Garden of Saints

Under the sky I lay
Wicked eyes I see
Under the moon the trees hold sway
Seduction hath captured me


The song my mother sang to me when I was drifting off to sleep seemed so sad. In her beautiful soprano and thick accent, it made it even worse. Sometimes I would feel my eyes closing over tears and fall into a dream that seemed connected to the song.

A dense wooded area, a moon full and dominant in the night sky. Eyes through the skeletal trees, yellow as the lit wick of a candle and I never woke... My nightmares faded into more calm and idealistic children’s dreams. Of flying in the sunny sky, of riding a carousel all alone; a song melodically repeating itself over and over for only my ears. I would usually wake to the morning sky through the open window and not remember the nightmares.

If I was purposely forgetting them so I wouldn't have trouble going to sleep, then it was truly a marvel when I started to remember them when I got older and my mom stopped singing the song to me in the language I didn’t understand.

On the eve of my fifteenth birthday, I awoke, my silk sheets in a tangle at my feet and in a cold sweat. So cold was the wind blowing through my open window I shivered. The clowns on my wind chime dinged in an almost maniacal pattern and I could have sworn that their porcelain faces, forever in strained smile were staring at me, mockingly. ‘Little boy having a bad dream. Aww... poor baby. Why doesn’t he call for his mama and ask for a bottle?’

The nightmare that had awoken me was much more vivid than any time before and it was my first time really remembering the scant details. A wind the scent of flames and something else, much sharper and acrid was in the air, just as it had seemed to smell in my dream. The woods surrounding, far from the walk that led to the front door and perhaps fifty yards from my room, seemed alight in excitement.

An eerie glow emnated from the woods, glowing through the fog an reflecting off of the icy trees and the snow covered ground. Why was the window open? Scant chance that my mother had opened it... she hadn’t come in without my knowing ever since she walked in on me in a rather compromising situation.

Snow was on my bed, and on the wooden floor surrounding the window. My eyes grew bright, the feeling that had come from the bad dream slowly waning to wonder. A winter storm has come, I thought, gripping my blankets and wrapping them around me in shivery excitement. The snow swirled about in the wind, being blown recklessly to the snowy ground by her reckless abandonment. The woods seemed farther away, because of the thick fog, yet closer, for it seemed to glow even brighter yet.

The wind blew, much harsher, but the clowns stopped their chiming. My clock on the wall across from my bed and above the old amourie , decorated with the childish pictures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck seemed to stop it’s rhythmic ticking.

All was silent, but out of the fog came a voice. A voice that seemed to emanate through the fog and snow and find it’s way right to my ear. I could practically feel the hiss of breath from the voice that seemed to be connected to everything that was in my childhood dreams. The woman’s voice was so unlike my mother’s... It was low and strong, not light and high like my mother’s had been.

In the night while no one’s round
Evil revered high
Pieriot captured by the sound
No one will hear him cry


The woman, not far away, covered by the heavy density of fog had called my name. I knew not what else she said, but it seemed so happy. Almost tinged with bitterness as if some compromise was made for such well-being being felt. I looked out and the snow caught my somber gaze, I saw it fall through the window and caress the parts of my legs that were still bare, for the blanket did not cover my whole body when wrapped around in such a way. And I felt a sense of arousal, as if someone was running a hand up my leg and to my thigh, soft as velvet and just lightly enough for me to know it was only an illusion.

When I got off my bed, and pulled the blanket up as if it were a robe I didn’t really know what I was doing. Enamored by the night and her song, so perfectly accompanied by the snow and winded scent of burnt leaves, I pulled on my pants from the night before and slipped on my snow boots, still wet with snow from that day. I readied myself for going outside, the song called for me... She said my name and I could not deny the harsh beauty I felt when I heard it, the slow caress slowly going up my legs, into my stomach, causing butterflies in my yearning body. The song carried me out of my room and into the hallway to the stairs...

It seemed an eternity, this meager trip down the stairs. I gripped the rail, as if to expel all of the sudden anticipation from my body as the stairs creaked one by one to the repetitious verse. When I made my way out to the icy cold, the snow seemed to bite my face and the wind seemed to try to drive me back inside to the warmth of my room, but No! My resolve was too high. What hesitation I had when inside the house was being slowly eaten away by the acidic splendor the night held for me.

