Tim Lebbon - Fears Unnamed Read Online Free PDF

me. “Shit, listen to that. Like it never was.”
    The storm had all but died down. There was a continuous, low hissing of sand slipping slowly from the dome tent. But even that faded away after only a few more seconds, and we were left with our own heavy breathing.
    The silence was shocking. My stomach rumbled, and I was ridiculously embarrassed.
    “Like it never was,” Scott said again. “Let’s go and see what it’s left us.”
    We exited the tent into a bloodred dusk.
    And we saw what the storm had left behind.

    The landscape had changed beyond recognition.
    Where the watering hole had been, a sand dune now lay. Where the neighboring tents had been pitched, there was now a wind-patterned expanse of loose sand. And the horizon that had once been apparent, viewed across packed sand and low, gentle mounds, was now hidden behind something new.
    Rising out of the desert, a city.

    I fell to my knees. I could not take in the immensity of what we were viewing. My mind would not permit it. It did not fit within the confines of my imagination, the limits of my understanding.
    Scott was amazed, but not surprised. That was something that terrified me even more. He was not surprised.
    “There it is,” he said. “There it is, at last.” He walked across the altered landscape, ignoring the fact that ours was the only tent left standing. There was no sign of the others. They could have been anywhere.
    “Scott?” I whispered at last. He turned and looked, smiling, but not at me. “Scott, what’s going on?”
    “The City of the Dead,” he said. “The storm gave it to us. Pete, you have to come and see it with me. Don’t just stay here.”
    “I’m afraid. It shouldn’t be there, it’s too… big.”
    “Out of the desert, that’s all.
Please
, Pete. You’ll always regret it if you don’t come. You’ll think about it forever. It’ll haunt you…
believe
me, I know. Live a little.”
    Live a little
. Yes, that was what I wanted to do. Scott had lived a lot, and I only wanted to live a little. But still, I was terrified. I could conceive of no way that this could be happening. I looked past him at the ruins revealed by the storm. They seemed to begin just over a wide, low dune created at the western extremes of the old camp, and if they were as close as I believed they probably rose about twenty feet above the desert level. Only twenty feet.
    But before the storm, there had been nothing there at all.
    “They shouldn’t be there…” I said.
    Scott shrugged. “The desert is deceiving. Messes with perspective. Come on.”
    He was lying. But somehow I stood and followed.
    The sand underfoot was loose and treacherous; more than once we both slipped and slid several steps down the side of the new dune. I could not take my eyes from the ruin rising before me. I tried to convince myself that I had been misled by Scott’s certainty; that the structure was naturally formed, carved from solid stone by millennia of scouring wind. But it could only be artificial. There were the joints between blocks, the blocks themselves huge and probably each weighing several tons. And the windows, squared at the base, curved inward at their head, like traditional church windows back home. Around the windows, still visible here and there, ornamentation. Scrolls. Patterned carvings that may have been some sort of writing. And in one place, staring out at us as we approached, guarding the ancient ruin it formed a part of, the face of a gargoyle.
    I tried not to look, but my gaze was drawn there. It had three eyes, two mouths, and though its edges had been worn by eons of erosion, still its teeth looked sharp.
    “Scott,” I whispered.
    “I know!” he said, excitement to my fear. “Come on! I think this is just a part of it.”
    We walked slowly up the low slope of the new dune. I glanced back once or twice at the remains of the camp we left behind. Only the single large tent was visible now, with a few sand-covered mounds here and