The Black Stone

Introduction

“The Black Stone” is a horror short story first published in Weird Tales, November 1931. Howard’s records note payment as $56 (sold for $64). The tale inaugurates two key Mythos touchstones in Howard’s fiction: the mad poet Justin Geoffrey and Friedrich von Junzt’s forbidden tome Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults). Operating squarely within the Cthulhu Mythos tradition, it mirrors the formal pattern of source-hunting scholarship, eldritch artifact, and a midnight revelation — yet in Howard’s brisk, visceral mode rather than Lovecraft’s antiquarian drift.

From the letters:

In a letter (#149) to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith, probably in December 1930 he wrote:

The Weird Tale story, a short one that brought $64, was infinitely better, though marred by a clumsy style and a too melodramatic development. It carried out the theme I mentioned to you in a previous letter; the title is “The Black Stone,” and is the best attempt at bizarre literature that I have yet sold. I have a still shorter and better story, “The Thing on the Roof,” which I have not yet sent Farnsworth and which I may not send him, since he says he is stocked up. But this story is by far the best thing I have ever written and one which I am really inclined to believe approaches real literature, distantly, at least.

In October 1931 he wrote (letter #180) to Lovecraft and said:

I hope you liked the “Bal-Sagoth” yarn. As for “The Black Stone” my story appearing in the current Weird Tales, since reading it over in print, I feel rather absurd. The story sounds as if I were trying, in my feeble and blunderingly crude way, to deliberately copy your style. Your literary influence on that particular tale, while unconscious on my part, was none the less strong.

This story also was published in an Anthology (Grim Death) in the UK in 1932. Howard was made aware of this from a letter from Lovecraft. We can read Howard’s reply in a letter from around December 1932 (letter #225b).:

No, I didn’t know my “Black Stone” had landed in the Not At Night anthology. I’m so far off the beaten track of literature *geographically, that I get only vague hints of what goes on in the world of pen and ink.

The Black Stone was also mentioned in a letter from Otis A. Kline to August Derleth in August 9, 1944:

August 9, 1944
Mr. August Derelith
Sauk City, Wisconsin.
Dear Derelith:
Thanks for yours of the 7th .
That preliminary sifting down to 29 titles looks to me like a good, representative collection of Bob’s work in the weird and fantastic field.
I note that you include “The Black Stone” on which book rights have already been sold. Do you think it should appear in both collections, published a year or so apart?
I don’t have any further suggestions or deletions at this time, but wondered about this item. I do agree with what you say about the Conan yarns. A steady, unbroken diet of violent action and sabre-hacking would, I think, pall on the reader.
I’ll look forward to hearing further from you on this in due course, and also to trying that additional Someone in the Dark in the reprint market when it comes in. Best regards.
Cordially,
[Kline]

Short summary:

An erudite unnamed narrator studies Von Junzt’s Black Book and travels to the Hungarian village of Stregoicavar to inspect a sinister monolith known as the Black Stone (linked in folklore to nightmares and Midsummer rites). After hearing local lore (from a tavern-keeper, his nightmare-plagued nephew, and a skeptical schoolmaster), the narrator spends Midsummer Night at the Stone and witnesses a spectral replay of a prehistoric-survival coven: a wolf-masked priest, a votaress scourged in a frenzied dance, a hag drummer, and an infant sacrifice—culminating in the appearance of a bloated toad-like entity atop the monolith. Seeking proof, he excavates the battlefield ruin of Count Boris Vladinoff and recovers a lacquered case taken from the Ottoman scribe Selim Bahadur in 1526. Selim’s manuscript confirms that the Turks found and destroyed a mountain cult and slew the cavern-bound monstrosity with steel and sanctified rite. Horrified, the narrator casts the case and a golden idol-pendant into the Danube, concluding the Stone is a Key—a surviving link to an abominable, pre-human past that briefly reopens each Midsummer.

Characters:

Unnamed Narrator – Scholarly traveler who reads Von Junzt, visits Stregoicavar, witnesses the Midsummer vision, and later corroborates it via Selim Bahadur’s manuscript.
Friedrich von Junzt – German occult savant, author of Unaussprechlichen Kulten (the “Black Book”); his hints about the Stone as a “Key” set the plot in motion.
Alexis Ladeau – Von Junzt’s friend who burned the author’s final notes and then killed himself; emblem of the book’s lethal knowledge.
Justin Geoffrey – Mad poet of The People of the Monolith; visited the area earlier and later died screaming in an asylum.
Tavern-keeper of Stregoicavar – Local source of tradition; points out the Stone’s location and recounts the village’s avoidance of it.
Tavern-keeper’s Nephew – As a child slept near the Stone; as an adult suffers recurring, indistinct nightmares of fire, drums, and the Stone atop a black castle.
Schoolmaster – Educated skeptic who links the site to a fertility/witch cult and the older name “Xuthltan.”
Selim Bahadur – Ottoman soldier-scribe; his recovered manuscript details the Turks’ destruction of the mountain cult and the slaying of the cavern monster.
Count Boris Vladinoff – Polish-Hungarian knight who died at Schomvaal; the lacquered case lay beneath the ruins that entombed him.
Wolf-masked Priest – Coven officiant who flogs the votaress, chants the ineffable Name, and sacrifices the infant against the Stone during the spectral rite.
Votaress – Frenzied dancer who embraces and kisses the monolith amid flagellation and smoke during the Midsummer rite.
Hag Drummer – Old woman beating a black drum beside the brazier; keeps the rite’s rhythm.
Worshippers of Xuthltan – Degenerate, squat villagers of an older, mixed stock; their sabbat is seen as a ghostly recurrence on Midsummer.
Toad-like Entity (Master of the Monolith) – Bloated, leering being that manifests atop the Stone during the rite; later slain in a cavern by Selim’s men according to the manuscript.