In small doses, men like Tobias "Injun" Nahkan might actually be considered a good thing. The men like him are common and commonly discussed. Over dinner tables and luncheons at PTA meetings. They're the men who hang around outside the big glass windows of Chucky Cheese's just staring in. They sit on the benches at the mall across from the little vibrating planes kids sit in for a quarter. They stare mysteriously until someone notices them. And when the parent does notice them, that parent walks over to their child, takes their hand, and leads them away. And that night, they hug their child a little tighter before putting them to sleep.

People like Tobias Nahkan remind parents that there are some very sick people in the world. And for two parents that remember their child and pull them away from the "creepy guy," one does not, and some children are never seen again. They are a reminder of how quickly something as beautiful as child can be snatched away.

Nahkan knew about kids and sick people, because he had been both.

He was tall man of Native American descent. His eyes were dark and fierce, especially under his long black hair, which hung down past his neck. He was thin, and powerful. The big folds of his leather trench coat and camouflage clothing hid a tough, sinewy body, the like of which was usually developed from a life of exercise and a life of beer. The friends he used to have called him Injun, because his favorite character in the book Tom Sawyer was Injun Joe, the scary killer. Injun grew up in a small town in Georgia, living in a happy family with his father, mother, and two older sisters.

They had lived a humble life, up until Injun's pre-teen years. They went to school, his parents worked, and he had many friends in the community. He was a soft boy then though, and was just outgrowing the last of his baby fat and his need for a babysitter when the accident happened. It was a close friend of the family, a nice, well dressed man that all the kids liked. He was a teacher at the high school Mona and Erin went to. So when his parents needed to go out for a night alone, and his sisters were at separate sleepovers with their girlfriends, he was the one Injun was left alone with.

He couldn't remember much. Just a fun night of popcorn, basketball games on TV, and jokes with the cool babysitter, until about ten o'clock at night. After that, his mind forcibly blanked out most of the images. But not the sensations. The heat of breath on him, and the disgusting feeling of a man's rough hands on his body.

At the point his memory returned, the cool babysitter had been thrown in jail, and he had been talking to therapists and doctors for weeks. He saw the upset look in his family's eyes, and used that to push the images away. After a few weeks, he couldn't remember it any more. But every once in a while, pictures slipped into his dreams. He lied to the therapists though, said he was better, and that all was okay. Eventually, they could do nothing but believe him.

He ran away from home a year later.

At thirty years old, he was still running. Red and blue lights flashed in through the big windows of the house. As he was walking by, one almost caught him and highlighted his face. He dropped to the floor, and rolled over against the door, leaning up with his head against it, eyes frantic, looking for a way out. The red and blue flashes lit up the room briefly, and his eyes drank in the purple-tinged rug, couch, coat hanger and radio that took up the living room. All went dark. Then there was another flash, and he looked over to the small boy huddled in the corner, eyes wide, sniffling to himself.

"Shut up, kid," he grunted.

"Stop whatever you are doing right now!," a crackly voice boomed from a loudspeaker outside. "This is the county police. This house is surrounded by armed policemen. Do not take any aggravated action! Open the door slowly, and send the child out, and we will not shoot. Repeat. We will not shoot!"

Like hell, Injun thought to himself. He wiped some sweat off his forehead with his soiled trench coat sleeve. His long fingers reached to a black belt, and pulled a .45 semi-automatic out. He fingered the cold metal of the handgun. With his other hand, he reached into his coat, and pulled out a long plastic container with a long string attached to it. He held the container in his teeth, and tried to concentrate as the electronic voice blared from outside the door, yelling more commands at him. He pulled out a pack of matches, and fumbled with the gun in his hand to get one lit. He struck it, and a small orange flame hissed to life. He lit the wick in the plastic explosive, and smiled at the child, who whimpered in return, unable to take his large wet white eyes of the scary man at the door.

