Scary Stories - Skulls In The Stars

0:00There are two roads to Torquhartown. One, the shorter and more direct route, leads across the barren upland more, and the other, which is much longer, winds its torturous way in and out among the hummocks and quagmires of the swamps, scurrying the low hills to the east. It was a dangerous and tedious trail, so Solomon Cain halted in amazement when a breathless youth from the village he had just left overtook him and implored him for God's sake to take the swamp road. The swamp road Cain stared at the boy. He was a tall, gaunt man was Solomon Cain. His darkly-palored face and deep-rooting eyes made more somber by the drab puritanical garb he affected. Yes, sir, to safer, the youngster answered, to his surprised exclamation. Then the more road must be haunted by Satan himself, for your townsman warned me against traversing the other. Because of the quagmires, sir, that you might not see in the dark, you had better return to the village and continue your journey in the morning, sir.

1:00Taking the swamp road? Yes, sir. Cain shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. The moon rises almost as soon as twilight dies. By its light I can reach Torkertown in a few hours across the mor. Sir, you had better not. No one ever goes that way. There are no houses at all upon the mor, while in the swamp there is the house of old Ezra, who lives there all alone since his maniac cousin Gideon wandered off and died in the swamp and was never found. An old Ezra, though a miser, would not refuse you lodging, should you decide to stop until morning, since you must go, you had better go the swamp road. Cain eyed the boy piercingly, the lad squirmed and shuffled his feet. Since the more road is so dour to waifers, said the Puritan, why did not the villagers tell me the whole tale, instead of vague mouthings? Men like not to talk of it, sir, we hope that you would take the swamp road after the minute advised you to. But when we watched and saw that you turned not at the forks, they sent me to run after you and beg you to reconsider.

2:00Name of the devil exclaimed Cain sharply, the unaccustomed oath showing his irritation, the swamp road and the more road. What is it that threatens me, and why should I go miles out of my way and risk the bogs and myers? Sir, said the boy, dropping his voice and drawing closer. We be simple villagers, who like not to talk of such things, less foul fortune befall us. But the more road is a way accursed, and hath not been traversed by any of the countryside for a year or more. It is death to walk those moors by night, as hath been found by some scour of unfortunate, some foul whore haunts the way and claims men for his victims. So, and what is this thing like? No man knows, none has ever seen it and lived, but late fairs have heard terrible laughter far out on the thin, and men have heard the horrid shrieks of its victims. Sure, in God's name, return to the village, there past the night, and tomorrow take the swamp trail to Torquhartown. Far back in Cain's gloomy eyes, a sentinel light began to glimmer, like a witch's torch,

3:02glinting under fathoms of cold gray ice. His blood quickened, adventure, the lure of life risk and drama. Not that Cain recognized his sensations as such, he sincerely considered that he voiced his real feelings when he said, These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many times. Sir, the boy began, then closed his mouth as he saw the futility of argument. He only added, the corpses of the victims are bruised and torn, sir. He stood there at the crossroads, sighing, regretfully as he watched the tall, rangel figure swinging up the road that led toward the moors. The sun was setting as Cain came over the brow of the low hill, which debatched into the upland fin. Huge and blood red it sank down behind the sullen horizon of the moors, seeming to touch the rank grass with fire. So for a moment the watchers seemed to be gazing out across a sea of blood.

4:03The dark shadows came gliding from the east, the western blaze faded, and Solomon Cain struck out boldly in the gathering darkness. The road was dim from disuse, but was clearly defined. Cain went swiftly, but wearily, sword and pistols at hand. Stars blinked out and night winds whispered among the grass like weeping spectres. The moon began to rise, lean and haggard, like a skull among the stars. Then suddenly Cain stopped short. From somewhere in front of him sounded a strange and airy echo, or something like an echo. Again, this time louder, Cain started forward again. Were his senses deceiving him? No. More out they peeled a whisper of frightful slaughter, and again closer this time. No human being ever laughed like that. There was no mirth in it, only hatred and horror and soul destroying terror. Cain halted. He was not afraid, but for a second he was almost unnerved. Then, stabbing through that awesome laughter, Cain the sound of a scream that was undoubtedly

5:05human. Cain started forward, increasing his gate. He cursed the elusive lights and flickering shadows which veiled the more in the rising moon and made accurate sight impossible. The laughter continued, growing louder, as did the screams. Then sounded faintly the drum of frantic human feet. Cain broke into a run. Some human was being hunted to death out there on the thin, and by what manner of horror God only knew. The sound of flying feet halted abruptly, and the screaming rose unbearably, mingled with other sounds unnamable and hideous. Evidently the man had been overtaken, and Cain, his flesh crawling, visualized some ghastly theme of the darkness, crouching on the back of its victim, crouching and tearing. Then the noise of a terrible and short struggle came clearly through the abysmal silence of the night, and footfalls began again, but stumbling and uneven. The screaming continued, but with a gasping gurgle, the sweat stood cold on Cain's forehead and body. This was heaping horror on horror in an intolerable manner.