The coruscated sky seemed to stretch on forever and the trees seemed wondrously more foreboding in their skeletal simplicity as they grew more and more dense. I struggled to see because their limbs began to reach high above me, blocking what great light the moon and stars held. It was beginning to get to dark to see anything but shadows, and the song came closer, through the fog that was low to my knees and from lips that seemed close enough to touch with one’s own.

As I made it deeper, the words changed, lilting lower to almost not be heard through the whispers and howls the wind made when it blew against the swaying trees.


Do not fret, my little one
The cold may bite and sting
But come the rising sun
You shan’t feel anything



I tripped over a tree branch that jutted out next to a large stone I had barely avoided. The grass was covered in ice under the increasingly heavy snow and I slid, feet first down a steep hill and into a valley where the darkness was complete and my eyes were as useless as my blanket, covered in snow was beginning to be. I sat up and grimaced at the sharp pain that came from my side when I did so. I gritted my teeth and sat up, slowly my arousal gone, for the cold was horrid and bit down to my aching bones.

I hadn’t noticed before, but the music.... It had stopped... And the feeling of excitement was replaced with a sudden and aberrant sense of dread that made me scold my self worse than my mother would the next day when she found out. ‘Get yourself in trouble on your birthday... Way to go you idiot,’ I scolded my self... Though I was increasingly aware of the fact that I could freeze to death, losing my way back home and all because an illusion... My imagination was too strong. I had fooled myself “Wait a minute,” I said, “Maybe this is only a dream... A horrible, horrible dream...”

A no, came from all around me in a harsh whisper and I jumped. The eerie glow that I had seen coming from the woods while in my room seemed to slither in with the fog, almost snake-like, the intensity of its sickly color increasing almost ten-fold to where I was enshrouded in green light.

I looked around in frozen shock and saw I was surrounded to the North, East, and West by old and rusted iron gates that reached high to rival the trees that surrounded, all dead with deep gnarled trunks, some seeming to have faces , in their macabre expressions that seemed to be directly associated to every nightmare of the woods I had ever had. I noticed that my right hand was resting on something hard and unyielding, yet it crumbled away with just a little movement of my hand. I turned to face a head stone that was so old the name was unreadable under the frozen ivy that covered it.

I let out a gasp of cold air and saw it tendril around me in the twisted twilight that played out in this place. There were graves all around me, some big, others nothing more than the size of a closed fist. Some were of angels, their faces half-crumbled away, or missing one or both of their wings.

I got up and looked around, noticing that the green fog not only seemed to be so thick it could be felt, but that it was thick in heat and the cold hardly bothered me anymore. Rows of graves were sat in the steep and narrow valley, the high slope guarded by the malicious looking fence that seemed put there with its sharp points only to impale trespassers coming the other way.

My side still ached as I walked on, but I grew more used to it as I made my way to the back row. There was one grave next to a mausoleum of cracked marble and brick that seemed very peculiar. Not only was it the only grave that depicted the crucifixion of Christ, but it was also the only one that had been completely broken off, the cross turned upside down from where it had faced. I could still see the expressionist’s idealistic face on the statue, and it was contorted in horridly realistic agony. The crown of thorns was the only thing that seemed to have been damaged... The thorns had all broken away from the detailed vines wrapped around the stone head.

The scent of fire was strong in the air... As was the highly sweet odor with the underlying scent of something rotting. The wind blew the fog up and around over my face to where I couldn’t see a thing, but the hideous green. The moon that was invisible seemed an eminent presence through the warmth and haze and I blinked back tears as the fog stung my eyes in an irritating, yet unknown measure. My whole body tingled with the weight and humidity the fog set upon it, fingers of the thickest air wrapping up and round my arms... down my stomach.. Lurching to the place I wanted it most to stop... It did not. It hovered over my excitement for nothing but a few seconds longer than it did my arms and continued its way down my legs and to my feet.

I knew I could not walk. I was frozen in bewilderment and the frustration one can only feel when utterly helpless, next to the blasphemy of the statue. Through the haze of fog, I felt dizzily sleepy... As if the fog had some sort of sedate in it, my eyes felt as if they were weighted down and slowly losing their strength to keep open. I slowly lowered myself to the snowy ground, my eyes slowly closing, yet still being able to see the green light through the sleep and the smoky seduction of the fog’s seemingly never-ending caress that seemed to linger around the most easily persuaded part of my body, lingering right above my lips and going lower... lower.. lower.

