Skulls in the Stars by Robert E. Howard (little readers txt) 📖
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Skulls in the Stars
by Robert E. Howard
A Solomon Kane Story
First published in Weird Tales, January 1929
He told how murders walk the earth
IThere are two roads to Torkertown. One, the shorter and more direct
route, leads across a barren upland moor, and the other, which is much
longer, winds its tortuous way in and out among the hummocks and
quagmires of the swamps, skirting the low hills to the east. It was a
dangerous and tedious trail; so Solomon Kane 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!” Kane stared at the boy. He was a tall, gaunt man,
was Solomon Kane, his darkly pallid face and deep brooding eyes, made
more sombre by the drab Puritanical garb he affected.
“Yes, sir, ‘tis far safer,” the youngster answered to his surprised
exclamation.
“Then the moor road must be haunted by Satan himself, for your
townsmen 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.”
“Taking the swamp road?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kane 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 moor.”
“Sir, you had better not. No one ever goes that way. There are no
houses at all upon the moor, 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—and 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.”
Kane eyed the boy piercingly. The lad squirmed and shuffled his feet.
“Since this moor road is so dour to wayfarers,” 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 hoped that you would take the
swamp road after the men 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.”
“Name of the Devil!” exclaimed Kane sharply, the unaccustomed oath
showing his irritation; “the swamp road and the moor road—what is it
that threatens me and why should I go miles out of my way and risk the
bogs and mires?”
Sir,” said the boy, dropping his voice and drawing closer, “we be
simple villagers who like not to talk of such things lest foul fortune
befall us, but the moor road is a way accurst 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 score of
unfortunates. Some foul horror 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-farers have heard terrible laughter far out on
the fen and men have heard the horrid shrieks of its victims. Sir, in
God’s name return to the village, there pass the night, and tomorrow
take the swamp trail to Torkertown.”
Far back in Kane’s gloomy eyes a scintillant light had begun to
glimmer, like a witch’s torch glinting under fathoms of cold grey ice.
His blood quickened. Adventure! The lure of life-risk and drama! Not
that Kane 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 a time.”
“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, rangy figure swinging up the road that led toward the moors.
The sun was setting as Kane came over the brow of the low hill which
debouched into the upland fen. 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 watcher seemed to be gazing out across a sea
of blood. Then the dark shadows came gliding from the east, the
western blaze faded, and Solomon Kane struck out, boldly in the
gathering darkness.
The road was dim from disuse but was clearly defined. Kane went
swiftly but warily, 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 Kane stopped short. From somewhere in front of him
sounded a strange and eery echo—or something like an echo. Again,
this time louder. Kane started forward again. Were his senses
deceiving him? No!
Far out, there pealed 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. Kane
halted. He was not afraid, but for the second he was almost unnerved.
Then, stabbing through that awesome laughter, came the sound of a
scream that was undoubtedly human. Kane started forward, increasing
his gait. He cursed the illusive lights and flickering shadows which
veiled the moor 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. Kane broke into a run.
Some human was being hunted to death out there on the fen, and by what
manner of horror God only knew. The sound of the flying feet halted
abruptly and the screaming rose unbearably, mingled with other sounds
unnameable and hideous. Evidently the man had been overtaken, and
Kane, his flesh crawling, visualized some ghastly fiend 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 the footfalls began again, but
stumbling and uneven. The screaming continued, but with a gasping
gurgle. The sweat stood cold on Kane’s forehead and body. This was
heaping horror on horror in an intolerable manner. God, for a moment’s
clear light! The frightful drama was being enacted within a very short
distance of him, to judge by 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.
Kane 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
gore-covered, frightful thing that fell at Kane’s feet and writhed and
grovelled 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. Kane bent above the
body, which lay stark in its unnameable mutilation, and he shuddered a
rare thing for him, who had seen the deeds of the Spanish Inquisition
and the witch-finders.
Some wayfarer, he supposed. Then like a hand of ice on his spine he
was aware that he was not alone. He looked up, his cold eyes piercing
the shadows whence 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 moor, and trees
and grasses took on their proper sizes. The shadows melted, and Kane
saw! At first he thought it only a shadow of mist, a wisp of moor 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 has 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 travesty
on the human form, like, yet horribly unlike. The grass and bushes
beyond showed clearly through it.
Kane 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, yet the red
horror at his feet gave mute testimony that the fiend could act with
terrible material effect.
Of one thing Kane 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, his wounds in
front.
Now a vague and grisly mouth gaped wide and the demoniac laughter
again shrieked but, soul-shaking in its nearness. And in the midst of
feat threat of doom, Kane deliberately levelled 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.
Kane, moving with the dynamic speed of a famished wolf, fired the
second pistol with as little effect, snatched his long rapier from its
sheath and thrust into the centre of the misty attacker. The blade
sang as it passed clear through, encountering no solid resistance, and
Kane felt icy fingers grip his limbs, bestial 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, a flying shadow armed with dagger
like claws. His savage blows met empty air, his leanly mighty arms, in
whose grasp strong men had died, swept nothingness and clutched
emptiness. Naught was solid or real save the flaying, apelike fingers
with their crooked talons, and the crazy eyes which burned into the
shuddering depths of his soul.
Kane 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.
He saw no help for it now, but that his form should lie there beside
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