A Cidade Sem Nome
Por H. P. Lovecraft
Quando me aproximei da cidade sem nome, eu sabia que ela estava amaldiçoada. Eu estava viajando por um vale árido e terrível sob a lua, e ao longe, eu a vi se projetando de forma inquietante acima das areias, como partes de um cadáver podem se projetar de um túmulo mal feito. O medo falava das pedras desgastadas pelo tempo dessa cidade ancestral, dessa avó das pirâmides mais antigas; e uma aura invisível me repelia e me ordenava que me afastasse de segredos antigos e sinistros que nenhum homem deveria ver, e que nenhum outro homem ousara ver.
Longe, no deserto da Arábia, jaz a cidade sem nome, em ruínas e inarticulada, suas muralhas baixas quase escondidas pelas areias de idades incontáveis. Ela deve ter sido assim antes que as primeiras pedras de Mênfis fossem colocadas, e enquanto os tijolos de Babilônia ainda estavam crus. Não há lenda tão antiga que lhe dê um nome, ou que lembre que ela já esteve viva; mas é contada em sussurros em torno de fogueiras e murmurada por avós nos acampamentos de xeques, de modo que todas as tribos a evitam sem saber exatamente por quê. Foi sobre esse lugar que Abdul Alhazred, o poeta louco, sonhou na noite anterior a cantar seu inexplicável dístico:
“Isso não
está morto, o que pode mentir eternamente,
E com estranhos éons, até a morte pode
morrer.”
Eu deveria ter sabido que os árabes tinham uma boa razão para evitar a cidade sem nome, a cidade contada em estranhas histórias, mas vista por nenhum homem vivo; no entanto, eu os desafiei e entrei no deserto inexplorado com meu camelo. Eu sou o único que a viu, e é por isso que nenhum outro rosto carrega linhas de medo tão hediondas quanto as minhas; por que nenhum outro homem treme de forma tão horrível quando o vento noturno sacode as janelas. Quando eu a encontrei na quietude macabra do sono eterno, ela me olhou, fria sob os raios de uma lua fria no meio do calor do deserto. E quando eu retornei seu olhar, eu esqueci meu triunfo em encontrá-la, e parei com meu camelo para esperar o amanhecer.
Por horas, eu esperei, até que o leste ficou cinzento e as estrelas se apagaram, e o cinzento se transformou em luz rosada orlada de ouro. Eu ouvi um lamento e vi uma tempestade de areia se agitando entre as pedras antigas, embora o céu estivesse claro e as vastas extensões do deserto estivessem imóveis. Então, de repente, acima da borda distante do deserto, veio a borda flamejante do sol, vista através da pequena tempestade de areia que estava passando, e em meu estado febril, eu imaginei que de alguma profundidade remota veio um estrondo de metal musical para saudar o disco de fogo, como Memnon o saúda das margens do Nilo. Meus ouvidos zuniram e minha imaginação fervilhou enquanto eu levava meu camelo lentamente sobre a areia até aquele lugar de pedra silenciosa; aquele lugar que era demasiado antigo para o Egito e Meroë lembrarem; aquele lugar que eu, sozinho entre os homens vivos, havia visto.
Dentro e fora, entre as fundações informes de casas e palácios, eu vaguei, nunca encontrando nenhuma inscrição ou escultura para contar sobre aqueles homens, se é que eram homens, que construíram a cidade e nela viveram há tanto tempo. A antiguidade do local era insalubre, e eu ansiava por encontrar algum sinal ou dispositivo para provar que a cidade foi de fato moldada pela humanidade. Havia certas proporções e dimensões nas ruínas que eu não gostava. Eu tinha comigo muitas ferramentas e cavei muito dentro das muralhas dos edifícios obliterados; mas o progresso era lento, e nada significativo foi revelado. Quando a noite e a lua retornaram, eu senti um vento gelado que trouxe um novo medo, de modo que eu não ousei permanecer na cidade. E quando eu saí fora das muralhas antigas para dormir, uma pequena tempestade de areia se reuniu atrás de mim, soprando sobre as pedras cinzentas, embora a lua estivesse brilhante e a maior parte do deserto estivesse imóvel.
