The story is narrated by a traveller in rural New England who seeks shelter from a storm in an apparently abandoned house, only to find that it is occupied by an old, white-bearded, and ragged man, speaking in "an extreme form of Yankee dialect...thought long extinct", whose face is "abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect." He shows a disquieting fascination for an engraving in an old book depicting a butcher shop of the "cannibal Anziques" (from the historic Congo kingdom of Anziku), and admits to the narrator (who becomes increasingly nervous and frightened throughout the man's story) that it made him hunger for "something more" - presumably human meat. It is suggested that the old man in the house was murdering men who stumbled upon the shack to satisfy his "craving", but this is not revealed, as before he can finish his story the two men notice blood leaking down from the ceiling and, subsequently, a lightning bolt destroys the house.