The Vault of Horror #[nn]

In the rain-lashed silence of a forgotten facility, Hartley takes over as headmaster, only to discover a chilling ritual: the inmates are kept in line by being subjected to grotesque rituals at the corpse of a former guard. As he dines with the inmates, he realizes the man he replaced was killed for trying to end the practice—and now they’re watching him. That night, after lying in bed beneath a skylight, Hartley is seized, locked in a coffin with a view, and dragged to a cemetery. He wakes back in his room, shaken, convinced it was a nightmare—until an inmate’s face looms above him, and dirt rains down.

In "Last Respects," a grieving Tony keeps a haunting vigil in Anna’s mausoleum, bound by love and guilt after her death. Trapped in the tomb with her corpse and a grotesque carnival prize, he endures a slow, desperate struggle for survival—drinking rainwater and facing the creeping decay around him. The line between mourning and madness blurs as the weight of his actions and the silence of the tomb close in.

In "Curiosity Killed," a woman’s growing suspicion that her friend’s disappearance is tied to a gruesome secret escalates when she begins to suspect the husband is using carrier pigeons to secretly dispose of the body—bit by bit—through a local kennel. As her fear deepens, she realizes too late that her own life is now the target, and the man she thought was her ally has come for her far sooner than expected.

In "The Basket," a man burdened by a rare condition—two heads sharing one body—relies on a simple basket to hide his secret. As the murderous impulses of one head grow stronger, the other must confront a terrifying choice: endure the horror or end it all.

In "Fed Up," a sword-swallower finds herself trapped in a marriage to a man whose insatiable appetite consumes every penny she earns from her act. As his weight grows and his gluttony spirals out of control, she begins to plot a darkly ironic retribution—urging him to master her dangerous craft, only to leave him helpless when the consequences of his own excess catch up with him.

In a tale of desperate longing, a grieving woman turns to a mysterious jade statue after her husband’s sudden death, hoping to undo the tragedy. Though warned by a fading memory of a cautionary tale, she makes her first wish for money—only to face a cruel twist when the insurance payout arrives too late. Now, with her heart set on bringing him back, she makes her final, fateful wish, unaware of the terrible price her longing might demand.

"The Craving Grave" tells the story of a lonely tomb that longs for the companionship of the dead, mocked by its peers for remaining barren. When a casket arrives bearing the body of Cynthia, the grave’s longing turns to dread as her nephew—once a thief—returns with his wife, seeking forgiveness. But the dead do not forget, and the grave soon becomes a place of twisted retribution.