Eu acordei exatamente ao amanhecer de um cortejo de sonhos horríveis, meus ouvidos zunindo como se de um sino metálico. Eu vi o sol espiando vermelhamente através dos últimos redemoinhos de uma pequena tempestade de areia que pairava sobre a cidade sem nome, e marquei a quietude do resto da paisagem. Mais uma vez, eu entrei nas ruínas sombrias que se erguiam sob a areia como um ogro sob uma coberta, e novamente cavei em vão por relíquias da raça esquecida. Ao meio-dia, eu descansava, e na tarde, eu passei muito tempo traçando as muralhas, e as ruas antigas, e os contornos dos edifícios quase desaparecidos. Eu vi que a cidade havia sido poderosa de fato, e me admirei com as fontes de sua grandeza. Para mim, eu imaginei todos os esplendores de uma era tão distante que a Caldéia não podia lembrá-la, e pensei em Sarnath, a Condenada, que se erguia na terra de Mnar quando a humanidade era jovem, e em Ib, que foi esculpida em pedra cinzenta antes de a humanidade existir.
De repente, eu cheguei a um lugar onde o solo rochoso se erguia abruptamente através da areia e formava uma falésia baixa; e aqui eu vi, com alegria, o que parecia prometer vestígios adicionais do povo antediluviano. Talhadas grosseiramente na face da falésia estavam as fachadas inconfundíveis de várias pequenas casas de pedra ou templos baixos; cujos interiores poderiam preservar muitos segredos de idades demasiado remotas para cálculo, embora tempestades de areia houvessem há muito apagado qualquer escultura que possa ter estado do lado de fora.
Muito baixas e entupidas de areia estavam todas as aberturas escuras perto de mim, mas eu limpei uma com minha pá e rastejei através dela, carregando uma tocha para revelar quaisquer mistérios que ela pudesse conter. Quando eu estava dentro, eu vi que a caverna era de fato um templo, e contemplei sinais claros da raça que vivera e adorara antes de o deserto ser um deserto. Altos primitivos, pilares e nichos, todos curiosamente baixos, não estavam ausentes; e embora eu não visse nenhuma escultura nem afrescos, havia muitas pedras singulares claramente moldadas em símbolos por meios artificiais. A baixeza da câmara talhada era muito estranha, pois eu mal podia me ajoelhar ereto; mas a área era tão grande que minha tocha mostrava apenas parte de cada vez. Eu estremeci de forma estranha em alguns dos cantos mais distantes; pois certos altares e pedras sugeriam ritos esquecidos de natureza terrível, revoltante e inexplicável, e me fizeram questionar que tipo de homens poderia ter feito e frequentado tal templo. Quando eu havia visto tudo o que o lugar continha, eu rastejei para fora novamente, ansioso para descobrir o que os outros templos poderiam render.
A noite havia agora se aproximado, mas as coisas tangíveis que eu havia visto fizeram a curiosidade mais forte do que o medo, de modo que eu não fugi das longas sombras projetadas pela lua que me haviam assustado quando eu primeiro vi a cidade sem nome. No crepúsculo, eu limpei outra abertura e, com uma nova tocha, rastejei para dentro dela, encontrando mais pedras e símbolos vagos, embora nada mais definido do que o templo anterior havia contido. A sala era tão baixa, mas muito menos ampla, terminando em um estreito corredor apinhado de santuários obscuros e crípticos. Em torno desses santuários, eu estava bisbilhotando quando o barulho do vento e do meu camelo do lado de fora rompeu a quietude e me atraiu para fora para ver o que poderia ter assustado a besta.
