Skull-Face

Skull-Face is a fantasy novella by Robert E. Howard, originally serialized in Weird Tales in 1929.
While containing no direct references to the Cthulhu Mythos, the story shares several themes with "The Call of Cthulhu", and the character Kathulos of Atlantis has been incorporated in the expanded Mythos. The story is also included in the collection Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard.
==Plot==
In London, an American World War I veteran named Stephen Costigan, traumatized by his war experience, becomes addicted to hashish and spends his days at Yun Shatu's Temple of Dreams. In a drug-induced dream, he sees a man with a skull-like face, and a beautiful young woman behind him.
When Costigan finally runs out of money, the same woman from the dream actually appears in front of him and speaks to the bouncer, Hassim, who allows Costigan to continue to frequent the opium house. Costigan is vaguely aware that the girl must be paying for his hashish, but is so disinterested in life at this point that he barely gives it a thought.
Hassim takes Costigan to a secret room, telling him that "the Master" wants to see him. Although he remains hidden, Costigan recognizes the Master's voice as that of the skull-faced man from his dream. The man marks Costigan's hand with the image of a scorpion, and gives him a golden liquid that cures his addiction. Over the next days, Costigan notices that he's not only cured, but also seems to be endowed with physical strength and awareness beyond that of a normal man.
Feeling grateful for what the Master has done to him, Costigan accepts a job to impersonate a government commissioner. Before he can do so, Costigan prevents an attempt at the Master's life by a British secret agent named John Gordon, but also prevents the Master's agent, Yussef Ali, from murdering Gordon, and allows the latter to escape. The young woman, Zuleika, visits Costigan in secret, revealing that she too is an agent of the Master, and is worried about what Costigan has done. After she leaves, Hassim returns to announce a change of plans, and Costigan finds out from a newspaper that the commissioner he was supposed to impersonate has been found murdered.
The Master sees Costigan again and acknowledges that the latter saved his life, but chastises him for saving Gordon's as well. Costigan claims that his dept of gratitude is paid, but the Master counters that Costigan will always be in his service, no less of a slave than Hassim or Zuleika. As he reveals himself, Costigan is horrified to see the skull-like face, parchment-like skin and clawed corpse-like hands, confirming this as the same man that he had seen in his dream.
The Master reveals that he cured Costigan's hashish addiction with a far more addictive drug, the golden liquid that was also responsible for increasing Costigan's physical and mental capacity. Withdrawal from the liquid would result in unparalleled agony followed by death. Thus being at the hands of the Master, Costigan has no choice but to accept his next assignment, which is the assassination of an influential adventurer, Sir Haldred Frenton.
Once again, Zuleika manages to speak to Costigan in secret. She tells him that the Master's name is Kathulos, but that she knows little of him and believes him to be from Egypt. She also gives Costigan a flask of the golden elixir that she stole from Kathulos, in case Costigan would need it.
Soon after breaking into Frenton's house, Costigan is surprised by John Gordon, who is aware of Kathulos' plan to have Frenton assassinated. Costigan tells Gordon about a secret tunnel connecting Yun Shatu's opium den to Kathulos' lair inside an abandoned warehouse, and promises to distract Kathulos while Gordon gathers a squad of agents to break in and arrest him. Gordon is suspicious, but chooses to trust Costigan.
When Costigan returns to the opium den, he is ambushed by Kathulos and his men, who reveal that Yussef Ali had followed Costigan and already reported the latter's betrayal. Just as they're about to kill Costigan, Gordon and his forces arrive, forcing Kathulos and his lackeys to flee through a tunnel filled with venomous snakes, which Kathulos can command with telepathy to attack only the policemen.
Costigan and Gordon exchange all information they have about Kathulos, who is the leader of a drug empire and secret society, and has gathered followers throughout Africa and Asia who believe he will lead them in a glorious uprising against the white nations and create a new world order. By obtaining favours, weapons and information from men at key government positions who are addicted to his drugs, Kathulos has become a legitimate global threat and has ordered the assassination of several men who could potentially foil his plans.
