Nightside
“A few of them jittered into the pool of weak yellow light cast by an aging streetlamp—a converted gaslight that was a relic of the previous century. It was old and tired, its pea-green paint flaking away; as weary as this neighborhood, which was older still. Across the street loomed an ancient church, whose congregation had dwindled over the years to a handful of little old women and men who appeared, like scrawny blackbirds, every Sunday and then scattered back to the shabby houses that stood ...to either side until Sunday should come again. On the side of the street that the lamp tried (and failed) to illuminate was the cemetery.Like the neighborhood, it was very old—fifty years shy of being classified as “Colonial.” There were few empty gravesites now, and most of those belonged to the same little old ladies and men that had lived and would die here. It was protected from vandals by a thorny hedge as well as a ten-foot wrought-iron fence. Within its confines, as seen through the leafless branches of the hedge, granite cenotaphs and enormous Victorian monuments bulked shapelessly against the bare sliver of a waning moon.The church across the street was dark and silent; the houses up and down the block showed few lights, if any.MoreLess
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