A lua brilhava vividamente sobre as ruínas primordiais, iluminando uma densa nuvem de areia que parecia soprada por um vento forte, mas decrescente, de algum ponto ao longo da falésia à minha frente. Eu sabia que era esse vento gelado e areento que havia perturbado o camelo, e estava prestes a levá-lo a um lugar de melhor abrigo quando eu casualmente olhei para cima e vi que não havia vento no topo da falésia. Isso me surpreendeu e me fez temer novamente, mas eu imediatamente me lembrei dos ventos locais súbitos que eu havia visto e ouvido antes ao nascer e ao pôr do sol, e julguei que era uma coisa normal. Eu decidi que ele vinha de alguma fenda rochosa que levava a uma caverna, e observei a areia agitada para rastreá-la até sua fonte; logo percebendo que ela vinha da abertura negra de um templo a longa distância ao sul de mim, quase fora de vista. Contra a nuvem de areia sufocante, eu me aproximei do templo, que, à medida que eu me aproximava, parecia maior do que os demais, e mostrava uma porta menos entupida de areia endurecida. Eu teria entrado se a força terrível do vento gelado não tivesse quase apagado minha tocha. Ele saía loucamente da porta escura, sussurrando de forma inquietante enquanto agitava a areia e se espalhava entre as ruínas estranhas. Logo, ele se tornou mais fraco e a areia se tornou cada vez mais imóvel, até que, finalmente, tudo estava em repouso novamente; mas uma presença parecia vaguear entre as pedras espectrais da cidade, e quando eu olhei para a lua, ela parecia tremer como se refletida em águas inquietas. Eu estava mais assustado do que podia explicar, mas não o suficiente para embotar minha sede de maravilhas; então, assim que o vento havia passado, eu cruzei para a câmara escura de onde ele havia vindo.
Esse templo, como eu havia imaginado do lado de fora, era maior do que qualquer um dos que eu havia visitado antes; e presumivelmente era uma caverna natural, pois trazia ventos de alguma região além. Aqui, eu podia me levantar quase ereto, mas vi que as pedras e altares eram tão baixos quanto os dos outros templos. Nas paredes e no teto, eu contemplei, pela primeira vez, alguns vestígios da arte pictórica da raça antiga, curiosas faixas onduladas de tinta que haviam quase desvanecido ou se desintegrado; e em dois dos altares, eu vi, com crescente excitação, um labirinto de curvas esculpidas com habilidade. Quando eu segurei minha tocha acima, pareceu-me que a forma do teto era demasiado regular para ser natural, e eu me perguntei o que os cortadores de pedra pré-históricos haviam trabalhado primeiro. Sua habilidade de engenharia deve ter sido vasta.
Então, um brilho mais intenso da chama fantástica me mostrou o que eu havia estado procurando, a abertura para aqueles abismos mais remotos de onde o vento súbito havia soprado; e eu desfaleci quando eu vi que era uma pequena porta artificial esculpida na rocha sólida. Eu empurrei minha tocha para dentro, contemplando um túnel negro com o teto arqueado baixo sobre uma escada íngreme e estreita de degraus pequenos e numerosos. Eu sempre verei esses degraus em meus sonhos, pois eu vim a saber o que eles significavam. Na época, eu mal sabia se chamá-los de degraus ou meros pontos de apoio em uma descida precipitosa. Minha mente estava girando com pensamentos loucos, e as palavras e advertências dos profetas árabes pareciam flutuar sobre o deserto, das terras que os homens conhecem para a cidade sem nome que os homens ousam não conhecer. No entanto, eu hesitei apenas por um momento antes de avançar através do portal e começar a descer cautelosamente a passagem estreita, pés primeiro, como se em uma escada.
É apenas nos terríveis fantasmas de drogas ou delírio que qualquer outro homem pode ter tido uma descida como a minha. A passagem estreita levava infinitamente para baixo, como algum poço assombrado hediondo, e a tocha que eu segurava acima da minha cabeça não podia iluminar as profundezas desconhecidas em direção às quais eu estava rastejando. Eu perdi a noção das horas e esqueci de consultar meu relógio, embora eu estivesse assustado quando pensei na distância que eu devia estar percorrendo. Havia mudanças de direção e de inclinação, e uma vez eu cheguei a um longo e baixo corredor nivelado onde eu tive que rastejar pés primeiro ao longo do chão rochoso, segurando minha tocha a braço de distância além da minha cabeça. O lugar não era alto o suficiente para se ajoelhar. Depois disso, havia mais dos degraus íngremes, e eu ainda estava subindo interminavelmente quando minha tocha falhante se apagou. Eu não acho que eu notei na época, pois quando eu notei, eu ainda estava segurando-a alta acima de mim como se estivesse acesa. Eu estava completamente desequilibrado com aquele instinto para o estranho e o desconhecido que me fez um vagabundo na terra e um frequentador de lugares antigos, proibidos e distantes.
