Haggopian and Other Stories

All of which to explain why, and not for the first time, I have dedicated a volume—this volume—to the memory of August Derleth…

Brian Lumley.

The Caller of the Black

One of my first stories, written in 1967 before any of my work had been published, “Caller”is derivative not only of H.P. Lovecraft’s work but also the work of others, more especially of August Derleth. Looking back I think this was probably a deliberate ploy; it was the sort of story that Derleth published, the sort I was reading in his collections and anthologies, and it was a Cthulhu Mythos story. In short I had been “studying the markets,” but the only market I had going for my work was Arkham House! Anyway, Derleth liked the story and it eventually saw print in 1971, in my first book from Arkham House, which was published under the same title: “The Caller of The Black”. Incidentally, the capitalized definite article in the tale’s title is also deliberate, because as you will discover, “The” Black is pretty much a one-of-a-kind sort of thing…thank goodness!

On monoliths did ancients carve their warning

To those who use night’s forces lest they bring

A doom upon themselves that when, in mourning,

They be the mourned…

—Justin Geoffrey

One night, not so long ago, I was disturbed, during the study of some of the ancient books it is my pleasure to own, by a knock at the solid doors of my abode, Blowne House. Perhaps it would convey a more correct impression to say that the assault upon my door was more a frenzied hammering than a knock. I knew instinctively from that moment that something out of the ordinary was to come—nor did this premonition let me down.

It was blowing strongly that night and when I opened the door to admit the gaunt stranger on my threshold the night wind gusted in with him a handful of autumn leaves which, with quick, jerky motions, he nervously brushed from his coat and combed from his hair. There was a perceptible aura of fear about this man and I wondered what it could be that inspired such fear. I was soon to learn. Somewhat shakily he introduced himself as being Cabot Chambers.

Calmed a little, under the influence of a good brandy, Chambers sat himself down in front of my blazing fire and told a story which even I, and I have heard many strange things, found barely credible. I knew of certain legends which tell that such things once were, long ago in Earth’s pre-dawn youth, but was of the belief that most of this Dark Wisdom had died at the onset of the present reign of civilized man—or, at the very latest, with the Biblical Burning of the Books. My own ample library of occult and forbidden things contains such works as Feery’s Original Notes on The Necronomicon, the abhorrent Cthaat Aquadingen, Sir Amery Wendy-Smith’s translation of the G’harne Fragments (incomplete and much abridged)—a tattered and torn copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts (possibly faked)—a literally priceless Cultes des Goules and many others, including such anthropological source books as the Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s Witch Cult, yet my knowledge of the thing of which Chambers spoke was only very vague and fragmentary.

But I digress. Chambers, as I have said, was a badly frightened man and this is the story he told me: