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 the desert of Araby lies 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 of Memphis were laid, and while the
bricks of Babylon were 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.
