The Vault of Horror #2

In "Sink-Hole!", a lonely woman’s desperate search for connection leads her down a dark path when she marries a man she’s never met—only to find her new life is already a trap. After she meets the charming health inspector Rick Hudson, her longing turns to obsession, and she makes a terrible choice that haunts her. When the truth about Hudson shatters her dreams, she returns to the well for water, only to face a revelation that will leave her—and readers—unprepared.

Dr. Harold Johnson, a once-prominent physician, faces ruin after a car accident costs him his hand—ending his career before it could truly begin. Desperate, he turns to a medical journal’s radical idea: preserving a donor hand through mechanical and chemical means, leading him down a path that blurs the line between science and horror.

Ken Anders stops by a strange costume shop on his way to a party, where the shopkeeper insists on fitting him with a mask meant to reveal his true self. Back home, he opens the box to find a costume of a rotting corpse—and when he dons it, his life spirals into a night of deception, betrayal, and dread. After a painful encounter with his fiancée and a mysterious vampire woman at the party, Ken’s fate takes a horrifying turn when he glimpses his own reflection in a lily pond.

In a town where obesity is the norm, the enigmatic Dr. Perdo arrives with a miracle cure: a single weight-loss capsule that works too well. When four townspeople die mysteriously—starved despite their newfound thinness—his sudden return six months later sets off a chilling reckoning. Disguised and desperate, he flees to the cemetery, only to confront the grotesque truth behind his victims' deaths: a monstrous tapeworm that now haunts the mausoleum.

In "Southern Hospitality!", Abner Scanlon, a man who once lived off wealthy women, finds himself trapped in a Southern estate with a wife from a once-wealthy family—only to discover her fortune is a lie. As his greed drives him to steal from the family’s heirlooms, the house seems to respond with chilling violence, claiming two relatives in quick succession. When Claudia hears a scream from the attic and finds Abner dead with a sword through him, she stares at the portrait above his body—her military great-great grandfather’s image—only to realize the blade is gone.

In "The Jellyfish!", the tension between brothers Charles and Howard Norton boils over when Charles, desperate to keep a lucrative order, proposes diluting insulin syringes—despite Howard’s objections. Years later, after Howard’s wrongful imprisonment and a secret prison lab experiment, he returns to confront his brother, offering a drink that may hold more than just a toast. The Crypt-Keeper watches from the shadows as the past comes back to haunt them both.

Martin Blackson resents his stepdaughter Kathy, haunted by memories of her mother’s first husband. When Kathy befriends the reclusive Mrs. Thaumaturge, Martin warns her to stay away—especially after the woman gifts Kathy a strange man-shaped candy doll. As tension mounts, a chilling accident during a woodcutting session leaves Martin with a severed hand, and Kathy begins to hear a scream that may not be her imagination.

Five years after their last meeting by the lake, Lillian Ansley and Roger Kane reunite as promised—only to part again, bound by duty to a husband still alive. As the years pass, their secret trysts become a ritual, each farewell a quiet surrender to fate. But when Waldo finally dies, Lillian seeks Roger, only to learn he was killed in a train wreck years before. Heartbroken, she returns to the lake on the day they were to meet—and finds him waiting, rotting, yet reaching for her.

In "About Face!", the Vault-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of vengeance and transformation, centered on Lydia Armstrong, a former circus lion tamer whose life was shattered by a panther attack that left her face disfigured. Haunted by betrayal when her loyal chauffeur, Steve, abandoned her for another woman, Lydia turns to witchcraft in a desperate bid for justice—crafting a spell that alters her appearance, only to see her revenge take a grotesque and unforeseen form across the country.

In "The Reluctant Vampire!", the Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of deception and desperation as Mr. Drink, a vampire by night and night watchman by day, struggles to maintain his cover at the Blood Donor Center. With the records missing and his secret supply dwindling, he’s forced to resort to murder to keep his position—and his life—intact. But when the center’s director starts connecting the dots between the surge in donations and a string of local killings, Mr. Drink’s carefully constructed facade begins to crumble.

In "Grandma's Ghost!", little Peggy is haunted not by the past, but by the lingering presence of her grandmother—whose final moments and mysterious final words seem to echo long after her passing. As her aunt and uncle conspire to inherit the old woman’s fortune, Peggy finds solace in the quiet attention of the gardner, even as she claims her grandmother’s spirit warns her of danger. When fate turns against her family’s plot, the line between memory and menace blurs, and Peggy’s bond with the gardner becomes her only refuge.

In the chilling halls of Croydon Insane Asylum, the Old Witch introduces a tale of twisted power and retribution, where Doctor Blackpool’s cruel "treatments" mask a darker truth. As he mocks and torments his patients, the victims quietly plot their revenge—until the night the asylum itself turns against him.

