"The Door To the Word" by Robert E. Howard and Joseph S. Pulver

originally published Nameless Cults, Chaosium, 2001

Expanded from 'The Door to the Garden', Fantasy Crosswinds #2, 1977.

John O'Dare lived the "savage" life of an adventurer, then settled down and became a writer of adventure novels.  Good-selling ones, too, it seems.  Now he's sitting in an easy chair in his home, enjoying the good life, a good book, and staring at the big-ass ring he inherited from his ancestor, Lord Donal O'Dare, witha big-ass stone and weird writing no one can decipher or identify.

His reverie is interrupted when he starts to have an acid flashback - except acid hadn't been invented yet so WTF.  After several hallucinogenic moments a skinny guy in a tunic and sandals suddenly climbs through his window.  Then apologizes for climbing through the wrong window.  O'Dare figures this guy is an escaped lunatic, but he soon finds out his visitor is named Xatha.  And he comes from somewhere else.  Like way else.  

It seems Xatha was farting around in some gorgeous garden at "the rim of the world" that is entered by portals or gates.  Everything was going just ducky until he got attacked by a bat-winged hamburger snatcher he calls "Begog".  He escaped through one of the gates, into our world, but Begog clawd him and sure enough, he's got the wounds to prove it.  Oh and by the way that's his ring, thank you very much!  At that moment, Begog himself shows up, so O'Dare and Xatha flee through another portal and end up back in Xatha's homeland.  (Here Pulver picks up the story).

Xatha's homeland is straight out of Lord Dunsany which means its pretty, verdant, wondrous, lovely, charming blah blah blah in a pile of superlative adjectives (don't get me wrong, I like Dunsany).  

Xatha takes him to his home city and introduces him to local hot chick Elethia, The Esteemed Father - their Grand Pooba, and his own pops, Zaga - who's way more manly than Xatha.  T.E.F. explains that Begog and his armies of orc-y things have been assailing them for centuries, due to screw-ups their ancestors made.  Oh and yes, it eas Donal O'Dare who crossed the worlds and took the ring off of them.  The gem in the ring (and other pieces of jewelry) are what keep Begog at bay.  But they're running low on juice and need to be recharged.  They're suddenly attacked by baddies but O'Dare, Xatha and Zaga chop them all up into hamburger. Off they go to recharge the gems. Riding on the back of pretty dragons.

All goes well till they reach their destination of Ssian-ho, another city, which they find has been reduced to rubble, and Xatha's brother killed in the conflict.  They're attacked again, and start piling up bodies of baddies until Begog hisself shows up.  It looks like curtains for our heroes until an orb of light suddenly shows up and makes Begog vanish.

Back home, Elethia, now enaged to O'Dare, elects to go with him and Xatha to find more gems.  They find them, but are attacked again by Begog, who knocks O'Dare into a portal and back to Earth.  Where people think he's nuts.  But he's gonna get back there.  And he has a plan...

Well this one at least is different, insofar as Pulver takes it in directions I can't even imagine Howard going.  I mean Dunsanian fruit salad just wasn't R.E.H.'s style.

In any other respects this is routine Burroughs+Dunsany+Lovecraft stuff.  Begog is kinda cool though.

"The Black Bear Bites" by Robert E. Howard

originally published From Beyond the Dark Gateway, April 1974 

Black John O'Donnell lies in hiding outside the mysterious house of Yotai Yun, on the outskirts of Hankow.  He's there to avenge a friend - Bill Lannon - who earlier infiltrated the house, looking into the sinister deeds of a sinister cult bent on world domination.  Lannon turned up dead soon after, and it wasn't a pretty death.  A fellow westerner, Eric Brand, had laughed at Lannon's plan.  It hadn't ended so funny.

O'Donnell gets in, clobbers some guards, finds they'e got a regular armory going, finds out he's been detected, listens in as Yotai Yun executes his most loyal servant and dumps him in the river, then listens in as Yotai Yun and The Black Lama, a mysterious hooded figure, blab about their big plan to conquer the world.  And about infiltrating a cult of Yog-Sothoth.

O'Donnell is found out and has to fight his way out, shooting Yotai and The Black Lama in the process.  It ain't looking good for him though, as he's outnumbered by Yotai's men.  But the authorities arrive just in time, and it turns out The Black Lama is Eric Brand!

This is basically an adventure tale with some Cthulhuvian in-jokes tossed in.  Not much to see here though the first part with O'Donnell hiding and spying is actually suspenseful and fun.

"The Abbey" by Robert E. Howard and C.J. Henderson

originally published Fantasy Crossroads 4/5, 1975

Our narrator, John O'Donnell, is wandering British woods when he comes across the "ruins" of what appears to be an ancient Saxon-built abbey, with a pool in front.  I say "ruins" because the place seems to be in fine shape.  Inside on a table he finds a letter written "in a feminine hand" - whatever that is!  Anyway, the letter is an earlier visitor's account of finding the abbey (except on their trip, the place was in ruins...) and getting bitten by a large toad-thingie that jumped out of the pool.  And afterwards the letter-writer's being plagued by weird dreams and croaking sounds.  Oh and there's a sketch of scourge on the margins of the letter.  Weird!

That's the extent of Howard's actual fragment.  From there, Henderson takes over.

O'Donnell is surprised by the entrance of skinny old priest, who chats with him amiably but obtusely and seems to know way too much about him.  When the priest's convo gets too weird, O'Donnell behaves as a proper R.E.H. hero should do - pulls a gun and shoots him.  To no noticeable effect!  The plugged priest pulls off his robe, revealing a pair of great wings.  O'Donnell shoots him some more and then stomps him to death, then runs out to the pool (noticing that the abbey is now a ruin again) and demands that whatever is in the pool come out and face him like a man!  Or a toad-thing!  Or whatever!

He starts throwing big rocks and stones into the water, exhausting himself.  That's when the sabre-toothed toad - as big as a boar! - comes out of the water and goes for him.  Poor O'Donnell is doomed!

Just then a bare foot from nowhere emerges and crushes the toad!  (Can I be forgiven for thinking this sounds a bit like the intro to Monty Python?) It turns out its the ghost/spirit of the young woman who wrote the letter.  She's been trapped there ever since.  And now O'Donnell has freed her.  P.S. she's naked and doesn't seem to mind.

Now - this part throws me ... did I miss something?  Because if her foot was big enough to completely crush something the size of a boar, she must've been pretty damn big!  But nowhere is this mentioned.  Did Henderson forget to mention it?  Did O'Donnell?  Am I just stupid?

Anyhoo, this is nothing to write home about.  I do find Howard's portion interesting, and find myself thinking that it would have made a decent opening to a short story or even a novella - the toad attack being the first bizarre incident of many more to come.