Na escuridão, fragmentos da minha tesourosa coleção de conhecimentos demoníacos passaram diante da minha mente; frases de Alhazred, o árabe louco, parágrafos dos pesadelos apócrifos de Damáscio, e linhas infames do delirante Image du Monde de Gauthier de Metz. Eu recitei trechos estranhos e murmurei sobre Afrasiab e os demônios que flutuavam com ele ao longo do Oxus; mais tarde, entoando repetidamente uma frase de uma das histórias de Lord Dunsany — “a escuridão insonora do abismo”. Uma vez, quando a descida se tornou incrivelmente íngreme, eu recitei algo em cantilena de Thomas Moore, até que eu temi recitar mais:
“Um reservatório de escuridão, preto
Como caldeirões de bruxas, quando cheios
De drogas lunares na eclipse destiladas.
Inclinando-me para olhar se o pé podia passar
Abaixo daquele abismo, eu vi, abaixo,
Tanto quanto a visão podia explorar,
The jetty sides as smooth as glass,
Looking as if just varnish’d o’er
With that dark pitch the Sea of Death
Throws out upon its slimy shore.”
Time had quite ceased to exist when my feet again felt a level floor, and I
found myself in a place slightly higher than the rooms in the two smaller temples now so incalculably
far above my head. I could not quite stand, but could kneel upright, and in the dark I shuffled
and crept hither and thither at random. I soon knew that I was in a narrow passage whose walls
were lined with cases of wood having glass fronts. As in that Palaeozoic and abysmal place I
felt of such things as polished wood and glass I shuddered at the possible implications. The
cases were apparently ranged along each side of the passage at regular intervals, and were oblong
and horizontal, hideously like coffins in shape and size. When I tried to move two or three
for further examination, I found they were firmly fastened.
I saw that the passage was a long one, so floundered ahead rapidly in a creeping
run that would have seemed horrible had any eye watched me in the blackness; crossing from side
to side occasionally to feel of my surroundings and be sure the walls and rows of cases still
stretched on. Man is so used to thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and pictured
the endless corridor of wood and glass in its low-studded monotony as though I 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; but there came a gradual
glow ahead, and all at once I knew that I saw the dim outlines of the corridor and the cases,
revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence. For a little while all was exactly as
I had imagined it, since the glow was very faint; but as I mechanically kept on stumbling ahead
into the stronger light I realised that my fancy had been but feeble. This hall was no relic
of crudity like the temples in the city above, but a monument of the most magnificent and exotic
art. Rich, vivid, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a continuous scheme of
mural painting whose lines and colours were beyond description. The cases were of a strange
golden wood, with fronts of exquisite glass, and contained the mummified forms of creatures
outreaching in grotesqueness the most chaotic dreams of man.
To convey any idea of these monstrosities is impossible. They were of the reptile
kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often
nothing of which either the naturalist or the palaeontologist ever heard. In size they approximated
a small man, and their fore legs bore delicate and evidently flexible feet curiously like human
hands and fingers. But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contour violating
all known biological principles. To nothing can such things be well compared—in one flash
I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, the bulldog, the mythic Satyr, and the human
being. Not Jove himself had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the horns and the noselessness
and the alligator-like jaw placed the things outside all established categories. I debated for
a time on the reality of the mummies, half suspecting they were artificial idols; but soon decided
they were indeed some palaeogean species which had lived when the nameless city was alive. To
crown their grotesqueness, most of them were gorgeously enrobed in the costliest of fabrics,
and lavishly laden with ornaments of gold, 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 and ceiling. With matchless skill had
the artist drawn them in a world of their own, wherein they had cities and gardens fashioned
to suit their dimensions; and I could not but think that their pictured history was allegorical,
perhaps shewing the progress of the race that worshipped them. These creatures, I said to myself,
were to the 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 thought I could trace roughly a wonderful epic of the
nameless city; the tale of a mighty sea-coast metropolis that ruled the world before Africa
rose out of the waves, and of its struggles as the sea shrank away, and the desert crept into
the fertile valley that held it. I saw its wars and triumphs, its troubles and defeats, and
afterward its terrible fight against the desert when thousands of its people—here represented
in allegory by the grotesque reptiles—were driven to chisel their way down through the
rocks in some marvellous manner to another world whereof their prophets had told them. It was
all vividly weird and realistic, and its connexion with the awesome descent I had made was unmistakable.
