Out of the Shadows #11

In "Fountain of Fear," an escaped convict stumbles upon a mysterious fountain said to grant youth—but as he tries to shed his old face, he discovers the water’s gift comes with a deadly price. The vengeful spirits of a forgotten tribe stand guard, and the past isn’t ready to let him go.

A witch's curse falls upon a pious man in Clydeston Glen, but when Mortalla Noll slips her victim a sinister black candle through his daughter, the girl's love for her father becomes stronger than dark magic itself. What begins as a supernatural trap meant to claim a good man's life takes an unexpected turn when an act of desperate courage shatters the witch's spell—and her own fate along with it.

John Sutton receives a mysterious coin from a strange beggar—one that grants three wishes—and makes a desperate plea for money to cover his debts. When the coin delivers on its promise in the most terrible way imaginable, John realizes too late that he's stumbled into a curse he'd read about before, one where every wish exacts a price far steeper than the gain. As his family is torn apart by the coin's dark power, John must face the agonizing choice of how to use his remaining wishes to undo the unspeakable horror he's already set in motion.

In "The Prophecy," fortune-teller Carlotta warns thief Chuck Hanson that his fate is written in the cards—death by water awaits him. After she foresees his doom, he kills her in a panic, then flees, haunted by the vision he can't escape.

At the La Scala opera house in Turin, 1907, two friends audition for the lead role in *Don Pedro*—but when Renato loses out to Duilio, he hatches a desperate scheme to sabotage his rival's voice and claim the part for himself. On opening night, as Renato takes the stage he's waited for, he discovers that fate has a darker reckoning in mind. A cautionary tale about the terrible price ambition can exact.

In this true account from 1954, Sam Johns is convicted of a woman's murder in a Midwest town and sentenced to hang—but the gallows repeatedly malfunction whenever he approaches the scaffold, while working flawlessly when tested with dummies. As Johns insists on his innocence, extraordinary circumstances begin to unfold that will determine his fate.

A vain barber named Leon endures endless ridicule from a customer named George over his baldness, until his resentment boils over into violence—and he decides to fashion a grim memento from his tormentor's hair. But the wig he creates begins to move and grow of its own accord, reaching out from beyond the grave to reckon with its maker in "The Wig," a chilling tale by Mike Roy from Out of the Shadows #11.

When Tamis Kahn's Mongol hordes lay siege to the castle of Graffenwehr in 1229, the fiendish warlord believes he's eliminated the Count and Countess—only to face a terrifying reckoning when a masked figure at his victory celebration reveals a truth that will change everything. This supernatural tale of vengeance and the supernatural unfolds across the fall of an empire.