The Compleat Crow

The Compleat Crow
© 1987 by Brian Lumley. All rights reserved.

Dust jacket and interior illustrations Copyright © 2014 by Bob Eggleton. 

All rights reserved.

Print version interior design Copyright © 2014 by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

ELECTRONIC ISBN

978-1-59606-656-4

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

subterraneanpress.com

brianlumley.com

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 © 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.

This one is for John the Balladeer, Jules de Grandin, Dr Laban Shrewsbury, 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.”

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 Führer
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 outré
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 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

Torquay, Devon,

England

May 2012

December 1916. One week before Christmas.

London, in the vicinity of Wapping, an hour before dawn…

Mist-shrouded façades of warehouses formed square, stony faces, bleakly foreboding with their blind eyes of boarded windows; Dickensian still, the cobbled riverside streets rang to the frantic clatter of madly racing footsteps. Except for the figure of a man, flying, his coat flapping like broken wings, nothing stirred. Just him…and his
pursuer
: a second male figure, tall, utterly silent, flowing like a fog-spawned wraith not one hundred yards behind.

As to who these two were: their names do not matter. Suffice to say that they were of completely opposite poles, and that the one who feared and ran so noisily was a good man and entirely human, because of which he’d been foolish…

And so he fled, that merely human being, clamorously, with pounding heart, tearing the mist like cobwebs in a tunnel and leaving a yawning hole behind; and his inexorable pursuer flowing forward through that hole, with never the sound of a footfall, made more terrible
because
of his soundlessness.

London, and the fugitive had thought he would be safe here. Panting, he skidded to a halt where a shaft of light lanced smokily down from a high window and made the cobbles shiny bright. In a black doorway a broken derelict sprawled like a fallen scarecrow, moaned about the night’s chill and clutched his empty bottle. Coarse laughter came from above, the chink of glasses and a low-muttered, lewd suggestion. Again the laughter, a woman’s, thick with lust.

No refuge here, where the air itself seemed steeped in decay and ingrown vice—but at least there was the light, and humanity too, albeit dregs.

The fugitive hugged the wall, fused with it and became one with the shadows, gratefully gulped at the sodden, reeking river air and looked back the way he had come. And there at the other end of the street, silhouetted against a rolling bank of mist from the river, motionless now and yet full of an awesome kinetic energy, like the still waters of a dam before the gates are opened—

The guttural laughter came again from above, causing the fleeing man to start. Shadow-figures moved ganglingly, apishly together in the beam of light falling on the street, began tearing at each other’s clothing. Abruptly the light was switched off, the window slammed shut, and the night and the mist closed in. And along the street the silent pursuer once more took up the chase.

With his strength renewed a little but knowing he was tiring rapidly now, the fugitive pushed himself free of the wall and began to run again, forcing his legs to pump and his lungs to suck and his heart to pound as desperately as before. But he was almost home, almost safe. Sanctuary lay just around the next corner.

“London”…“home”…“sanctuary.” Words once full of meaning, but in his present situation almost meaningless. Could anywhere be safe ever again? Cairo should have been, but instead, with the European War spilling over into the Middle-East, it had been fraught. Paris had been worse: a seething cauldron on the boil and about to explode shatteringly. And in Tunisia…In Tunisia the troubles had seemed endless, where the French fought a guerilla war on all sides, not least with the Sahara’s Sanusi.

The Sanusi, yes—and it was from the secret desert temple of an ancient Sanusi sect that the fugitive had stolen the Elixir. That had been his folly—it was
why
he was a fugitive.

Half-way round the world and back their Priest of the Undying Dead had chased him, drawing ever closer, and here in London it seemed that at last the chase was at an end. He could run no further. It was finished. His only chance was the sanctuary, that secret place remembered from the penniless, friendless childhood of a waif. It had been more than thirty years ago, true, but still he remembered it clearly. And if a long-forsaken God had not turned from him entirely…

Wrapped in mist he rounded the corner, came out of the mazy streets and onto the river’s shoulder. The Thames with all its stenches, its poisons, its teeming rats and endless sewage—and its sanctuary. Nothing had changed, all was exactly as he remembered it. Even the mist was his friend now, for it cloaked him and turned him an anonymous grey, and he knew that from here on he could find his way blindfold. Indeed he might as well be blind, the way the milky mist rolled up and swallowed him.

