The Music of Irich Zahn by H.P. Lovecraft

Red by Mike Bannett. website Mike Bannett Author.com.

I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the

rood or say. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved

deeply and do all the antiquities of the place and have personally explored every region of whatever name which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the rhodor say.

But despite all I have done, it remains in humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality

where during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university,

I've heard the music of Iich-zan. That my memory is broken, I do not

wonder. For my health, physical and mental was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the

hoodorsay, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there.

But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing,

for it was within a half hour's walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there.

I have never met a person who has seen the Rudorsay. The Rudorsay lay across a dark river, bordered by precipitous, brick, blier-windowed warehouses, and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone.

It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighbouring factories shut out the sun perpetually.

The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may someday help me to find it, since I should recognize them at once.

Beyond the bridge were narrow, cobbled streets with rails.

And then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the hoodosset was reached.

I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d'Ose.

It was almost a cliff closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places of flights of steps and ending at the top in a lofty

ivied wall. Its paving was irregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bare earth with

struggling, greenish-gray vegetation.

The houses were tall, peaked roofed, incredibly old and crazily leaning backward, forward and sideways.

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