Thralls of the Unspeakable City

Being a sect. of Prof. Harrison's memoirs (late of London, Cambridge and parts unknown), exp. avail. in full shortly. Direct all theological, archaeological and commercial enqs. to the author.

As I have elsewhere recorded, in the past years I have operated a business enterprise in several metaphysical realms, faced unutterable horrors, received new names, befriended spiritual creatures and taught adjunct courses at universities across the Middle Spheres. However, my recent escape from a supernal city whose name cannot be sounded by terrestrial speech provided experiences so novel and harrowing as to stand in stark relief even from the strange background of my life. What I relate here, like all my public discussion of realm-walking and super-physics,¹ is both my authentic experience and certified by several authoritative witnesses, although not all remain in our living world to be cross-examined.

When “Steamer” Griggs and I arrived at the City, we closed a half-year campaign of trade throughout the navigable regions of the Passageway, as it is termed by the growing society of foolhardy scoundrels who attempt the traverse. I pray earnestly that by the close of this tale I may have dissuaded any readers contemplating the attempt or seeking to replicate my lamentable methods. By the time our tiny caravan stumbled through the ornately ornamented gates from the violet sands outside, the bodily toll of the constant orisons required to keep our forms tangible to that metaphysical location sapped my strength dangerously. Griggs meanwhile kept up his accustomed unceasing complaint, especially noting our dwindling stock of modified Cainite² rounds for the Purdey’s double rifles. In short, the moment of arrival came none too soon.

After too-brief moments of rest and a trip through the open markets to refit our stores, we met our guide. Rezanhaz’el cut a singular figure even in that place of monotonous amazement. Seated at a table of wrought vermilion iron, his form clad in a sable robe and forearms encased in ponderous manacle sheaths, he sipped a scalding digestif of some kind despite the glaring rays of mid-morning. Motioning us to join him at the café table, he waited silently while we scanned the shifting lettering of the menus and ordered hopefully. He waited still further, before opening conversation during the noise of several waiters and their attendant co-spiritual apparatus³ laying our table.

“I was informed by post to expect your arrival, Professor. I trust your journey was informative and diverting?”

Steamer ventured sounds of indecipherable sincerity as he assayed the late breakfast despite its outré appearance. As serving spirits continued to pile trays and juglets on the table, I worked to maintain my mind’s partial focus always on the litanies that kept us bound to this sphere. I am sure the pauses in conversation would seem overly lengthy, given human preferences for fast and productive speech. However, one quickly learns that the inhabitants of the Middle Spheres are quite content to unravel life thread by thread as it comes eternally on. Whenever, that is, they do not have a more pressing matter to engage their ponderous minds.

“We are glad indeed to have arrived safely in the City, my friend.” I felt it best to avoid a running dialogue explaining what a near thing our journey had truly been. “I had hoped that you would be able to direct us to sources from whom we might procure certain items of great interest to us.”

Rezanhaz’el regarded us with a stare that migrated around the table, seeming to take in every minute detail with his glittering eyes. Another long silence floated in the dusty air. I could hear the tinkling rattle of spiritual machines in the street, and a passing hawker’s ululating attempt to draw the attention of the infernal slave-caravans arriving by the minute to add to the morning’s traffic. The City made it difficult to maintain one’s fixed attention on anything for very long. When he finally spoke, Rezanhaz’el betrayed considerable effort in lifting his terrific right arm from the table, twisting it to display the penitential greave.

“We are alike in this manner, Professor. I am marked for my deeds and well-known for what I am to any common being that sees me in the street. Secrecy is a luxury I have long been denied.” As he spoke he motioned to the space above our heads. “You carry the Mark of Man about with you, plain to our kind. You have chosen the Path of Cain, and all that you meet are aware of this. Everyone’s hand is against you.”

I must confess this singular speech jarred my composure. My hand stole of its own accord to the back of my neck, where the raised tattoo of Cain’s Mark carved by a Bosran heretic⁴ throbbed slightly even a decade and more later. I could see that Griggs was similarly affected, although his Mark was freshly inscribed. Not for the first time, my heart sorely dissuaded me from my purpose. But my mind, that ever-prolific source of deception for the self, refused any course but to press on in quest of the precious knowledge I had come to seek. I was a man dominated by a singular demand for the secrets of these lands, and my brow burned with the knowledge that I neared the objects of years’ search and sacrifice.

I forced a wolf-like grin sharply discordant from my inner countenance. “Then our hand shall be against everyone. Enough idle chatter; can you produce the information we require?”

