The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
The House Around the Corner
by Rie Sheridan Rose
When I was a child, no more than ten,
we avoided passing the house down the way,
No words were needed among the young.
We knew by instinct to stay away.
.
It held an ancient arcane beauty
we recognized but didn’t get.
The walls were encased in twisting roots,
as if the trees weren’t done with it yet.
.
No one went there to visit,
not even on magic Halloween.
The children raced quickly past it,
as if afraid they might be seen.
.
Only the oldest of the old
dared to climb the creaking stair.
They’d reach with palsied hand to open the door,
and step inside to vanish there…
.
Then I grew up and moved away,
all thoughts of the dwelling buried deep.
Eighty years have come and gone,
and now it visits me in sleep.
.
It calls to me with voiceless whispers,
willing me back to come inside.
I write this now because I’m listening…
by the time you read this—I’ll have died.
.
Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:
Overheard in Hell:
Dark Poetry
Poems exploring hell and damnation. Tales of sorrow, vengeance, betrayal, and redemption. Ghosts, ghouls, and demons stalk these pages. Don’t read in a lonely house…in a darkened room by a single candle…
…unless you like the touch of an icy finger up your spine.
Spreading the Writer's Word 
A creepy and cool poem.
A poem full of intrigue – love this line “as if the trees weren’t done with it yet” – there’s so much behind teh simplicity of the words