Girl (very upset, almost crying): You didn't have to do it this way.
Dream Lord (in narrative): I don't think I want to know.
Page 3 panel 4
Another disjointed memory, of somebody scaling and gutting fish on newspapers on a kitchen table. It is a flashback from his childhood.
Voice of adult (face is not shown; only hands, arms, fish are in panel): Come on, Gary. Use the knife to slit 'er open, right on back to the tail. Then we scoop out the guts.
Page 3 panel 5
Dream Lord (in narrative): When was that? I...look at all the rats! They're working their way to me. I hope I die soon.
Medium shot of 3 or 4 rats hopping around a nearby corpse, nibbling on the abdomen.
Page 3 panel 6
Dream Lord (whimpering, crying): Oh, God...please let me die...
He gazes over his chest at a rat which is watching him, sitting on its haunches in the foreground.
Page 3 panel 7
Dream Lord hears somebody shout, and he whirls his head around to see who it is. He is shocked by the familiar voice.
Voice (off-panel): Emmett! Emmett Adams!
Dream Lord: Huh? I thought I was..
Page 3 panel 8
Dream Lord (off-panel): ...alone.
A woman stands nearby. She is in her early 40's, tall and bony, with black hair pulled back in a bun. She wears a house dress and apron, and though she is not monstrous-looking or ugly, she has a stern, commanding expression. She stands over the heaps of corpses, her hands on her knobby hips, glaring at the Dream Lord.
Mother: Emmett! This is absolutely shameful!
Page 4 (8 panels)
Page 4 panel 1
Mother (off-panel): How many times do I have to tell you...
Dream Lord (whispering): Mother.
Page 4 panel 2
Mother: ...you have to start picking up after yourself!
She lifts an arm and a leg from the corpses, tidying up as if she were at home. She walks right on top of the bodies, seemingly oblivious to them. Mother: What a mess!
Page 4 panel 3
The Dream Lord weakly lifts a hand toward his mother, shocked and trying to understand what's happening.
Dream Lord: Mother...what are you doing here?
Mother (still picking up body parts): That's a silly question, isn't it? What does it look like I'm doing? I'm certainly not sunbathing at the lake! Why haven't you cleaned this room like I told you?
Page 4 panel 4
Dream Lord: Mom...I'm dying.
Mother: What a lame excuse! I told you four times to clean this place, and you still haven't done it! All you ever do is lie around on your back like a lazy bum!
(She points at him while she yells, her other arm full of severed limbs.)
Page 4 panel 5
Dream Lord (desperately): Please...help me.
Mother (tossing aside a load of bloody limbs and marching toward the Dream Lord): Oh, I'll help you all right, young man.
Page 4 panel 6
Mother (grabbing the Dream Lord's arm and pulling him up): I will help you get out of that bed...
Dream Lord (as he is lifted from the pile of bodies): Aaaaargh!
Page 4 panel 7
Mother (effortlessly yanking the Dream Lord to his feet): ...And start cleaning your room! Now get going!
Dream Lord (clutching painfully at the spot where the sword is stuck in his chest): Oh, God, it hurts!! Mom, no! Help me, please!
Page 4 panel 8
Mother: Don't be such a baby, Emmett! You put on such a routine, every time you get a scratch! I won't play along, you hear me? I won't give you the attention!
Forcefully dragging the Dream Lord along behind her, she walks toward a scraggly, dead tree, against which a broom leans. Rats scurry away before them.
Page 5 (8 panels)
Page 5 panel 1
Mother thrusts the broom into the agonized Dream Lord's quivering hand.
Mother: You've got to grow up, Emmett. You have to learn responsibility. Your father won't reprimand you, but I will! Your father doesn't care!
Page 5 panel 2
Closeup of the Mother's face as she suddenly and briefly becomes quiet. She gazes away from the Dream Lord, off into the distance, thinking about her husband. She looks sad and thoughtful.
Mother (quietly): He just doesn't care about anyone.
Page 5 panel 3
The Dream Lord can't stand the pain anymore, and stumbles away from his mother. He is screaming and clutching his chest, about to collapse to the ground.
Dream Lord: Aaaaggghh! Help!
Mother: Emmett? You get back here, you little ham! That won't get you out of your chores!
