Unformatted text preview: The Collected Stories
of H. P. Lovecraft Prepared for SciFi4Me.com by Jason P. Hunt THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT CONTENTS
The Nameless City
The Festival
The Colour out of Space
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
Dreams in the Witch-house
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shadow over Innsmouth
The Shadow out of Time
At the Mountains of Madness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Azathoth
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephais
Cool Air
Dagon
Ex Oblivione
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
From Beyond
He
Herbert West: Reanimator
Hypnos
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
In the Vault
Medusa's Coil
Memory
Nyarlathotep
Pickman's Model
Poetry of the Gods
The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
The Book
The Cats of Ulthar
The Crawling Chaos
The Descendant
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Evil Clergyman
The Horror at Martin's Beach
The Horror at Red Hook
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Moon Bog SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT The Music of Erich Zann
The Other Gods
The Outsider
The Picture in the House
The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
The Unnamable
The White Ship
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
What the Moon Brings
Polaris
The Very Old Folk SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT THE NAMELESS CITY
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 greatgrandfather 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.
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 SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT 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. At noon I 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 bed rock 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 on
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 SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT 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 for wonder; so as soon as
the wind was quite gone I crossed into the dark chamber from which it had come.
This temple, as I had fancied from the outside, was larger than either of those I
had visited before; and was presumably a natural cavern since 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 pictorial art of the ancient race,
curious curling streaks of paint that had almost faded or crumbled away; and on
two of the altars I saw with rising excitement a maze of well-fashioned curvilinear
carvings. As I held my torch aloft it seemed to me that the shape of the roof was
too regular to be natural, and I wondered what the prehistoric cutters of stone
had first worked upon. Their engineering skill must have been vast.
Then a brighter flare of the fantastic flame showed that form which I had been
seeking, the opening to those remoter abysses whence the sudden wind had
blown; and I grew faint when I saw that it was a small and plainly 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 very small, numerous and steeply
descending steps. I shall always see those steps in my dreams, for I came to
learn what they meant. At the time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or
mere footholds in a precipitous descent. My mind was whirling with mad SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT thoughts, and the words and warning of Arab prophets seemed to float across
the desert from the land that men know to the nameless city that men dare not
know. Yet I hesitated only for a moment before advancing through the portal and
commencing to climb cautiously down the steep passage, feet first, as though on
a ladder.
It is only in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can
have such a descent as mine. The narrow passage led infinitely down like some
hideous haunted well, and the torch I held above my head could not light the
unknown depths toward which I was crawling. I lost track of the hours and forgot
to consult my watch, though I was frightened when I thought of the distance I
must have be traversing. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and
once I came to a long, low, level passage where I had to wriggle my feet first
along the rocky floor, holding torch at arm's length beyond my head. The place
was not high enough for kneeling. After that were more of the steep steps, and I
was still scrambling down interminably when my failing torch died out. I do not
think I noticed it at the time, for when I did notice it I was still holding it above me
as if it were ablaze. I was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the strange and
the unknown which had made me a wanderer upon earth and a haunter of far,
ancient, and forbidden places.
In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my cherished
treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab, paragraphs
from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and infamous lines from the
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--"The
unreveberate blackness of the abyss." Once when the descent grew amazingly
steep I recited something in sing-song from Thomas Moore until I feared to recite
more:
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 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 SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT 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 that 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 a 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 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
paintings whose lines and colours were beyond description. The cases were of a
strange golden wood, with fronts of exquisite glass, and containing 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 suggestion 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 evident 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 bullfrog, the mythic Satyr, and the human
being. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the
horns and the noselessness and the alligator-like jaw placed 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 SciFi4Me.com THE COLLECTED STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT 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 help
but think that their pictured history was allegorical, perhaps showing the progress
of the race that worshipped them. These creatures, I said 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 the nameless city; the
tale of a mighty seacoast 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 afterwards 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
connection with the awesome descent I had made was unmistakable. I even
recognized 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 had
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 civilization, which included a written
alphabet, had seemingly risen to a higher order than those immeasurably later
civilizations 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
shown concerning natural death. It was as though an ideal of immortality had
been fostered as a cheering illusion.
Still nearer the end of the passage was 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 of 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, golden nimbu...
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