Vault of Horror #5

In "Sink-Hole!", a lonely woman’s desperate bid for love takes a chilling turn when her mail-order husband proves to be more than she bargained for. After she kills him and hides the body in their well, her hopes rise with the arrival of the charming health inspector, Rick Hudson—only to shatter when she learns he’s already married and leaving town. As she returns to the well for water, her thirst for connection leads to a far more unsettling discovery.

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 radical medical experiment, using a chemical and mechanical apparatus to preserve a new hand, but the source of his replacement proves far more troubling than he ever imagined.

Ken Anders stops by a strange costume shop on his way to a party, where the odd proprietor fits him with a mask and outfit 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 night spirals into dread. After a painful rejection from his fiancée and a fateful encounter at the party, he meets a woman in a vampire costume who draws him into a garden. There, the truth of her nature and the mask’s curse begin to unfold—leaving him staring into the pond, where his reflection betrays something far worse than he imagined.

Dr. Perdo arrives in a town of plump residents with a miracle weight-loss pill—so effective it leaves four patients emaciated and dead within weeks. Six months later, disguised and fleeing suspicion, he seeks refuge in the mausoleum of one of his victims, only to confront a monstrous tapeworm that may have been feeding on his victims all along.

In "Only Human!", Andrew Harmon and Miss Landers find themselves drawn to one another while working to teach an electronic brain, but their growing connection takes an unexpected turn when the machine begins to develop its own feelings—complicating the line between mind and emotion in ways neither of them anticipated.

In "Why Papa Left Home," Raymond Williams Jr. finds himself thrust 25 years into the past, chasing the mystery of his father’s sudden departure after his birth. As he navigates a world shaped by secrets and shifting identities, he encounters the people who once defined his family’s past—Doctor Vandeveer Hybolt, Martha Anders, and Mr. Axel—each holding pieces of a truth that will reshape his understanding of who he is.

In the eerie silence of a vast alien world, Captain Becker and crewmate Vaughn struggle to survive after their ship crashes—only to face a terrifying new threat in the form of a colossal space worm. As Vaughn grapples with the creature’s relentless torment, he’s forced to confront the moral weight of cruelty, both toward the beast and his own kind.