Page 5 panel 4
Mother (trying to grab him as he hobbles away): You're pushing your luck, mister! I still haven't forgotten what you did with the TV last week!
Dream Lord (a surprised look on his face as he notices something ahead of him): Where did that come from?
Page 5 panel 5
A swirling portal has appeared in a hill, in a space cleared of corpses.
Dream Lord (off-panel): A hole...a way out!
Page 5 panel 6
Dream Lord (now crawling desperately toward the portal, his mother beating him on the back with her broom): If I can... get home... to the Dream Base...my power...
Mother (angry and crying at the same time): Get back here, Emmett! Come on, you have work to do! Stop running away! Emmett!
Page 5 panel 7
The Dream Lord manages to heave his shattered, bleeding body into the portal, and with a flash, he disappears.
Mother (racing after him, as his torso vanishes into the hole): Don't leave me...
Page 5 panel 8
Mother: ...alone! (She tries to hurl herself after him, but the energy portal has already vanished, and she slams into a solid hill of dirt and rock and bodies.)
Page 6 (8 panels)
Title (across the top of the page): Long Night's Journey Into Death
Page 6 panel 1
Narrator: He slips through a sea of gelatin, cold and slimy and airless. Around him, he can see nothing, just reaches of featureless plasma. Gasping for breath, he fills his lungs with the stuff.
Show the Dream Lord, in his torn, bloody costume, with the sword still protruding from his chest, floating through a vast sea of a murky green gelatinous substance.
Page 6 panel 2
Narrator: Nothing is familiar here. He had hoped the portal would lead him home, to regain his power and somehow undo the pain. He hoped wrong.
The Dream Lord is plunging forward through the gel, smothering and beginning to lose consciousness.
Page 6 panel 3
Flashback of the Bogeyman from the first chapter.
Bogeyman: I am your dream, Adams! I am your Bogeyman! You have tried to forget me, to exile my memory as you set up your cotton candy kingdom in dreamland! But you could not...you never will!
Page 6 panel 4
Closeup of the Dream Lord's face as he chokes and turns blue.
Narrator: Once, he was almost a god, a king of dreams and guardian of life. Now, he prepares to die.
Page 6 panel 5
Flashback to Emmett's childhood. He is sitting, cross-legged, before a TV set (circa early 1960's), listening to his parents shout at each other while he watches Woody Woodpecker cartoons.
Mother (off-panel): ...and you aren't sick anymore! You can't always have your way around here!
Father: Shut up! I pay for you and the kid, every damn day! All you give me is grief! What's wrong with you?
Page 6 panel 6
Extreme closeup of cartoon image on TV, as Father shouts off-panel.
Father: Get out of here, if you don't like it! Get the hell out of here!
Page 6 panel 7
Bogeyman (in flashback): You can't even keep your own mind together, can you?
Page 6 panel 8
Flashback image of the young, heavy girl crying
at a kitchen table. This is the same panel that was used earlier in this chapter.
Girl (very upset, crying): You didn't have to do it this way.
Page 7 (8 panels)
Page 7 panel 1
Suddenly, the Dream Lord is dumped from another energy portal. He falls from the portal, along with a gush of the gelatin substance, out of a brick wall. The first panel only shows him plunging out of the portal in the wall, followed by the gel.
Page 7 panel 2
The Dream Lord is on his knees on a dark, cobblestone street. He is dripping with green gel, spitting it out of his lungs and sucking in the air.
Dream Lord: Uk...ack...I'm out...bluh...still alive...but I don't...think I made it back...home...
Page 7 panel 3
The Dream Lord looks down the shadowy street, sees a crowd of dark and menacing figures racing toward him. A spotlight blazes atop a bulky jeep.
Dream Lord: No... this is definitely not the Dream Base.
Page 7 panel 4
Medium shot of the approaching crowd. There are 8 or 10 figures, dressed in black Nazi Gestapo uniforms with swastikas on the sleeves. They look like men, only they have the faces of wolves. They all carry machine guns and pistols, and there is a wolfman operating the spotlight and a large gun mounted on the jeep.
Nazi Wolf: You cannot escape, abomination! The Fuhrer has ordered your slaughter! You will die like a pig!
Page 7 panel 5
Wolf (off-panel): Kill him!
The Dream Lord just kneels where he has fallen for a second, stunned and sick
with pain, He is still dripping with slime, and the sword juts from his heart.
