerie forms as will-o'-wisps danced to the sound of thousands of si

    As I sit here this dark, cold, mid-Winter evening, scribing on my final stage of parchment with my final droplets of ink, I hear them rolling their serpentine tongues against my chamber door; I feel His cold, foreboding grip about my constricted collar; and I taste Their foul perfume of pure malignancy and death upon my parched lips. I sit here, scribing, marking-down a warning to all those that come after me. I do not speak my name as I do not remember the syllables of my Christian nomenclature, but - reader - if I did so recall, I would neglect its utterance as I would fear for those who read my name as the beasts of the many-angled-wor