Part 11 (1/2)
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 somberly, ”you knew what thing did these deeds. You feared the ghost of 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 no 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 a solid thing that can rend and slay, and though he feared you terribly in life, in death he fears you not.”
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 p.r.o.nounced the words of his doom.
”A hard thing it is,” said Kane somberly, ”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 G.o.d 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 groveling 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 G.o.d. 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 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 G.o.d has a place for such souls where fire and sacrifice may cleanse them of their dross as fire cleans the forest of fungous things. Yet my heart is heavy within me.”
”Nay, sir,” one of the villagers spoke, ”you have done but the will of G.o.d, 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s 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 unnamable, formless ma.s.s, and vanished in the shadows.
Far across the fen sounded a single shriek of terrible laughter.
CRETE.
_Weird Tales, February 1929_ _The green waves wash above us_ Who slumber in the bay As washed the tide of ages That swept our race away.
Our cities -- dusty ruins; Our galleys -- deep-sea slime; Our very ghosts, forgotten, Bow to the sweep of Time.
Our land lies stark before it As we to alien spears, But, ah, the love we bore it Outlasts the crawling years.
Ah, jeweled spires at even -- The lute's soft golden sigh -- The Lion-Gates of Knossos When dawn was in the sky.
MOON MOCKERY.
_Weird Tales, April 1929_ _I walked in Tara's Wood one summer night,_ And saw, amid the still, star-haunted skies, A slender moon in silver mist arise, And hover on the hill as if in fright.
Burning, I seized her veil and held her tight: An instant all her glow was in my eyes; Then she was gone, swift as a white bird flies, And I went down the hill in opal light.
And soon I was aware, as down I came, That all was strange and new on every side; Strange people went about me to and fro, And when I spoke with trembling mine own name They turned away, but one man said: ”He died In Tara Wood, a hundred years ago.”
*RATTLE OF BONES*
_Weird Tales, June 1929_ ”Landlord, ho!” The shout broke the lowering silence and reverberated through the black forest with sinister echoing.
”This place hath a forbidding aspect, meseemeth.”
Two men stood in front of the forest tavern. The building was low, long and rambling, built of heavy logs. Its small windows were heavily barred and the door was closed. Above the door its sinister sign showed faintly -- a cleft skull.
This door swung slowly open and a bearded face peered out. The owner of the face stepped back and motioned his guests to enter -- with a grudging gesture it seemed. A candle gleamed on a table; a flame smoldered in the fireplace.
”Your names?”
”Solomon Kane,” said the taller man briefly.
”Gaston l'Armon,” the other spoke curtly. ”But what is that to you?”
”Strangers are few in the Black Forest,” grunted the host, ”bandits many. Sit at yonder table and I will bring food.”
The two men sat down, with the bearing of men who have traveled far. One was a tall gaunt man, clad in a featherless hat and somber black garments, which set off the dark pallor of his forbidding face. The other was of a different type entirely, bedecked with lace and plumes, although his finery was somewhat stained from travel. He was handsome in a bold way, and his restless eyes s.h.i.+fted from side to side, never still an instant.
The host brought wine and food to the rough-hewn table and then stood back in the shadows, like a somber image. His features, now receding into vagueness, now luridly etched in the firelight as it leaped and flickered, were masked in a beard which seemed almost animal-like in thickness. A great nose curved above this beard and two small red eyes stared unblinkingly at his guests.
”Who are you?” suddenly asked the younger man.
”I am the host of the Cleft Skull Tavern,” sullenly replied the other. His tone seemed to challenge his questioner to ask further.
”Do you have many guests?” l'Armon pursued.
”Few come twice,” the host grunted.
Kane started and glanced up straight into those small red eyes, as if he sought for some hidden meaning in the host's words. The flaming eyes seemed to dilate, then dropped sullenly before the Englishman's cold stare.