The Nameless City

This short story can be read for free online on the H.P. Lovecraft website. I'm not going to lie, for years, I was intimidated by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, the cosmic mythological concepts of his worlds and the stunning, yet frightening artwork that has originated from Lovecraft's words. I should rephrase: it isn't so much the Lovecraftian vibe itself that I dreaded, but rather my feeling that reading Lovecraft might not live up to the monumental expectations that years of exposure to Lovecraft-inspired media were responsible for building. I have eagerly consumed and enjoyed countless fictional works that were widely described as 'Lovecraftian' (e.g., Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy, the works of Panos Cosmatos and Richard Stanley, and of course the entire filmography of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead) – but I have never read anything actually written by Lovecraft. The moon was gleaming vividly over the primeval 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. What struck me immediately with this short story, one of Lovecraft's first published writings, was how the story is soaked in atmospherical touches. From the first sentence, you get a strong sense of the images Lovecraft tried to conjure up, of how he produced such intricate written templates to the infinite amount of stunning artworks crafted from his universes. Lovecraft draws a gorgeous painting with his words, and then infuses it with dread and terror, existentialist fears and increasingly claustrophobic feels. Best read in the surroundings of the darkness of the night.