macabre (adj) – involving death or violence in a way that is strange, frightening, or unpleasant. (by Merriam Webster)
source: Merriam Webster. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/macabre
Found in “A Rose for Emily” section 5, second paragraph, second sentence
Text: They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men –some in their brushed Confederate uniforms–on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
The town came to Miss Emily’s funeral. The old men were wearing Confederate uniforms and talking about Miss Emily as if they believe “they had danced with her and courted her.” And the ladies who came were talking in a hissing sound (sibilant) and in gruesome and terrifying way(macabre).
