Scary Stories - Skulls In The Stars

A traveler named Solomon Cain is warned by a breathless youth not to take the shorter Moor Road to Torkertown. The villagers have sent the boy to stop him. The Moor Road, the boy explains, is "accursed" and has not been traveled in a year. A "foul whore" haunts the way, and a score of men have been found dead, their bodies "bruised and torn." Cain, a gaunt Puritan with "deep brooding eyes," is not deterred. He considers it a duty to combat Satan and strikes out across the moor at sunset.

The Hunt on the Moor

As the moon rises, "lean and haggard, like a skull among the stars," Cain hears a strange and eerie laughter from the darkness ahead. It holds no mirth, only "hatred and horror, and soul-destroying terror." Then he hears a scream and the drum of frantic human feet. Cain breaks into a run. He witnesses a man being hunted down, dragged, and slaughtered by an unseen force. The victim, a gore-covered, mutilated thing, finally falls dead at Cain's feet. Then, from the shadows, a shape begins to take form: vague and misty, with "two hideous eyes" that burn with an insanity "transcending earth." It is a "brain-shattering travesty on the human form."

The Nature of the Demon