The Black Stone

For other uses, see Black Stone (disambiguation).

Short story by Robert E. Howard

"The Black Stone"

Short story by Robert E. Howard
Country| United States
Language| English
Genre(s)| Lovecraftian horror
Publication
Published in| Weird Tales
Publication type| Periodical
Media type| Pulp magazine
Publication date| November 1931
Series| Cthulhu Mythos

"The Black Stone" is a horror short story by American writer Robert E. Howard, first published in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales. The story introduces the character of Justin Geoffrey, a mad poet, and the fictitious book Unaussprechlichen Kulten by Friedrich von Junzt. The story is part of the Cthulhu Mythos, and follows the same pattern and has the same features as much of H. P. Lovecraft's classic work.

## Synopsis[edit]

The story opens with an unnamed narrator being gripped with curiosity by a brief reference to the Black Stone in the book Nameless Cults, aka The Black Book, by Friedrich von Junzt. He researches the artifact but finds little further information. The ancient (though its age is debated) monolith stands near to the village of Stregoicavar ("meaning something like Witch-Town") in the mountains of Hungary. There are many superstitions surrounding it, for instance anyone who sleeps nearby will suffer nightmares for the rest of their life and anyone who visits the stone on Midsummer Night will go insane and die. Though the Monolith is hated and disliked by all in the village, it is said by the Innskeeper that "Any man who lay hammer or maul to it die evilly", so the villagers simply shun the stone.

The narrator decides to travel to Stregoicavar on vacation. Along the way he hears of the local history and sees the site of an old battlefield, where Count Boris Vladinoff fought the invading Suleiman the Magnificent in 1526. Local stories say that Vladinoff took shelter in a ruined castle and was brought a lacquered case that had been found near the body of Selim Bahadur, "the famous Turkish scribe and historian", who had died in a recent battle. The unnamed contents scared the Count but at that moment Turkish artillery destroyed a part of the castle and he got buried in the rubble, where his bones still remain.

Reaching the village, the narrator interviews some of the villagers. The current inhabitants are not the original people of the village - they were all wiped out by the Turkish invasion in 1526. They are said to have been of a different, unknown, race than the Hungarians with a reputation for raiding their villages and kidnapping women and children. A school teacher reveals that according to legend, the original name for the village was Xuthltan and the stone was worshiped by pagans at one time (although they probably did not erect it themselves). The black stone is "octagonal in shape, some sixteen feet in height and about a foot and a half thick."

A week after arriving the narrator realizes that it is Midsummer Night and makes his way to the stone. He falls asleep an hour before midnight but wakes to find the chanting and dancing people around the stone. After much dancing, during which the narrator is unable to move or do anything but observe, a baby is killed in sacrifice. Shortly a giant toad-like monster appears at the top of the stone and a second sacrifice, a young girl, is offered to it. The narrator faints at this point and decides that it was a dream when he wakes again. But slowly, he realizes that it was no dream. He remembers that Selim Bahadur's case was still with the Count's bones which hadn't been disturbed. The narrator unearths the nobleman's remains and with them, the case belonging to the Turk. He translates the account written by the historian and is horrified by his account of what happened near the Black Stone, how the monstrous creature slaughtered at least ten men before being killed by steel weapons blessed by Muhammad. He realizes that he beheld the cultist worshipers' ghosts bowing before a ghost. He flings the contents of the case into a river.

## Characters[edit]

### Justin Geoffrey[edit]

(1898-1926) A poet who wrote "The People of the Monolith" after visiting the village of Stregoicavar and died "screaming in a madhouse" five years before the events of the story. He is remembered by the villagers as acting in an odd manner, with a habit of mumbling to himself. The story opens with this stanza, which is attributed to him:

> They say foul things of Old Times still lurk
>  In dark forgotten corners of the world.
>  And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights.
>  Shapes pent in Hell.

Lovecraft mentions Geoffrey in The Thing on the Doorstep, saying that he is a friend of Edward Derby, the protagonist of the tale. Lovecraft states in the story that Geoffrey "died screaming in a madhouse in 1926 after a visit to a sinister, ill-regarded village in Hungary".[1] This is a detail invented by Lovecraft and not part of Howard's original story.

### Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt[edit]

(1795-1840) An eccentric German poet and philosopher noted for his extensive travels and membership in myriad secret societies. He is mainly remembered as the author of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults or The Black Book), which was published shortly before his death. Six months after his return from an expedition to Mongolia, he was found dead in a locked and bolted chamber with taloned finger marks on his throat.

Robert M. Price compares the death of Von Junzt to the demise of Abdul Alhazred, author of the Necronomicon: "[In] Lovecraft's tongue-in-cheek 'History of the Necronomicon'...he recounts the doom of Abdul Alhazred. 'He is said by Ebn Khallikan ... to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses.' ...And 'what of the monstrous hand that strangled out his life?' In both cases, the coroner reports the cause of death as a phantom monster suspiciously like the one that rent Lovecraft himself limb-from-limb in Robert Bloch's 'The Shambler From The Stars'."[2]

At the time of his death, von Junzt was working on a second book, the contents of which are unknown since it was burnt to ashes by his friend, the Frenchman Alexis Ladeau. Having read the book before destroying it, Ladeau afterwards slit his own throat with a razor. Von Junzt was one of the few people to have read the Greek version of the Necronomicon.

### Narrator[edit]

Almost nothing is known about the story's anonymous narrator. He is very learned, with extensive knowledge of history and anthropology, and has read much on the subject of ancient religion, including obscure or bizarre authors like von Junzt. His tastes in poetry go to the obscure and weird too, such as Geoffrey.