Our companion shifted slightly in his seat, then delayed speaking again until the clamor of glorifications from a wandering choir in the street sufficiently obscured our dialogue from any possible hearers. “I alone have such information. The broker in question is the only within my set who has proven willing to break the blockade and deal in these items outside of his jurisdiction. In exchange for his significant trust in your discretion, he will no doubt require usurious compensation for these risks.”

I nodded impatiently, having planned meticulously each step of this enterprise during my year’s residence at the Nael’s College.⁵ “We have come prepared. Where shall we meet this plucky tradesman of yours?”

Rezanhaz’el stood, his eight-foot figure forcing our necks to crane from our repast. “I will convey your desire. When the goods are ready, a servant will be sent to your rooms. Until then, seek quiet. Avoid the streets.”

With this saturnine injunction, our guide turned and disappeared into the very thoroughfare he had warned us against. I searched my bags for the proper currency and discharged our obligation for the curious breakfast, the coins gently slicing my fingertips as they left my hand to add a few drops to the crust encasing each blackened round. Griggs engaged himself with uttering dreadful oaths in a tone of perfect cheerfulness concerning our meal, surroundings and enterprise while I bargained with the innkeeper over a joined set of rooms to prevent any unnecessary travel within the City's walls. This achieved, we busied ourselves transferring our baggage from the cart and planning our transport from the City, assuming the successful close of our business. We passed a restless day as best we might, chiefly in smoking up our final shreds of tobacco while Steamer cleaned and oiled a favorite rifle and I paged back and forth in one of the codices we had carefully transported throughout the past six months. This particular volume contained the only extant account of a human traveler’s experiences in our present situation, purporting to be the diaries of a Mohammedan mystic translated to this sphere at the time of Suleiman’s whispered searches into the dark art.

Griggs noticed my occupation and scoffed jovially. A more confirmed and truculent skeptic has not been born, and we spent many a merry evening encamped on the bleak sands of the Middle Sphere holding forth on finer points of natural philosophy and metaphysics. The conversation tended to reach a decided dead end about the time the hunter and campaigner neared the bottom of a bottle, always with the same recital of his discovery of a friend’s head lolling on a spike during his campaigning days. For Steamer, this event had been all he needed to recognize the world as a hollow and preposterous sham. Surrounded by strange and wonderful sights in realms unknown to human minds, he stoutly maintained that some natural explanation existed for every fantastical occurrence. We were interrupted in the early stages of another of these good-natured rows by an attack of scraping taps against the outer window.

All banter instantly ceased as Griggs covered the window with his formidable weapon while I stole over as quietly as I could to undo the shutters. We received a shock disagreeable in the extreme to see a small creature perched against the stone exterior wall, which immediately made scuttling entry as I undid the latch. It was perhaps the rough dimensions of a terrier or large hare, armored with a crustacean’s shell of dull mottled crimson-black and a multitude of arms and feelers. However, it was the incongruous face that most startled our sensibilities, a broad placid visage that extended across the creature’s entire front, white and tumescent. As it dropped to the floor, I barely prevented Griggs from firing before we discovered the origin of our strange visitor. Suddenly, the eyes and mouth opened wide and with a booming voice that somehow disconcerted us still further, the messenger began to declaim.

“Men of the Outer Spheres, for such you certainly are as evidenced to all in this place by the Mark you bear. Know that my Prince, the Sufficiency and Satiety of Eternal Hungers, earnestly desires to discuss your errand in this place face to face.”

We had no time to debate this singular speech, as behind our backs the door of the apartment rattled and then shattered inward in a shower of splinters and a choking cloud of smoke. We had only a moment to see three figures emerge from the sudden gloom, wrapped in tattered cloaks and carrying an assortment of assassin’s glittering tradewares. Quick as thought, Griggs emptied a barrel of the Purdey’s full into the face of the first through the door, filling the tiny room with yet more smoke and showering the assortment of carpets piled on the stone floor in gleaming gore. It is without doubt that his instant action saved us, although at the time and for hours afterwards we bitterly regretted the series of events begun by this shot.

Hemmed in by the remaining two assailants, we were in no position to debate the merits of our next movement. Griggs used the remaining chamber of his rifle to dissuade our visitors from further action while I snatched up my satchel, its contents too precious to abandon. Then we backed slowly to the window and made our escape by alternately sliding down some sort of drainpipe, scraping our hands dreadfully as payment for our unorthodox egress. At some point while climbing down I realized to my disgust to that our first visitor had alighted on my back and fastened itself firmly there, its slightly warm claws digging gently into my neck and shoulder as the broad face began to whisper directions in my ear.

