The Boarder and the Book

A guy called Stanley Weatheringham

Turned up at my college room,

I’d wanted a quiet boarder there

To help with the rent, and soon,

I couldn’t afford to be picky, he

Was the only one that applied,

He looked pretty meek and gentle, so

I asked him to come inside.

 

He said he was writing his Ph.D.

That he only needed a desk,

I said, ‘Come in, and take your pick,

I only come here to rest.’

A tattered book was under his arm

With a cover, badly worn,

And cut in the leather an ancient glyph

In the shape of a cuneiform.

 

I admit I was more than curious,

But didn’t say anything then,

All that could wait for a later date,

Once he had settled in,

I went away and I left him there

For the long drawn afternoon,

And when I returned again that night

He was sitting there, in the gloom.

 

I switched the light and he flinched and turned

His face towards the wall,

I saw his pallor was pale and grey,

He didn’t look well at all,

The book lay open across the desk

And I saw the ancient runes,

Written by hand on the parchment there

With a cluster of purple moons.

 

He turned and he snapped the book tight shut

Then he seemed to brighten up,

He ran his fingers over his eyes,

‘I think I’ve read enough!’

He sighed, and locked the book in a drawer

And he took away the key,

Went for a walk and left me there

With my curiosity.

 

Each day I’d leave him there at the desk

And return when it was dark,

He’d make some lame excuse as he went

To walk out in the park,

I asked him what the book was about,

He said some Persian script,

And when I pushed him for more, he said

One word - ‘Sennacherib!’

 

He’d never want to discuss it, he

Just liked to be left alone,

But every day he was stranger, like

Some foreigner, far from home,

My sleep began to be troubled, I

Would wake in the early hours,

Thinking I’d heard a trumpet blast

In one of the college towers.

 

Stanley slept on the other side

Would toss and turn in the night,

And sometimes suddenly sit up straight,

Cry out in a sudden fright,

He’d often call out a single word

From the depths of a vivid dream,

‘Rabshakeh, oh Rabshakeh’, he would call,

And then he would scream!

 

I went to the college library

To look up Sennacherib,

To read of the mighty battles that

This ancient monarch did,

And then I read of his army that

This Rabshakeh had led,

A hundred and eighty thousand in

The morning, lay there dead!

 

I went back up to my room and found

Some dampness on the walls,

A sort of a yellow fungus that

Was spreading over all,

While Stanley sat, pored over the book,

His skin was blotched and fat,

‘I think you’re getting the measles, Stan,

He said: ‘It’s worse than that!’

 

That night as well as the trumpets I

Could hear the clash of steel,

I dreamt of an ancient army camp

Where the banners flew for real,

And men were moaning and calling out

In a tongue I’d never heard,

Calling to some lost pagan god

And ‘Baal’ was the word.

 

The following morning Stanley lay

In a heap upon the floor,

And blood was trickling from his mouth,

From every weeping sore,

The book lay there, malevolent

Its pages yellow with sin,

While a faded angel hovered there,

Looked down on the dying men.

 

The book was put in a quarantine

In the library, upstairs,

And Stanley, he was cremated by

The Dean, to allay their fears,

My room was locked and barred to me

So I had to find a crib,

I’ll never take in a boarder now

Who mentions Sennacherib!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Sheila Kline]

Oh my, that's one boarder who would have been better left with his book of evil outside "the castle walls, the garden gate, the other side of everything, anywhere but here", land!!

Your story is fascinating and I love the history you weave into it!! Lord Byron wrote of The Destruction of Sennacherib according to the Biblical accounting, and in reading more of it, I wonder if Jerusalem fell to the hand of Assyrians. Ah yes, historians continue to debate whether or not it did.

Nonetheless, your poem is "bewitching"!! I shudder to think what the book must have looked like, or even more what words it held!! It certainly had the power to destroy!!!!

[roarke]

The movie producers are gonna want a sequel.....

I kinda picture a young Boris Karloff as Stanely.
Was this a different meter than you usually use?

Very nice work.

[Valentine]

How eerie..and to take in a stranger was not a very wise thing to do, especially a nutty one like that guy..funny how the boarders thoughts went into the room guys mind without them ever really connecting verbally..This is a strange write..not like your usual easy to understand ones..Katihe