Haggopian and Other Stories

But there, I’ve held off from telling the important part—and for the same reason Joe Borszowski held off: I don’t want to be thought a madman. Well, I’m not mad, Johnny, but I don’t suppose for a single moment that you’ll take my story seriously—nor, for that matter, will Seagasso suspend any of its North-Sea commitments—but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I tried to warn you.

Now I ask you to remember what Borszowski said about great, alien beings lying asleep and imprisoned beneath the bed of the sea; “gods” capable of controlling the actions of lesser creatures, capable of bending the very weather to their wills—and then explain the sight I saw before I found myself floundering in that mad ocean as the old Sea-Maid went down.

It was simply a gusher, Johnny, a gusher—but one such as I’d never seen before in my whole life and hope never to have to see again. For instead of reaching to the heavens in one solid black column—it pulsed upwards, pumping up in short, strong jets at a rate of about one spurt in every five seconds—and it wasn’t oil, Johnny—oh God!—it wasn’t oil! Booze or none I swear I wasn’t drunk; not so drunk as to make me colour-blind, at any rate!

Like I said, old Borszowski was right, he must have been right. There was one of those great god-creatures down there, and our drill had chopped right into the thing!

Whatever it was it had blood pretty much like ours—good and thick and red—and a great heart strong enough to pump that blood up the bore-hole right to the surface!

Think of it, that monstrous heart beating down there in the rocks beneath the sea! How could we have guessed that right from the beginning our instruments had been working at maximum efficiency—that those odd, regular blips recorded on the seismograph had been nothing more than the beating of a great submarine heart?

All of which explains, I hope, my resignation.

Bernard “Pongo” Jordan,

Bridlington,

Yorks.

Name and Number

In the tradition of a good many writers of weird fiction before me (E. A. Poe, Seabury Quinn, and Manly Wade Wellman spring most easily to mind) I created my own”occult investigator” in the shape of Titus Crow. He featured first in “The Caller of The Black”, (the first story in this current volume) but was destined for greater adventures in many a story (not to mention several novels) that were still to come. “Name and Number” is one such story. Written in 1981, just one month after I left the Army (following twenty-two years’ service), it first appeared in Francesco Cova’s excellent glossy Anglo-Italian fanzine (Kadath), in the 5th issue, dated July 1982. Nominated for a British Fantasy Award, which it didn’t win, its most recent appearance was in TOR Books’ Harry Keogh: Necroscope, & Other Weird Heroes. But the best (in my opinion) Titus Crow story, “Lord of the Worms”, can be found in this book’s companion volume…

I

Of course, nothing now remains of Blowne House, the sprawling bungalow retreat of my dear friend and mentor Titus Crow, destroyed by tempestuous winds in a freak storm on the night of 4 October 1968, but…

Knowing all I know, or knew, of Titus Crow, perhaps it has been too easy for me to pass off the disastrous events of that night simply as a vindictive attack of dark forces; and while that is exactly what they were, I am now given to wonder if perhaps there was not a lot more to it than met the eye.