The Haunted Moor

“It was a night, a pitch-black night,

The moon was rising high.

No torch or lantern in my sight,

And clouds soon hid the sky.

No wind or creature could I hear,

Just silence all around.

In that night all dark and clear

My path I scarcely found.

It was that night, the pitch-black night:

A ghost seen on my way –

A soldier’s soul that lost a fight,

Or that’s what people say.

His glowing jacket white and red,

And scimitar of steel.

A bleeding wound upon his head,

Though pain he couldn’t feel.

“Halt!” he said, with voice of ice

That nearly froze my heart.

I seized and looked into his eyes,

Though wishing to depart.

“Two has died here, in a fight,”

The ghost now told to me.

“And I shall tell you, on this night,

The truth that can’t be seen.”

And so, upon that pitch-black night,

His tale the ghost did tell;

“Indeed it’s two who here have died,

And one has gone to Hell.

The other – that is me, my friend,

And still I’m here today,

To mark the place where third was sent

To sleep beneath this lay.”

“So hear me now, I beg you, sir,

For never may I rest,

If someone will not seek for her,

And free her from her chest.”

And so the ghost he left me,

Upon the pitch-black night.

Nothing more for me to see,

But darkness without light.

And on that night, the pitch-black night,

I walked across the moor –

Homeward bound in dark of night;

Across the haunted moor.

Two, he said, and one in Hell,

The second still is here.

And third, a woman, gone as well,

And resting somewhere near.

Tomorrow in the evening light,

I returned to that place,

Where I had heard the tale at night –

To seek her resting place.

I searched and came upon a mound

That lonely there did stand.

I wondered, what inside was found,

What laid beneath this land.

Though night was getting darker,

I searched through lonely mound.

I dug my way still deeper,

What there was to be found?

And then again, a pitch-black night,

I found what there did hide;

A skull I held in lantern’s light,

A skull of little child.

And now appeared that ghost again;

I knew I had done right.

He didn’t speak, just nodded, then

He vanished from my sight.

And on that night, the pitch-black night,

I walked across the moor –

Homeward bound in dark of night;

Across the haunted moor.”

(By: Wyrd)