THE GHOSTS OF MONTE CHRISTO

Blank window panes hold vigil to the twilight as it’s falling

with shifting shadows tricking eyes and setting skin to crawling.

The house called Monte Christo offers stories for recalling

and summons forth its ghosts to sway the doubtful from their stalling.

 

Still held in time and trapped in place with history renewing

their tragedies in sequence play like movies for the viewing.

Yet some who go there seeking truth will find their own undoing

for do these ghosts exist or are our minds just misconstruing?

 

The mistress tends her empty house until the day’s new dawning.

Her whispered prayers are murmurs heard, soft echoes of her mourning,

as dressed in black she walks the halls with crucifix adorning

and begs the living where she can to heed her strident warning.

 

The frightened screaming echoes as a young maid’s face is paling.

Her fingers lose their weakened grip upon the upstairs railing

and though in silent death she lies, her blood-stained hair is trailing

across the time-worn paving where the bleach stains stay prevailing.

 

A stable hand, a boy of ten, his master set to shaming

for laziness in sleeping but his illness was the blaming.

His mattress straw was set alight, his bedclothes soon were flaming,

but servant voices are not heard no matter what they’re claiming.

 

A mad man chained to brick and frame for constant misbehaving,

a captive held for forty years to quell his violent raving.

His anguished howls still fill the air in some unspoken craving

a poor man far beyond all help, a soul deemed not worth saving.

 

So, do their spirits haunt the house held captive to despairing

or do we glimpse another time, a time of cruel uncaring,

or when we see the things they saw or feel the grief they’re sharing

do thoughts of conscience bother us when at the mirror staring?

 

The ghosts of Monte Christo guard the secrets in their keeping.

Their sadness plays and plays again while hands of time are sweeping

but when the house is ruins, are such spirits simply sleeping

or bound to earth and cursed to dwell forever in their weeping?