6:07God, for a moment's clear light, the frightful drama was being enacted within a very short distance of him, to judge from the ease with which the sounds reached him. But this hellish half-light veiled all in shifting shadows, so that the moors appeared a haze of blurred illusions, and stunted trees and bushes seemed like giants. Cain shouted, striving to increase the speed of his advance. The shrieks of the unknown broke into a hideous, shrill squealing. Again, there was the sound of a struggle, and then, from the shadows of the tall grass, a thing came reeling, a thing that had once been a man, a gourd covered, frightful thing that fell at Cain's feet and rived and groveled, and raised its terrible face to the rising moon, and gibbered and yammered, and fell down again and died in its own blood. The moon was up now, and the light was better. Cain bent above the body, which lay stark in its unnamable mutilation, and he shuddered. A rare thing for him, who had seen the deeds of the Spanish Inquisition and the witch-finders.

7:07Some wafer, he supposed. Then, like a hand of cold ice on his spine, he was aware that he was not alone. He looked up, his cold eyes piercing the shadows, once the dead man had staggered. He saw nothing, but he knew he felt that other eyes gave back his stare, terrible eyes, not of this earth. He straightened, and drew a pistol, waiting. The moonlight spread, like a lake of pale blood over the mor, and trees and grasses, took on their proper sizes. The shadows melted, and Cain saw. At first he thought only a shadow of mist, a whisp of more fog that swayed in the tall grass before him. He gazed, more illusion, he thought. Then the thing began to take on shape, vague and indistinct. Two hideous eyes flamed at him, eyes which held all the stark horror which had been the heritage of man since the fearful dawn ages. Eyes frightful and insane, with an insanity transcending earthly insanity. The form of the thing was misty and vague, a brain shattering tragedy on the human form,

8:08like, yet horribly unlike. The grass and bushes beyond showed clearly through it. Cain felt the blood pound in his temples, yet he was as cold as ice. How such an unstable being, as that which wavered before him could harm a man in a physical way, was more than he could understand. At the red whore at his feet gave mute testimony that the fiend could act with terrible material effect. Of one thing Cain was sure, there would be no hunting of him across the dreary moors, no screaming and fleeing to be dragged down again and again. If he must die, he would die in his tracks, wounds in front. Now a vague and grizzly mouth gaped wide, and the demonic laughter again shrieked, but soul-shaking in its nearness. And in the midst of feet threat of doom, Cain deliberately leveled his long pistol and fired. A maniacal yell of rage and mockery answered the report, and the thing came at him like a flying sheet of smoke, long shadowy arms, stretched to drag him down. Cain, moving with the dynamic speed of a famished wolf, fired the second pistol with his little

9:10effect, snatched his long rapier from its sheath, and thrust into the center of the misty attacker. The blade sang as it passed clear through, encountering no solid resistance, and Cain felt icy fingers grip his limbs, beech-jill talons, tear his garments, and the skin beneath. He dropped the useless sword, and sought to grapple with his foe. It was like fighting a floating mist, the flying shadow armed with dagger-like claws. His savage blows met empty air, his leanly mighty arms, and whose grafts strong men had died, swept nothingness and clutched emptiness. Not was solid, or real saved the flaying, ape-like fingers, with their crooked talons, and the crazy eyes which burned into the shuddering depths of his soul. Cain realized that he was in a desperate plight indeed. Already his garments hung in tatters, and he bled from a score of deep wounds, but he never flinched, and the thought of flight never entered his mind. He had never fled from a single foe, and had the thought occurred to him he would have flushed with shame.

