Scary Stories: "Skulls In The Stars"

The story opens with Solomon Cain, a gaunt Puritan traveler, standing at a crossroads at dusk. A breathless village youth has run after him to beg him—for God's sake—not to take the Moor Road to Torkertown. The shorter, more direct route across the barren upland is, according to the villagers, accursed. No one has crossed those moors by night in over a year. Some foul thing haunts the way, and it has claimed scores of victims. No man has seen it and lived. The only sounds that come from the moor are terrible laughter and the horrid shrieks of the dying.

Cain's reaction is not fear but a quickening of blood. He does not recognize the sensation as the lure of adventure and risk. He tells himself he is a strong man needed to combat Satan in his might. He refuses to turn back and strides forward into the gathering darkness.

The hunt on the moor

The moon rises "lean and haggard, like a skull among the stars." Cain hears laughter from somewhere ahead—no human being ever laughed like that. There is no mirth in it, only hatred and horror. Then comes a human scream, then the drum of frantic feet. Someone is being hunted to death out there. Cain breaks into a run.