Den store skrækbog #[nn]

In a future Earth scarred by war, nuclear holocaust, and lingering radiation, humanity has devolved into something unrecognizable—those who still resemble "normal" humans are hunted and killed on sight. In this brutal world, Jo, a rare survivor with a semblance of the old world, must navigate a landscape where trust is a death sentence and every glance could be the last.

In "Døden følger med," a man handcuffed to a dead policeman stumbles through a merciless desert, desperate to escape the weight of the corpse dragging him down. As thirst and heat gnaw at his resolve, he faces a horrifying choice: sever the dead hand or risk being consumed by vultures that circle ever closer.

In "Lad gryet komme," a man’s growing unease turns to dread when a mysterious girl he encounters in the woods matches the police description of a dangerous escaped lunatic. As his fear deepens, his girlfriend’s fate takes a grim turn—she becomes the latest victim of the real threat lurking in the shadows.

In "Pibe-drømme," Chen recounts his descent from a man seeking power through opium-fueled visions to a hollow shell haunted by the terrible weight of his dreams. Each vision—of his wife, son, and finally his daughter’s abusive husband—unfolds in terrifying reality, leaving him with nothing but guilt and silence. As the line between dream and fate blurs, his only refuge becomes the opium den, where he now drifts, lost in the aftermath of his own nightmares.

In "Midnat-messen!", a skeptical traveler stops in a quiet town where people vanish at dusk, fearing a killer on the loose—though he dismisses the whispers of vampires as superstition. Hungry after a closed restaurant leaves him stranded, he wanders into a familiar place that shouldn’t be open, only to find the doors wide shut and the menu waiting.

In the thick Louisiana swamps, a man lures travelers to his isolated mansion, diverting them from the road to feed his brother’s gruesome hunger. After a particularly gruesome night, three grotesque corpses—each made of mismatched body parts—rise from a quicksand pool and begin to dismantle the man, reassembling his body in a horrifyingly wrong configuration.

In "Rum-født!", newlyweds Enid and Lon embark on a honeymoon voyage in a spaceship, only for Enid’s health to deteriorate under the strain of space travel. Forced to land on an alien world, they realize she can’t survive another launch—so Lon returns to Earth alone, seeking supplies, only to encounter a mysterious alien being he kills, unaware of the terrible truth behind it.

In *Hvirvelstrømmen*, Jo wakes in a nightmarish sequence of torment—boiling water, freezing ice, electric shocks—each sensation more real than the last. As the world closes in around her, she’s told she’s mad, trapped in her own mind, until a sudden memory shatters the illusion: the men questioning her are not her doctors, but her tormentors.

In "Sumpen," a lone shack crouches in the heart of a decaying swamp, home to a man whose madness matches the rot around him. As he dispatches his victims and buries them beneath the sagging floorboards, the structure begins to crumble—slowly, inevitably—under the weight of its own secrets.

In the aftermath of World War 2, a fugitive former commander of Belsen Concentration Camp flees across Europe and into America, haunted by the ghost of a single inmate who vowed to find him. Years later, his terror reaches its peak on a train ride when he suddenly comes face to face with the man he’s spent a lifetime evading—his past, finally catching up.

In "Knap-øje," a blind boy finds wonder in the world for the first time on Christmas, only to face cruelty from his stepfather, who mocks him for his "shoe-button" eyes—just like his beloved teddy bear. When his mother falls ill, the boy pleads for help, but his stepfather’s abuse escalates, culminating in the tearing of the bear’s eyes and a final, tragic act. The story unfolds with quiet dread, tracing the bond between a boy and his toy, and the haunting cost of a mother’s love.

In the storm-lashed silence of a remote facility, Hartley confronts a chilling ritual as he watches inmates desecrate a corpse—only to learn it’s the price of control. After dinner, the truth sinks in: the man he replaced was murdered for trying to end the practice, and now Hartley is alone with the inmates’ hungry eyes. Lying in bed, staring at the skylight, he dreams of being dragged into a coffin and buried—only to wake up, shaken, with the horrifying certainty that the nightmare is still real.

In *Frelst*, a G.B.I. agent infiltrates the crew of the spaceship *Mercury*, posing as a new recruit to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious deaths linked to Captain Jargot. As he digs deeper, he uncovers a grotesque secret: Jargot has been using the crew’s blood to fuel the ship’s advanced engines. When the captain turns on him, the agent is rescued by a fellow crew member—only to learn the survivor is a vampire, bound for Earth with a far more unsettling plan.

In "Kamens kalamiteter," Jack Kamen grapples with the pressure to deliver darker art for the horror comics he's drawn for, after being told his style is too sweet. As he struggles to meet expectations, he dozes off at his desk and dreams of committing a gruesome act under the full moon, returning to his wife and children with a sinister intent. The story unfolds in a tense, dreamlike haze, capturing the unease of creative pressure and the thin line between imagination and fear.