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The Nameless City
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written January 1921
Published November 1921 in The Wolverine, No. 11: 3-15.
When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was traveling in a
parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding
uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made
grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge,
this great-grandfather of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me
and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see,
and no man else had dared to see.
Remote in thedesertofArabylies the nameless city, crumbling and
inarticulate, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted ages. It
must have been thus before the first stones ofMemphiswere laid, and while the
bricks ofBabylonwere yet unbaked. There is no legend so old as to give it a
name, or to recall that it was ever alive; but it is told of in whispers around
campfires and muttered about by grandams in the tents of sheiks so that all the
tribes shun it without wholly knowing why. It was of this place that Abdul
Alhazred the mad poet dreamed of the night before he sang his unexplained
couplet:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons death may die.
I should have known that the Arabs had good reason for shunning the nameless
city, the city told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, yet I defied
them and went into the untrodden waste with my camel. I alone have seen it, and
that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other
man shivers so horribly when the night wind rattles the windows. When I came
upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilly from
the rays of a cold moon amidst the desert's heat. And as I returned its look I
forgot my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with my camel to wait for the
dawn.
For hours I waited, till the east grew grey and the stars faded, and the grey
turned to roseate light edged with gold. I heard a moaning and saw a storm of
sand stirring among the antique stones though the sky was clear and the vast
reaches of desert still. Then suddenly above the desert's far rim came the
blazing edge of the sun, seen through the tiny sandstorm which was passing away,
and in my fevered state I fancied that from some remote depth there came a crash
of musical metal to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it from the banks of the
Nile. My ears rang and my imagination seethed as I led my camel slowly across
the sand to that unvocal place; that place which I alone of living men had seen.
In and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and places I wandered,
finding never a carving or inscription to tell of these men, if men they were,
who built this city and dwelt therein so long ago. The antiquity of the spot was
unwholesome, and I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the
city was indeed fashioned by mankind. There were certain proportions and
dimensions in the ruins which I did not like. I had with me many tools, and dug
much within the walls of the obliterated edifices; but progress was slow, and
nothing significant was revealed. When night and the moon returned I felt a
chill wind which brought new fear, so that I did not dare to remain in the city.
And as I went outside the antique walls to sleep, a small sighing sandstorm
gathered behind me, blowing over the grey stones though the moon was bright and
most of the desert still.
I awakened just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, my ears ringing as
from some metallic peal. I saw the sun peering redly through the last gusts of a
little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city, and marked the quietness
of the rest of the landscape. Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins
that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet, and again dug
vainly for relics of the forgotten race. AtnoonI rested, and in the afternoon
I spent much time tracing the walls and bygone streets, and the outlines of the
nearly vanished buildings. I saw that the city had been mighty indeed, and
wondered at the sources of its greatness. To myself I pictured all the spendours
of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not recall it, and thought of Sarnath
the Doomed, that stood in the land of Mnar when mankind was young, and of Ib,
that was carven of grey stone before mankind existed.
All at once I came upon a place where the bedrock rose stark through the sand
and formed a low cliff; and here I saw with joy what seemed to promise further
traces of the antediluvian people. Hewn rudely on the face of the cliff were the
unmistakable facades of several small, squat rock houses or temples; whose
interiors might preserve many secrets of ages too remote for calculation, though
sandstorms had long effaced any carvings which may have been outside.
Very low and sand-choked were all the dark apertures near me, but I cleared one
with my spade and crawled through it, carrying a torch to reveal whatever
mysteries it might hold. When I was inside I saw that the cavern was indeed a
temple, and beheld plain signs of the race that had lived and worshipped before
the desert was a desert. Primitive altars, pillars, and niches, all curiously
low, were not absent; and though I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were
many singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means. The
lowness of the chiselled chamber was very strange, for I could hardly kneel
upright; but the area was so great that my torch showed only part of it at a
time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far corners; for certain altars and
stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature
and made me wonder what manner of men could have made and frequented such a
temple. When I had seen all that the place contained, I crawled out again, avid
to find what the temples might yield.
Night had now approached, yet the tangible things I had seen made curiosity
stronger than fear, so that I did not flee from the long mooncast shadows that
had daunted me when first I saw the nameless city. In the twilight I cleared
another aperture and with a new torch crawled into it, finding more vague stones
and symbols, though nothing more definite than the other temple had contained.
The room was just as low, but much less broad, ending in a very narrow passage
crowded with obscure and cryptical shrines. About these shrines I was prying
when the noise of a wind and my camel outside broke through the stillness and
drew me forth to see what could have frightened the beast.
The moon was gleaming vividly over the primitive ruins, lighting a dense cloud
of sand that seemed blown by a strong but decreasing wind from some point along
the cliff ahead of me. I knew it was this chilly, sandy wind which had disturbed
the camel and was about to lead him to a place of better shelter when I chanced
to glance up and saw that there was no wind atop the cliff. This astonished me
and made me fearful again, but I immediately recalled the sudden local winds
that I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and judged it was a
normal thing. I decided it came from some rock fissure leading to a cave, and
watched the troubled sand to trace it to its source; soon perceiving that it
came from the black orifice of a temple a long distance south of me, almost out
of sight. Against the choking sand-cloud I plodded toward this temple, which as
I neared it loomed larger than the rest, and shewed a doorway far less clogged
with caked sand. I would have entered had not the terrific force of the icy wind
almost quenched my torch. It poured madly out of the dark door, sighing
uncannily as it ruffled the sand and spread among the weird ruins. Soon it grew
fainter and the sand grew more and more still, till finally all was at rest
again; but a presence seemed stalking among the spectral stones of the city, and
when I glanced at the moon it seemed to quiver as though mirrored in unquiet
waters. I was more afraid than I could explain, but not enough to dull my thirst
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