1. THE CHARNEL UNEARTHING

(Instrumental)


2. WRETCHED BANQUET

The chant of the ghoul caller opens the crypts
Stone lids now shift and grind
Fetid air escapes
Fleshless fingers brace crumbling edges
To propel forth their bodies of rot
What purpose have they returned?
To what bidding do they serve?
Ravenous lust for flesh smothers the trace humanity that exists behind their blank, putrefying eyes
Plunder and devour the remnants of the dead
Murder and eat credulous living
Succumbed to the will of sorcery,
An unwavering mob of decay
Conscience holds no power to magic
Nothing can stop it
This wretched banquet
A morbid feast
Abhorrent undead forced to roam under the spell of necromancy


3. A WATERY INTERNMENT

You sink slowly
As murk dissolves the luminance
As pressure builds
As flails reduce to flutter
Lungs fill with fluid
As breath stifles
As panic nictates into stillness
With each weakening, dying heartbeat, you grow closer to death
What ideas enter a dying man’s consciousness in those last moments of actuality?
When survival is futile, do you think of regret?
Do you beg for forgiveness to a god above?
An uncaring deity who let you suffer this fate?
Deeper
You’ve lost sense of direction
Do you struggle to hang on to those last few moments of animation?
Where minutes dissect into seconds
Then seconds fraction themselves away into closing flickers of existence
The hourglass reduces to the falling of each individual grain, and the world around you is slowly engulfed in darkness... while you expire at the speed of thought


4. THE HIDDEN FIEND

Beware the Aswang: Shape-shifting demon of the Philippines
A nightly feeder on the unborn
Day-walking weaver of deceit
Amongst your peers is where the cleftless ghoul hides
Inverted reflection reveals a darkness that resides
Fallacious asura
Descendent of manananggal
Serpentine stealer of life, crawling from the bedside
Penetrating proboscis splitting vaginal wall
Slowly draining lifeforce
Siphoning the fetal skull
Puerile delicacy garnished in amniotic fluid
An unseen creature in hiding
Using the guise of fellow man
A friend, neighbor, or perhaps even relative
They socialize beside us
With an unspoken, malicious secret
Seek out the holy agimate
For the creature could be anyone
It could even be you


5. AN OMINOUS JOURNEY

(Instrumental)


6. THE GIFT

Upon your doorstep sat a mortifying piece
Tightly packaged parcel
Wrapped neatly with care
Initially innocuous, but upon a closer glance: Wear and much depreciation, and lacking a return address?
“Who could have sent this?”
As you bring the box inside and tear away the moldy tape and twine the gift reveals its grisly image: A grotesque visage made of bone
A human skull
No explanation
But with features that are oddly familiar
You feel an eerie sense of dread
As you run your fingers along its calcified structure
Pulling open the jaws only to find the teeth match your own
Denial sets in
This cannot be
You’re still alive, within your home
Was this sent from the future?
Or just some morbid trick?
As you peer into the empty sockets you can only guess how long until it’s your turn to be the one on the inside looking out?


7. GRAVEN DESIRES

She lays silent
In her cold porcelain skin
Nothing could be done to save her
A love unrequited no longer
I felt her embrace
As her final exhale dissipated into the air
When the blade dove in
I draw her lids closed with my fingertips
Her warm lips now frigid and lifeless
She shall sleep eternally as mine for eternity
As mine for eternity...


8. DECEIVER IN THE SHADOWS

Timeless, ageless lurking monster
Insidious, evil legend
Myth that haunts in the countryside luring lost wanderers...
Now victims
Stained with the mark of his feast
Another pale, lifeless body found: New flesh for the beast
Contorted faces found frozen in terror
Hunter
Liar
Stealer of blood
Vampire or beast?... No one ever lives to tell
A foreboding castle bears his name
Shadow-stained kingdom of horror
Screams resonate through the mist
Cold and limp or forever lost
Holy men left drained and dead
Others met worse fates
Life in servitude: Signed in blood
Eternally bound as his slaves