Friday, March 17, 2017
The Other Side of the Macabre Mirror
A fellow horror fiend sent over some small, but still certainly scary scans to a very cool Lou Cameron (penciled) story from the May 1952 issue of The Beyond #11-- an issue from this series that has always eluded me! There are definitely not enough evil mirror stories archived here at THOIA!
This one is a little interesting -- and not for the Vault Keeper sneaking out and moonlighting for another company -- because he's actually got an escape hatch from his torment. He will, eventually, and could be relatively soon, get out of the mirror by luring in another sucker.
ReplyDeleteAfter that -- especially if it's decades later (the count didn't age) -- he can get a new identity, his wive's body will never be found, and while in the mirror he's NOT aging (unlike prison.)
All in all, not the worse fate.
The first page of this story made me think of Algernon Blackwood's 'The Land of Green Ginger"
ReplyDeleteThe beginning is very similar but Blackwood's tale goes off in a different direction.
Both tales even have the mirror warning the would be buyer of what lies ahead.
Okay, we get it: never collect anything!
ReplyDeleteOoh, blown from the sand of pirate graves. Good detail! Thanks a lot, Fellow Horror Fiend (and Karswell)!
ReplyDeleteClearly, Willis didn't reflect very well upon the consequences he would encounter upon entering the mirror.
ReplyDeleteI also like '..an hour of reckoning so macabre, so soul-searing and terror-fraught, that it passed the boundaries of human understanding!'.
ReplyDeleteI snuck in a couple more appropriate tags.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, some of the plot reminds me of R. Chetwynd-Hayes' "The Gatecrasher" (made into a segment of the movie From Beyond the Grave), although this predates that story by 20 years!
In a general way, it's also like the THRILLER episode "Prisoner In The Mirror."
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