The Compleat Crow
Brian Lumley
NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY
Hodder and Stoughton.
Copyright ©1997 by Brian Lumley
First published in Great Britain in 1997
by Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline PLC
A New English Library paperback
The right of Brian Lumley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 0 340 69544 7
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Avon Dataset Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warks
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd. St Ives plc, Bungay, Suffolk
Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline PLC
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
DEDICATION
This one is for John the Balladeer, Jules de Grandin, Dr Laban Schrewsbury, Carnacki, John Silence, Van Helsing, and many other members of a fraternity too long to list here. Nor may we forget Prince Zaleski, Nayland Smith or Sherlock Holmes; except that in their case, despite bordering on the supernatural more than once, their deductions were not so much paranormal as 'elementary'.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
From THE CALLER OF THE BLACK, by Brian Lumley, published by Arkham House, Copyright ©1971 by Brian Lumley: The Caller of the Black, The Mirror of Nitocris, De Marigny's Clock. Also from the same collection: Billy's Oak, from THE ARKHAM COLLECTOR, Winter, 1970, Copyright O 1969 by August Derleth, and An Item of Supporting Evidence, from the ARKHAM COLLECTOR, Summer, 1970, Copyright 1970 by August Derleth.
From THE HORROR AT OAKDENE & Others, by Brian Lumley, published by Arkham House, Copyright ©1977 by Brian Lumley: The Viking's Stone, Darghud's Doll.
From WEIRDBOOK 17, edited/published by W Paul Ganley: Lord of the Worms, Copyright © 1983 by Brian Lumley.
From KADATH, July, 1982, edited/published by Francesco Cova: Name and Number, Copyright ©1982 by Brian Lumley.
From WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 1983: Sixty Years of Weird Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Published by Weird Tales Ltd.: The Black Recalled, Copyright ©1983 by Brian Lumley.
CONCERNING TITUS CROW
FROM ONE POINT of view: 'No man ever knew Titus Crow better than I did; and yet his personality was such that whenever I met him — however short the intervening time since our last meeting — I would always be impressed anew by his stature, his leonine good looks, and by the sheer weight of intellect which invariably shone out from behind those searching eyes of his . .
And from another: 'He was tall and broad-shouldered and it was plain to see that in his younger days he had been a handsome man. Now his hair had greyed a little and his eyes, though they were still very bright and observant, bore the imprint of many a year spent exploring — and often, I guessed, discovering — along rarely trodden paths of mysterious and obscure learning . .
Mysterious, obscure learning .. .
Titus Crow is an occult investigator, a psychic sleuth, an agent for Good in the detection and destruction of Evil. During WWII, as a young man, he worked for the War Department; his work in London was concerned with cracking Nazi codes and advising on Hitler's predilection for the occult: those dark forces which Der Fuhrer attempted to enlist in his campaign for world domination.
Following the end of the war, and from then on right through a very active life which encompassed many 'hobbies', he fought Satan wherever he found him and with whichever tools of his trade were available to him
at the time. Crow became, in fact, a world-acknowledged master in such subjects as magic, specifically the so-called 'Black Books' of various necromancers and wizards, and their doubtful arts; in archaeology, paleontology, cryptography, antiques and antiquities in general; in obscure or avant-garde works of art — with particular reference to such as Aubrey Beardsley, Chandler Davies, Hieronymous Bosch, Richard Upton Pickman, etc. — in the dimly forgotten or neglected mythologies of Earth's prime, and in anthropology in general, to mention but a handful.
As a collector, particularly of strange bric-a-brac and outre objets d'art, Crow had few peers in the years before . . . before his transition. But of that latter — change — sufficient has already been recorded elsewhere.
A one-time writer of macabre short stories, he occasionally chronicled his own adventures; at other times such work was undertaken by his lifelong friend Henri-Laurent de Marigny (son of Etienne, the world-famous New Orleans mystic), while others of his adventures were reported by mere acquaintances.
All of the Titus Crow adventures, in short story or novelette form, are here collected for the first time in one volume. They are presented chronologically, as best as may be determined, and along with The Burrowers Beneath and the 'post-transition' novels, they complete the Crow canon.
In addition to the tales in which Titus Crow is a primary actor, there are three other closely related stories: The Mirror of Nitocris, the one and only personal chronicle of Crow's apprentice and fellow traveller, de Marigny; Inception, in which Crow plays only a cameo role; and lastly The Black Recalled, in which nothing of Crow appears at all!
Or does it?
Only one thing remains to be said. In the light of Titus Crow's fascination and lifelong affair with matters of dark concern, much of this volume is naturally taken up with narratives of relentless horror. Therefore — it is not a book for the squeamish.
You have been warned!
Brian Lumley
Brixham, Devon,
England
May 1985
[NOTE to this ebook: the paper original from which this ebook was derived was owned by a rare and accomplished psychic, Magus, Adept, and Ipsissimus. He had turned down one page in this volume, for use in future reference to that part of the book, of special relevance to him regarding meaning and reality of the Cthulhu Cycle Deities. This page is at the beginning of the story:”The Black Recalled”and is noted in that place within this ebook.]
INCEPTION
THE TITLE OF this first story speaks for itself, but without giving too much away — I hope! Another funny thing about the story is this: it is the first Crow tale — but it was written last!
I 'blame' this story on Paul Ganley; when we were talking about a Crow book, he said: 'What about Crow's early years? Why exactly was he the way he was?'