"Something thicker than despair Rides upon the midnight air The smell of blood, the taste of prey We spy you hiding Gilles de Rais" Under August swelter After banquet and soiree When spiced wine and song Have further heated veins To the ninth degree as tenacula Hold another body in their sway Gilles retires from the grasping fires That will ashen the remains Darkness incarnate Demons in his semen That once clung about the throats Of children dragged from cellars to his rooms Now permeate the castle All who sleep dream of the goat That dark eclectic harbinger of doom Nightingales sang of tragedy Whispers were made of blasphemy Vain, insane, this brute aloof Drew tainted veils over bitter truth The stairs ran helter-skelter His bedchamber besieged By phantoms who sheltered In it's furs, remorse Sought to overwhelm him Like a lantern of disease That shone on rotten faces Of those murdered out in force Darkness incarnate Fleeing ghosts so indisposed To his Satanic love Of children dragged from cellars to his feast He rose, a carnal wind opposed To those that sat above Tearing out into the forest like a beast The night wind sang of tragedy Whispers were made of blasphemy Vain, insane, this brute aloof Drew tainted sails over naked truth Madness clouded everything Like a lycanthropic shroud And through it's ghastly lineaments he saw The trees become obscenities Semen drip from every bough As if he rooted Nature like a whore Dryads tongued under skirts of leaves Surrendering branches that slenderly pleased The Mocking orifices and the forest on her knees Then once besotted, knotted trunks now grew Rotten, venereal, cancerous, blue The clotting of his heart to a rank cantankerous tune "Death is only a matter of a little pain" Beneath the sallow moonlight In a wonderland of pain Gilles fled back to the castle Terrified and drained He sought his deep red velvet bed And the sleep it preordained Exhausted, forced into the dead The creep of nightmares came again Madness clouded everything Like a lycanthropic shroud And through it's ghastly lineaments he saw Hundreds of slain children Some came crawling disembowelled To where he stretched out howling on all fours Corpses tore at his legs and knees As he clawed to the cross, begging reprieve From a Lord that soared above the awful scene He sobbed and wept, no voice was left To scream, the dream was not drubbed yet He heard the horrors hiss beside him, 'Herod, you'll regret...' 'Who hears the tears of nightfall? Who steers the spears so spiteful?' "Oh my dearest angels, go pray to God for me"