Abigail: The Scary Story told in a metal album.

The best way to start this beautiful month of October is with a horror story but with the novelty that it is told over nine songs and with a duration of 40 minutes in the first concept album of the Speed Metal band King Diamond, Abigail, released in 1987. On this album, Kim Bendix Petersen aka King Diamond deploys his full vocal spectrum, giving his album a variety of climaxes and moods that perfectly complement the band's songs. So, if you enjoy not only horror stories but also metal music, this is for you.

Abigail tells the story of a young couple, Miriam Natias and Jonathan La'Fey, who settle in an old mansion that La'Fey has inherited. It takes place in the summer of 1845 and on their arrival they are warned by seven horsemen not to settle in the house because if they do, "18 will become 9". They ignore the warning and proceed to settle in the mansion.

During his first night, Jonathan meets Count La'Fey, the family ghost, who is a deceased relative and he shows him a coffin in which the corpse of a stillborn girl, Abigail, rests. The ghost informs him that Miriam is the carrier of Abigail's spirit and that the girl will soon be reborn so to avoid this, Jonathan must kill Miriam immediately.

The narrative then tells the story of what happened to the Count and his wife: on July 7, 1777, his wife was pregnant and ready to have a daughter - who would later be discovered to be a bastard child. In other words, she had been born of his wife's infidelity with another man. Enraged, he threw her down the stairs, breaking her neck and causing her baby to be stillborn. Later, the Count had the Countess's body cremated, and the stillborn fetus he named Abigail and had it mummified and deposited in a sarcophagus, since the Count had an inexplicable desire to preserve Abigail for the future.

Going back to the summer of 1845, during which Jonathan and Miriam are beset by a series of strange situations such as withered flowers and unpleasant odors reaching such a point that in one of these incidents Jonathan discovers an empty crib swinging in the air, and both he and Miriam insist they haven't brought her.

The next day Jonathan realizes that the family ghost was telling the truth as he sees his wife with a highly developed pregnancy. So Jonathan accuses Abigail of possessing Miriam, and Abigail (through Miriam) admits it. Jonathan is terrified and considers getting a priest to exorcise Miriam - Miriam, however, exercising a moment of control, urges him to throw her down the stairs to kill her just as the Count had killed the Countess and the original incarnation. from Abigail.

Therefore, Jonathan pretends to give in to Abigail's demands and suggests to her (once he regains control of Miriam) that he go down to her family crypt so that she can be reborn where she died. However, when the pair meet at the top of the stairs, Jonathan is distracted and the possessed Miriam throws Jonathan down the stairs. Miriam gives birth to Abigail, but dies shortly after, the last vision of her being that of Abigail's "yellow eyes"; supposedly the ghost of her can be heard screaming on the stairs in July ever after.

The seven horsemen arrive at the mansion and discover baby Abigail in the sarcophagus, eating something too horrible for the narrator to mention (although the fact that it is in the sarcophagus suggests that Abigail is eating her own previous body). Dismayed, they take her away to bury her in a hidden chapel in the forest with seven silver spikes nailed into hers, her body (burial heard as an introduction to the album), in the hope that this will prevent a new resurrection of her.

There is the album playlist if you want to listen to and enjoy it: