Astonishing #48

In "It Happened at Midnight!" from Astonishing #48, a writer spins a tale of midnight abductions by alien beings from another dimension—only to find the same eerie event unfolding in real life. When a man vanishes at exactly midnight, the twist lies in the identities of those who pull him away: they claim to be FBI agents hunting an alien, but the line between fiction and reality blurs in unsettling ways.

In "The Man Behind the Mask!" from Astonishing #48 (1956), a masked philanthropist known only as the Miller of Mireton—his identity hidden beneath a wooden mask—gives all he has to help the townspeople, even as his fortune fades. When he makes one final, desperate journey to deliver what little remains, he’s met with unexpected kindness from those he’s aided, who claim they recognized him despite the mask. As he removes it in disbelief, the story’s quiet revelation leaves him—and readers—stunned.

In "There's No Tomorrow," a pirate captain finds himself caught in a storm and arrested by Spanish forces—exactly as a gypsy foretold. When he demands to know why her prophecy came true a day late, he learns the gale has pushed his ship across the international date line, making it Wednesday, not Thursday.