Following the murder of a Russian baron, Gordon and Costigan get a glimpse of Kathulos entering a curiosity shop and follow him. By disguising himself as a mummy and using his psychic abilities to cloud Costigan's mind, Kathulos is able to evade them. However, the shopkeeper sees the mark of the scorpion on Costigan's wrist and mistakes him for a fellow cultist, therefore whispering the words "Soho 48", which reveal the location of the cult's next gathering.
Meanwhile, a report from a fellow investigator reveals Kathulos' backstory as a revived Atlantean, found in a state of stasis inside a floating airtight sarcophagus off the coast of Senegal. The report also identifies him as the "Son of the Ocean", the subject of an ancient prophecy that claims that a man would rise from the sea and lead the Egyptians in a quest to conquer the entire world. Over the course of eras, the legend expanded so that not just Egypt but the whole of Africa would be triumphant.
The next day, Zuleika meets with Costigan to tell him that Gordon has been captured by Kathulos' men and will be sacrificed. Costigan rushes to the Soho 48 address, where he battles and kills several of Kathulos' men and prevents Gordon's sacrifice, but is himself captured and caged.
Kathulos reveals his ultimate goal, which is to prepare the world for a new empire when the other Atlantean wizards and kings (who remain in suspended animation under the sea) are reawakened. He is still unaware that Zuleika has stolen a flask of elixir for Costigan, and expresses his desire to perform experiments on the latter to find out how the elixir's effects could last so long in him. One of the experiments will be to remove Costigan's addiction to see how his body reacts. At this moment, Gordon, who has successfully evaded Kathulos' minions, enters the room and shoots Kathulos, who escapes through a secret passage. Just as Costigan and Gordon manage to escape, the entire building (in which Kathulos had stored large amounts of explosives) blows up.
Costigan is reunited with Zuleika and drinks the antidote that Kathulos had intended to give him as an experiment, which Gordon had managed to retrieve from the building before they escaped the explosion. While the antidote cures Costigan of his addiction, the withdrawal from the elixir leaves him weak, and he needs months to recover. The newspapers spread the news that an abandoned building used to store explosives by a secret anarchist society has blown up, and while Gordon and Costigan are confident that the explosion killed Kathulos' minions, they wonder whether Kathulos himself has survived. Gordon makes use of his influence in the British government to get a fleet of gunboats to patrol the oceans in case any of the other Atlantean sages are found floating in a sarcophagus.
==Characters==
*Stephen Costigan, an American World War I veteran turned hashish-addict in London.
*Kathulos of Atlantis, a.k.a. the Master, or the Scorpion, a revived sorcerer who leads a cult seeking to destroy civilization and rebuild the empire of Atlantis.
*Zuleika, a young Circassian woman, who is a slave of Kathulos.
*Yun Shatu, a Hong Kong smuggler, manager of an opium den named the Temple of Dreams, and one of Kathulos' agents.
*Kathulos' henchmen, who are employees in the Temple of Dreams: 
**Hassim, a Senegalese former chief and convicted murderer.
**Yussef Ali, a Moroccan slave-dealer.
**Yar Khan, an Afghan with an unknown past.
**Santiago, a Haitian voodoo practitioner.
**Ganra Singh, a renegade Sikh, murderer and weapons-dealer.
**Li Kung, a Chinese opium smuggler.
*John Gordon, a British secret agent who is on the track of Kathulos.
*Hansen, a policemen who assists Gordon.
*Kamonos, a Levantine owner of a curiosity shop, who is loyal to Kathulos.
==Publication History==
After its initial serialization in Weird Tales (October/November/December 1929), the piece became the title story of Arkham House's Robert E. Howard collection Skull-Face and Others (1946). It has subsequently been reprinted many times, including in Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard (Chaosium, 2001) and The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard (WordFire Press, 2020).Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: Skull-Face."
==References==
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Robert E. Howard works
Category:Mythos-Adjacent Works