The kid is Bill Hoffman. He's been kidnapped and buried in a graveyard, with only a measly pipe to provide air, and carry his cries for his parents to the surface. Unfortunately, once it starts to rain, the pipe also allows water to flow into the box!
The ones responsible, Billy's babysitter, her twin brother Eddie, and their stepdad, are currently fleeing the cops. Stepdad's yelling at Eddie, who insists it wasn't his fault he didn't see the cop when he ran a red light. Eddie tries to cut onto the freeway in front of a truck, hydroplanes, and they get broadsided, then blown up. This is bad, since they were supposed to call in Billy's location after they picked up the ransom. No one told the cops in the patrol car and now no one knows where the kid's buried. No one living, at any rate.
Turns out, one of the Hoffmans' friends is Amy Beitermann, and she knows someone who might be able to speak with the dead. Thinking about Jim Corrigan calls him to the hospital. Eddie clung to life the longest, so Corrigan enters his body to find his soul. He asks Amy to keep thinking of him, to act as an anchor. Eddie's soul has already moved past the land of the recently dead (where Deadman is just, hanging out, for some reason), so the Spectre descends into Hell.
He passes Louis Snipe, who betrayed and murdered Corrigan in the '40s. Snipe curses him, but Spectre says Snipe got what he deserved (being devoured by giant leeches.) Then Jim's dad appears (tied to a swastika with barbed wire) asking if the same is true of him, and if so, isn't it true of Corrigan as well, as written in some verse of the Bible blah blah. Spectre knows a trick when he sees it and calls out Shathan, Lord of Lies, still torn up from a previous fight they had.
Shathan's got Eddie's soul inside his body, like a heart. Eddie still protests nothing was his fault, but nobody's listening. Spectre claims Shathan is only trying to keep the Spectre from helping a child. Shathan fires back the Spectre is only here because he didn't get to punish Eddie himself. Spectre throws the first punch, but this is Shathan's realm, and he hits the Spectre with a buffet of the tortures Ol' Moonface inflicted on others. Cut up by giant scissors, trapped in a mirror and shattered, all that good stuff.
Spectre ultimately shakes it off, reaches into Shathan's chest and tears out Eddie. As he walks away, Shathan mentions a legend of a devil that repented his rebellion and merged with a human soul to walk the Earth. Is the Spectre that devil? Spectre dismisses it as another trick, but Shathan admits he would even stoop to the truth if it caused doubt in the Spectre's heart. (The answer, fyi, is yes.) The Spectre orders the gates of Hell to open, Eddie explains where the kid is buried, but before he can get too far into excuses, the Spectre chucks him back through the gates.
Back on Earth, Amy and Lt. Nate Kane get a rude surprise as Eddie's corpse sits up and reveals the kid is buried in a cemetery under the name Krause. Nate barrels off with two cops and Billy's dad, while Amy stays behind, trying to help Corrigan get out of Eddie's dead body. It's pouring rain, so the coffin is rapidly filling with water, but they manage to dig it up in time to save the kid. Now if Nate could only figure out how Corrigan got that info, and how Amy knows the "psycho detective."
{10th longbox, 24th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #5, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Digital Chameleon (colorist), Todd Klein (letterer)}
2 comments:
For some reason, it took me a couple of paragraphs to clock that you were talking about the Spectre rather than the Spirit. I thought Eisner was going uncharacteristically dark with this story of buried children!
That'll teach me to wake up before reading.
I've never actually read any of The Spirit, but Frank Miller probably had buried children in The Spirit movie he directed (I think I got as far as Sam Jackson smashing The Spirit over the head with a toilet and tapped out on that thing), so it's not impossible.
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