The thrill of horror that gripped me at this bizarre passenger was only equaled by my apprehension at our precarious situation. As dusk wrapped the streets forbidden to us by our the wisdom of our guide, we pressed onwards. I listened carefully to the murmured instructions of the messenger, turning now down a lonely twisting alley and now into an open street lit by unflickering torches and paced by silent nightgoers. Griggs inventoried his pockets for chance rounds and totaled five, counting the unexpended barrel of his rifle. This discovery did little to lighten our mood.

We had not been traveling more than three or four minutes when Griggs hissed a warning. Sure enough, our two surviving assailants had managed to trace our hasty flight, and were now swarming across the roofs flanking the street at a startling rate. Favoring caution and heeding Rezanhaz’el’s warnings, we quickened our pace and our prayers. But we soon found more than two sets of eyes marked our path. Making another turning, we barely avoided striking a terrific figure, a seeming statue of ten feet in height bearing a polearm and clad in armor that reflected the torchlight to dazzle our eyes. I recognized one of the guardians so seldom seen in this crumbling haunt of rejected spirits. My heart leapt, imagining my half-faith prayers to have been answered; until, that is, the giant plucked Griggs aloft by the shirt collar and held him suspended while regarding me with several bronzed eyes.

“You have ventured far beyond your place, Men.”

The clamor of the voice raised echoes in the darkness. I noted ruefully that at least our erstwhile assassins could no longer be seen. For a moment Griggs swung gently, and my mind raced fruitlessly as I sought a solution in the endless labyrinths of learning that had become my fortress. Just as I was about to respond, our interview was interrupted by a sibilant third party.

“Oh great one, these are here at my summoning, traveling this free city to do business. Surely this is not forbidden?”

If the titanic guardian was perturbed by this speaker, it certainly did not betray this by any signs we could see. For myself, the crawling centipedal monstrosity which addressed us from the gloomy end of the alley threatened to break my rattled constitution. The horse-like protuberance of grub’s flesh I took for its head wobbled in our direction and opened sickeningly as it spoke again.⁶

“Remand them to our charge and they shall be bonded until they may complete these errands. We shall stand responsible until they leave this sphere via the railway. Are we not able to guarantee these terms?”

Griggs fell abruptly, deposited to the black cobbles as the guardian regarded us stoically.

“It is not for me to speak against your prince. Their lives are your charge.”

We were left in the fearsome custody of our apparent sponsor without another word. Griggs broke the stunned silence with a singular and inventive blasphemy, upon which I would swear as I sit now writing these notes that the infernal diplomat who now represented our safe passage in the Unspeakable City managed to simulate a smile, unlikely though this would seem given its horrible visage. The messenger which brought us to this point let go its hold on me and scuttled to alight atop its apparent comrade, where it seated or perhaps rather burrowed itself into a perch seemingly designed for it. As we stood mutely regarding this pair, both their mouths now chorused an invitation as something like seats appeared on the flanks of the large creature. We sat down with all the gingerly delicacy of a debutante alighting on a carriage seat, our senses aflame with the disturbance of our unnatural encounter.

Steamer cast a glance of mixed amusement and reproach in my direction as we lurched off into the night.

“Professor, I begin to have the definite feeling that we are out of our depth, eh?”

He waggled the muzzle of his rifle to generally indicate our surrounds and situation. I was far too engaged in desperate attempts to devise a path out of our predicament to make him any answer. Returning again and again was the thought that we were absolutely beyond the barely mapped boundaries of understanding understanding I had collected through an entire career of singular and dangerous study. My original plans had involved a single meeting through our intermediary with a broker, one exchange of goods, and then our return journey. In truth, Griggs’ presence in the enterprise was solely for protection and experience with the overland desert trek. Now we found his lifelong preparation for violent action to be our sole source of security, while I had been entirely beyond my powers of prediction or preparation since our meeting in the café that morning.

With these unsettling thoughts as my companions, I brooded and told my beads in an attempt at silent prayer. Griggs for his part seemed overcome by the scuttling passage through increasingly forbidding streets, and I heard no sound from him apart from the occasional grim oath or the click of the receiver catch as he spasmodically opened and closed the breech of his rifle.

