(Six dribbles written in 2008 for the LJ Community Spooky Arda's "Six Days of Spooky" Challenge; each one highlights a different moment of scariness in LotR. A dribble is a poem in which the first line has ten words, and each succeeding line is one word less, to one word at the end.)
Trickles of Fear
I. Old Man Willow
Heavy, heavy, the air in its stillness oppressive and dreary;
Pippin's mind is sluggish, he cannot think for weariness.
He hears an insistent whisper- or does he?
The heat burdens him, stealing his breath;
to stop, to rest, to sleep
here in the enticing shade
against the old willow,
leaning into sleep
into dreams…
Snick.
II. Black Breath in Bree
You see that shade among the shadows, beyond the lamplight,
and you have to follow, you have to know,
drawn on, in spite of your mind screaming.
'Perhaps I'll learn something useful,' you think,
but that's not what you believe.
Mist is in your eyes
of tears and weariness.
What is hope?
Deep water
waits…
III. The Rumour of Him
"Be careful! They say there is a new terror abroad,
a ghost that drinks blood. No, I mean it;
my neighbour told me that her husband found
a nest upon the ground, fledglings drained.
Last night a slinking figure was
spied creeping through the village.
Where is the baby?"
"In her cradle
Under the
window"…
A/N: Inspired by the following passage regarding Gollum, in "The Shadow of the Past": "The Wood-elves tracked him first, an easy task for them, for his trail was still fresh then. Through Mirkwood and back again it led them, thought they never caught him. The wood was full of the rumour of him, dreadful tales even among beasts and birds. The Woodmen said that there was some new terror abroad, a ghost that drank blood. It climbed trees to find nests; it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles…"
IV. A Stumble in the Dead Marshes
Sam felt his hands sinking into the filthy, stinking ooze
nearly to his elbows, he gagged at the stench.
He blinked his stinging eyes and then stared:
like looking down through a dirty window,
faces- ghastly, gruesome, green and grinning,
Dead! All of them dead!
And one of them
had looked like
his dear
Master.
V. Older and Fouler Things
Boromir berated himself; he should never have thrown that stone.
Far beneath, in the pool's cold and darksome depths,
something stirred, and ripples bubbled to the surface.
Awakened, malice sent a thread of thought
questing to the distant murky surface.
A token of power beckons,
calling, calling: "take me!"
moving slowly upwards
tentacles writhe…
There!
VI. Bound
( The sixth dribble of six, a double inverted dribble this time.)
Pain! If the Morgul-blade had seemed a dagger of ice,
this was a stiletto of fire, burning through him.
Like lightning it coursed all through his veins;
he felt as though he were aflame.
He could hear his heart pounding.
It thundered louder and louder
and then it slowed.
His vision faded,
his hearing
didn't.
Dark;
He found
he couldn't move.
Sam's voice, Sam's tears-
Am I dead? He wondered.
No, no- not dead, not dead!
Dead he would be beyond this agony!
Yet why then could he feel nothing? Nothing!
Imprisoned, unmoving in these bonds, unblinking without tears, alone-
rough orcish voices! Sam, save yourself! All is lost, lost!
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