The unnamed narrator of the story goes into the middle of the Arabian Peninsula to seek out and enter a lost city. After hearing a clanging seemingly coming from deep inside the earth, the narrator inspects mysterious carvings and ruins until nightfall. The next day, the narrator discovers a cliff riddled with low-ceilinged buildings, unfit for human use. While he attends to his suddenly nervous camel, the narrator discovers a somewhat larger temple, with altars, painted murals, and a small staircase going down. After he descends, his torch dies, and he crawls on his hands and knees until he enters a hallway with small wooden coffins containing bizarre reptiles inside of them lining the walls. The narrator notices a large amount of light coming from an unknown source. After crawling to it on his hands and knees, he sees a large brass door with a descent into a misty portal. He then hears moaning coming from the coffin passage, and feels a strong wind coming from the passage, trying to pull him down. Against all odds, he resists, and sees what appear to be reptiles with a body shaped like a cross between a crocodile and a seal with a strange head common to neither of them, involving a protruding forehead, horns, lack of a nose, and an alligator-like jaw crawling behind the lit portal. The wind dies down after the last of it flows down into the light, when suddenly the door closes behind the narrator, leaving him in the dark.
60 Gothic Classics : Exploring the Haunting Depths of Classic Gothic Literature
Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Anna Katharine Green, George MacDonald, Bram Stoker, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, William Godwin, Henry James, Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, John Meade Falkner, George Eliot, Robert Hugh Benson, Horace Walpole, Frederick Marryat, Thomas Love Peacock, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gaston Leroux, Grant Allen, Arthur Machen, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer, Charles Brockden Brown, James Hogg, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Richard Marsh, Charles Robert Maturin, John William Polidori, H. G. Wells, W. Jacobs, H. P. Lovecraft, William Thomas Beckford, Nikolai Gogol, Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Fitz-James O'Brien, Eliza Parsons
bookPickman's Model (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 44)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Call of Cthulhu (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 43)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookCool Air (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 42)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Descendant (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 41)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookIn the Vault (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 40)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookHe (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 39)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Horror at Red Hook (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 38)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Shunned House (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 37)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Festival (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 36)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Unnamable (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 35)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Rats in the Walls (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 34)
H. P. Lovecraft
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The Tomb (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 1)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookDagon (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 2)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookPolaris (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 3)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookBeyond the Wall of Sleep (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 4)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookMemory (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 5)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookOld Bugs (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 6)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Transition of Juan Romero (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 7)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe White Ship (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 8)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Doom That Came to Sarnath (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 9)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Statement of Randolph Carter (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 10)
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audiobookThe Terrible Old Man (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 11)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobookThe Tree (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 12)
H. P. Lovecraft
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