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Synopsis of Black Man with a Horn
Our writer is discussing the power of the past narrative. He is a writer of horror fiction, and one of the younger sort of acolytes of Lovecraft. Although he wrote more and longer, he has always been seen in Lovecraft’s shadow. His name is not given, but it appears that he is likely Frank Belknap Long.
Our writer is flying back from a Lovecraft Convention where he is realizing that despite his long work, he has become just his relationship with Lovecraft. On the way back he meets Rev. Mortimer on the plane from Heathrow to NYC where our writer lives. Our good Rev. is a recently returned missionary from Malaysia and is coming back. He feels that he was chased home and tells our narrator that he was sent to set up another missionary base deep in the inner jungle of the Malay peninsula. He was sent to these nasty Chuacha people where they were one of the nastiest people he had ever met, despite the friendliness of other natives he worked with.
Our narrator gives him his sister’s address in Miami and they meet up there. Meanwhile, our writer does a little investigation on his own as he visits a local natural museum in NYC where he finds a nasty discovery. That the Tcho-Tcho people actually exist, and are likely the same ones that Rev. Mortimer ran into. The Tcho-Thco are a race of evil people that was believed to be created by Lovecraft as one of the Mythos Elements, but apparently not.
An article runs in the Miami Herald about Rev. Mortimer going missing. He writes the local police but they tell him they already know about the threats on his life and that they treating it as a murder. Another Miami Herald story follows, this time one for a Malay citizen wanted for questioning of the disappearance of Rev. Mortimer. It was the same face as someone on the plane and he recognizes it.
He does some more investigating and finds out that the Tcho-Tcho are believed dead and that a great black man playing a horn is considered the Herald of Death, although the miniature made by the people in the museum is more akin to death itself and was attached to the horn. One story calls this character the Shoo Goron, a sort of local boogeyman. He flies down to Miami after the detective tells him they found some lung tissue in Rev. Mortimer’s room.
A local young person working at a local restaurant has also gone missing, his sister has fallen ill, and then she passes. He is living at the same hotel that the previous folks disappeared from. His neighbors disappeared after reporting that a large black man wearing a scuba mask came near their bungalow the previous night. He remains where he is to meet his death.
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