Banshees shrieking in the night
Warn of danger lurking in the black,
The smell of death is a warning of
The approaching verdillac.
 
A monster from myth or awful fact?
No-one can really say for sure,
But those who know the smell of death
Stay inside ‘hind a bolted door.
 
When the verdillac is passing through
Little’s left alive in its wake,
People cover their ears to the sound
That their poor dying animals make.
 
Farms are stripped of life as though
The victim of a locust plague,
But animals, not plants, are taken as
The verdillac devours all chained or caged.
 
Unchained beasts may stampede to safety
Till the verdillac surely hunts them down,
Then by the time humans dare emerge
No living creature e’er can be found.
 
A faceless, fearless monster
From fact or fiction?   None can say,
But those who dare to investigate
Go screaming to an early grave.

In the big cities we think that we are safe
For the verdillac has naught to hide,
But from time to time human corpses are found
Mere skeletons screaming as they died.