Billy's Oak

"Billy's Oak" is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Brian Lumley, first published in the Winter 1970 issue of The Arkham Collector. It marks the print debut of the character Titus Crow, although the 1987 short "Inception" saw his earliest in-universe timeline appearance.
==Synopsis==
A writer named Gerald Dawson is doing research for a book about black magic and wishes to consult the infamous Cthäat Aquadingen. To that end, he contacts occultist Titus Crow, who possesses a copy of the rare volume.
Crow allows Dawson to see the book, but warns him that the parts that contain instructions for spells and rituals have been removed for safety. Surprised by Crow's genuine belief in the supernatural, Dawson challenges him to produce evidence. In response, Crow draws attention to a creaking sound that can be heard coming from his garden. He claims the sound is made by a tree called Billy's Oak, after the wizard Billy Fovarque was hanged there in 1675, and the branch continues to creak with the hanged man's weight to this day. Crow also claims that a previous owner of the house went almost mad trying to figure out the sound's origin.
Unimpressed with the story, Dawson offers that the branch creaks because of the wind, and opens up the window to see the tree. He is shocked, however, to find that there's nothing there, as Crow informs him that Billy's Oak was cut down seventy years ago, yet the sound is still heard.
== Characters ==
Titus Crow: In his first appearance, Crow is introduced as "a London-dwelling collector of obscure and eldritch volumes"--including a 400-year-old copy of the Cthäat Aquadingen, bound in human skin. He is engaged in unspecified "studying," largely nocturnal, because "he was better able to concentrate at night." He professes to "believe in ghosts and fairies, in ghouls and genies, in a certain mythological ‘prop’ [i.e., the Necronomicon], and in the existence of Atlantis, R’lyeh, and G’harne.” Physically, he is described astall and broad-shouldered and it was plain to see that in his younger days he had been a handsome man. Now, though, his hair had greyed and his eyes, though they were still bright and observant, bore the imprint of many a year spent exploring—and often, I guessed, discovering—along rarely trodden paths of mysterious and obscure learning. He was attired in a flame-red dressing-gown....Gerald Dawson: A writer of nonfiction on supernatural subjects whose existence he does not believe in; when he refers to his books as "documentary," he puts the word in scare quotes. By 1955, he had had "a surprising measure of success" with his book Here Be Witches!, and his publisher was pressing him to start work on a followup, Forbidden Books!.
William "Billy" Fovarque: "Accused of wizardry," he was hanged from an oak tree in 1675 "by a crowd of fear-crazed peasants." He was on his way to trial when he was lynched "because he’d started a horrible incantation and weird shapes had begun to form in the sky." The creaking of the branch from which he was hanged could still be heard centuries later--even after the tree known as Billy's Oak was chopped down.
== Setting ==
The story introduces Blowne House, Titus Crow's "sprawling bungalow house" located "on the outskirts of the city," i.e., London. The house was built ca. 1885, after the felling of Billy's Oak--a tree whose ghostly creaking still haunts the garden. The house's rafters are made from "teak--and seasoned well before the house was built." 
The house contains a secret panel hidden in the wall next to the fireplace, where Crow's copy of the Cthaat Aquadingen is kept, and "a tall, four-handed, hieroglyphed, coffin-shaped monstrosity of a clock," identified as "de Marigny's clock."
Blown House also contains "a well-thumbed copy of Walmsley’s Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms, and Ancient Inscriptions"; this seems to be the first mention of this oft-cited text.
== Publication History ==
After its initial appearance in The Arkham Collector, "Billy's Oak" was reprinted in Lumley's collections The Caller of The Black (Arkham House, 1971) and The Compleat Crow (W. Paul Ganley, 1987).
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Brian Lumley works