With his free hand Injun grabbed the rapidly burning device, rolled, and with a mighty heave, threw it out the window. The boy closed his eyes as the glass crashed loudly. All flashlights left the window to follow the projectile to it's place on the ground, and cries of "Hold your fire!" could be heard throughout the yard.

The panic barely had a chance to die down as a loud, hot explosion rocked the front lawn. A ball of fire could be seen through the window, and it lit up the room. The boy in the corner screamed, and Injun took his chance to tighten his grip on his gun. He ran out of the living room, into the kitchen. With surprising agility, he bounded up onto the counter and out the back window. Trench coat flew out behind him as he sprinted out into the night. He smashed an unsuspecting cop in the chin with the barrel of his gun, and the man fell to the ground with a grunt. Injun heaved and puffed under his heavy clothes as he ran. He bounded into some bushed behind the house and like that, disappeared…

Corey Jobe, the homeless superhero, he thought ruefully.

Outside a donut shop in Mandrake, Atlanta, a young African-American boy sat alone on a street corner. Evening was setting in, and as the last few rays of sunlight slowly disappeared, the entire city was bathed in a kind of subtle, pink glow, barely noticeable to the inattentive observer. But Corey had nothing to do but observe, and thus, noticed every second of the fading sun. Bitterness prevented any chance of his enjoying it however.

Corey Jobe was only fourteen years old. Born and raised in Georgia, his father was a lawyer, killed by gangsters on the opposing side of a case. Since then, his brother had raised him and cared for him in the underbelly of downtown Atlanta City. That was the life he had lived for years. Until his brother was killed, and Corey was taken and forcibly bound to his brother's killer. Now, alone in the world, he wandered the streets with…

As the last of the sunlight had almost died out, someone working from inside the donut shop emerged in the window and hung up a "CLOSED" sign. The few cars that had been on the street had stopped coming, and the unusual, complete silence made it seem like the whole suburban community was empty.

The man in the window, a fat guy with a big brown mustache, gave the dirty Corey a mean look, and he took it as a message to pack up and ship out. He rolled up the blanket he had been sitting on, and stuffed the few quarters and singles he had managed to collect and stuffed them into his pockets. He walked off into the adjacent alley, no exact destination in mind, as he had no place to go, and no place to sleep that night.

$7.33, he thought to himself, it's not great, but it's bus fare. I just gotta' crash somewhere tonight, and find the bus station in the morning. And then, I'm out of here.

"You do not employ your time well, Corey Jobe," said a voice from behind him.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he still physically jumped at the surprise, but at the very least, Corey comforted himself, he was becoming more and more used to the Spectre's out of the blue entrances. Though he couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

"I thought I told you to get lost," he started. Then thought. "And what is

that supposed to mean?"

"You beg for money," the Spectre answered.

"I don't beg for money. I don't even talk. I sit on the corner here, and I let people exercise their charitable side."

"You don't need too. There are any number of places in this town were you could go and seek help for your situation. You could work. You lament your poor lot in life, but you could change it. Why don't you? Is it pride?"

Corey just shook his head. "No, it's direction. Right now, I don't need a job. I need some spare change and a bus-ticket to Gotham City. And if my less than respectable methods bother you, you can go on back to Texas, or wherever you came from."

Corey walked on a bit down the alley, and the Spectre kept pace with him. His hood overshadowed his eyes completely, the lower face being the only source of expression for the Spirit of Wrath. Though he moved forward, and his heavy cloak shifted in the air around him, it still hugged his body, hiding it's features in blackness. The light from a nearby window cast warm reflections on the otherwise cold and hard brownstones the two walked past. "You're intent on going to Gotham City, then? This is foolish. You seek to track all over the country, starving yourself and begging for money the whole way, to visit the Justice Society museum. Why?"

"I don't know. Read my mind," Corey waved him off, dismissively.

"Why?," the Spectre repeated, as coldly and as dispassionately as before.

