The Shadow over Insmoth by H.P. Lovecraft, Red by my. HP Lovecraft.

Chapter 2

Shortly before 10 the next morning, stood with one small valise in front of Hammond's

drugstore in Old Market Square waiting for the Insmuth bus. As the hour for its arrival drew near, I noticed the general drift of the loungers to other

places up the street or to the ideal lunch across the square. Evidently, the ticket agent had not exaggerated the dislike which local people bore towards

Insmoth and its denizens. In a few moments a small motorcoach of extreme decrepitude and dirty grey colour rattled down State Street,

made a turn and drew up at the curb beside me.

I felt immediately that it was the right one, a guess which the half legible sign on the windshield, Arkham, Insmith, Newb Port, soon verified.

There were only three passengers, dark unkempt men of sullen visage and somewhat youthful

cast, and when the vehicle stopped they clumsily shambled out and began walking up State Street in a silent, almost

furtive fashion. The driver also alighted, and I watched him as he went into the drugstore to make some purchase.

This, I reflected, must be the Joe Sergeant mentioned by the ticket agent,

and even before I noticed any details, they spread over me a wave of spontaneous aversion

which could be neither checked nor explained. It suddenly struck me as very natural that the local people should not wish to ride on a bus owned and driven by this man or to visit any oftener than possible the habitat of such a man and his kinsfolk.

When the driver came out of the store I looked at him more carefully and tried to determine the

source of my evil impression.

He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man, not much under six feet tall, dressed in shabby blue civilian

clothes and wearing a frayed golf cap.

His age was perhaps 35, but the odd deep creases in the sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull expressionless

face. He had a narrow head, bulging watery blue eyes that never seem to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin,

and singularly undeveloped ears. His long thin lip and coarse-pored grayish cheeks seemed almost beardless except for some

sparse yellow hairs that straggled and curled in irregular patches and in places the surface seemed

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