Up High

They followed screams to where he died his face showed he’d been terrified. Though none knew why he’d passed that way, ...on ‘Devils Hill’ his body lay. Around I feel a ghostly chill, why must I venture up this hill and see the place my friend had died, right now I wish I’d stayed inside. What is this shiver in the air, each time I look there’s no one there. An icy chill runs down my spine, am I the one who’s next in line. Here lies the spot he breathed his last, again I feel this icy blast. I think I hear his final scream, an echo in this nightmare dream. Surrounded now by thoughts of doom, all that’s evil starts to loom, playing on my inner fear, my personal demons now appear. I’m damned, I know, I feel my past has finally caught me up at last. I know that just to get our way we’d often made all others pay, there’s those we trod into the earth while living high in joy and mirth. My friend who’d died here yesterday had shared the evil games we’d play. Most times we made folks life pure hell and once ignored an old man’s spell who’d cursed us both with inner eye and said that when ‘up high’ we’d die. We laughed out loud, the stupid thing, we lived ‘up high’ ...‘high as a king’. Could he not see we always win by walking over men like him? Oh God!, ‘up high’ ...he meant this hill, where I'm now drawn against my will, to answer for a lifetime’s sin cursed by the way we ‘always win’. Then suddenly from all around a thundering voice then shook the ground; ”For all the evil you have spread, today you’ll join the tortured dead. Damnation, for your life of hate has led you to the Devil’s gate. Eternity to spend in Hell, determined by an old man’s spell”… Next day my body was found there, none knew the misery and despair that I’d caused others with my friend ......to earn the horrors of this end. Ivor G Davies