"The Lord of the Lichyard," says Charles Dexter Ward in his self-conceived and self-willed grimoire, "appeareth in the form of an impossibly tall albino man clad in the blackest armor, with both hands wrapped around the pommel of a greatsword, whose blade and hilt are also of the darkest black; or he appeareth in the form of a wolf the length and heighth of a racehorse, fur blacker than black, teeth that glint pale and white in candlelight; or...