Brian Lumley - The Caller of the Black

[andydecker]

Brian Lumley – The Caller of the Black (Arkham House, 1971, 235 pages)


Cover: Herb Arnold
(Cover found on the net. Thanks to the original scanner.)

Contents:
A Thing About Cars!
The Cyprus Shell (1968)
Billy's Oak (1970)
The Writer in the Garret
The Caller of the Black
The Mirror of Nitocris
The Night Sea-Maid Went Down
The Thing from the Blasted Heath
An Item of Supporting Evidence
Dylath—Leen
De Marigny's Clock
Ambler's Inspiration
In the Vaults Beneath
The Pearl

This is Brian Lumley's first story-collection, published by August Derleth's Arkham House. Some of those stories were published before also by Derleth in his magazine The Arkham Collector. It was a while before Lumley managed to get into more mainstream markets. Derleth was undoubtedly the man who started his career as a writer.

The content is a mixture of Mythos stories and some horror stories. Some work naturally better than others, but one can already see the writer's strength and weaknesses. Here is also introduced Lumley's first hero, British occultist Titus Crow, and his friend De Marigny. A lot of the non-Mythos stories were never reprinted. Fun fact: According to the ISFDB this was reviewed by David Sutton in Shadow, June 1972. It would be interesting to see what he thought of this newcomer back then.

The collection is available again in digital edition.

A Thing about Cars!
The narrator, a soldier abroad, looses contact with his brother in England, whose wife and later his son die in car accidents. When he finally finds him in the British country, the brother has lost his mind and having his vengeance on cars and drivers.

High in atmosphere, the story is too rambling and the end could be better written.

The Cyprus Shell
A soldier tells the story why in Cyprus his appetite for seafood and especially for shellfish was killed forever. There was young corporal Jobling who was a conchologist. He found this unknown shell including snail 20 feet below. He anchored it with a nylon-line to the rock and got his mind switched with it.

Lumley's first published story. Told in the form of a letter this has a novel idea, a creepy and convincing atmosphere and a well realized ending. The Mediterranean setting suited Lumley, as he later often proved. The form is rather typical of the writer: a slow start, broad strokes, but then he delivers.

Billy's Oak
The first person narrator is writing a non-fiction book titled Forbidden Books. He seeks help from occultist Titus Crow, who owns a copy of the infamous Chaat Aquadingen. The writer doesn't believe in the supernatural, but Crow tells him the tale of the ghost of Billy's oak.

One of the first Titus Crow stories. A clever idea, this is despite its length - the usual compilation and name-dropping of Mythos lore included - more of a vignette. The harmless and abrupt ending could be right out Spellbound or Misty, though.

TBC …

[piglingbland]

Yes, I did indeed review THE CALLER OF THE BLACK In my fanzine Shadow, in 1972. A mere 52 years ago!! Now that Brian has passed on I guess a re-appraisal of his large body of work is somewhat overdue. Dark Horizons (journal of The British Fantasy Society) published my piece "Brian Lumley: Latter Day Lovecraftian" in 1976. Here's the review of THE CALLER OF THE BLACK, in response to Andy Decker's suggestion:

SHADOW, ISSUE 17, June 1972

THE CALLER OF THE BLACK, by Brian Lumley. Arkham House1971. (£2.10 /235pp). Reviewed by David A. Sutton.

A Thing About Cars begins prosaically enough, in rather the Lovecraft fashion, but climaxes in a glut of pure grue. While one would normally find the tale of straight-horror more or less a debasement of the genre, this story is so unusual in its obsession that besides being thoroughly horrifying, it held a certain technical fascination so that if wasn't morally objectionable. The line, however, between a finely worked climax and shocking grue too much to stomach is very, very delicate, but I think Mr. Lumley succeeds-in being restrained enough. One wonders, though, whether another reader of slightly finer sensibilities will feel. the same? Mind you, its choice as first story in the book, I would have thought, is a bad one.

The Cyprus Shell is an unusual tale of the supernatural, similar to The Deep-Sea Conch (in Dark Things), but not as convincing I thought. Brian has mentioned in correspondence that he would like to see Conch and The Cyprus Shell published as a diptych since they are more than vaguely connected, and I think there is something to be said in doing so. This tale, it will be remembered, appeared in Derleth's Arkham Collector.

Billy's Oak will also be remembered from The Arkham Collector, a short ghost story with a twist ending that doesn't have much impact unfortunately. The story has two interesting sub-plots besides the ghost itself, that of a "forbidden book" and also a weird, unearthly clock, both of which sounded more interesting than the story which unfolded.