I moaned in half-sleep and felt my pajama bottoms being pulled down. “No...” I whispered, groggily, “It’s dreadful cold... I’ll freeze.” Down came my long johns, leaving me bare in the caress of the winded fog, the scent of fire and the sweetness of rotting filling my nostrils as the tendrils of the fog wrapped around me... Pulling me into dreamless ecstacy. Up and down, taunting me into the edges of an erotic dream, up and down...

When I opened my eyes, I lay under the familiar royal blue silk blanket that was wet with melted snow and covered in dead pine needles and leaves. I shot up, though sleep still had a lull on me. “Only a dream...” I mouthed, for my mouth was too dry to speak. The chimes did ding so melodically. The clock tick-tocked its friendly rhythm and I glanced to see the time through the light veil of the darkness that the moon pervaded. Midnight, exactly... The beginning of a new day... My birthday.

The strangely surreal events of my dream were still despairingly clear in my head., for that’s what it was, of course, a dream... but... Why were my blankets so wet? I had opened the window in half-sleep, and the snow had blown through, on the floor and on my blanket soaking it and the wind, cold as death had blown through the shivering curtains, the pine needless and leaves. Then why did I feel so sticky... around my legs and stomach? Elementary, my dear Pieriot. You are not innocent. You know what happens when you have such dreams as you had this night. I turned from the clock to the door, the hallway it opened to dark in shadows.

Why was there a woman dressed in a simple cotton dress in the hallway, her black eyes staring into mine, flashing in the light. I would have screamed if I hadn’t heard the words coming from her as she slowly walked into my room, the moon revealing the hideous truth of what had really happened that night. The song she sang from her jawless mouth seemed to perfectly mimic the tune my mother used to sing, though they seemed much more sinister coming from this creature, her jet-black hair blowing against the billowing funeral dress. She spun in circles, coming closer, as the words that were forced from her bloody and jawless mouth repeated over and over, gaining speed as she spun quicker, almost running into the amorie , but regaining composure.

Under the sky you lay
With pleasure you have felt
In the garden of the saints
Now punishment shall be dealt


Her black glistening eyes seemed wet with tears as she spun closer and closer, and her pale skin seemed to take in the color of the moon and make her seem a sickly yellow. Her funeral dress spun with her, flaring at the bottom and pulled up to her legs by the wind. “Don’t come any closer,” I whispered. “Demon... Whatever you are stay away.”

Her singing stopped, but still she spun on and on and with a throaty voice that seemed to be accompanied by the sounds of tendons cracking and arteries spilling their blood, she said back, “I am the one you visited all of those years... I am the one that sang you to sleep through your mother’s mouth... I am the one that brought you to the woods, to a place that no mortal has ever seen and let you experience the pleasure that one can only feel when completely surrendered to evil... Though you have not.”

I pushed the blankets off of my trembling form and stood off the bed, her half-face glaring at me in demonic glee as she stopped her spinning. A maggot twisted its way out of the forever bleeding wound and dropped on the floor in a puddle of blood. I shuddered in revulsion and backed back to my bed, better to be as far away from the vile thing as possible, than to attempt any escape. “You will pay for the ecstacy you felt... Though you can’t remember you called my name when I touched you.. You moaned for more... And more I gave you... You see... You surrendered... You gave up what was pure inside and gave it to us... We feed on it... And it’s been so loongg... Since we’ve tasted something so sweet as yours.” A long tongue, covered in bile and gore slithered out of her wound and flicked suggestively, more maggots falling to the floor in a disgusting heap. “You tricked me!” I screamed out in terror as she came closer, her tongue seeming to reach for me as her white dress became almost see-through in the moonlight and I saw under it a great squirming, as if her skin was literally crawling, but then I noticed a nightcrawler fall out of a long sleeve and knew she was covered in bugs.

“The loss of innocence is so beautiful,” she groaned, reaching for my face as if to caress it in her long claw-like fingers. “It’s like watching fire burn a house to the ground... It’s so lovely... And so final at the same time... No time can erase it... Nothing can...”