The Nameless City

When I drew nighthe nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was traveling
in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I sawit protruding
uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude froman ill-made
grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivorof the deluge,
this great-grandfather of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aurarepelled me
and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no manshould see,
and no man else had dared to see.
Remote in the desert of Araby lies the nameless city, crumblingand
inarticulate, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands ofuncounted ages. It
must have been thus before the first stones of Memphis were laid,and while the
bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked. There is no legend so old asto give it a
name, or to recall that it was ever alive; but it is told of inwhispers around
campfires and muttered about by grandams in the tents of sheiksso that all the
tribes shun it without wholly knowing why. It was of this placethat Abdul
Alhazred the mad poet dreamed of the night before he sang hisunexplained
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 shunningthe nameless
city, the city told of in strange tales but seen by no livingman, yet I defied
them and went into the untrodden waste with my camel. I alonehave seen it, and
that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear asmine; 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 atme, chilly from
the rays of a cold moon amidst the desert's heat. And as Ireturned its look I
forgot my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with my camelto 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 moaningand saw a storm
of sand stirring among the antique stones though the sky wasclear and the vast
reaches of desert still. Then suddenly above the desert's far rimcame the
blazing edge of the sun, seen through the tiny sandstorm whichwas passing away,
and in my fevered state I fancied that from some remote depththere came a crash
of musical metal to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it fromthe banks of the
Nile. My ears rang and my imagination seethed as I led my camelslowly across
the sand to that unvocal place; that place which I alone ofliving men had seen.
In and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and placesI
wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of thesemen, if men
they were, who built this city and dwelt therein so long ago. Theantiquity of
the spot was unwholesome, and I longed to encounter some sign ordevice to prove
that the city was indeed fashioned by mankind. There were certainproportions
and dimensions in the ruins which I did not like. I had with memany tools, and
dug much within the walls of the obliterated edifices; butprogress was slow,
and nothing significant was revealed. When night and the moonreturned I felt a
chill wind which brought new fear, so that I did not dare toremain in the city.
And as I went outside the antique walls to sleep, a small sighingsandstorm
gathered behind me, blowing over the grey stones though the moonwas bright and
most of the desert still.
I awakened just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, myears ringing
as from some metallic peal. I saw the sun peering redly throughthe last gusts
of a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city, andmarked the
quietness of the rest of the landscape. Once more I venturedwithin those
brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under acoverlet, and
again dug vainly for relics of the forgotten race. At noon Irested, 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 cityhad been mighty
indeed, and wondered at the sources of its greatness. To myself Ipictured all
the spendours of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not recallit, and
thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that stood in the land of Mnarwhen mankind was
young, and of Ib, that was carven of grey stone before mankindexisted.
All at once I came upon a place where the bedrock rose starkthrough the
sand and formed a low cliff; and here I saw with joy what seemedto promise
further traces of the antediluvian people. Hewn rudely on theface of the cliff
were the unmistakable facades of several small, squat rock housesor temples;
whose interiors might preserve many secrets of ages too remotefor calculation,
though sandstorms had long effaced any carvings which may havebeen outside.
Very low and sand-choked were all the dark apertures near me, butI cleared
one with my spade and crawled through it, carrying a torch toreveal whatever
mysteries it might hold. When I was inside I saw that the cavernwas indeed a
temple, and beheld plain signs of the race that had lived andworshipped 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 artificialmeans. The
lowness of the chiselled chamber was very strange, for I couldhardly kneel
upright; but the area was so great that my torch showed only partof it at a
time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far corners; for certainaltars and
stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting andinexplicable nature
and made me wonder what manner of men could have made andfrequented such a
temple. When I had seen all that the place contained, I crawledout again, avid
to find what the temples might yield.
Night had now approached, yet the tangible things I had seen madecuriosity
stronger than fear, so that I did not flee from the long mooncastshadows that
had daunted me when first I saw the nameless city. In thetwilight I cleared
another aperture and with a new torch crawled into it, findingmore vague stones
and symbols, though nothing more definite than the other templehad contained.
The room was just as low, but much less broad, ending in a verynarrow passage
crowded with obscure and cryptical shrines. About these shrines Iwas prying
when the noise of a wind and my camel outside broke through thestillness and
drew me forth to see what could have frightened the beast.