I even recognised the passages.
As I crept along the corridor toward the brighter light I saw later stages
of the painted epic—the leave-taking of the race that had dwelt in the nameless city and
the valley around for ten million years; the race whose souls shrank from quitting scenes their
bodies had known so long, where they had settled as nomads in the earth’s youth, hewing
in the virgin rock those primal shrines at which they never ceased to worship. Now that the
light was better I studied the pictures more closely, and, remembering that the strange reptiles
must represent the unknown men, pondered upon the customs of the nameless city. Many things
were peculiar and inexplicable. The civilisation, which included a written alphabet, had seemingly
risen to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilisations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet
there were curious omissions. I could, for example, find no pictures to represent deaths or
funeral customs, save such as were related to wars, violence, and plagues; and I wondered at
the reticence shewn concerning natural death. It was as though an ideal of earthly immortality
had been fostered as a cheering illusion.
Still nearer the end of the passage were painted scenes of the utmost picturesqueness
and extravagance; contrasted views of the nameless city in its desertion and growing ruin, and
of the strange new realm or paradise to which the race had hewed its way through the stone.
In these views the city and the desert valley were shewn always by moonlight, a golden nimbus
hovering over the fallen walls and half revealing the splendid perfection of former times, shewn
spectrally and elusively by the artist. The paradisal scenes were almost too extravagant to
be believed; portraying a hidden world of eternal day filled with glorious cities and ethereal
hills and valleys. At the very last I thought I saw signs of an artistic anti-climax. The paintings
were less skilful, and much more bizarre than even the wildest of the earlier scenes. They seemed
to record a slow decadence of the ancient stock, coupled with a growing ferocity toward the
outside world from which it was driven by the desert. The forms of the people—always represented
by the sacred reptiles—appeared to be gradually wasting away, though their spirit as shewn
hovering about the ruins by moonlight gained in proportion. Emaciated priests, displayed as
reptiles in ornate robes, cursed the upper air and all who breathed it; and one terrible final
scene shewed a primitive-looking man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the City of Pillars,
torn to pieces by members of the elder race. I remembered how the Arabs fear the nameless city,
and was glad that beyond this place the grey walls and ceiling were bare.
As I viewed the pageant of mural history I had approached very closely the
end of the low-ceiled hall, and was aware of a great gate through which came all of the illuminating
phosphorescence. Creeping up to it, I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond;
for instead of other and brighter chambers there was only an illimitable void of uniform radiance,
such as one might fancy when gazing down from the peak of Mount Everest upon a sea of sunlit
mist. Behind me was a passage so cramped that I could not stand upright in it; before me was
an infinity of subterranean effulgence.
Reaching down from the passage into the abyss was the head of a steep flight
of steps—small numerous steps like those of the black passages I had 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 of brass, incredibly thick and decorated with fantastic
bas-reliefs, which could if closed shut the whole inner world of light away from the vaults
and passages of rock. I looked at the steps, and for the nonce dared not try them. I touched
the open brass door, and could not move it. Then I sank prone to the stone floor, my mind aflame
with prodigious reflections which not even a death-like exhaustion could banish.
As I lay still with closed eyes, free to ponder, many things I had lightly
noted in the frescoes came back to me with new and terrible significance—scenes representing
the nameless city in its heyday, the vegetation of the valley around it, and the distant lands
with which its merchants traded. The allegory of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal
prominence, and I wondered that it should be so closely followed in a pictured history of such
importance. In the frescoes the nameless city had been shewn in proportions fitted to the reptiles.
I wondered what its real proportions and magnificence had been, and reflected a moment on certain
oddities I had noticed in the ruins. I thought curiously of the lowness of the primal temples
and of the underground corridor, which were doubtless hewn thus out of deference to the reptile
deities there honoured; though it perforce reduced the worshippers to crawling. Perhaps the
very rites had involved a crawling in imitation of the creatures. No religious theory, however,
could easily explain why the level passage in that awesome descent should be as low as the temples—or
lower, since one could not even kneel in it. As I thought of the crawling creatures, whose hideous
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 except for the poor primitive man torn to pieces in the last
painting, mine was the only human form amidst the many relics and symbols of primordial life.
