Haggopian and Other Stories

As more of “The Black,” the evil blood of Yibb-Tstll, settled on him, Gedney began the frantic brushing motions which I remembered so well, all the while babbling and striving to fight his way past my windowpole. By now the stuff was thick on him, inches deep, a dull, black mantle which covered him from head to toe. Only one eye and his screaming mouth remained visible and his outline was rapidly becoming the bloated duplicate of that hideous shadow I had seen on the night of Chambers’ death.

It was now literally snowing black death in my room and the end had to follow quickly. Gedney’s bulging eye and screaming, frothing mouth seemed to sink into the ever thickening blackness and the noises he was making were instantly shut off. For a few seconds he did a monstrous, shuffling dance of agony, and unable to bear the sight any longer I used the pole to push him off his feet. My prayer that this action would put a quick end to it was answered. He pulsed! Yes, that is the only way I can describe the motion of his smothered body: he pulsed for a moment on the carpet—and then was still. Briefly then, the lights seemed to dim and a rushing wind filled the house. I must have momentarily fainted for I awoke to find myself stretched out full length on the carpet with the shower still hissing behind me. As mysteriously as it had come, “The Black” had departed, back to that other-dimensional body which housed it, taking Gedney’s soul and leaving his lifeless shell behind…

Later, after a stiff drink, I opened the envelope and found the flaking, brittle shards I had expected. Later still, with the rapidly stiffening, lolling corpse beside me, I drove out towards Gedney’s country home. I parked his car in a clump of trees, off the road, and in the small hours made my way back on foot to Blowne House. The brightening air was strangely sweet.

Haggopian

This one was written in mid-1970, by which time it seems I had improved somewhat! Still in the Army, I was a recruiting Sergeant in Leicester. When business was slow you would find me scribbling away at my desk. I did send a copy of “Haggopian” to Derleth at Arkham House, but he was ill and in 1971 died tragically young, leaving a gaping hole in the publishing of weird fiction which no one else seemed capable of plugging. The story was accepted by Jerry Page, for his magazine Coven 13 (later Witchcraft & Sorcery)—which almost immediately ceased publication! Finally, via my agent, Kirby McCauley, it found a home in the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and appeared in the issue for June 1973. Haggopian was, and still is, one of my personal favourites.

I

Richard Haggopian, perhaps the world’s greatest authority on ichthyology and oceanography, to say nothing of the many allied sciences and subjects, was at last willing to permit himself to be interviewed. I was jubilant, elated—I could not believe my luck! At least a dozen journalists before me, some of them so high up in literary circles as to be actually offended by so mundane an occupational description, had made the futile journey to Kletnos in the Aegean to seek Haggopian the Armenian out; but only my application had been accepted. Three months earlier, in early June, Hartog of Time had been refused, and before him Mannhausen of Weltzukunft, and therefore my own superiors had seen little hope for me. And yet the name of Jeremy Belton was not unknown in journalism; I had been lucky on a number of so-called “hopeless” cases before. Now, it seemed, this luck of mine was holding. Richard Haggopian was away on yet another ocean trip, but I had been asked to wait for him.

It is not hard to say why Haggopian excited such interest among the ranks of the world’s foremost journalists; any man with his scientific and literary talents, with a beautiful young wife, with an island-in-the-sun, and (perhaps most important of all), with a blatantly negative attitude toward even the most beneficial publicity, would certainly have attracted the same interest. And to top all this Haggopian was a millionaire!