Cool Air

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...