Tommy Tester, a young hustler living in Harlem with his ailing father Otis, is hired to deliver an occult tome to Ma Att, a sorceress living in Flushing Meadows. Shortly afterwards, reclusive millionaire Robert Suydam hires him to perform at a party. But it turns out that what Suydam really wants is to awaken an Eldritch Abomination.
The Ballad of Black Tom contains examples of:
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Tommy is not a talented musician and would be laughed out of most establishments in Harlem that have much-much better musicians to choose from. However, by choosing to play up his look, he can appeal to white people in other parts of the city who don't know any better.
- Brown Note: When Black Tom activates his powers, a low tone plays that makes everyone who hears it feel nauseous.
- Commonality Connection: Suydam says he hired Tommy because it was obvious from his simple-minded guitar man act that he was familiar with illusion and artifice, like Suydam.
- Dedication: For H.P. Lovecraft, with all my complicated feelings.
- Dramatic Drop: When Suydam takes a room in his mansion "Outside," the view from the window suddenly becomes the deep sea. Tommy is so shocked he drops his guitar.
- Eye Scream: Black Tom cuts off Malone's eyelids. Now he has to wear tinted goggles, both to protect his eyes and to stop other people from having to see him. He has to douse his eyes with a solution throughout the day so they don't dry out.
- Fold the Page, Fold the Space: Suydam's explanation for going Outside is: Imagine a cotton ball stuck to a strip of adhesive tape. Now imagine crumpling the tape, so that many different points touch the same cotton ball. The cotton ball is this room.
- Meaningful Rename: Tommy starts going by Black Tom after the death of Otis, saying, "My birth name has no more power over me. It died with my daddy."
- Middle Name Basis: Charles Thomas "Tommy" Tester.
- Never Learned to Read: Tommy is afraid of what Ma Att will do with the full occult tome, so he has Otis remove a single page. Otis is illiterate, so there's no risk that he'll Go Mad from the Revelation.
- Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: Howard goes into the Tester apartment and sees Otis holding a guitar. He empties his entire revolver into him, then reloads and shoots again. He swears he thought the guitar was a gun.
- Sky Face: Months after his ordeal at Red Hook, Malone walks past a tall building, looks up, and sees Black Tom's eyes staring down at him from the clouds. Malone falls to his knees and screams hysterically, to the alarm of passersby. A few of them follow his sightline and see Tom's face, too.
- Street Musician: Tommy, despite the fact that he has no talent. By sticking to his repertoire of three songs and humming to disguise his lack of singing ability, he can sometimes trick people into thinking he's good.
- Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: After Howard kills Otis, Tommy goes out to eat with his best friend Buckeye, who doesn't know what happened. He can't even look at his plate.
- We Can Rule Together: Suydam's followers consist of a wide variety of oppressed ethnic minorities. Suydam promises that when the King that sleeps at the bottom of the ocean awakens, all the prejudice and evil will be wiped away with the destruction of most of humanity, and Suydam and his followers will live in a utopia under the King.
- Weirdness Censor: Malone's sensitive disposition means that his censor is impaired. When he visits Ma Att, he gets the impression that there's much more of her sticking out behind her physical body, but nobody else notices anything unusual.
