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Hi there I'm brand new here. I have read most of Lovecraft's stuff at one time or another in my life, but I seem to recall a story which had the main character wandering through an old part of the city an into a sealed house, where he encounters some kind of Puritanical Evil Preacher type (this is not the Evil Clergyman story...I just read that) and as it turned out the man has somehow travelled back through time into the time of the Plague. The preacher is a totally malevolent psychopath that says to the protagonist "YE PULING LACKWIT!" at one point. The villain speaks in archaic English. Am I mistaken? Is this another author's work? I'm hoping a die-hard Lovecraft fanatic can come up with the name of this story. Thanks in advance!

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    I think I've read about all of Lovecraft and I don't remember this story.
    – zeta-band
    May 31, 2017 at 23:14
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    It might not be written by H.P.L but by one of his followers. Is it the Jerusalem's lot by Stephen King maybe?
    – Yasskier
    May 31, 2017 at 23:19
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    Have you tried searching Derleth's stories? Usually if it's a Lovecraft type story but not one he penned, then it's probably Derleth.
    – Tim
    May 31, 2017 at 23:19
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    Your question has been answered. If you are satisfied with the answer, you can accept it by clicking on the check mark next to it.
    – user14111
    Jun 1, 2017 at 5:54
  • Btw: literature.sx exists.
    – Martin Schröder
    Jun 1, 2017 at 21:42

1 Answer 1

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This sounds like Lovecraft's story with the unassuming title "He".

The narrator has recently moved to New York and encounters a stranger in historic clothing. The stranger offers to show the city's "secrets" to the narrator and reveals that he has learned a magical means to travel through time from Native Americans that he poisoned afterwards. The narrator is horrified by this and the visions of other times the stranger shows him. When he cries out in fear, this awakens the spirits of the murdered natives who then appear and kill the wizard.

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    By the way, Lovecraft's "He" has been reprinted a number of times, and the reprint in Weird Terror Tales, Winter 1969/1970 is available at the Internet Archive.
    – user14111
    Jun 1, 2017 at 5:35
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    Good answer, but why don't you include the quotation with "ye puling lackwit", which absolutely clinches the identification? I don't know that spoiler protection is needed, but whatever.)
    – user14111
    Jun 1, 2017 at 5:35
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    "Can you — dare you — go far?" I spoke with awe, and I think he shared it for a second, but the evil grip returned. "Far? What I have seen would blast ye to a mad statue of stone! Back, back — forward, forward — look, ye puling lack-wit !" And as he snarled the phrase under his breath he gestured anew; bringing to the sky a flash more blinding than either which had come before. For full three seconds I could glimpse that pandemoniac sight, and in those seconds I saw a vista which will ever afterward torment me in dreams.
    – user14111
    Jun 1, 2017 at 5:46
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    Pronominal SF: He—Lovecraft, She—Haggard, It!—Sturgeon, Itself!—Van Vogt, They—Heinlein, Them!—Douglas, We—Zamyatin, Me, Myself, and I—Tenn
    – user14111
    Jun 2, 2017 at 1:07
  • That's it..the story "He". Thanks for your responses! Last night I was able to figure it out. Love this story.
    – Charingo
    Jun 6, 2017 at 16:24

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