Horror tales; Salem (Mass.) -- Fiction; Short stories
He reached a corner, turned unthinkingly to the left. The odd sensation
increased. He walked on slowly, pondering.
No doubt he _had_ traveled by this way before—and very probably he had
done so in a brown study, so that he had not been conscious of his
route. Undoubtedly that was the explanation. Yet as Carson turned into
Charter Street he felt a nameless uneasy waking within him. Salem was
rousing; with daylight impassive Polish workers began to hurry past him
toward the mills. An occasional automobile went by.
Before him a crowd was gathered on the sidewalk. He hastened his steps,
conscious of a feeling of impending calamity. With an extraordinary
sense of shock he saw that he was passing the Charter Street Burying
Ground, the ancient, evilly famous “Burying Point.” Hastily he pushed
his way into the crowd.
Comments in a muffled undertone came to Carson’s ears, and a bulky
blue-clad back loomed up before him. He peered over the policeman’s
shoulder and caught his breath in a horrified gasp.
A man leaned against the iron railing that fenced the old graveyard. He
wore a cheap, gaudy suit, and he gripped the rusty bars in a clutch that
made the muscles stand out in ridges on the hairy back of his hands. He
was dead, and on his face, staring up at the sky at a crazy angle, was
frozen an expression of abysmal and utterly shocking horror. His eyes,
all whites, were bulging hideously; his mouth was a twisted, mirthless
grin.
A man at Carson’s side turned a white face toward him. “Looks as if he
was scared to death,” he said somewhat hoarsely. “I’d hate to have seen
what he saw. Ugh—look at that face!”
Mechanically Carson backed away, feeling an icy breath of nameless
things chill him. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, but still that
contorted, dead face swam in his vision. He began to retrace his steps,
shaken and trembling a little. Involuntarily his glance moved aside,
rested on the tombs and monuments that dotted the old graveyard. No one
had been buried there for over a century, and the lichen-stained
tombstones, with their winged skulls, fat-cheeked cherubs, and funereal
urns, seemed to breathe out an indefinable miasma of antiquity. What had
frightened the man to death?
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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