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She gave birth amid wild thunder
in a place ringed with stones.
Down in the village, even above
the howling dogs and noise from the hills,
hideous screams were heard.
As she cradled the child
in misshapen, worm-white arms,
her father took the other one
and locked it away in an upper room
where an outsider’s eyes
wouldn’t behold it.
For Lavinia, did it ever seem odd?
The sound of surging waves
and stamping hooves
on the floorboards above;
the lingering, charnel stench;
how the cattle vanished from the barn?
Did she know the second survived,
or even suspect?
Was she an outsider, too?
She muttered prophecies about her son,
but her visions never showed
what form of dreadful nurturing would feed
the greater of her brood.
(After re-reading HPL’s “The Dunwich Horror”) |
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