The tone, and the nature of the question halted Corey's steps. He turned around. "For lots of reasons. One, I want to know what you were doing with them "in hell," that I keep having dreams about.* Two, I want to know what connection you all have to my grandfather, and why my Dad hated you. Three, they know you. They fought with you, and they have information on you that's decades old, that I don't have the benefit of sharing in. So maybe a couple of superheroes, hopefully more impartial than you, can explain to me why you're such a jerk and what I can do to get rid of you. Maybe even kill you."

*(He's been having dreams of the JSA's journey to Hell in the pages of JSA #9- Jonah)

"You rage against yourself, Corey Jobe, and I can only hope it doesn't destroy you," intoned the Spectre from within his cloak. "I have already informed you of the nature of your dreams. My comrades and I journeyed into Hell to save someone. We lost someone else in the process. It is unfortunate that this still haunts you, but it will pass. And as for the bond which has tied our existence together, it is forged of the strongest stuff in the universe. Nothing on this Earth or beyond could ever hope to break it."

Corey waited, expecting something else in the Spectre's answer. He ran his finger over the jagged brick wall, until he realized nothing further was forthcoming. "And…?," he pressed.

"And what?"

"What about the part about my grandpa," he finished, speaking out loud as he processed his thoughts. "You can read minds and all that, so if you'd met my grandfather before, you'd know when you met me right? You had to."

"I knew. It's true, Jobe, I have met your grandfather before. I recognized the connection the instant I was alerted to your brother, and, by default, you. But the connection is a trivial one, a simple coincidence."

"Yeah," the thin boy continued to pressure. "So what happened? Why did my grand-dad love the Justice Society, and my dad hate them?"

The Spectre's voice was soft, and it seemed he spoke to the winds, few as they were. "That is not for me to tell. You are suspicious of me, and thus, are determined to go to Gotham City and the Justice Society museum. Perhaps you will find your answers there," said the Spectre, turning away.

Corey turned and rushed before him, his cool façade evaporated.

"Whoa! No way! You know something, and you could tell me now, but you're not. What are you hiding?"

"I hide nothing. I can hide nothing…," the Spectre spoke continuing to walk forward.

Corey stood his ground and tried to block him off, but the Spectre had already evaporated into thin streaks of white air, which seeped into Corey's body and took root within him.

Well, Corey thought, glancing at his alleyway surroundings , this looks like as good a place to sleep as any.

The guy behind the counter at the BP Station had sighed with relief when he left. Scraggly black hair, dark beady eyes, and unshaven face, combined with the fact that he walked around at 1 o'clock in the morning in full hunting gear made Injun Joe a representative of the "America's Most Wanted" stereotype in every way possible. His breath stank of various types of cheap liquor as he stumbled down the dark alleyways between buildings in the small, suburban community. He fingered an unreasonably long, sharp hunting knife which was stashed in the back of his camouflage trousers.

No real thought occupied his mind as he walked. And if thought makes something alive and human, then Joe was barely breathing. He could not remember once in his life when he had considered the consequences of his actions. In truth, the principal was foreign to him. He knew only that he desired to touch and to kill. His lack of contemplation on those matters and motivations was what grayed the lines which decided whether or not he was truly a man. A man knows why he wants to do something. Joe only knew that he wanted too. He was like a barrel of fetishes and impulses, dumped into the skin of man.

And at that moment, on that night, that barrel of dark human nature was rolling on down Allaver St. and his blurred vision could only see as far as the Braunson & Son's Donut Shop. His steel-toed boots clicked against the pavement in a slow, rhythmic procession. He squinted his eyes against the painful reflection of the streetlights off the storefront windows.

Having nothing to listen to as he walked around the streets aimlessly, he opted to listen to his own labored breathing. That is, until he passed the donut shop and realized the steady ins and outs of respiration he was listening to were not his own. He turned his head slowly, batting string of hair out of his eye. Creeping closer, the steel-toed boots scraped lightly against the gravel beneath his feet, he saw a boy of roughly fourteen or fifteen years of age, in ripped blue jeans and a white t-shirt with a gray sweatshirt over. He had huddled in between two trash cans, and propped his body up against a brownstone wall.