10:11He saw no help for it now, but that his form should lie there beside the fragments of the other victim, but the thought held no tears for him. His only wish was to give us good and account of himself as possible before the end came, and if he could, inflict some damage on his unearthly foe. There above the dead man's torn body, man fought with demon, under the pale light of a rising moon, with all the advantages with the demon, save one, and that one was enough to overcome the others. For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, surely abstract, form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost? Cain fought with his arms and his hands and his feet, and he was aware at last that the ghost began to give back before him, and the fearful slaughter changed to screams of baffled fury. For man's only weapon is courage that flinch is not from the gates of hell itself, and against such not even the legions of hell can stand. Of this Cain knew nothing. He only knew that the talons which tore and rendered him seemed to grow weaker and wavering,

11:16that a wild light grew and grew in the horrible eyes. And reeling and grasping he rushed in, grappled the thing at last, and threw it, and as they tumbled about on the more it rived and lapped his limbs like a serpent of smoke, his flesh crawled, and his hair stood on end, for he began to understand its gibbering. He did not hear and comprehend as a man hears and comprehends the speech of a man, but the frightful secrets it imparted in whisperings and yammerings, and screaming silences sank fingers of ice into his soul, and he knew. Two. The old hut of Ezra, the miser stood by the road in the midst of the swamp, half screened by the sullen trees which grew about it. The walls were rotting, the roof crumbling, and great pallet and green fungus monsters clung to it, and rived about the doors and windows as if seeking to peer within. The trees leaned above it, and their gray branches intertwined so that it crouched in semi-darkness like a monstrous dwarf over whose shoulder ogres lear.

12:17The road which wound down into the swamp among the rotting stumps and rank hummocks and scummy, snake-haunted pools and bogs, crawled past the hut. Many people passed that way these days, but few saw old Ezra, save glimpses of a yellow face, peering through the fungus-screened windows, itself, like an ugly fungus. Old Ezra, the miser, partook much of the quality of the swamp. For he was gnarled and bent and sullen. His fingers were like clutching parasitic plants, and his locks hung like drab moss above ice trained to the murk of the swamplands. His eyes were like a dead man's, yet hinted of depths abysmal and loathsome as the dead lakes of the swamplands. These eyes gleamed now at the man who stood in front of his hut. This man was tall and gaunt and dark. His face was haggard and claw-marked, and he was bandaged of armen leg. Somewhat behind this man stood a number of villagers. Are you Ezra of the swamp road? I, and what you want of me.

13:19Where is your cousin, Gideon, the maniac youth who abode with you? Gideon? I. He wandered away into the swamp and never came back. No doubt he lost his way and was set upon by wolves or died in a quagmire, or was struck by an ador. How long ago? Over a year. I, Harkie Ezra the miser, soon after your cousin's disappearance, a countryman coming home across the moors was set upon by some unknown fiend and torn to pieces, and thereafter it became death to cross the moors. First men of the countryside, then strangers who wandered over the thin, fell into the clutches of this thing. Many men have died since the first one. Last night I crossed the moors and heard the flight and pursuing of another victim, a stranger who knew not the evil of the moors. Ezra the miser, it was a fearful thing. For the wretched twice broke from the fiend, terribly wounded, and each time the demon caught him and dragged him down again. At last he fell dead at my feet, done to death in a manner that would freeze the statue of a saint.

14:20The villagers moved recessely and murmured to each other, and old Ezra's eyes shifted frutatively. Yet the somber expression of Solomon came never altered, and his condor-like stare seemed to transfix the miser. I, I, muttered old Ezra hurriedly, a bad thing, a bad thing. Yet why do you tell this thing to me? I, a bad thing. Harkie further Ezra, the fiend came out of the shadows, and I fought with it over the body of its victim. I, how I overcame it, I know not, for the battle was hard and long, but the powers of good and light were on my side, which are mightier than all the powers of hell. At last I was stronger, and it broke from me and fled, and I followed to no avail, yet before it fled it whispered to me a monstrous truth. Old Ezra started, stared wildly, seemed to shrink into himself. Nay, why tell me this, he muttered? I returned to the village and told my tales, had came. For I knew that now I had the power to rid the moors of its curse forever. Ezra, come with us.

