"Covenant of Darkness"

by William Jones
originally published Cthulhu's Dark Cults, Chaosium, 2010

Det. Matthew Leahy and Prof. Rudolph Pearson are hanging in Pearson's NYC apartment in 1923, waiting for some expected and unpleasant guests.  It seems Pearson has attracted the unwanted attentions of a cult of ghouls living in the hidden places in NYC.

A knock at the door brings Jordan Gabriel, an anthropologist who works cataloging specimens at the Museum of Natural Science.  She has a bag of bones that are decidedly unnatural.

Jordan begins to display and explain the bones when, lo and behold, a ghoul appears at the window.  Jordan is only moderately non-plussed by this.

After several bits of business, the ghoul breaks into the apartment.  It demands the bones.  Finally they decide to hand them over.  Prof. Pearson lives with the knowledge that the ghouls live in secret in the Big Apple, and prey on derelicts and throwaways.

A fairly slight story, and the writing, though quite good, suggests Jones' tongue is in his cheek.  The ghoul cult (drawn from Chaosium's Secrets of New York gaming supplement for Call of Cthulhu) is eerie, and recalls Whitley Streiber's interesting The Wolfen.  I think it will come to some use in my own (still upcoming) Call of Cthulhu campaign.  But in general, while entertaining, this tale is too slight to make much of an impression.