With hope renewed he plunged on across the last deserted street lying parallel to the river, found the high stone wall he knew would be there, followed it north for fifty yards to where spiked iron palings guarded its topmost tier against unwary climbers. For immediately beyond that wall at this spot the river flowed sluggish and deep and the wall was sheer, so that a man might easily drown if he should slip and fall. But the fugitive did not intend to fall; he was still agile as the boy he’d once been, except that now he also had a grown man’s strength.

Without pause he jumped, easily caught the top of the wall, at once transferred his grip to the ironwork. He drew himself up, in a moment straddled the treacherous spikes, swung over and slid down the palings on the other side. And now—now, dear God—only keep the pursuer at bay; only let him stay back there in the mist, out of sight, and not come surging forward with his rotten eyes aglow and his crumbling nose sniffing like that of some great dead nightmare hound!

And now too let memory stay sharp and serve the fugitive well, let it not fail him for a single moment, and let everything continue to be as it had been. For if anything had changed beyond that ancient, slimy wall…

…But it had not!

For here, remembered of old, was his marker—the base of a lone paling, bent to one side, like a single idle soldier in a perfect rank—where if he swung his feet a little to the left, in empty space above the darkly gurgling river—

—His left foot made contact with a stone sill, at which he couldn’t suppress the smallest cry of relief. Then, clinging to the railings with one hand, he tremblingly reached down the other to find and grip an arch of stone; and releasing his grip on the railings entirely, he drew himself down and into the hidden embrasure in the river’s wall. For this was the entrance to his sanctuary.

But no time to pause and thank whichever lucky stars still shone on him; no, for back there in the roiling mist the pursuer was following still, unerringly tracking him, he was sure. Or tracking the Elixir?

Today, for the first time, that idea had dawned on him. It had come as he walked the chill December streets, when patting his overcoat’s inside pocket, for a moment he had thought the vial lost. Oh, and how he’d panicked then! But in a shop doorway where his hands trembled violently, finally he’d found the tiny glass bottle where it had fallen through a hole into the lining of his coat, and then in the grey light of wintry, war-depleted London streets, he had gazed at it—and at its contents.

The Elixir—which might as well be water! A few drops of crystal-clear water, yes, that was how it appeared. But if you held it up to the light in a certain way…

The fugitive started, held his breath, stilled his thoughts and brought his fleeting mind back to the present, the Now. Was that a sound from the street above? The faintest echo of a footfall on the cobbles three or four feet overhead?

He crouched there in the dark embrasure, waited, listened with terror-sensitized ears—heard only the pounding of his own heart, his own blood singing in his ears. He had paused here too long, had ignored the Doom hanging over his immortal soul to favour the entirely mortal fatigue of bone and muscle. But now, once more, he forced himself to move. Some rubble blocked the way—blocks of stone, fallen from the low ceiling, perhaps—but he crawled over it, his back brushing the damp stonework overhead. Small furry rodents squealed and fled past him toward the faint light of the entrance, tumbling into the river with tiny splashes. The ceiling dripped with moisture, where nitre stained the walls in faintly luminous patches.

And when at last the fugitive had groped his way well back along the throat of the passage, only then dared he fumble out a match and strike it to flame.

The shadows fled at once; he crouched and peered all about, then sighed and breathed easier; all was unchanged, the years flown between then and now had altered nothing. This was “his” place, his secret place, where he’d come as a boy to escape the drunken wrath of a brutish stepfather. Well, that old swine was dead now, pickled in cheap liquor and undeservingly buried in the grounds of a nearby church. Good luck to him! But the sanctuary remained.

The match burned down, its flame touching the fugitive’s fingers. He dropped it, swiftly struck another, pushed on along the subterranean passage.

Under a ceiling less than five feet high and arched with ancient stone, he must keep his back bowed; at his elbows the walls gave him six inches to spare on both sides. But while he could go faster now, still he must go quietly for a while yet. The follower had tracked him half-way round the world, tracked him supernaturally. And who could say but that he might track him here, too?

Again he paused, scratched at the stubble on his chin, wondered about the Elixir. Oh, that was what his pursuer wanted, sure enough—but it was not
all
he wanted. No, for his chief objective was the life of the thief! A thief, yes, which was what he had been all of his miserable life. At first a petty thief, then a burglar of some skill and daring (and eventually of some renown, which in the end had forced him abroad), finally a looter of foreign tombs and temples.