The moon was gleaming vividly over the primitive ruins, lightinga dense
cloud of sand that seemed blown by a strong but decreasing windfrom some point
along the cliff ahead of me. I knew it was this chilly, sandywind which had
disturbed the camel and was about to lead him to a place ofbetter shelter when
I chanced to glance up and saw that there was no wind atop thecliff. This
astonished me and made me fearful again, but I immediatelyrecalled the sudden
local winds that I had seen and heard before at sunrise andsunset, and judged
it was a normal thing. I decided it came from some rock fissureleading 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 distancesouth of me,
almost out of sight. Against the choking sand-cloud I ploddedtoward this
temple, which as I neared it loomed larger than the rest, andshewed a doorway
far less clogged with caked sand. I would have entered had notthe terrific
force of the icy wind almost quenched my torch. It poured madlyout of the dark
door, sighing uncannily as it ruffled the sand and spread amongthe weird ruins.
Soon it grew fainter and the sand grew more and more still, tillfinally all was
at rest again; but a presence seemed stalking among the spectralstones of the
city, and when I glanced at the moon it seemed to quiver asthough mirrored in
unquiet waters. I was more afraid than I could explain, but notenough to dull
my thirst for wonder; so as soon as the wind was quite gone Icrossed into the
dark chamber from which it had come.
This temple, as I had fancied from the outside, was larger thaneither of
those I had visited before; and was presumably a natural cavernsince it bore
winds from some region beyond. Here I could stand quite upright,but saw that
the stones and altars were as low as those in the other temples.On the walls
and roof I beheld for the first time some traces of the pictorialart of the
ancient race, curious curling streaks of paint that had almostfaded or crumbled
away; and on two of the altars I saw with rising excitement amaze of
well-fashioned curvilinear carvings. As I held my torch aloft itseemed to me
that the shape of the roof was too regular to be natural, and Iwondered what
the prehistoric cutters of stone had first worked upon. Theirengineering skill
must have been vast.
Then a brighter flare of the fantastic flame showed that formwhich I had
been seeking, the opening to those remoter abysses whence thesudden wind had
blown; and I grew faint when I saw that it was a small andplainly artificial
door chiselled in the solid rock. I thrust my torch within,beholding a black
tunnel with the roof arching low over a rough flight of verysmall, numerous and
steeply descending steps. I shall always see those steps in mydreams, for I
came to learn what they meant. At the time I hardly knew whetherto call them
steps or mere footholds in a precipitous descent. My mind waswhirling with mad
thoughts, and the words and warning of Arab prophets seemed tofloat across the
desert from the land that men know to the nameless city that mendare not know.
Yet I hesitated only for a moment before advancing through theportal and
commencing to climb cautiously down the steep passage, feetfirst, as though on
a ladder.
It is only in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium thatany other man
can have such a descent as mine. The narrow passage ledinfinitely down like
some hideous haunted well, and the torch I held above my headcould not light
the unknown depths toward which I was crawling. I lost track ofthe hours and
forgot to consult my watch, though I was frightened when Ithought of the
distance I must have be traversing. There were changes ofdirection and of
steepness; and once I came to a long, low, level passage where Ihad to wriggle
my feet first along the rocky floor, holding torch at arm'slength beyond my
head. The place was not high enough for kneeling. After that weremore of the
steep steps, and I was still scrambling down interminably when myfailing torch
died out. I do not think I noticed it at the time, for when I didnotice it I
was still holding it above me as if it were ablaze. I was quiteunbalanced with
that instinct for the strange and the unknown which had made me awanderer upon
earth and a haunter of far, ancient, and forbidden places.
In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of mycherished
treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab,paragraphs from
the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and infamous lines fromthe delirious
Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz. I repeated queer extracts,and muttered of
Afrasiab and the daemons that floated with him down the Oxus;later chanting
over and over again a phrase from one of Lord Dunsany's tales--"Theunreveberate
blackness of the abyss." Once when the descent grewamazingly steep I recited
something in sing-song from Thomas Moore until I feared to recitemore:

A reservoir of darkness, black
As witches' cauldrons are, when fill'd
With moon-drugs in th' eclipse distill'd
Leaning to look if foot might pass
Down thro' that chasm, I saw, beneath,
As far as vision could explore,
The jetty sides as smooth as glass,
Looking as if just varnish'd o'er
With that dark pitch the Seat of Death
Throws out upon its slimy shore.

