"Wentworth's Day"

by August Derleth
originally published The Survivor and Others, Arkham House, 1957

Fred Hadley, from Boston, is on his way through Dunwich, one summer night in 1927, when a storm hits.  He pulls into a rundown, empty barn and knocks on the door of the run-down house, which isn't so empty.  Amos Stark, a crazy old coot, lives there.  He's friendly enough to let Fred camp out till the storm runs out.  No big deal that he has a big book on black magic ("The Seventh Book of Moses") or that he keeps rattling on about someone named Wentworth, from whom he borrowed the book and, apparently, $5,000, and who's dead, but might be coming back for it.  And might have been murdered by Stark. Hadley is, needless to say, a little baffled.  But he curls up on the old sofa for a nap.  He's awoken by a knock on the door and Stark's screaming.  He finds Stark being strangled by the skeletal remains of (one assumes) Wentworth.  He passes out.

When he comes to, he rushes to check on Stark.  He finds he is indeed dead, and, to prove it wasn't a hallucination, there are still some finger bones lodged in Stark's neck.  The finger bones jump out of the neck and go dancing out the door, and Fred runs off screaming into the night.

Had Derleth been reading EC comics?  This reads more like something from that line than HPL.  Fun, funny story (incidentally, Creepy comics did do an adaptation in the 60's).  Nothing special though.