Skulls in the Stars | Page 5

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 twain stood out boldly against the moon; then they merged into one unnameable, formless mass, and vanished in the shadows.
Far across the fen sounded a single shriek of terrible laughter.

THE END

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