Tombs and temples…

Again he thought of the Elixir, that tiny vial in his pocket. If only he had known then…but he had not known. He had thought those damned black Sanusi wizards kept treasure in that dune-hidden place, the tribal treasures of their ancestors; or at least, so he’d been informed by Erik Kuphnas in Tunis. Kuphnas, the dog, himself one of the world’s foremost experts in the occult. “Ah!” (he had said), “but they also keep the Elixir there—which is all that interests me. Go there, enter, steal! Keep what you will, but only bring me the Elixir. And never work again, my friend, for that’s how well I’ll pay you…”

And he had done it! All of his skill went into it, and a deal of luck, too—and for what? No treasure at all, and only the tiny vial in his pocket to show for his trouble. And
what
trouble! Even now he shuddered, thinking back on those corpse-laden catacombs under the desert.

Straight back to Tunis he’d taken the vial, to Erik Kuphnas where he waited. And: “Do you have it?” The black magician had been frantically eager.

“I might have it,” the fugitive had been tantalisingly noncommittal. “I might even sell it—if only I knew what it was. But the truth this time, Erik, for I’ve had it with lies and tales of priceless treasure.”

And Kuphnas had at once answered:

“No use, that vial, to you. No use to anyone who is not utterly pure and completely innocent.”

“Oh? And are you those things?”

How Kuphnas had glared at him then. “No,” he had answered slowly. “I am not—but neither am I a fool. I would use it carefully, sparingly, and so dilute as to be almost totally leeched of its power. At first, anyway—until I knew what I was dealing with. As to what it is: no man knows that, except perhaps a certain Sanusi wizard. The legends have it that he was a chief three hundred years ago—and that now he’s high-priest of the cult of the Undying Dead!”

“What?” the fugitive had snorted, and laughed. “
What?
And you believe such mumbo-jumbo, such utter rubbish?” Then his voice had hardened. “Now for the last time, tell me:
what is it?
”

At that Kuphnas had jumped up, strode to and fro across the fine rugs of his study. “Fool!” he’d hissed, glaring as before. “How may any mere man of the 20th Century ‘know’ what it is? It’s the essence of mandrake, the sweat on the upper lip of a three-day corpse, six grey grains of Ibn Ghazi’s powder. It’s the humor of a zombie’s iris, the mist rising up from the Pool of All Knowledge, the pollen-laden breath of a black lotus. Man, I don’t ‘know’ what it is! But I know something of what it can do…”

“I’m still listening,” the fugitive had pressed.

“To one who is pure, innocent, unblemished, the Elixir is a crystal ball, a shewstone, an oracle. A single drop will make such a man—how shall we say?—AWARE!”

“Aware?”

“Yes, but when you say it, say and think it in capitals—AWARE!”

“Ah! It’s a drug—it will heighten a man’s senses.”

“Rather, his perceptions—if you will admit the difference. And it is
not
a drug. It is the Elixir.”

“Would you recognize it?”

“Instantly!”

“And what will you pay for it?”

“If it’s the real thing—fifty thousand of your pounds!”

“Cash?” (Suddenly the fugitive’s throat had been very dry.)

“Ten thousand now, the rest tomorrow morning.”

And then the fugitive had held out his hand and opened it. There in his palm had lain the vial, a tiny stopper firmly in its neck.

Kuphnas had taken it from him into hands that shook, held it up eagerly to the light from his window. And the vial had lit up at once in a golden glow, as if the occultist had captured a small part of the sun itself! And: “Yes!” he had hissed then. “Yes, this
is
the Elixir!”

At that the fugitive had snatched it back, held out his hand again. “My ten thousand—on account,” he’d said. “Also, we’ll need an eye-dropper.”

Kuphnas had fetched the money, asked: “And what is this about an eye-dropper?”

“But isn’t it obvious? You have given me one fifth of my money, and I will give you one fifth of the Elixir. Three drops, as I reckon it. And the rest tomorrow, when I’m paid.”

Kuphnas had protested, but the fugitive would not be swayed. He gave him three drops, no more. And five minutes later when he left him, already the occultist had been calculating the degree of dilution required for his first experiment. His first, and very likely
only
experiment. Certainly his last.

For when with the dawn the fugitive had returned and passed into Kuphnas’ high-walled courtyard and up the fig-shaded marble steps to his apartments, he had found the exterior louvre doors open; likewise the Moorishly ornate iron lattice beyond them; and in Kuphnas’ study itself—