Forbidden Worlds #61

When Professor Henry Sheldon, a man of science, encounters his old schoolmate David Ennis at a lecture on the occult, their debate over the supernatural leads David to recount an extraordinary tale: the legend of Nicholas the Planter, a 14th-century Englishman who received a magical seed from a sorcerer and planted it in the most evil place he could find—the domain of the wicked Baron Guilfoyle. What unfolds is a centuries-spanning story of an enchanted tree that seems to possess a will of its own, protecting the innocent and striking down the cruel, testing the very boundary between superstition and documented fact.

When Dr. Lawton inherits an eccentric country doctor's old automobile along with his practice, he discovers the vehicle has a mind of its own—literally taking control of the wheel during foggy mountain drives and seemingly steering him where he needs to go. As inexplicable incidents mount, Dr. Lawton struggles to explain the car's uncanny behavior, caught between his rationalist skepticism and the undeniable evidence that something supernatural may be at work. Desperate to escape the mystery, he calls his colleague Dr. Gordon from the city, only to have the car make its presence known in the most unsettling way possible.

An old Indian warns two engineers in the New Mexico desert that they're about to awaken Attu, a legendary god sleeping for thousands of years, but Palmer dismisses the warning as superstition and orders the blasting to begin. When the dynamite goes off, the ground shakes violently, and Palmer later discovers that the earthquake damage has left giant footprints across the landscape. Palmer and his crew must decide whether the warning was real—and what that means for their power line project.

A mysterious talisman with the power to grant three wishes lands in the hands of Rowan, who seeks Dean Masters' help drafting foolproof wishes that won't backfire—but when the professor's student Andrew gets his chance to use the magic, his selfless desire to make everyone on Earth happy spirals into consequences no one anticipated. Rowan's cautionary tale of an earlier wish gone wrong proves that good intentions may matter less than precise wording when dealing with forces beyond mortal understanding.