De Marigny's Clock (story)

De Marigny's Clock is a short story by Brian Lumley, first published in the Arkham House collection The Caller of the Black, in 1971. It features Lumley's recurring character Titus Crow and the mysterious clock from the story "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price.
==Synopsis==
Eccentric occultist and psychic Titus Crow wakes up to find himself threatened by a pair of burglars, who demand to know where he keeps his money. The ruffians refuse to believe in Crow's claim that there is no money in the house, and proceed to search for it amidst his collection of books and antiquities, much to the occultist's despair. At last, they come to a coffin-shaped grandfather clock which previously belonged to American occultist Etienne-Laurent de Marigny.
The mysterious clock functions without any visible mechanism, its hands moving irregularly, and emits strange sounds. For years, Crow has been trying to make sense out of its functioning, but hasn't been able to open it. One of the burglars, Pasty, who has untrained psychic abilities, senses danger, but his colleague, Joe, is convinced that the money is inside the clock.
Being a master safecracker, Joe manages to open a panel from the machine and sticks his arm inside, only to scream in horror as something on the other side grabs him. Pasty rushes to help him, but when he temporarily manages to pull Joe back from what turns out to be a spacetime portal, he sees that Joe's skin has been horribly corroded by acid and loses his balance, resulting in both men disappearing inside the mechanism. Crow faints in terror and the clock's panel closes again automatically.
When he wakes up, Crow remembers the horrifying psychic impressions he had received from Pasty as the two thugs plunged into the Lake of Hali on a world in the Aldebaran system and were devoured by strange aquatic predators.
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Brian Lumley works