The fog of Morningside rolls thick and gray, Where the sun never touches the light of the day. The hearse is a shadow, a black iron hearse, Driven by one who has conquered the curse. Beneath the white marble, the silence is broken, By words of the void that should never be spoken. The caskets are light, for the bodies are gone, Shrunk into slaves before the first dawn. Their eyes are sewn shut, their spirits are bound, To the red-planet soil in the holes in the ground. Beware the sphere, the chrome-plated sting, Hear the high-pitched hum of its spinning metal wing. It locks on the temple, it drills through the bone, A surgical predator, cold and alone. No escape from the void, no end to the dread, When the Tall Man comes for the meat of the dead. The silver ball hovers, a mirror of death, Waiting to catch your final, cold breath. It launches its blades with a mechanical snap, Caught like a rat in a glistening trap. The drill bit descends, a spiraling spike, A thirsty machine with a hunger to strike. It punches through foreheads with a sickening crack, And the fountain of crimson starts pouring out black. The brain-matter sprays on the mausoleum wall, As the body collapses in the dust of the hall. Reggie is armed with the four-barrel blast, The Hemi is screaming, the shadows are cast. But the Tall Man is standing, seven feet tall, A pillar of darkness, the lord of them all. Yellow blood leaks from his severed-up hand, Transmuting to insects that crawl through the sand. The gateways are pulsing, the pitch-forks are vibrating, The Lurkers are hungry, the Dwarves are all waiting. They’ll pack you in crates for the journey to space, To serve in the mines of a godless place. The nightmare is layered, a dream within dreams, Where the mirrors are portals and nothing quite seems. Is it Mike in the bed? Is it Jody who died? Or the Lady in Lavender, darkness inside? The gold sphere is rising, the master of spheres, Powered by centuries of human-bred fears. It carves through the ribcage, it shatters the chest, Taking the heart for a terrible test. The gore is a river, the bone is a bridge, From the gates of the town to the cemetery ridge. "You think that when you die, you go to Heaven?" The Tall Man is laughing, the clock’s striking seven. There is no salvation, no light in the sky, Only the silver that’s destined to fly. It’s a harvest of horror, a reaping of souls, As the heavy black carriage through history rolls. The brains are the fuel, the blood is the oil, For the engine that grinds beneath the dark soil. In the desert of souls where the sun is a scar, They’re building an army from worlds very far. The sphere enters eyes with a wet, heavy thud, Mixing the gray-matter into the mud. Graphic and cold is the work of the blade, A symphony played in the funeral shade. The teeth of the drill find the center of thought, Destroying the life that the Tall Man has caught. No mercy is found in the chrome or the lead, Only the silence of the mutilated dead. Boy! You’re still running, but where can you go? The silver is faster than anything you know. It’s behind every mirror, it’s under the floor, It’s the scratching you hear at the mausoleum door. The sphere is spinning… The skull is thinning… The drill is deep… And the Tall Man never sleeps.
