Wraith's Race

No one travels the road by night,
those who have dared to venture after dark
always are found walking with ashen faces, sanity fled,
babbling incoherently about the demons of their fears.

While cruising even in the day
ghostly eyes often appear in rear view mirrors,
car radios wail with death moans,
cold, icy invisible fingertip scrape the neck,
muscles tighten from pure sense of something terrifying,
lurking in the woods, watching,
waiting to claim the souls,
as vehicles are made to crash into trees,
when a power takes control over the steering wheel,
foot is forced to press accelerator to the floor,
other one unable to reach the brake,
bloodied and smashed transportation discover,
but passengers always missing.

The rare survivors tell of seeing a transparent figure
standing near the road just before the accident,
what horror envelopes in crippling fright
is when the driver notices
that the image belongs to him or her,
dressed in a black funeral shroud,
eye sockets empty, mouth gaping
hand raised and beckoning for body to join the spirit.

None who live to speak of the day
ever are able to know peace again,
for in the bathroom mirrors the wraith will appear,
always clawing with eerie foreboding
to seduce another rendezvous with demise,
victim of reoccurring nightmares in which they relive
over and over the accident, but this time
feeling drug from wreckage by their own ghost,
screaming as the ground opens and flames erupt,
before sinking below the earth and the hole disappears.

Eventually succumbing to the spell,
faces flush with comatose possession,
calmly stroll out of their homes to automobiles,