When our dreadful steed finally came to a halt before a gate wreathed in vividly disturbing scrollwork, the night had descended into profound darkness, kept at bay by pools of strangely colored light pouring from almost every window and door on the streets. Although very few of the City’s inhabitants were abroad, it was clear that few of them had completely retired either. We slid to the ground and I silently thanked the Almighty for no longer being in contact with that form of slithering flesh which now waited coiled before the gate. The small rider waggled free of its perch and scuttled to the open space where a lock ought to have been in the gate, where it nestled and then disappeared in a burst of foul excrescence as the mechanism ground open. Shepherded forward by our remaining loathsome companion, Griggs and I made our way across a courtyard lit by an almost imperceptible pale glow and populated by several stands of what I took to be enormous blackened fungi, at least until we began to recognize the currents of whispers around us as originating with these strange wavering formations.⁷ Our voices sank to a similar timbre as we contemplated what might possibly confront us at the other end of the courtyard, where we neared a rounded portal unbarred or blocked, yawning open like a tomb’s mouth.

It took our eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom inside what seemed to be a low and spreading empty chamber whose extent we could not guess. The same sourceless luminescence as pervaded the outer court eventually allowed us to dimly make out a seemingly vast burrow sloping away underground, the low roof supported here and there by pillars which winked myriad blank orbs at us as we moved forward to a rising chorus of whispers. Even Griggs, ever stalwart and cheerful in the face of danger, seemed shaken by our surrounds. For my part, my initial stirrings of animal fear were already giving place to the ardent hunger of the researcher, and beyond that to the fixation of the confirmed esotericist. Here at last, swept along by my hubris, I yet hoped to secure the artifacts I sought to finish my work, to establish a foundation upon which my legacy could be built. While the hunter beside me swore ever more volubly and in terms tending away from irreverence and towards righteously wrathful, my only half-hysterical thought was to imagine the looks of chagrin on the faces of Chelmnitz and Thorsön when I finally presented my first exhibits and accompanying papers.

All dreams of academic glory fled from my mind as a profound bulk stirred slightly atop a dais jutting from the edge of the chamber. This platform, which we now could see suspended outwards at a height of perhaps ten feet from the floor where we stood, was without exaggeration of a length and depth to encompass the floorplan of spacious London flat. Completely covering, and in fact extending beyond in some places, this space rested the ponderous form of a creature beyond my capability to clearly depict in the bland descriptors of academia nor the florid heights of prose. We stood without motion or thought before the elephantine pearlescent maggot, summited by a too-small bland flat face eerily similar to that of the messenger who had disappeared into the gate. I am unsure whether my faculties fully absorbed the subsequent moments, but I relate what I am certain occurred.

The first sight I could fully apprehend was a pitiful one. Rezanhaz’el, our guide and hope of safety, hung suspended from the low ceiling of the chamber in coils of fungal matter. I could make out a slight smile as he extended an arm still encased in the bronzed greave.

“I am sorry to welcome you in this way. I warned you to stay out of the streets.”

His enigmatic tone was like a goad to Griggs, whose mind already seemed to strain at the bounds of his sanity.

“Weren’t left with much choice now, were we my lad? I suppose you’ve nothing to do with our present little predicament?”

The hunter slowly leveled the muzzle of his weapon, the gentle menacing catch of the rifle’s hammer echoing above the whispers around us. I placed a restraining hand on his arm, hoping to avoid violence until there was no other alternative. In truth, I was already swallowed by the desire to know all that passed here, to catalog and possess whatever I could despite the forbidding malevolence we could both feel pressing against our spirits. I have confessed already in this narrative to the intense intellectual avarice which lured me far deeper into these studies than I had ever intended at the first. Whatever the cause, my desire for knowledge was never more overmastering than when we stood within this loathsome underground burrow.

A voice of peculiar refinement and quality boomed from the dais behind Rezanhaz’el.

“Professor Thomas Harrison, my bondslave informs me of your desires to obtain certain articles in my possession. These I must say I am hesitant to part with, but my mind is not yet made up. Is one of you willing to become as this one is to guarantee that such items as I desire from your sphere will be retrieved in exchange?”

With terrifying rapidity, a tentacle or extension of the reclining mass shot forward to wrap around and indicate one of Rezanhaz’el’s arms.

Griggs hissed in repressed hatred and disgust, while I took an involuntary step towards the platform. The decision was already made, and I regret to describe the total lack of fear or hesitancy that accompanied the moment. All feeling had disappeared from my heart save the encompassing desire to hold the proofs I had sought for years. There, a few steps closer to the throne, appeared on a pedestal of soft material a small pile of scrolls and codices surrounding a single coal-black reliquary. As I approached, a throat-like protuberance grew from the pedestal, and the Prince (for that is indeed who occupied the foul perch) gave instructions.