But as always in my strange and roving existence, wonder soon drove out fear;
for the luminous abyss and what it might contain presented a problem worthy of the greatest
explorer. That a weird world of mystery lay far down that flight of peculiarly small steps I
could not doubt, and I hoped to find there those human memorials which the painted corridor
had failed to give. The frescoes had pictured unbelievable cities, hills, and valleys in this
lower realm, and my fancy dwelt on the rich and colossal ruins that awaited me.
My fears, indeed, concerned the past rather than the future. Not even the physical
horror of my position in that cramped corridor of dead reptiles and antediluvian frescoes, miles
below the world I knew and faced by another world of eerie light and mist, could match the lethal
dread I felt at the abysmal antiquity of the scene and its soul. An ancientness so vast that
measurement is feeble seemed to leer down from the primal stones and rock-hewn temples in the
nameless city, while the very latest of the astounding maps in the frescoes shewed oceans and
continents that man has forgotten, with only here and there some vaguely familiar outline. Of
what could have happened in the geological aeons since the paintings ceased and the death-hating
race resentfully succumbed to decay, no man might say. Life had once teemed in these caverns
and in the luminous realm beyond; now I was alone with vivid relics, and I trembled to think
of the countless ages through which these relics had kept a silent and deserted vigil.
Suddenly there came another burst of that acute fear which had intermittently
seized me ever since I first saw the terrible valley and the nameless city under a cold moon,
and despite my exhaustion I found myself starting frantically to a sitting posture and gazing
back along the black corridor toward the tunnels that rose to the outer world. My sensations
were much like those which had made me shun the nameless city at night, and were as inexplicable
as they were poignant. In another moment, however, I received a still greater shock in the form
of a definite sound—the first which had broken the utter silence of these tomb-like depths.
It was a deep, low moaning, as of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and came from the direction
in which I was staring. Its volume rapidly grew, till soon it reverberated frightfully through
the low passage, and at the same time I became conscious of an increasing draught of cold air,
likewise flowing from the tunnels and the city above. The touch of this air seemed to restore
my balance, for I instantly recalled the sudden gusts which had risen around the mouth of the
abyss each sunset and sunrise, one of which had indeed served to reveal the hidden tunnels to
me. I looked at my watch and saw that sunrise was near, so braced myself to resist the gale
which was sweeping down to its cavern home as it had swept forth at evening. My fear again waned
low, since a natural phenomenon tends to dispel broodings over the unknown.
More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night-wind into that gulf
of the inner earth. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the floor for fear of being
swept bodily through the open gate into the phosphorescent abyss. Such fury I had not expected,
and as I grew aware of an actual slipping of my form toward the abyss I was beset by a thousand
new terrors of apprehension and imagination. The malignancy of the blast awakened incredible
fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the only other human image in that frightful
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 a vindictive rage all the stronger because it was
largely impotent. I think I screamed frantically near the last—I was almost mad—but
if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling wind-wraiths. I tried to
crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed
slowly and inexorably toward the unknown world. Finally reason must have wholly snapped, for
I fell to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed
of the 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 or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where
I must always remember and shiver in 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 believed except in the silent damnable small hours 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-up viciousness of desolate eternities. Presently
those voices, while still chaotic before me, seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form
behind me; and down there in the grave of unnumbered aeon-dead antiquities, leagues below the
dawn-lit world of men, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling of strange-tongued fiends. Turning,
I saw outlined against the luminous aether of the abyss what could not be seen against the dusk
of the corridor—a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate-distorted, grotesquely panoplied,
half-transparent; devils of a race no man might mistake—the crawling reptiles of the nameless
city.
And as the wind died away I was plunged into the ghoul-peopled blackness of
earth’s bowels; for behind the last of the creatures the great brazen door clanged shut
with a deafening peal of metallic music whose reverberations swelled out to the distant world
to hail the rising sun as Memnon hails it from the banks of the Nile.