Dark castle rising
from a bed of stale gloom
that slowly smothers the air.
An invisible sunset casts crimson
shadows that fade in the tainted mists
born of the surrounding lands.
Tattered pennants whimper from
their lonely posts atop crumbling towers.
No lights lit, no bodies home.

Only
lost souls
drifting down
stairwells and corridors
into cobwebbed chambers
where once-
smiling young maidens
would captivate and enchant
while lively minstrels cheered the nobility.
They toasted to good health and bright lives.

The sun coughs up closing shadows
and sinks down in anguish.
Night hustles in delivering
a heavy mantle of silence.
Only the sighs of a few desperate
spirits can be caught as they trickle
through the dense woodwork of the fog.