Adventures into the Unknown #73

Edward Courtney is haunted by a recurring nightmare—a fevered chase through fog-shrouded streets toward a house on Magnolia Street, always pursued by a sinister old man, always ending in the structure's collapse. When psychiatrist Dr. R. P. Farraday's first explanation fails to stop the dreams, he turns to hypnosis and uncovers a buried childhood memory: the old man is John Battersby, his father's former business partner, who once swore vengeance on Courtney's family. Now that the source is revealed, Courtney hopes the nightmare will finally release its grip—but Ogden Whitney's "The House on Magnolia Street!" suggests that understanding the past may not be quite enough to escape it.

In pre-war Berlin, the legendary magician Karl Sternhardt discovers an extraordinary secret—the ability to disappear and materialize elsewhere—but his estranged son Otto, radicalized by the Nazi regime, has rejected him and his ideals to become a ruthless U-boat commander. When Otto's submarine is crippled and trapped on the ocean floor with no escape, a letter from his dying father finally reaches him, revealing the very knowledge Otto once dismissed as childish nonsense.

Ralph Minton returns from Crete with an ancient relic he believes to be a barometer—until Professor Strook reveals it's actually a mysterious Cretan artifact thousands of years old, carved with symbols for "luck" and "misfortune." When Ralph discovers the liquid level seems to predict his fortune with uncanny accuracy, he begins wagering his life on its cryptic readings, transforming himself from a struggling clerk into a wealthy man, but at a cost that may consume him entirely.

Hannel, a nuclear physicist from the plague-ravaged planet Thorion, grows desperate when his world's superstition-bound rulers refuse to embrace medical progress, forcing him to make a fateful choice: steal a rocket ship and flee into the unknown with his wife Lusi and their child in search of a habitable world. Battling the very plague he fled, navigating treacherous cosmic perils, and clinging to hope against impossible odds, Hannel discovers far more than he bargained for when his desperate gamble finally yields results.