The Nightmare Men: “Master By Name, Master By Number”
‘He was impossible to miss. Tall in his dark suit, with his leonine head and imposing looks, he would have seemed prominent in any crowd…’ Such is the description of Titus Crow, delivered by his amanuensis and friend, Henri-Laurent De Marigny in the opening pages of the 1977 story, “The Viking’s Stone”. Created in 1971 by author Brian Lumley, the character was crafted in the tradition of other occult investigators, such as John Silence or Carnacki; Crow was an avowed agent of good, his struggles all the more impressive for occurring as they did in the harsh, nihilistic universe created by HP Lovecraft.
“Titus Crow?” said Arnold. “Yes, well, we’ve all had reason to fear him in our time…”
-Geoffrey Arnold, “The Black Recalled” (1983)
Titus Crow first appeared in Lumley’s 1971 story, “The Caller of the Black”. Crow’s credentials as a psychic sleuth and occult investigator are impressively vetted in the story, as he defeats both mortal and immortal enemies through the cunning application of the standard Lovecraftian eldritch lore, a shower faucet and a window pole. From the outset, it is clear that Crow inhabits the same deadly universe as Inspector Legrasse or John Kirowan, where elder entities prey on a mostly unaware human population; but unlike the former, Crow is well-armed against such entities and, unlike the latter, he’s quite happy to test himself against their machinations out of simple heroism.
Schooled in a wealth of occult lore and possessed of an innate desire to confront evil, Crow is seemingly destined from birth to pit himself against the abominable. Indeed the 1987 story, “Inception” concerns the weird circumstances of Crow’s birth and baptism and the battle between Good and Evil which revolves around the latter. Too, the occult numerology behind the date and hour of that special birth comes into play more than once, as those numbers show Crow to be a Master Magus, a fact which puts a spanner into more than one opponent’s scheme.
In “The Lord of the Worms” (1983), Crow’s early career working for the British War Department in World War Two is mentioned, during which he worked to foil Hitler’s occult machinations. His destruction of the eponymous entity is his first step on the road which leads to his first ‘official’ case as an occult investigator in “The Caller of the Black”, wherein he confronts the villainous sorcerer Gedney and the nightmarish entity known only as ‘The Black’.