Pontefract, England — The Black Monk House
by Dawg
Pontefract broods beneath sullen skies,
wind pressing its chill through the bricks of Number 30 East Drive,
a house born of postwar optimism,
now saturated with dread–every stone, every doorframe,
complicit in what survives.
Behind faded curtains and the measured tick of a clock,
silence is never empty;
it fills with the dust that refuses to settle,
with the memory of footsteps that echo out of sequence.
The floorboards mutter in protest at the weight of things unseen–
an overturned photograph, a bruise on a child’s arm,
family names muttered like a prayer for protection
as something cold flickers past, relentless, disarming.
A monk swathed in shadow, face a smudge beneath a hood,
moving with predatory patience through rooms
papered in faded roses and regret.
His hands, invisible, reach for lamps and glasses,
for hair and heartstrings–
disturbances ripple out like a blasphemous duet.
In the darkness, glass shatters, the air goes still–
panic blooms sudden, silent, absolute.
No priest’s blessing, no expert’s cross, no salt laid careful at thresholds,
can chase the Black Monk from his claim.
Objects soar in the air, water seeps where no pipes run,
candles flare and die, the air curdles,
a sickly hush falls as night blots out the sun.
The monk–once hanged for nameless sin, they say–
returns nightly for his ritual of fright.
Walls sweat with the fever of the past;
lightbulbs burst with a crack that signals his arrival,
a figure in the periphery, robe as black as consequence,
face featureless, given over entirely to denial.
Even when the living abandon the place,
Pontefract holds the secret close–
the monk remains, untouchable.
A house no longer home but reliquary–
a monument to the unfinished, the unforgiven.
Within these walls, the Black Monk watches,
and nothing is ever quite as it dreams.