Nightmare #8

A street musician—silent, weathered, and driven by something unknowable—is coaxed into playing for a party of jeering partygoers at the Goethe Concert Hall. What begins as a waltz soon becomes something far more sinister, as the crowd finds themselves unable to stop dancing, compelled by music that shifts from hypnotic to frantic, dragging their bodies through an ordeal neither their minds nor hearts can endure. The mystery of who—or what—this mad maestro truly is lingers long after the music finally stops.

A young woman flees the streets in terror after encountering a grotesque, skull-headed creature emerging from the sewers—and when police dismiss her account, she and Officer Davis venture into the tunnels to prove what she's seen. What they discover in the darkness forces them to confront something far more nightmarish than a single monster, as the very tunnels themselves seem alive with malevolent purpose.

Scarlyn Friedrich, a hunchbacked graveyard keeper tormented by the townsfolk of Dunwich, has found solace in worshipping Satan—and his dark master has granted him a terrible boon: everlasting life. When the horrified townspeople discover his blasphemous devotions, they exact a brutal revenge that sends Scarlyn into an abyss between life and death, buried in the very ground he tends. Now, trapped in a coffin and clawing toward consciousness, Scarlyn must confront what his eternal reward truly means.

A bitter advertising executive with nothing to his name makes a desperate bargain with a supernatural force—trading his soul for eternal life and the chance to finally get ahead. When Smith's newfound immortality unleashes catastrophic forces upon the world, he discovers that surviving alone forever might be a far crueler reward than damnation itself. Howie Anderson and Ferran Sostres craft a darkly ironic tale about the price of ambition in "The Weird and the Undead."