‘An Index of Doom’

Out of the Dust Shall Acheron Arise: Chapter 21 of Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon

Reading from pages 227-34 of the DelRey edition

For men, one cagey, one worried, one haunted and one drunk turn to look stage right at a shadowy menace that casts its pal across the throne-like chair of the rightmost man with his back to the door.

My potential titles included:

“The lambent Lights of Hell” and “To the Bloody Block.”

For his first novel Howar…