Cool Air - Glass Hammer

I recall that awful feeling

Of growing horror, as from my ceiling

Dripped noxious fluids which filled my room

With a singular odor, a foetid fume

Which should have served to warn me well

That in the room above did dwell

A fearful thing

Yet I required the Doctor’s care

I clambered up the creaking stair

To the sepulcher wherein survived

His deathless mind, a thing which thrived

In the cool air, in the frigid tomb

Twas Death he fought in that Stygian gloom

Night after night I would visit there

Regardless of the freezing air

A nameless fear within me grew

For his bloodless hands and ghoulish hue

Were more than an anxious mind could bare

In this laboratory with its cool air

My host though odd was not unkind

And he told me how the will, the mind

Was stronger than organic life

His enemy, Death, and with Death his strife

He raved then of outlandish schemes

Of sorcerous rites, unholy dreams

Where the Daemons howl, dark planets roll

Through a universe both lifeless and cold

Of blasphemy he took no heed

As arcane rites became his creed

As noxious vapours 'round him rolled

While curious engines pumped the cold

I can’t abide the cool air

I can’t abide the cool air

He thrived within the cool air

I can’t abide the cool air

Noisome machines and bubbling vials

Were but scientific trials

Or so he claimed, but then I knew

And thus the dread within me grew

Night after night I would visit there

Regardless of the freezing air

Cold as death it leached my will

I lost my mind in the morbid chill

But death must come to claim us all

He had not seen the fatal flaw

It failed at last, that damned device

That machine which kept his room like ice

I can’t abide the cool air

I can’t abide the cool air

He thrived within the cool air

I can’t abide the cool air

This won’t suffice

Bring ice bring ice

His tomb, his lair

Must have cool air

He uttered then a piteous cry

He begged for ice as though he’d die

Without its chill, so ice I brought

Yet this was death with which we fought

The air grew warm and stifling hot

And as he melted into rot

That hollow voice I’d come to fear

Whispered fell into my ear

A thing I cannot bear, and yet

I laughed as if I could forget

I laughed as only the mad can do

And then I shrieked for then I knew

He spoke the thing which confirmed my fears

«I have been dead for eighteen years»

I can’t abide the cool air

I can’t abide the cool air…