The Twisted Stick
One of my first stories. A hunchback corners a band of campers with an awful ghost story involving a sinister nun with a secret.
‘Twas the last night in June,
a
nd under the moon,
The fire was fading fast,
As each camper told
a story of old,
Each scarier than the last.
One told the yarn of a haunted barn,
Which he’d learnt by heart off his gran.
Another went pale and recited the tale
Of a headless ice-cream man.
As the firelight faded, the stories ‘came jaded,
And each were forced to drone
On about shocks that they’d read of in books,
And off The Twilight Zone.
“And just as one was about to go on
With a Stephen King that he knew,
A voice rang sharp from out of the dark,
“What’s next then, Scooby Doo?”
Then from out of the shadows, towards the saddoes,
A hunchback did appear.
With eyes that seemed cursed, and breath that seemed worse
He screamed at all that would hear,
“I’ll tell thee a tale, a terrible tale,
Of grief despair and dread.
So people beware, it will make all the hairs
Stand up on the back of your head".
“I’ll tell thee a tale, a horrible tale,
Of dread, despair and grief.
So people take heed, it will make your gums bleed
All the way to the back of your teeth.
I’ll tell thee a tale, a monstrous tale,
That’ll scare you to the quick.
It’s a tale everyone about a ghostly nun,
Who carried a twisted stick.
“This tale so it be was first told to me,
By a distant friend called Boz,
Who was all on his tod, with no home and no job.
Homeless and hopeless he was.
With no food or heat, he begged on the street,
And became a deplorable creature;
So much so in fact, that in a desperate act,
He became a geography teacher.
“By the final school bell, Boz had taught all he could tell
About the Tundra and oxbow lakes,
The climate of Darwin, arable farming,
And how to measure earthquakes.
When the last child had gone, and safely alone,
Boz dined on sweets confiscated,
And then with a mattress, a globe and an atlas,
He slept and for morning awaited.