Ghoul

There are tales in this city, older than the hills, of a thing that slips and slides in the night.

It stalks, they say, from the grave to the glade, glade to the gullet of Glickem.

Meet them not, on the shivering moonless night. When mist flounders and falls like aborted clouds.

It is wrong, in the way only a mirror can be. Eyes black where white should be and a smile most foul.

Around its neck, like a morose scarf, a noose, a length of rope coiled.

Meet them not, on the shivering moonless night. Lest you fall -- Victim after victim, a knot in the rope.