A writer's nightmare, The Writer in the Garret doesn’t work at all well since the end has little tangible connection with the rest of the plot. However, the descriptive passages of the destitute and incompetent author will hold terrors for anyone who writes fiction.

The title story has a particularly devilish piece of monstrousness as its horror, but of course the trappings of the story are in typical pastiche-HPL form: the references to ancient evils before mankind, the forbidden books of occult lore and so forth. The Caller of the Black is a nightmarish fiction though, magnificently outre is the horror, and it reminded me very vaguely of Leiber's A Bit of the Dark World.

The Mirror Of Nicrotis deals with, as its title suggests, a mirror which opens onto the "other" world at the rather melodramatic hour of midnight. The tale uses the now overworked "diary" format which ends at the crucial moment leaving the reader - in the story - to suffer the same fate.

Judging by Rising with Surtsey (Dark Things) Brian Lumley has an affinity in writing horror stories with aspects of the sea or sea life with a contemporary slant. The Deep Sea Conch and The Cyprus-Shell show this too, and The Night the 'Sea-Maid' Went Down is a modern story about a North Sea Oil Rig whose drill bores bring up several of the star-Shaped Elder Signs, by which means - in the Cthulhu Mythos - the Old Ones are imprisoned in their eternal sleep. This one climaxes on a note of very well wrought blood curdling horror. All in all, a Cthulhu tale with an extraordinarily refreshing slant, which most Mythos lovers will find enjoyable, and which in its way, is about as weird as anything W.W. Hodgson found at sea in his tales.

As a follow-up to Lovecraft's The Colour out of Space, Brian Lumley offers, The Things From the Blasted Heath, where a rare plant collector acquires a particularly bizarre growth from the said "blasted heath"; a pale, veined bush which glows at night. The horror is particularly nauseous, but handled. with great care. The theme is a trifle old-hat however.

Quite a number of Mr. Lumley's tales contain the character of a collector of unusual, archaeological artifacts: Titus Crow, and An Item of Supporting Evidence is one of these. The story isn't at all macabre and is more an intellectual exercise where Crow produces a piece of evidence to support his apparently nonsensical weird tale about a faceless monster in Roman Britain.

The next tale absorbs a number of the Lovecraft themes and places and is a dream-fantasy set in the 'lands about fabled Ulthar. Dylath-Leen is a story of evil and sorcery in which the protagonist visits the world of dream three times in an attempt to rid the town of its evil visitors. I can't really make up my mind about this one - a slow moving but quite readable story.

In answer to my plea for a story about the unusual clock mentioned earlier in Billy's Oak, Brian Lumley offers, De Marigny's Clock. Carved from a block of apparently solid wood, with no openings, this timepiece, shaped like a coffin and with four hands that move to no earthly timekeeping, is in fact a dimensional gate to a monstrous otherworld. In the story Titus Crow's house is invaded by two amusing thugs who are looking for money. Needless to say, they get more than they bargained for when they decide that the loot is inside the clock. One gets the impression that the author was trying to find a new situation into which he could "drop" mythos lore, but what comes out in this case is a seemingly tongue-in-cheek tale of a couple of real bungler-burglars.

Ambler's Inspiration is mostly camp with direct references to Arkham House, authors like C. M. Eddy, Lovecraft and actor Chris Lee; and reads much like an SF-cum-mad vivisectionist story.

The longest piece in the book, In the Vaults Beneath is a pure Lovecraft-type yarn, an extravaganza spanning right back to At the Mountains of Madness and even a hint of More contemporary mythos work such as Wilson's The Philosopher's Stone. All the mythos elements are here, history, archaeology, prehistory, lost lands, weird outposts, all the scientific aspects of the Cthulhu Mythology well-wrought by Mr. Lumley into a fascinating novelette which aficionados will find a joy to read. The author uses many new ideas of his own invention and the story's ending is, while easily guessable, quite deliciously gruesome and inventive.

Finally, The Pearl, another "fishy" story, set in Cyprus, where the protagonist finds giant oysters with giant pearls inside. The climax is unexpected, but not overtly disturbing and I felt more sorry for the death of the poor oyster by spear-gun.

I think THE CALLER OF THE BLACK is a highly readable collection of tales, most of them written in the framework of the Mythos, which will of great interest to all lovers of Lovecraft’s pantheon. It is, however, an uneven, anthology, with, here and there, stories which lack conviction and which poorly utilise the medium of the terror tale. Mind you, the good stories - and most are in this bracket - are genuinely conceived and well thought out. Mr. Lumley handles the use of the Cthulhu Mythos with care and I think enhances it. The writing falters here and there, but don't be put off, a more entertaining collection of original shorts by a single author would be very hard to find these days.

[andydecker]

Thank you so much for your efforts, David. That was interesting to read.