History
Mr. Costigan was an American man who studied the Black Book of the German eccentric Von Junzt and the life of the American poet Justin Geoffrey.
Geoffrey had died, screaming in a mad-house, five years after having approached and stared at the Black Stone, an ebon monolith standing near the town of Stregoicavar (translated as "Witch Town"), a village in the mountains of Hungary. Geoffrey was the only verified case among many tales of people losing their minds after witnessing the monolith. Costigan's studies led him to be curious about the whole story.
Enabled by a recent inheritance from his uncle to finally, Costigan traveled to Stregoicavar five years after Geoffrey's death, in order to witness the stone on mid-summer night. Despite the refusal of his carriage-driver to go further, Costigan kept on, ignoring a ruined castle, souvenirs of the Turks' invasion of Eastern Europe under Suleiman the Magnificent.
Finally reaching the Black Stone, he examined it but soon fainted, and was awakened by cultists (presumably ghosts, visions or dreams), led by a priest with a weird toad-like pendant, conducting an obscene ceremony involving dance frenzies, whipping, and the sacrifice of a baby. The ceremony culminated with the apparition of a monstrous toad-thing. As a maiden was sacrificed to it, Costigan fainted again.
Awakening, he first believed it was all a dream, but he then witnessed the pendant of the priest in the grass, and fled in terror at the proof of the ancient horrors of Earth, though Costigan didn't fell into madness like those who had seen the same scene before him.[1]Notes
- This character was the narrator in "Black Stone" (November, 1931) by Robert E. Howard.
- Unnamed in the original story (though it is believed to be a John Kirowan story, which are part of the Cthulhu Mythos),[2] he was named "Mr. Costigan" in the adaptation in Savage Sword of Conan #74 (March, 1982), possibly as a reference to other characters created by Howard, including Sailor Steve Costigan (first appearing in "The Pit of the Serpent"; July, 1929), and the distinct character Steve Costigan (protagonist of Skull-Face; October to December, 1929).