Time had quite ceased to exist when my feet again felt a levelfloor, and I
found myself in a place slightly higher than the rooms in the twosmaller
temples now so incalculably far above my head. I could not quitestand, but
could kneel upright, and in the dark I shuffled and crept hitherand thither at
random. I soon knew that I was in a narrow passage whose wallswere lined with
cases of wood having glass fronts. As in that Palaeozoic andabysmal place I
felt of such things as polished wood and glass I shuddered at thepossible
implications. The cases were apparently ranged along each side ofthe passage at
regular intervals, and were oblong and horizontal, hideously likecoffins in
shape and size. When I tried to move two or three for furtherexamination, I
found that they were firmly fastened.
I saw that the passage was a long one, so floundered aheadrapidly in a
creeping run that would have seemed horrible had any eye watchedme in the
blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of mysurroundings
and be sure the walls and rows of cases still stretched on. Manis so used to
thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and picturedthe endless
corridor of wood and glass in its low-studded monotony as thoughI saw it. And
then in a moment of indescribable emotion I did see it.
Just when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; butthere came a
gradual glow ahead, and all at once I knew that I saw the dimoutlines of a
corridor and the cases, revealed by some unknown subterraneanphosphorescence.
For a little while all was exactly as I had imagined it, sincethe glow was very
faint; but as I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into thestronger light I
realised that my fancy had been but feeble. This hall was norelic of crudity
like the temples in the city above, but a monument of the mostmagnificent and
exotic art. Rich, vivid, and daringly fantastic designs andpictures formed a
continuous scheme of mural paintings whose lines and colours werebeyond
description. The cases were of a strange golden wood, with frontsof exquisite
glass, and containing the mummified forms of creaturesoutreaching in
grotesqueness the most chaotic dreams of man.
To convey any idea of these monstrosities is impossible. Theywere of the
reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile,sometimes the
seal, but more often nothing of which either the naturalist orthe
palaeontologist ever heard. In size they approximated a smallman, and their
fore-legs bore delicate and evident feet curiously like humanhands and fingers.
But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contourviolating all
know biological principles. To nothing can such things be wellcompared - in one
flash I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, thebullfrog, the mythic
Satyr, and the human being. Not Jove himself had had so colossaland protuberant
a forehead, yet the horns and the noselessness and the alligator-likejaw placed
things outside all established categories. I debated for a timeon the reality
of the mummies, half suspecting they were artificial idols; butsoon decided
they were indeed some palaeogean species which had lived when thenameless city
was alive. To crown their grotesqueness, most of them weregorgeously enrobed in
the costliest of fabrics, and lavishly laden with ornaments ofgold, jewels, and
unknown shining metals.
The importance of these crawling creatures must have been vast,for they
held first place among the wild designs on the frescoed walls andceiling. With
matchless skill had the artist drawn them in a world of theirown, wherein they
had cities and gardens fashioned to suit their dimensions; and Icould not help
but think that their pictured history was allegorical, perhapsshewing the
progress of the race that worshipped them. These creatures, Isaid to myself,
were to men of the nameless city what the she-wolf was to Rome,or some
totem-beast is to a tribe of Indians.
Holding this view, I could trace roughly a wonderful epic of thenameless
city; the tale of a mighty seacoast metropolis that ruled theworld before
Africa rose out of the waves, and of its struggles as the seashrank away, and
the desert crept into the fertile valley that held it. I saw itswars and
triumphs, its troubles and defeats, and afterwards its terriblefight against
the desert when thousands of its people - here represented inallegory by the
grotesque reptiles - were driven to chisel their way down thoughthe rocks in
some marvellous manner to another world whereof their prophetshad told them. It
was all vividly weird and realistic, and its connection with theawesome descent
I had made was unmistakable. I even recognized the passages.
As I crept along the corridor toward the brighter light I sawlater stages
of the painted epic - the leave-taking of the race that had dweltin the
nameless city and the valley around for ten million years; therace whose souls
shrank from quitting scenes their bodies had known so long wherethey had
settled as nomads in the earth's youth, hewing in the virgin rockthose primal
shrines at which they had never ceased to worship. Now that thelight was better
I studied the pictures more closely and, remembering that thestrange reptiles
must represent the unknown men, pondered upon the customs of thenameless city.
