The next sentence uses a common pattern, starting wide and then adding a closer detail.
Villagers were crisscrossing in front of them, their figures briefly illuminated by street lamps.
Again, we get a spooky feeling by making something nice and safe (the friendly villagers) seem out of reach.
Can you find the same pattern in these examples?
Women were talking on the other side of the river, their soft laughter echoing off distant walls.
People walked on the streets high above, their shadows flickering across metal grills in the ceiling.
Swans were swimming on the lake, their white feathers almost lost in the fog.
You might notice another structure in this snippet: each of the clauses has a very similar person + action + circumstance pattern. When you have two clauses with very similar structures, it's called a parallelism.
