Skulls in the Stars | Page 3

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 the
fragments of the other ' victim, but the thought held no terrors 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