The Vault of Horror #36

Credits:
Cover dated May 1954
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Twin Bill!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig
"Witch Witch's Witch!" - Art by Jack Davis/Story by Johnny Craig
"Pipe Dream" - Art by Bernie Krigstein/Story by Johnny Craig
"Two-Timed!" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Jack Oleck

A fairly strong late issue of the Vault of Horror, principally through the efforts of Johnny Craig. By this point, Craig was editor of the comic, and he wrote 3 out of 4 stories here, the most he'd ever write for a single EC comic.

"Twin Bill!" - A man, Larry Bannister, catches his wife and lover together at their cabin in the woods. He forces them at gunpoint to hike a mile into the woods then dig their own graves. When the lover fights back, Larry strikes him unconscious, and he buries both him and his wife alive. Larry returns to his car only to find that it won't start due to a dead battery. He returns home in his wife's car and it takes him several weeks to be able to return to the cabin to replace the battery. He forgets the keys however, and figures that he will dig up his wife's corpse and take them from her purse rather than have to make the long trip home to get them and risk that his car will be seen. When he arrives at the grave however, he finds it empty. Larry flees back towards the cabin, seeing the figures of his wife and lover in the distance, and when he makes it back, he waits there, hoping to shoot them when they come in. They finally do come in, but when he turns on the flashlight they are revealed to be rotting corpses, fused together, and his gun has no effect as they kill him. Some very strong artwork from Craig on this story, which also does a very good job of providing a very dark, scary atmosphere throughout.

"Witch Witch's Witch!" - A man named Eric who lives in a small European village goes away on business one week and when he has returned, he is now married to a woman named Helena. This upsets Eric's mother, as well as his fiance Alicia and her mother, but Eric will hear none of it. Soon afterwards, Eric's mother dies of a heart attack. The local church group bans Helena from attending and soon after their leader dies. Alicia's mother starts a rumor that Helena is a witch and caused this, and one day while passing her by, Helena stares at her and she drops dead. The rumors continue to build that Helena is a witch and at her mother's funeral, Alicia starts grabbing her chest with pain, claiming that Helena is doing it. A mob rushes to Eric and Helena's house, accusing her of a witch and finding a pin cushion shaped as a human that they think is the cause of Alicia's suffering. Eric tries to stop them, but is shot, and the mob carries Helena to the town square where they put her in the middle of a roaring bonfire. Suddenly, Helena raises her arms, shouts out a chant, transforms into her true form, and the entire mob turns to rats. Another strong story; its not often in these types of stories where someone is accused of being a witch, and then actually ends up being one.

"Pipe Dream" - The old Chinese man Chen Chu Yang spends his days smoking opium in a den and dreaming. He tells of how years ago, he had dreamed of his wife dying after smoking his opium and when he came home she had died. Chen is supported by his son, but he is soon drafted. Chen returns to his smoking and dreams that his son will die as well, and he does, being struck by a car on the way home from his going-away party. Chen's daughter marries a man against his wishes and months later she tells him he unbearable and beats her. Due to Chinese honor Chen tells her she must stay with him and will only be free if he dies. Chen then has another opium-induced dream where he is able to kill his son-in-law and free his daughter. When he awakens the man has died, but with no explanation, his daughter is put to death for the murder. Chen returns to his opium to dream another dream. Another strong tale, and similar to the recently reviewed "Murder Dream" it is a surrealistic, largely dream-based story, although this story is a bit better than that one.

"Two-Timed!" - A boy hears a noise one night and heads outside to the woods, where he finds an adult man who has just beat a woman to death with a pipe. The man grabs the boy, but suddenly there is a bang and the boy falls unconscious. When he wakes, his parents are there with the local constable and the man is gone, but the ground is all burned as if there was an explosion. Years pass. The boy, now an adult, hears that his wife is plotting to kill him, so he plans to kill her instead. He fools her into thinking he is going away then brings her into the woods where he beats her with a pipe. He suddenly notices a boy and grabs onto him, but realizes it is himself at a younger age and lets go. Thinking the bang he heard years before may have been a gunshot, he grabs a gun from his beaten wife and lights her on fire. Suddenly a shot rings out and he topples over. The town constable comes out and reveals that a paper at the scene many years ago had the current date on it, which led him here. An odd, confusing tale which is quite a disappointment after the first three stories in this issue.