The Haunted Traveler Vol 1 Issue 2

56
The voice returned; a maniacal babble somewhere
between a shriek and laughter, or an echo of
both. The mourners toppled around him, clinging to
the earth with brittle hands. Jeff spread his arms out
wide, standing tall as the crows fled their nests in a
hail of winged coal. Death came, angered at His calling.
He crawled from the open grave, riding an
abattoir stench that gagged with a toxic sweetness; a
huge snake-like body propelled by green and rotting
limbs, with screaming faces instead of scales and a
gaping maw jammed with yellow tusks that dripped
corruption on the steaming grass. He looked upon the
sunburnt day with a panoptic glance; hundreds of eyes
surveyed the scene, each one as malicious, as indifferent
as eternity.
With a gleeful snap Death swallowed the fallen
mourners one by one, barely chewing as the old and
infirm sank down his gullet to be digested in hell.
Jeff tried not to move, not to vomit, lest he draw attention
to himself. He was in no hurry to test the efficacy
of his sister’s spell at such close quarters. The angels
circled overhead, gurning like gargoyles, the beat of
their wings fanning back his hair, their oily laughter
cording his veins.
Beneath the feeble yelling, and the raucous
gluttony of Death, he heard a scrape and a thud. The
lid began to slide from Gemma’s coffin, screws popping
like burning oak knots, and he panicked in case
he forgot the words he had rehearsed so often, the profound
farewell he had been perfecting since Rhonda
had first suggested this brief resurrection.