Many things were peculiar and inexplicable. The civilization,which included a
written alphabet, had seemingly risen to a higher order thanthose immeasurably
later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet there were curiousomissions. I
could, for example, find no pictures to represent deaths orfuneral customs,
save such as were related to wars, violence, and plagues; and Iwondered at the
reticence shown concerning natural death. It was as though anideal of
immortality had been fostered as a cheering illusion.
Still nearer the end of the passage was painted scenes of theutmost
picturesqueness and extravagance: contrasted views of thenameless city in its
desertion and growing ruin, and of the strange new realm ofparadise to which
the race had hewed its way through the stone. In these views thecity and the
desert valley were shewn always by moonlight, golden nimbushovering over the
fallen walls, and half-revealing the splendid perfection offormer times, shown
spectrally and elusively by the artist. The paradisal scenes werealmost too
extravagant to be believed, portraying a hidden world of eternalday filled with
glorious cities and ethereal hills and valleys. At the very lastI thought I saw
signs of an artistic anticlimax. The paintings were lessskillful, and much more
bizarre than even the wildest of the earlier scenes. They seemedto record a
slow decadence of the ancient stock, coupled with a growingferocity toward the
outside world from which it was driven by the desert. The formsof the people -
always represented by the sacred reptiles - appeared to begradually wasting
away, through their spirit as shewn hovering above the ruins bymoonlight gained
in proportion. Emaciated priests, displayed as reptiles in ornaterobes, cursed
the upper air and all who breathed it; and one terrible finalscene shewed a
primitive-looking man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, theCity of Pillars,
torn to pieces by members of the elder race. I remember how theArabs fear the
nameless city, and was glad that beyond this place the grey wallsand ceiling
were bare.
As I viewed the pageant of mural history I had approached veryclosely to
the end of the low-ceiled hall, and was aware of a gate throughwhich came all
of the illuminating phosphorescence. Creeping up to it, I criedaloud in
transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; for instead of otherand brighter
chambers there was only an illimitable void of uniform radiance,such one might
fancy when gazing down from the peak of Mount Everest upon a seaof sunlit mist.
Behind me was a passage so cramped that I could not stand uprightin it; before
me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence.
Reaching down from the passage into the abyss was the head of asteep flight
of steps - small numerous steps like those of black passages Ihad traversed -
but after a few feet the glowing vapours concealed everything.Swung back open
against the left-hand wall of the passage was a massive door ofbrass,
incredibly thick and decorated with fantastic bas-reliefs, whichcould if closed
shut the whole inner world of light away from the vaults andpassages of rock. I
looked at the step, and for the nonce dared not try them. Itouched the open
brass door, and could not move it. Then I sank prone to the stonefloor, my mind
aflame with prodigious reflections which not even a death-likeexhaustion could
banish.
As I lay still with closed eyes, free to ponder, many things Ihad lightly
noted in the frescoes came back to me with new and terriblesignificance -
scenes representing the nameless city in its heyday - thevegetations of the
valley around it, and the distant lands with which its merchantstraded. The
allegory of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universalprominence, and I
wondered that it would be so closely followed in a picturedhistory of such
importance. In the frescoes the nameless city had been shewn inproportions
fitted to the reptiles. I wondered what its real proportions andmagnificence
had been, and reflected a moment on certain oddities I hadnoticed in the ruins.
I thought curiously of the lowness of the primal temples and ofthe underground
corridor, which were doubtless hewn thus out of deference to thereptile deities
there honoured; though it perforce reduced the worshippers tocrawling. Perhaps
the very rites here involved crawling in imitation of thecreatures. No
religious theory, however, could easily explain why the levelpassages in that
awesome descent should be as low as the temples - or lower, sinceone cold not
even kneel in it. As I thought of the crawling creatures, whosehideous
mummified forms were so close to me, I felt a new throb of fear.Mental
associations are curious, and I shrank from the idea that exceptfor the poor
primitive man torn to pieces in the last painting, mine was theonly human form
amidst the many relics and symbols of the primordial life.
