After Watching Horror Movies on a Summer Night, 1998 by Daniel Gene Barlekamp

After Watching Horror Movies on a Summer Night, 1998

Through the crack in my bedroom door, I hear someone say,

“It’s as still as death out there.”

The metaphor loses me.

The dead are never still on summer nights.

They wander through the trees toward the kitchen door

longing to come inside,

their nightclothes starched and white in the gauzy moonlight.

I turn down the radio next to my bed.

I want to hear the whisper of their bare feet against the grass,

to track their approach

so I know when to bury my head beneath the covers.

The smell of swollen wood varnish

hangs musty in the humid August air.

One has gotten in.

Usually my mother manages to keep them all out,

but not tonight.

I catch a glimpse of a woman’s faded floral nightgown

as she vanishes around the corner at the end of the hall.

She knows I’m here, knows it better

than most.

I pick at the stitching on my bedsheet, clean and crisp,

until the skin is raw beneath my fingernail.

When I can no longer contain the pressure building in my chest,

I start to whimper, softly at first, then louder

so the living downstairs will hear.

I pray for my mother’s soft, slippered tread on the stairs,

but what approaches instead is heavy, weighed down

by the stench of yesterday’s cigarettes

and the stiffness of the coming grave.

My father flickers in and out of sight

as he shuffles toward my room.

I expected the living to protect me from the dead,

but then his face is in the doorway, blocking out the light and rasping,

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

Daniel Gene Barlekamp is the author of poetry, fiction, and audio drama for adults and young readers. His poems have appeared in Pictura Journal, Seventh Quarry, Tiny Wren, and elsewhere and have been translated into Chinese by Poetry Hall. His horror stories for middle-grade readers have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including The Haunted States of America (Godwin Books/Macmillan 2024). Originallyfrom New Jersey, Daniel now lives with his wife and son in Massachusetts, where he practices U.S. immigration law. Visit him at https://dgbarlekamp.com/ and on BlueSky @dgbarlekamp.bsky.social.