Dream Lord (again near tears): Oh God, no. No more, please. No more!
Page 7 panel 6
Wolf (still far down the alley): Fire!
The corps of Gestapo wolves fire their machine guns, and streams of bullets zing from the walls and floor of the alley. The Dream Lord struggles to his feet and half-runs, half-hobbles away from them. He is gasping for breath and crying as he tries to escape them.
Dream Lord: No more! I'm the Dream Lord!
Page 7 panel 7
The Dream Lord turns a corner and stumbles down another alley, as bullets flash against the walls behind him.
Wolf (off-panel): Slaughter him!
Dream Lord: No no no no...I want to go home...I want to wake up...
Page 7 panel 8
At the end of the new alley, another pack of Gestapo wolves suddenly appears. Sirens are blaring through the streets.
New Wolf: There he is! Kill him!
Dream Lord: This is a dream! It has to be a dream...
Page 8 (8 panels)
Page 8 panel 1
The first group of wolves comes around the corner, and opens fire on the Dream Lord. The other wolves fire at the same time, and the Dream Lord manages to stumble through a moldy wooden door out of the alley.
Wolf Leader: Get him! Blow his head off!
Dream Lord: It has to be a dream!
Page 8 panel 2
On the other side of the door, the Dream Lord finds a dark room. Huddled in a corner is a family of refugees from the wolves. The refugees are sheep, dressed in rags, clearly desperately frightened.
Dream Lord: Oh, thank God I've found someone! Please, you've got to help me!
Page 8 panel 3
Dream Lord: quick, they're trying to kill me! I need your help!
Mother Sheep: Who...who are you?
Father Sheep: It's him! The abomination!
Page 8 panel 4
The father sheep runs to the window and screams to the wolves in the street outside.
Father Sheep: Here! Kill him, he's HERE!
Dream Lord: No!
Page 8 panel 5
The Dream Lord runs and hobbles through another doorway, barely escaping the wolves' guns. Bullets rip up the wall and wooden door frame, barely missing him.
Wolf: Get him! Kill him now!
Page 8 panel 6
The Dream Lord emerges on the other side of the dark doorway, this time in a large nightclub. Nazi wolves are drinking beer and dancing with their women. The room is bathed in red light, a glitzy Berlin-style cabaret. The Dream Lord runs as fast as he can, clutching the sword which still juts from his chest, his face contorted with pain and animal terror.
Dream Lord: Help me! Somebody, please help...
Page 8 panel 7
Dream Lord: ...me.
Closeup of his face as he stops short, suddenly and horribly realizing that he faces a room full of enemies.
Page 8 panel 8
Medium shot of a crowd of Nazi wolves, all with hateful sneers on their faces. They all pull out their weapons.
Page 9 (8 panels)
Page 9 panel 1
The pursuing wolves burst out of the doorway behind the Dream Lord, all their guns trained on his body.
Wolf Leader: There! We have him! The abomination is trapped!
Dream Lord (bursting into tears, about to completely fall apart): Nooo!
Page 9 panel 2
Bogeyman (off-panel): Oh, Kubla, what in the world is wrong?
Dream Lord (looking in the direction of the voice): Wha?...
Page 9 panel 3
The Bogeyman, or an image of him, has appeared in the cabaret, leaning casually and snidely against a post. He is bathed in the club's red light.
Bogeyman: You're the Dream Lord! Make it go away! Ha ha ha ha!
Page 9 panel 4
Dream Lord (screaming): I can't! I can't do anything!!
Wolf Leader (approaching the Dream Lord from behind): We finally have you, monstrosity! You can no longer run from the punishment for what you have done!
Page 9 panel 5
Wolf (snarling and aiming his pistol): You stand accused of murder! The penalty is execution! How do you plead, bastard?
Page 9 panel 6
Dream Lord (backing against a wall, into a spotlight): I never...I didn't... do anything...I'm.. I'm sorry...
Wolf (off-panel): Liar!
Page 9 panel 7
Wolf: You are a murderer and a liar! The verdict is guilty, the sentence is death!
All the guns in the room are raised and cocked with a hundred clicks.
Page 9 panel 8
Wolf: Kill him!
Dream Lord (in a weak, helpless whimper): No!
Page 10 (7 panels)
Mr. Sandman Page 5