Cosmic Horror

Robert E. Howard wrote gripping horror stories, giving a unique twist to the traditional monsters of gothic fiction – vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. But he was also a pioneer of cosmic horror, joining his friend H. P. Lovecraft in imagining that humankind was preceded on the earth by powerful, grotesque entities whose ancient age of dominion is memorialized today by strange cults. In remote corners of Arabia, Hungary, Britain, and Honduras, hidden doorways still provide access to these terrible beings – Gol-goroth, the Children of the Night, the Guardian of Xuthultan, and others. A few arcane books of ancient lore point the way to these portals of Hell. Pity the hapless scholar or adventurer who unwittingly turns the key.

The Black Stone

The 19th Century scholar Von Junzt wrote of it in his book, Nameless Cults. In the wild mountains of Eastern Europe stands a black stone monolith, relic of an unimaginable past. A poet, Justin Geoffrey, once visited the monolith and went mad. Tonight, a venturesome student of the occult finds his way to the haunted glade and witnesses a grisly ritual that summons an intruder from Beyond.

The Children of the Night

Struck unconscious by an accidental blow from a stone-age ax, O’Donnel remembers a past life as Aryara, a warrior of a primitive Celtic tribe in pre-Roman Britain. Aryara has a bloody debt to repay; the reptilian Children of the Night slaughtered his band of fellow hunters, and only he survived. Aryara’s vengeance leads to a lethal reckoning and to the revelation that the Children’s inhuman legacy may have survived into the 20th Century.

The Fire of Asshurbanipal

Bedouin legend whispers of Kara-Shehr, the City of Devils, lost in the trackless sands of the Arabian desert. Soldier of fortune Steve Clarney finds the forgotten citadel and its treasure, the priceless ruby known as the Fire of Asshurbanipal. The outlaw sheik Nureddin also lays claim, but human greed pales before the foul, hulking obscenity that was conjured out of Hell to guard the gem thousands of years ago … and watches over it still.

The Cairn on the Headland

What lies beneath the stone cairn on the headland of Clontarf, where the Christian Irish defeated the pagan Vikings in pitched battle a thousand years ago? The unscrupulous extortionist Ortali plans to uncover the secret. In a dream that spans dark gulfs of time, his blackmail victim John O’Brien discovers that the ancient myths of the Norsemen hid monstrous realities. One of those realities slumbers underneath the cairn, dead but not dead, waiting to return to slavering life as Ortali unknowingly toils to free it.