In a haunting tale from *The Vault of Horror #2*, a once-celebrated knife-throwing act in Hungary takes a dark turn when Harry, the performer, awakens to find his wife Olga unresponsive—dead, or so he believes. As he prepares her burial, he uncovers the terrible truth: Olga is a vampire, and their act was never just entertainment. Now, years later in America, their twisted performance reaches its final, fatal moment—where Harry, on the brink of death, makes one last, shocking announcement before the final throw.

In "That's a 'Croc'!", the Old Witch introduces a chilling tale set at a local zoo where "Crazy" Coogan, the devoted zoo-keeper, tends to a pit of crocodiles with unsettling devotion. When a young boy questions whether these man-eaters truly enjoy their meals, Coogan’s calm demeanor flickers—just enough to hint at something darker beneath. As a missing man’s family searches in vain and a mysterious ring surfaces in the zoo’s cleaning crew, suspicion builds. When a barroom confrontation exposes the truth, Coogan’s desperate act of self-preservation leads him straight into the jaws of the very beasts he claimed to control.

In "Child's Play," the Vault-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of domestic dread, where the quiet suburban life of Milton and Emma Collins unravels into something far darker. When a series of seemingly small transgressions—refused footballs, stolen apples, and a wife’s quiet kindness—trigger escalating violence, the line between punishment and guilt blurs. As the boys who once played outside their home grow haunted by what they’ve witnessed, a ghostly voice from the shadows returns to demand answers from a man who thought he’d buried his crimes.

In "Trapped!", Marty finds himself stranded in a desolate stretch of the Smoky Mountains after a sudden jump from a moving train, only to be drawn into a farmhouse with a chilling secret. As the isolation deepens and a haunting fly begins to echo like a scream, Marty’s desperate flight from the past leads him straight into a trap far worse than he could have imagined.

In "Fountains of Youth!", Eileen Martin answers a mysterious ad seeking a companion for the enigmatic Madam DuBois, despite her brother Kenneth’s growing unease. As the two women set sail on a luxury cruise, Eileen’s sudden death sends Kenneth on a desperate investigation—uncovering a horrifying truth: Madam DuBois feeds on youth, and her next victim is already fading before his eyes.

In the frozen silence of the Arctic, two geologists, Gerald Dawson and Herbert Campbell, uncover a chilling secret buried beneath the ice—a creature long thought mythical, now awakened and far more dangerous than any tale could warn. As the Old Witch narrates, the men’s curiosity turns to dread when the frozen monster stirs, and the true horror begins not in the ice, but in the choices they make when faced with what they’ve unleashed.

In "Gone... Fishing!", the Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of two men at the water’s edge—Maxwell Larkin, a passionate fisherman, and Steven, his reluctant companion. When Max reels in something far too real, Steven flees in horror, only to return and find his friend caught in a trap of unseen threads, pulled into the depths by something far older than the sea.

When Betty Marsh’s dog Jerry is injured and rescued by the reclusive Roger Cartwright, she’s grateful—especially when he returns the dog and begins visiting regularly. Their growing closeness deepens into something more, but when Roger vanishes one evening and Jerry keeps bringing back only silence, the dog’s strange behavior takes a disturbing turn. One day, Jerry drags something back into Betty’s house that changes everything.

In a grim, backbreaking sweatshop run by the merciless Mr. Lasch, women toil for pennies under brutal conditions, their lives measured in endless hours and broken spirits. When the threat of the scrap box—where even the mind can unravel—becomes a weapon of resistance, the workers weave a quiet rebellion with threads of fury and fate. The Vault-Keeper warns: some debts are paid in time, not money.

In "99 44/100% Pure Horror!", Ernie Mattson, the seemingly successful manager of the Hudson Soap Company, finds his perfect life unraveling in the most literal sense—literally, as he discovers the horrifying truth behind the soap he’s been using. The Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of revenge and retribution, where Ernie’s past as a murderer comes back to haunt him in the most visceral, slippery way possible.

In a remote plantation on a tropical isle, 'Red' Buckley stands over the body of his former boss, the Frenchman Duval, after a single gunshot. With the island’s lights fading behind him, Buckley and the silent native Kulu set off on a three-day journey to Banggai, bound for a steamer and a new life. But as the boat cuts through the dark water, Buckley begins to suspect the true cost of his escape—and that the man he thought he was leading may have been leading him all along.

In "Staired... in Horror!", the Old Witch introduces a chilling tale of deception and dread, where Irma Leechman, a widow with a secret past, begins a dangerous new chapter with Robert Hornsby—only to be haunted by the ghosts of her previous crimes. As their marriage unravels and the past resurfaces, the winding staircase of Robert’s country estate becomes a twisted symbol of her mounting guilt and fear.