Evil can move, it adapts to change
And, thus, it has a far-reaching range.
From dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn,
From night to morning, that evil marches on.
Our dark forest, the hero of these tales
Stretches into Ohio in 1826,
Seeking solace, misfortune, and cries
In a rural setting, a cozy home in the sticks
Where Ceely Rose decided some should die.
Her parents, Rebecca and David,
Met young, fell in love, and were wed.
The wanted a family, and they had
Two beautiful children, a cozy little clan.
They named their daughter Ceely, a proper name
For a modest mill-family child like her.
They never suspected she’d achieve fame
For a spine-chilling triple murder
Of which she’s the only blame.
Rebecca and David raised Walter and Ceely
To be well-behaved, thoughtful, and, ideally,
To know the difference between right and wrong.
Walter himself was well-versed and strong.
Ceely, however, spent much time in the woods
And was, admittedly, a little bit wild.
Arguably, she wasn’t even morally good
But she did dream of love as a child.
And fall in love, she would.
One day, at twenty-three years of age
Ceely broke out of her sorrowful cage.
The neighbor, Guy Berry, caught her eye.
Excitedly, she told her family of Guy.
Did they approve? Not at all, not one bit.
Guy was only sixteen years old.
And so Ceely Rose fell into a rage, a fit
Spouting frustrations and accusations so bold.
Their doubt, she thought, they’ll come to regret it.
In the kitchen, Ceely had often worked.
And it was there that inevitability lurked.
It was one day on a hot afternoon
Where the sun was hot, and the season was June,
When, across the front porch, Ceely crept.
There, she had hidden a stash of arsenic.
Which, for a special occasion, she’d kept.
Ceely intended to make her family sick,
Until, her one true love, they’d accept.
She mixed it into cottage cheese abundantly,
Which they downed at dinner with gluttony.
They ate hungrily until, one by one,
The townsfolk realized just what had been done.
David stepped out and came back to his wife
Laying on the floor, so he sought help.
On the way into town, his trip was rife
With thirst, so he stopped at a well
For a taste of the elixir of life.
Greedily, David drank, while a neighbor looked on
And came to realize something was very wrong.
He drank, got sick, and quickly collapsed,
The neighbor allowed no time to lapse.
They rushed him home and found his missus
Passed out cold, and so they moved to call
A doctor for two people on those premises,
Whose heartbeat’s tempo had started to fall
And whose consciousness laid in deep abysses.
On their way home, a neighbor had spotted Walter,
Ceely’s brother, at the side of the road in the gutter.
Walter was taken home, and there met a doctor
And Ceely, who watched the exam unfold like a proctor.
Ceely’s father, David, died the very next day
On the couch, and the Rose family began to fret.
Though they ate well and everyday would pray,
Walter died one week later. Mom should have been next,
But she recovered and had to face the oncoming fray.
The verdant Ohio woods continued to whisper to Ceely,
The clock was ticking, and if she loved Guy — truly, really,
She had to make a move, and she had to act fast.
She returned to the kitchen and crafted expertly, steadfast,
A sweet, delicious, and tantalizing pie.
She took it to the Berry home, and there she said,
“This is for all of you… but don’t give any to Guy.”
They accepted, but threw it out near the chicken shed.
The chickens pecked, pecked and then slowly died.
By this time, everybody in town knew, but wouldn’t say
That Ceely was the reason her family passed away.
Her mother, Rebecca, feared to see her daughter taken,
So she insisted Ceely would do better. She was mistaken.
In the kitchen, as always, Ceely created
A hearty Midwestern meal that was truly to die for.
Her mother ate hungrily, as she was so fated.
The Rose family was gone. Ceely had won her cold war.
But she never considered what fate awaited.
And so Ceely was tried for three familial deaths.
“But it’s okay. They’ll wake up again and take a breath.”
She was declared insane, as she clearly didn’t understand
That all those lives were taken by her hands.
She was found not guilty simply because she was insane,
And she lived out her final days in an asylum.
But the dark and evil woods are bored by the mundane
So they set out to lure someone else inside them.
On they stretched into another time and plane.