The Hand

Jon Lansdale is a comic book illustrator, whose relationship with his beautiful wife Anne and daughter Lizzie is in danger. While driving, Anne and Lansdale end up behind a slow-moving truck with an impatient driver behind them. In the heat of an argument, Anne tries to pass the truck, while Lansdale waves at the roadhog behind them. He fails to pull his hand back in the car in time—it hits the truck, and is lopped off. Anne attempts to find the severed hand but cannot locate it. Lansdale starts a painful adjustment to not having his drawing hand, while Anne tries to repair their relationship and marriage. Lansdale attempts unsuccessfully to recover the hand himself, only finding the signet ring Anne gave him. The couple move to New York and Lansdale is approached by his friend and agent Karen Wagner to co-produce his comic with another artist, David Maddow. Lansdale however, begins to show signs of a mental breakdown, and when he shows the test boards to Karen, they are all marked up. Karen retracts her offer and fires Lansdale, who cannot recall marking up the boards while questioning his daughter about the incident. In a fit of frustration, Lansdale loses his signet ring. Anne is unable to cope with Lansdale's increasingly erratic behavior and general instability. Lansdale becomes jealous of Anne's yoga instructor and begins his slow descent into insanity when an encounter with a homeless man leaves the man dead at the "hand" of his former appendage. It is not entirely clear whether or not this was a real or imagined event. Lansdale begins having hallucinations about various inanimate objects, such as a shower faucet, coming to life as a hand. After his final meeting with Wagner, Lansdale comes forth with his intention to take an offer to teach at a small community college in California. At the suggestion of his friend Brian, Lansdale rents out a cabin in the woods for the time being. While the majority of his students fail to show an interest in comic books, Stella Roche is interested, and she also takes a personal interest in Lansdale. Anne insists on staying with Lansdale during the Christmas season and he begins to have violent hallucinations about the hand strangling her. That night, the missing ring reappears on Lansdale's pillow. Lansdale and Stella begin a romantic relationship despite the latter showing an interest in Brian. Not long after, Lansdale meets Brian at a bar, but is confused as he should be on a two-week vacation with Stella. He soon learns that Brian hasn't seen her since she last went to Lansdale's cabin. Lansdale picks up Anne at the airport, but soon realizes she has no real intention of staying as she previously claimed. He hallucinates the hand strangling her, causing the car to crash in a fiery explosion. While his wife and daughter are at the cabin, Lansdale confesses to Brian that he slept with Stella. Soon after, Brian is killed in his car by the hand. That night, Lansdale awakens to see the hand trying to kill Anne. Lizzie overhears the commotion and calls the police, and Lansdale chases the hand outside into the nearby barn. The hand tries to attack him, but Lansdale stabs it. The hand crawls to a nearby spare tire where Lansdale tries to stab it again, misses, and the hand wraps itself around Lansdale's throat and causing him to lose consciousness. Lansdale awakens to find his left hand around his throat while the police investigate. The sheriff, and his deputies attempt to ask Lansdale what happened. Discovering that Anne is still alive, Lansdale attempts to explain what happened when the officers notice a pungent smell permeating the area in the carport around the car, specifically from the trunk. Lansdale tries to prove that nothing is wrong by opening the trunk, only to be horrified by the sight of Stella and Brian's dead bodies stuffed inside. At a local insane asylum, a psychologist attempts to communicate with Lansdale. She wants him to remember and admit that it was him, not his severed hand, who killed all the victims. He says that the hand wants to kill her because it hates her. Suddenly, the hand (which may exist or may still be a figment of Lansdale's mind) appears from behind the psychiatrist and strangles her. Lansdale, completely taken over by the essence of the hand, looks at her dead body and starts to laugh. He loosens the restraint on his other hand and gets up, presumably to escape from the asylum.