Excerpt of The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
so this is gonna be a little bit longer than my previous sessions. It's an excerpt from H. P. Lovecraft's The Nameless City. When I drew nigh the nameless city, I knew it was a curse ID. I was traveling in a parched in 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 delusion, this great grandfather of the eldest pyramid and of Euless or a repelled me and baby retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see and no man else had dared to see. Remote In the deserts of Araby lies the nameless city, crumbling and inarticulate. It's low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted ages. It must have been thus before the first Stones of Memphis relate. 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 grand Dems in the tents of sheikhs so that all the tribes shun it without holy knowing why it was of this place that Abdul has read. The mad poet dreamed of the night before, he saying his unexplained couple it that is not dead, which can eternal lie. And with strange, Aon's death may die. I should have known that the Arabs had good reason for shunning the name of city the city told of in strange tales, but seen by no living man. Yet I defied them and went into the on trodden waste with my camel. I alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear is 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 the UN ending sleep, it looked at me chili from the rays of a cold moon amidst the deserts heat. And as I returned, it's look. I forgot my triumph at finding it and stopped still with by ********* Wait for dawn. Four hours I waited till the east grew gray and the stars faded and the grey turned to rosette light edged with gold. I heard a moaning and saw storm of sand stirring among the antique stones, though the sky was clear and the vast reaches of desert still. Then suddenly, above the deserts, 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 meme non hails it from the banks of the Nile. My ears rang in my imagination. Si, vidas. I lead my camel slowly across the sand to that on vocal place, that place, which I alone of living men, had seen in and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses in places I wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of these men. If men, they were who built the city and dwelt there. And 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 Doug much within the walls of the obliterated edifices. But progress was slow and nothing significant was revealed. When night in 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, ah, small sighing sandstorm gathered behind me, blowing over the gray 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 is from some metallic peel. I saw the sun pairing red li 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 cover lit and again dug vainly for relics of that for gotten race. At noon I rested, and in the afternoon I spend 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 spenders oven age so distant that Shelda could not recall it and thought of Sar Nef, the doomed that stood in the land of Nahr when mankind was young and of IPB that was carving of Graystone 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 hyun rudely on the face of the cliff, where the unmistakable facades of several small squad rock houses were temples whose interiors might preserve many secrets of age is too remote for calculation. Those sandstorms had long faced any carvings which may have been outside. Very low and san 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 mystery is it might hold. When I was inside, I saw that the cavern was indeed a temple and beheld plane signs of the race that had lived and worshipped before the desert was a desert primitive alters pillars and niches all curiously low. We're not absent, and though I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were many singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means. The low nous of the chiseled chamber was very strange, for I could hardly kneel upright, but the area was so great that my torch showed only part of it out of time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far corners for certain altars and stones, suggested for gotten writes of a terrible, revolting, 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 my curiosity is stronger than fear, so that I did not flee from the long moon cast shadows that had daunted me. When I first saw the nameless city in the twilight, I cleared another aperture with a new torch and crawled into it, finding more vague stones and symbols, though nothing more definite than the other temple had contained the room was Justus low but much less broad ending in a very narrow passage, crowded with obscure in critical shrines about these shrines. I was prying when the noise of the 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 chili 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 plotted toward this temple, which, as I neared it, loomed larger than the rest and shoot a doorway far less clogged with cake to 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 to the moon, it seemed to quiver as though mirrored in unquiet waters. I was more afraid than I could explain, but not enough to deal my thirst for wonder. So as soon as the wind was quite gone, I crossed into the dark chamber from which it had come. All right, so that was about 1/3 of H. P. Lovecraft's the nameless city. I think we'll put a pin it'd here and resume it in some other session. I hope you enjoyed