Skulls in the Stars by Robert E. Howard (10 best books of all time .txt) 📕
Ezra cringed and snarled.
"You can not prove this lie!"
Kane spoke a few words to an agile villager. The youth clambered up the rotting bole 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 are Satan!" gibbered old Ezra.
Kane folded his arms.
"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 Kane sombrely, "you knew what things did these deeds. You feared the ghost the maniac, and that is why you chose to leave his body on the fen instead of concealing it in the swamp. For you knew the ghost
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for him. His only wish was to give as good an account of himself as
possible before the end came, and if he could, to inflict some damage
on his unearthly foe. There above the dead man’s torn body, man fought
with demon under the pale light of the 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, equally abstract, form a
concrete weapon to combat that ghost? Kane fought with his arms and
his feet and his hands, 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 flinches not
from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions
of Hell can stand. Of this Kane knew nothing; he only knew that the
talons which tore and rended him seemed to grow weaker and wavering,
that a wild light grew and grew in the horrible eyes. And reeling and
gasping, he rushed in, grappled the thing at last and threw it, and as
they tumbled about on the moor and it writhed 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. II
The hut of old Ezra the miser stood by the road in the midst of the
swamp, half screened by the sullen trees which grew about it. The
wall; were rotting, the roof crumbling, and great pallid and green
fungus-monsters clung to it and writhed about the doors and windows,
as if seeking to peer within. The trees leaned above it and their grey
branches intertwined so that it crouched in semi-darkness like a
monstrous dwarf over” whose shoulder ogres leer.
The road which wound down into the swamp among 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 a glimpse 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 eyes 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 arm and leg. Somewhat behind this man stood a
number of villagers.
“You are Ezra of the swamp road?”
“Aye, and what want ye of me?”
“Where is your cousin Gideon, the maniac youth who abode with you?”
“Gideon?”
‘Aye.” 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 adder.”
“How long ago?”
“Over a year.”
“Aye. Hark ye, 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 those moors. First men of the countryside, then strangers who
wandered over the fen, fell to the clutches of the 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 wretch twice broke from the
fiend, terribly wounded, and each time the demon caught and dragged
him down again. And at last he fell dead at my very, feet, done to
death in a manner that would freeze the statue of a saint.”
The villagers moved restlessly and murmured fearfully to each other,
and old Ezra’s eyes shifted furtively. Yet the sombre expression of
Solomon Kane never altered, and his condor-like stare seemed to
transfix the miser.
“Aye, aye!” muttered old Ezra hurriedly; “a bad thing, a bad thing!
Yet why do you tell this thing to me?” “Aye, a sad thing. Harken
further, Ezra. The fiend came out of the shadows and I fought with it
over the body of its victim. Aye, 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 the powers of Hell.
“At the 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 tale, said Kane, “for I knew
that now I had the power to rid the moors of its curse forever’. Ezra,
come with us!”
“Where?” gasped the miser.
“To the rotting oak on the moors.” Ezra reeled as though struck; he
screamed incoherently and turned to flee.
On the instant, at Kane’s sharp order, two brawny villagers sprang
forward and seized the miser. They twisted the dagger from his
withered hand, and pinioned his arms, shuddering as their fingers
encountered his clammy flesh.
Kane motioned them to follow, and turning strode 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 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 geared up the great oak tree, like a gibbet, now only a decaying
shell. There Solomon Kane halted.
Old Ezra writhed in his captor’s grasp and made inarticulate noises.
“Over a year ago,” said Solomon Kane, “you, 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 can not prove this lie!”
Kane spoke a few words to an agile villager. The youth clambered up
the rotting bole 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 are Satan!” gibbered old Ezra.
Kane folded his arms.
“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 Kane sombrely, “you knew what things did these deeds.
You feared the ghost the maniac, and that is why you chose to leave
his body on the fen instead of concealing it in the swamp. For you
knew the ghost would haunt the place of his death. He 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 man but you, but his mazed
spirit can not 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 of his ghost, solid thing that can rend and
slay, and though he feared you terribly in life, in death he fears you
not at all.”
Kane halted. He glanced at the sun.
“All this I had from Gideon’s ghost, in his yammerings and his
whisperings and his shrieking silences. Naught but your death will lay
that ghost.”
Ezra listened in breathless silence and Kane pronounced the words of
his doom.
“A hard thing it is,” said Kane sombrely, “to sentence a man to death
in cold blood and 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 naught else will satiate him.”
At these words Ezra’s brain shattered, his knees gave way and he fell
grovelling and screaming for death, begging them to burn him at the
stake, to flay him alive. Kane’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 across
the face, but Kane 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
him, old Ezra yammered and gibbered unhuman sounds and then fell
silent, staring at the sun with terrible intensity.
They walked away across the fen, and Kane flung a last look at the
grotesque form bound to the tree, seeming in the uncertain light like
a great fungus growing to the bole. And suddenly the miser screamed
hideously:
“Death! Death! There are skulls in the Stars!”
“Life was good to him, though he was gnarled and churlish and evil,”
Kane sighed. “Mayhap 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.” “Nay, sir,” one of
the villagers spoke, “you have done but the will of God, and good
alone shall come of this night’s deed.” “Nay,” answered Kane 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 moor was an ocean of shadows and the tall
grass about them bent in long waves before the, faint wind, breaking
the deathly stillness with breathless murmurings.
Then far away the red disk of the moon rose over the fen, 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
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