MYSTERY HORROR

- ( based on a true event in the 1980s)

Mystery Horror


Lydia of the Ukraine,

arrested for typewritten prayers

interrogated ten days

to try make her tell

of a catacomb church

collapsed down the stairs

of the G.P.U. cellar

and Guard Ataev gentled

her to re-stand.


‘Christ save you’ she said.

And the words fell on Cyril Ataev

as her eye flashed in pain.


G.P.U. Special Command dispensed

with the usual unmarked tortures

giving Lydia hot noise for silence.


“Don’t you feel pain?’ they asked.

‘Pain! What is pain?’ she sparked.

‘ My God is consuming fire!

According to your disposition,

He either illuminates or burns.’


That set them devising sex therapy squared.

The four, not enough

called Guard Ataev down

who came, but abominated,

so before he knew what he did

and pulled his army pistol

and shot two from tortures.


A third G.P.U. man

brained Ataev with pistol butt

but while battered Ataev began to throttle him.

The fourth G.P.U. man, point blank,

shot Ataev who fell towards Lydia

‘ Saint take me with you’

‘I will’, Lydia was radiant.

And as these words knocked open

doors to another world

terror darkened with violence the minds


of the two G.P.U. men still alive

until yelling as if God was there,

insanely, they fired, fired, fired...

& shot till the martyr's deaths

emptied their revolvers

and they fled as if

they could ever get away

from what - an unknown

- mysterious horror!


One G.P.U. man,

afterwards, went quite insane.

The other died soon of nervous shock.

But before he died he told his friend Alexei...

and Alexei Ikonnikoff, believing in Christ,

brought the story to light in respect

of the Mysterious Horror



1992 © Wayne David Knoll