Silhouettes in the hall, inexplicable stains,
Fingernails scratching the windowpane.
When children go missing (it happens you know),
Their parents boggle: Where did they go?
Were they lost in the woods, did they fall in the lake?
Did a paedophile lure them with candy or cake?
Were they hit by a car, were their bodies puréed?
Did they play where we told them never to play?
But the truth is another, more dreadful, more vile.
In your stomach you know what’s befallen the child:
When children go missing and never come back,
It’s because they’ve gone into the bogyman’s sack.
Take a look at the bogy, I dare you my friend,
As he carries his victim away to its end.
Have you ever seen something as awful as him?
So horrid, so filthy, so wicked, so grim?
How on earth do such terrible things come to be?
Would the good Lord create such an evil as he?
Was he spawned by the devil or made by a man?
Did he grow like a mandrake or come in a can?
Was he built like the golem of water and earth?
No, an old gypsy told me the date of his birth:
In ancient Carthage (300 BC),
The bogy was born just like you and like me.
Long before he could speak he was already spoiled.
By the time he learnt how, he made sailors recoil.
He was cheeky to strangers and rude to his friends,
It would seem he took pleasure in causing offence.
He refused to do homework, neglected his chores,
His report card read: “Lazy and foul to the core”.
Still, his mother and father they loved him a lot.
The other Carthagians, sadly, did not.
On a day when the boy was especially gruff,
The good people of Carthage had just had enough.
See, for all of their virtues they did have one vice:
The time-honoured practice of child sacrifice.
So they carried him off to the temple of Ba’al
(The Phoenician idol they liked best of all),
He was placed on the altar and fed to the flames,
As he burned to a crisp he was cursing their names.
“Hear me, Carthagians, detestable ones,
I swear to come back for your daughters and sons!”
Over the flutes and the drums he was heard,
Even old Ba’al paid heed to his word.
On that ill-omened day in the shade of the horns,
As his body was eaten, his soul was reborn.
Now he slips through the ages under the curse,
Destined forever to wander the earth.
For his journey is fuelled by voracious hate,
By a hunger he’ll never be able to sate.
He must feed on the fears of the people he meets,
Oh, and lest we forget: All the children he eats.
He sneaks into your house around 7 pm -
Even bolted the door is no hindrance to him.
And he harvests your dread for the smallest of creeps,
And he reaps from your nightmares while you’re asleep.
And he sucks out the marrow from inside your bones,
And he moulds it to shapes he can use for his own.
When his strength is sufficient he seeks out a child -
He pursues it with terror and traps it with guile.
Once a child is entrapped in the bogyman’s sack,
It is certain to end as a nourishing snack.
Silhouettes in the hall, inexplicable stains,
Fingernails scratching the windowpane.