Haggopian and Other Stories

“A what?” she said, apparently stunned, but not yet outraged. She seemed more surprised than shocked. Maybe that in itself should have told him something, but he was too far gone now—too angry with himself that he’d succumbed. She was WOMAN, and they were all the same. “A tart! A piece! A slimy bloody hooker!”

“Ah!” she said, with a lot of emphasis; and she smiled at him with her suddenly mobile, swiftly metamorphosing face. Her left arm held him tightly and her legs wound about him. Her left hand grew three-inch claws sharp as needles that sank all the way into his back. One of them pierced his spine expertly to paralyse him, so that his scream came out a shrill, gasping whistle. “No,” she said, in a voice which flowed like her unbelievable features, “not a hooker—just a hook!”

He shook on her, jerking like he was ready to come again, vibrating in agony—the agony of knowing, and in knowing there was nothing he could do about it. Her right arm uncoiled from his back and lifted the pager from the bedside table, and something sharp and shiny pressed its button.

There came a crackle of static, and something else that might have been speech, might even have been a question. But not in any language of Earth. She answered it in the same—tongue?—and sank a second needle into Slater’s spinal column to still his twitching and calm him down a little.

Before the darkness came, he realised he knew beyond any reasonable doubt that she’d been speaking through the fissure, and also that he knew what she’d said.

“OK,” she’d said. “You can reel us in now…”

The Black Recalled

It was my intention originally to use “Caller” and “The Black Recalled” as a diptych, with the first to open the book and the second, its sequel, to close it. But then I decided that the end should in fact be THE END…I know you’ll get my meaning when you reach “the end” of this volume’s final story. Anyway, this Titus Crow story (wherein paradoxically our occultist hero is never actually seen!)was commissioned by Bob Weinberg for the Book of the World Fantasy Convention, 1983. Paul Ganley later got me to write a Titus Crow “origin” story, “Lord of the Worms”, and I went one better by following that up with an even earlier “origin” short story entitled “Inception”. Now, that last was not a Mythos tale, but it was done for a special reason: so that Paul could put the entire thing together in a book called—no prizes for guessing it—The Compleat Crow, which wasn’t in fact complete because of the Crow novels (six of them!) that were still out there somewhere! But at least we’d covered the short stories and novellas. Anyway, Paul published all the novels, too, so that was that all squared up.

Do you remember Gedney?” Geoffrey Arnold asked of his companion Ben Gifford, as they stood on the weed-grown gravel drive before a shattered, tumbled pile of masonry whose outlines roughly suggested a once-imposing, sprawling dwelling. A cold November wind blew about the two men, tugging at their overcoats, and an equally chilly moon was just beginning to rise over the near-distant London skyline.

“Remember him?” Gifford answered after a moment. “How could I forget him? Isn’t that why we chose to meet here tonight—to remember him? Well, I certainly do—I remember fearing him mightily! But not as much as I feared this chap,” and he nodded his head toward the nettle- and weed-sprouting ruin.