Author: Eva McFarlane. Eva is a graduate of Edinburgh Napier University with a BA (Hons) degree in English, she is a current student in the MA Creative Writing programme. Originally from Edinburgh, she enjoys all writing with a Gothic twist, primarily within the dark fantasy and horror genres. She is also a poet, with her first poem The Men they could have been published in summer 2024 in the Whitburn Gala Programme. Additionally, Eva has recently completed her first poetry manuscript and is eager to get published while she also works on her novel The Corpse Road.

Upon a night wet and windy,

I tell of a tale so dreary,

For, I watch them drag him, weary,

Along the hangman’s trail.

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Ravens bud out from the night,

They caw and hover; they aim to fright.

For they will receive their fill of death tonight,

Along the hangman’s trail.

---

Men are traipsed along, wailing,

They find their nerves to be failing,

For very soon, we all will see their bodies flailing.

They meet death along the hangman’s trail.

---

Strung up and left to the wind,

Their vacant bodies dance without end.

As their limbs grow stiff, and eyes roll back

Their lives were thrust off the tracks.

---

Now, the hangman decorates the tree,

I watched as he tried but failed to flee.

See how he transforms into a mere ornament,

A soldier of guiltless torment.

For no one dared to help him escape

The hangman’s twisted trail.