Vardaman Conrad wrote a book. The book is written in magic language, signs like cracks, like lightning, that do not repeat themselves. He himself does not know what he has written. That vanishing web, his own words, was dictated to him by He-who-has-so-many-names: The Great Joke, The Question, The Disgust, The Chaos.

This should be enough to make the book a rarity, a relic. But there is more:

The book grants the reader the capacity for dream transference. Whoever reads it is able to dream the dreams of the one who read it before.

The first reader dreamed the dreams of Vardaman Conrad.

Cities of inverted pyramids, desert, an elongated and bloody sun overhead.

After each reading, after each dream, the reader remembers the city in more detail. A city that grows through dreams.

I don’t know how many have read the book before me.

In my dreams the pyramids turned slowly, five-winged birds flew in all four directions at the same time.

One day someone will remember the city perfectly.

Then something will happen.

I hope I won’t be here when it does.