EC - A Tasty Morsel (Davis)

A Tasty Morsel
art by Jack Davis, story by Al Feldstein
Haunt of Fear #5 (1951)

Davis certainly does ugly well. This is one of his earliest EC stories, still not quite as stylized and energetic as his key later work (plus he always seemed a bit better teamed with Kurtzman), but with some nice heavily shadowed work on a dark subject.

This story is one of those told in the second person, making it seem that the reader is the character in the story. Well, not really, it more makes the story read awkward without adding anything.

In this tale, you take refuge in an inn on a stormy night. The large, ugly innkeeper leads you to your room, but soon you go out looking for a blanket. You hear a noise from the basement and when you investigate you see the innkeeper draining the blood of a man, obviously a vampire. He turns on you and starts to drain your blood... and then you wake up. Only to find that the innkeeper is draining your blood, but not because he's a vampire. There are worse things to be captured by.