15:21Here gasped the miser. To the rotting oak on the moors. Ezra reeled as though struck, he screamed incoherently and turned to flee. On an instant, a cane's sharp order, two brony villagers sprang forward and seized the miser. They twisted the dagger from his withered hand, and pinned in his arms, shuddering as their fingers encountered his clammy flesh. Cain motioned them to follow, and turning, straught up the trail, followed by the villagers, who found their strength taxed to the utmost in their task of bearing their prisoner along. Through the swamp they went and out, taking a little used trail which led them up over the low hills and out on the moors. The sun was sliding down the horizon, and Old Ezra stared at it with bulging eyes, stared as if he could not gaze enough. Far out on the moors reared up the great oak, like a gibbet, now only a decaying shell. There, Solomon Cain halted. Out Ezra, writhed in his captors grasped, and made inarticulate noises. Over a year ago Solomon Cain said,

16:22You, fearing that your insane cousin Gideon would tell men of your cruelties to him, brought him away from the swamp by the very trail by which we came, and murdered him, here, in the night. Ezra cringed and snarled. You cannot prove this lie. Cain spoke a few words to an agile villager. The youth clamoured up the rotting bowl of the tree, and from a crevice high up, dragged something that fell with a clatter at the feet of the miser. Ezra went limp with a terrible shriek. The object was a man's skeleton. The skull cleft. You! How knew you this? You were Satan, gibbert old Ezra. The thing I fought last night told me this thing as we reeled in battle, and I followed it to this tree. For the fiend is Gideon's ghost. Ezra shrieked again and fought savagely. You knew, said Cain somberly. You knew what things did these deeds. You feared the ghost of the maniac, and that is why you chose to leave his body on the thin, instead of concealing it in the swamp. For you knew the ghost would haunt the place of his death.

17:23He was insane in life, and in death he did not know where to find his slayer, else he had come to you in your hut. He hates no man but you. But his mazed spirit cannot tell one man from another, and he slays all, lest he let his killer escape. Yet he will know you, and rest in peace forever after. Hate hath made his ghost a solid thing that can rid and slay, and though he feared you terribly in life, in death he fears you not at all. Cain halted and glanced at the sun. All this I had from Gideon's ghost, in his Yammerings and his Whispering's and his shrieking silences, not but your death will lay that ghost. Ezra listened in breathless silence, and Cain pronounced the words of his doom. A hard thing it is, said Cain somberly. He sent a man to death in cold blood, in such a manner as I have in mind. But you must die that others may live, and God knoweth you deserve death. You shall not die by noose, bullet, or sword. But at the talons of him you slew, for not else will satiate him.

18:26At these words Ezra's brain shattered. His knees gave way, and he fell groveling and screaming for death, begging them to burn him at the stake, to flay him alive, Cain's face was set like death, and the villagers, the fear rousing their cruelty, bound the screeching wretch to the oak tree, and one of them bade him, make his peace with God. But Ezra made no answer, shrieking in a high shrill voice, with unbearable monotony. Then the villager would have struck the miser across the face, but Cain stayed him. Let him make his peace with Satan, whom he is more like to meet, said the Puritan grimly. The sun is about to set. Loose his cords, so that he may work loose by dark, since it is better to meet death free and unshackled than bound like a sacrifice. As they turned to leave, old Ezra, Yamard, and gibbered, unhuman sounds, and then fell silent, staring at the sun with terrible intensity. They walked away across the thin, and Cain flung a last look at the grotesque form bound to the tree, seeming in the uncertain light like a great fungus growing to the bowl, and

19:26suddenly the miser screamed hideously. Death! Death! There are skulls in the stars! Death was good to him, though he was gnarled and churlish and evil, Cain sighed. May have God has a place for such souls where fire and sacrifice may cleanse them of their dross as fire cleans the forest or fungus things, yet my heart is heavy within me. Nacer, one of the villagers spoke. You have done but the will of God, and good alone can come of this night's deeds. Nay, answered Cain heavily. I know not. I know not. The sun had gone down, and night spread with amazing swiftness, as if great shadows came rushing down from unknown voids to cloak the world with hurrying darkness. Through the thick night came a weird echo, and the men halted, and looked back the way they had come. Nothing could be seen. The more was an ocean of shadows, and the tall grass about them bent in long waves before a faint wind, breaking the deathly stillness with breathless murmurings.

20:26Far away the red disc of the moon rose over the fin, and for an instant a grim silhouette was etched blackly against it. A shape came flying across the face of the moon, a bent, grotesque thing whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the earth. And close behind came a thing like a flying shadow, a nameless, shapeless horror. A moment the racing twain stood out boldly against the moon, then they merged into one unnamble, formless mass and vanished in the shadows. Far across the fin sounded a single shriek of terrible laughter.