He

Written by H. P. Lovecraft

Narrated by Howard King

"He" is a short story by American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written August 1925, it was first published in Weird Tales, September 1926.
Plot: The story's anonymous narrator has moved from New England to New York City, and greatly regrets it. One night, while wandering in a historic part of Greenwich Village, he happens upon a man dressed in garments from the 18th century. The man offers to show the narrator the secrets of the town. - The man brings the narrator to his home; there, he tells him the story of a squire who bargained with Native Americans for the secrets of their rituals concerning time and space, which were practiced on the land where the squire had recently taken up residence. After learning these secrets, the squire killed the Native Americans by giving them "monstrous bad rum"; within a week all of them were dead, and he alone had the secret knowledge. The man shows the narrator visions of the city's past and future so terrifying that the narrator begins to scream wildly. The screams rouse the spirits of the Native Americans to take vengeance on the man, who is the same squire from 1768.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Literature International
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9783991450429

H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.