But as always in my strange and roving existence, wonder soondrove out
fear; for the luminous abyss and what it might contain presenteda problem
worthy of the greatest explorer. That a weird world of mysterylay far down that
flight of peculiarly small steps I could not doubt, and I hopedto find there
those human memorials which the painted corridor had failed togive. The
frescoes had pictured unbelievable cities, and valleys in thislower realm, and
my fancy dwelt on the rich and colossal ruins that awaited me.
My fears, indeed, concerned the past rather than the future. Noteven the
physical horror of my position in that cramped corridor of deadreptiles and
antediluvian frescoes, miles below the world I knew and faced byanother world
of eery light and mist, could match the lethal dread I felt atthe abysmal
antiquity of the scene and its soul. An ancientness so vast thatmeasurement is
feeble seemed to leer down from the primal stones and rock-hewntemples of the
nameless city, while the very latest of the astounding maps inthe frescoes
shewed oceans and continents that man has forgotten, with onlyhere and there
some vaguely familiar outlines. Of what could have happened inthe geological
ages since the paintings ceased and the death-hating raceresentfully succumbed
to decay, no man might say. Life had once teemed in these cavernsand in the
luminous realm beyond; now I was alone with vivid relics, and Itrembled to
think of the countless ages through which these relics had kept asilent
deserted vigil.
Suddenly there came another burst of that acute fear which had
intermittently seized me ever since I first saw the terriblevalley and the
nameless city under a cold moon, and despite my exhaustion Ifound myself
starting frantically to a sitting posture and gazing back alongthe black
corridor toward the tunnels that rose to the outer world. Mysensations were
like those which had made me shun the nameless city at night, andwere as
inexplicable as they were poignant. In another moment, however, Ireceived a
still greater shock in the form of a definite sound - the firstwhich had broken
the utter silence of these tomb-like depths. It was a deep, lowmoaning, as of a
distant throng of condemned spirits, and came from the directionin which I was
staring. Its volume rapidly grew, till it soon reverberatedfrightfully through
the low passage, and at the same time I became conscious of anincreasing
draught of old air, likewise flowing from the tunnels and thecity above. The
touch of this air seemed to restore my balance, for I instantlyrecalled the
sudden gusts which had risen around the mouth of the abyss eachsunset and
sunrise, one of which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels tome. I looked at
my watch and saw that sunrise was near, so bracing myself toresist the gale
that was sweeping down to its cavern home as it had swept forthat evening. My
fear again waned low, since a natural phenomenon tends to dispelbroodings over
the unknown.
More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind intothe gulf
of the inner earth. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly atthe floor for
fear of being swept bodily through the open gate into thephosphorescent abyss.
Such fury I had not expected, and as I grew aware of an actualslipping of my
form toward the abyss I was beset by a thousand new terrors ofapprehension and
imagination. The malignancy of the blast awakened incrediblefancies; once more
I compared myself shudderingly to the only human image in thatfrightful
corridor, the man who was torn to pieces by the nameless race,for in the
fiendish clawing of the swirling currents there seemed to abide avindictive
rage all the stronger because it was largely impotent. I think Iscreamed
frantically near the last - I was almost mad - of the howlingwind-wraiths. I
tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but Icould not even
hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward theunknown world.
Finally reason must have wholly snapped; for I fell babbling overand over that
unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed ofthe nameless
city:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place--what
indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured orwhat Abaddon
guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiverin the night
wind till oblivion - or worse - claims me. Monstrous, unnatural,colossal, was
the thing - too far beyond all the ideas of man to be believedexcept in the
silent damnable small hours of the morning when one cannot sleep.
I have said that the fury of the rushing blast was infernal -
cacodaemoniacal - and that its voices were hideous with the pent-upviciousness
of desolate eternities. Presently these voices, while stillchaotic before me,
seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form behind me; anddown there in
the grave of unnumbered aeon-dead antiquities, leagues below thedawn-lit world
of men, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling of strange-tonguedfiends.
Turning, I saw outlined against the luminous aether of the abysswhat could not
be seen against the dusk of the corridor - a nightmare horde ofrushing devils;
hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half transparent devils ofa race no man
might mistake - the crawling reptiles of the nameless city.
And as the wind died away I was plunged into the ghoul-pooleddarkness of
earth's bowels; for behind the last of the creatures the greatbrazen door
clanged shut with a deafening peal of metallic music whosereverberations
swelled out to the distant world to hail the rising sun as Memnonhails it from
the banks of the Nile.