“Place your left arm inside and receive. You shall be under my care until such time as you return to me discharging my request. Then take all you desire and go.”

I heard Rezanhaz’el utter a single word as I buried my arm to the elbow in the slightly cold receptacle, but could not make out its meaning. Behind me the hunter uttered the name of our Lord and Savior for the first time in my hearing without a shred of irony or profane intention. I realized that I was screaming in acute pain. Then both barrels of the Purdey’s bellowed close together, the Cainite rounds turning the immense smiling face before me into a ruin.

I have no memories of what passed after, until the moment when I recovered my faculties standing on the platform of the railway leading to Terminus Station and back to our own sphere. The carriages glinted in the oppressive sun, as did the armor of the guardian barring us from entering one of them. Griggs seemed to be arguing volubly with this formidable figure while thumbing rounds into his rifle. All of this barely pierced my thoughts as a curtain of immense pain overpowered me, emanating from the greave now clamped onto my left arm. Rezanhaz’el stood next to me, his support the only thing keeping me from dropping unceremoniously to the platform in a faint. My blood dripped steadily from the underneath the wrist cuff to splash onto the gleaming pavement, my thoughts a shifting turmoil from which mixed prayers and despair surfaced alternately.

“These are marked as thralls. They cannot make the passage. It is denied them until their penance is complete. You may pass.”

The glorious engines began to accelerate their revolutions and Griggs looked back at the two of us with an expression of acute helpless distress that in later moments of reflection filled me with regret for my assumptions regarding him. I realized to my shock that he was at the point of remaining on the platform.

“Don’t do it, Steamer. Go back, and wait until you hear from me. I will probably still need your assistance.”

For the briefest moment the bitter and irascible adventurer, who had saved our lives five times over through his instant action and faithful courage, held my gaze. Then he nodded cheerfully, raising a jaunty salute as he stepped into the carriage. I entrusted Griggs with the satchel containing our bitterly won plunder, asking that he retain the items in deep confidence until such time as we met again. As the cars began to glide away down the rail, he sang out a hearty farewell from a window, leaving us standing on the platform.

I looked down to see my arm resting for support on Rezanhaz’el’s.

“I don’t suppose you know of a place where we might remain quietly, perhaps for some time, my friend? I seem to have placed my hand against everyone in earnest.” I attempted a wry smile. “And perhaps somewhere I might obtain what passes for pen and ink among these savage people?”

The grim spirit nodded and then said nothing more for a few minutes.

The narrative above has been collated by Dr. Harrison from notes which were found on his person when he was famously discovered under such strange circumstances in the jungles of Madagascar three years ago. It breaks off at this place and only continues in occasional diary entries that the author has not yet authorized for publication.

1. c.f. “Public Debates Regarding the Metaphysical Possibilities of Super-Physical Travel,” Cambridge, 1890,” as well as the author’s published essays on this topic.

2. I detail the unique properties of this material preparation in “The Mark of Cain: Its Spiritual and Practical Utilities,” published in volume XLVII of the Journal of Practical Theology.

3. c.f. Ezekiel in the first chapter, as well as portions of Scharnheim’s extensive collected treatises On Malefic and Beneficent Biologies and Ibn al-Quff’s The Tools of the Djinni. The reader should at all times understand that descriptions of such things, even from a scholarly standpoint, must necessarily be approximate and referential.

4. It should of course surprise no reasonable person that I have endeavored throughout this tale of woe to diffuse any traces which might be used to follow my course or emulate my methods. In so doing, a number of details may have been falsified or obscured. I can no longer remember precisely which.

5. A part of a loose association of research institutions spread over several spheres, Nael’s will undoubtedly be unknown to my readers due to its location in the Deep and the somewhat understandable agoraphobia of its faculty. However, any literate human has almost certainly read work originating in the college.

6. I have since attempted a preliminary and fruitless search of the existing literature for any indication of exactly what sorts of creatures these were. They are not recorded in either Scharnheim or al-Quff. Taxonomy of such beings is necessarily an infant branch of our sciences, and I must confess frankly to a lack of desire to examine the extant materials too closely, given their nature. It is possible, although unlikely, that I may in the future publish my own treatise on the matter.

7. As I have already noted, the easy lines of classification which allow earthly kingdom and phyla to be separated neatly prove much less useful in the spheres beyond.