He by H. P. Lovecraft. Short summary

5 seconds

The hero, strolling through the city at night, met a mysterious stranger who offered to show the young man a very different city. The hero agreed to the tour and found himself in a very strange city.

1 minute

The hero wanders at night through the old quarter of New York City. In Greenwich Village, he meets an old man dressed in old clothes. The old man invites the hero for a walk through the neighborhood, which is not on any map of the city.

The neighborhood looks ancient: there are oil lanterns along the edges of the sidewalk, and the houses are old and creepy. The old man led the hero to his house, told him about his ancestors and how one squire had discovered the secret of time travel. The ancestor had learned this secret from the Indians, whom he then poisoned with bad alcohol.

The old man asked the hero not to make a sound and began to perform some kind of ritual. The landscape in the window of the house began to change and the hero saw a hellish city behind the glass. He screamed and frightened the old man. Suddenly someone started banging on the door. The old man shouted that he hadn’t poisoned the rum and it was the Indians’ own fault. A crowd of ghosts burst into the house and dragged the old man, who was the squire.

The hero woke up in the yard. He could not find his way home and was left to wander in the terrible city.