Moonlit Madness

It was dead of night but outside it was still bright.

It was a very special moonlit night.

Things like sounds they’d usually fear,

No longer scared them because they could see what was near.

Since they felt safer they decided to explore.

They left the cabin and went into the forest more.

What they had often thought was a woman’s scream.

They saw was just a bird on the highest roof beam.

They laughed as they saw how they’d been deceived.

Behind the nervous laughter they were also relieved.

As they went further the cabin got smaller.

They remembered the tale of the “Mountainside Mauler”.

There was an abandoned baby who had grown up in the woods wild.

Raised by the wildlife as a teenager and child.

It was why the cabin had been so cheap at sale.

They didn’t believe and dismissed it as an old wives’ tale.

The crunching footstep sounds that they used to fear,

They learned were just the footsteps of a pack a deer.

They laughed again feeling even more at ease.

As their other curiosities they also planned to appease.

Their adventure was going better than they could ever dream.

As they spoke about how “things are seldom ever what they seem”.

Suddenly the moon was then covered by a cloud.

The forest went pitch black and there was a scream extremely loud.

When the cloud has passed and they surveyed the group.

One was hanging from a tree on a hangman’s loop.

They all parted ways as they each began fleeing.

None could believe the horror they were seeing.

One called out to the group they heard a voice beg.

Yelling about having fell down and breaking a leg.

No one turned back to help trying to survive.

All each one cared about was staying alive.

Each one in the group had a deadly accident that night.

A few of them had heart attacks and died from sheer fright.

The next day the police found the hanged body was a suicide.

There was no lynching murder for a killer to hide.

Each other death after investigation time was spent,

was found not to be a homicide but a tragic accident.

The only survivor was the one they’d left behind.

Who’d cried out for help but who they’d paid no mind.

He’d woke up back home with a splinted broken leg.

He’d seen a looming figure and began again for help to beg.

Then he’d passed out and remembered nothing but an approaching figure getting taller.

It was what he’d assumed was the “Mountainside Mauler”.

What he’d been fearing in the back of his mind.

Had turned out to be someone both helpful and kind.

It was all so unbelievable that his own “friends” didn’t care.

It was like waking up from his own personal nightmare.

The police learned his so called friends had set a trap.

Hoping he’d have the accident that made his leg snap.

He wept in despair and lost all composure.

As he learned they’d left him there to just die from exposure!

If the weather didn’t kill him like they’d hoped it would.

They thought the wildlife would kill him stuck there if it could.

They’d smiled in his face, laughed and told him his jokes were funny.

The real truth about them was they were only after all his money.

That’s how this poem is finally going to end.

About how someone from nightmares turned out to be a friend.