## Reception[edit]

S. T. Joshi has called the story Howard's only "explicit Cthulhu Mythos story". He goes on to say that the toad-like monster in the story is likely Tsathoggua, the toad god created by Clark Ashton Smith. He cites as evidence the fact that Howard had already referenced Tsathoggua in an earlier tale, "The Children Of The Night".[3] Robert Weinberg and E. P. Berglund, in their 1973 book The Reader's Guide To The Cthulhu Mythos, stated that "The Black Stone" was "the best Mythos story not written by Lovecraft himself."[4]

## References[edit]

1. ^ Lovecraft, H. P., Klinger, L. S., & Moore, A. (2014). The new annotated H. P. Lovecraft (First edition). Liveright Publishing Corporation. (p. 683)
2. ^ Price, "The Borrower Beneath (Howard's Debt to Lovecraft in 'The Black Stone')", Crypt Of Cthulhu #3.)
3. ^ Joshi, S. T. (2015). The rise, fall, and rise of the Cthulhu mythos (First Hippocampus Press edition). Hippocampus Press. (pp. 152-153)
4. ^ Dennis Rickard, "Through Black Boughs:The Supernatural in Howard's Fiction", in Don Herron, The Dark Barbarian : the writings of Robert E. Howard : a critical anthology. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1984. (pp. 73-4 ) ISBN 9780313232817.

## Sources[edit]

* Robert E. Howard (1998) [1931]. "The Black Stone". Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1st ed.). New York, NY: Random House. ISBN 0-345-42204-X.

## External links[edit]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Black Stone

* The Black Stone title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
* Full text at Australian Project Gutenberg

* v
* t
* e

Works by Robert E. Howard

Fantasy|

| Conan|

* "Beyond the Black River"
* "Black Colossus"
* "The Black Stranger"
* "The Devil in Iron"
* "Drums of Tombalku"
* "The Frost-Giant's Daughter"
* "The God in the Bowl"
* "The Hall of the Dead"
* "The Hand of Nergal"
* The Hour of the Dragon
* "Iron Shadows in the Moon"
* "Jewels of Gwahlur"
* "The People of the Black Circle"
* "The Phoenix on the Sword"
* "The Pool of the Black One"
* "Queen of the Black Coast"
* "Red Nails"
* "Rogues in the House"
* "The Scarlet Citadel"
* "Shadows in Zamboula"
* "The Snout in the Dark"
* "The Tower of the Elephant"
* "The Vale of Lost Women"
* "A Witch Shall be Born"
* "Wolves Beyond the Border"
* "Xuthal of the Dusk"

|

Kull|

* "By This Axe I Rule!"
* "Exile of Atlantis"
* "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune"
* "The Shadow Kingdom"

Bran Mak Morn|

* "The Children of the Night"
* "Worms of the Earth"

Adventure|

| El Borak|

* "Blood of the Gods"
* "The Coming of El Borak"
* "The Country of the Knife"
* "The Daughter of Erlik Khan"
* "Hawk of the Hills"
* "The Lost Valley of Iskander"
* "North of Khyber"
* "Son of the White Wolf"
* "Three-Bladed Doom"

|

Comedy|

| Sailor Steve Costigan|

* "Alleys of Peril"
* "Blow the Chinks Down!"
* "Breed of Battle"
* "The Bull Dog Breed"
* "Champ of the Forecastle"
* "Circus Fists"
* "Dark Shanghai"
* "Fist and Fang"
* "General Ironfist"
* "Night of Battle"
* "The Pit of the Serpent"
* "Sailor's Grudge"
* "The Sign of the Snake"
* "The Slugger's Game"
* "Sluggers on the Beach"
* "Texas Fists"
* "The TNT Punch"
* "Vikings of the Gloves"
* "Waterfront Fists"
* "Winner Take All"

|

Breckinridge Elkins|

* A Gent from Bear Creek
* Mayhem on Bear Creek
* The Pride of Bear Creek

Horror|

| John Kirowan|

* "The Children of the Night"
* "The Haunter of the Ring"
* "The Black Stone"

|

Other|

| Short story
collections|

* Skull-Face (1946)
* The Dark Man (1963)
* Kull (1967)
* Red Shadows (1968)
* Wolfshead (1968)
* Red Blades of Black Cathay (1971)
* Marchers of Valhalla (1972)
* The Sowers of the Thunder (1973)
* Tigers of the Sea (1974)
* Worms of the Earth (1974)
* Black Vulmea's Vengeance (1976)
* The Iron Man (1976)
* Hawks of Outremer (1979)
* The Road of Azrael (1979)
* Lord of the Dead (1981)
* Nameless Cults (2001)
* People of the Dark (2005)
* Heroes in the Wind (2009)

|

Other stories|

* Almuric
* "Black Canaan"
* "The Cairn on the Headland"
* "The Curse of the Crimson God"
* "Hawks Over Egypt"
* "Pigeons from Hell"
* Post Oaks & Sand Roughs
* "The Road of the Eagles"
* "The Shadow of the Vulture"
* Skull-Face
* "The Sowers of the Thunder"
* "The Twilight of the Grey Gods"

Other characters|

* Cormac Fitzgeoffrey
* Dark Agnes de Chastillon
* Kirby O'Donnell
* Red Sonya
* Solomon Kane
* The Sonora Kid
* Steve Harrison
* Turlogh Dubh O'Brien

Poetry|

* Always Comes Evening (1957) ("Men of the Shadows")
* Singers in the Shadows (1970)
* Echoes from an Iron Harp (1972)
* Shadows of Dreams (1989)
* Poems (A–H) (I–O) (P–Z)

See also|

* Bibliography
* "The Hyborian Age"
* Unaussprechlichen Kulten

Authority control databases |

* MusicBrainz work

|

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