It was Corey Jobe.

Joe reached out his arms menacingly...

But a breeze stirred Corey. He sputtered slightly in his sleep, the opened his eyes long enough to look around sleepily at his horizons. His eyes caught almost immediately on the man's shoes, and climbed up the camouflage suit to the very scary facial expression.

Then the fear began to set in.

"Wha-?," he started, before a small chunk of metal flew forward and struck him back against the wall. He bled from the mouth, and tried to stem the flow with his sleeve. Upon trying to lift himself up again, a huge fist slammed down on the back of Corey's head.

He exhaled loudly, and slumped to the ground, unconscious.

And Injun Joe just picked up the young man's body and discreetly walked on down the street with him.

Everything was red. Bright, neon red with a kind of hazy, ooze-like purple effect at the edges. This was the world in vertigo.

Images were splattered against a sheet of blank space, some small and some large, like shards of shattered glass. The scene denied the presence of sound entirely. The whole The light off of each shard shimmered and faded, and each reflection seemed to carry ghastly, less-than-real forms. They moved and lumbered about unclearly, out of focus, carrying on this or that task, completely absorbed in their own momentary worlds. Caring only for the actions of the moment, that is the consciousness of the dream-ghost. Their only reality.

A closer inspection into the pictures etched on the broken shards revealed the individual world of each one. Red like blood on fire, each was a different cornerstone in the life of Tobias Nahkan. They flashed and fell in tandem, faster and faster. Tobias as a child, playing in a sand box with his friends. Tobias, crying and naked in the bathroom with some dark figure framed in the doorway. Tobias on a psychiatrist's couch. Tobias, his face lit up by the neon screen of a computer monitor, exploring the darker reaches of the internet. Tobias in jail. Tobias on the street, abducting a child that had wandered off from her parents. Another girl from recess at her school. A young boy on Halloween night…and more, and more.

They all slithered and coalesced, all the images into one great flash of red, which grew brighter and brighter, until the silence was shattered by a single ear-spitting noise like the follow-through from cracking to breaking glass. Then everything went black, and when light finally started to return, Corey awoke.

"Hey!," he shouted, sitting up straight on a cold, dirt-littered floor. "W-where am I?," he stuttered, his eyes searching, trying to adjust to the dim basement room he found himself in.

"Shh! Shut up," a voice hissed, as a clammy hand pressed firmly against his mouth. "He could be back at any time!"

After the initial shock, Corey finally settled down enough that his mystery-assailant allowed him the use of his mouth.

"Who are you?," he whispered. "Where is this place?"

"I'm Lance, and I'm the oldest kid here. I don't really know where we are. And judging from that bruise on the back of your head, you got here the same way we did. Knocked out cold, every one."

Corey looked around the room. He was in a small room, with cement floor, walls, and ceiling. Almost no light entered into the room, as there were no windows, and one door in the corner. He didn't go towards it because he had already assured himself it would be locked. Calming down enough to focus past the rocketing beat of his heart, he tried to listen to the sounds around him, but all he could here was slight scratching and the murmur of young voices from outside the door.

He leaned back against the wall, only now realizing that his head was pounding. "Okay, please start over from the beginning." Lance pulled himself up in front of Corey, and for the first time he got a good look at the boy. The kid was tall and lanky, with wavy, crazy blonde hair, and yes, it did appear he was at least older than Corey. He looked very solidly sixteen. His skin was pale and his eyes dark. Corey wondered how long he had been in this faux-cell.

A little girl that had gone unnoticed shuffled forward. She too was skinny, almost dangerously so, it seemed, in a torn, dirty little pink dress. She had light brown skin, and Corey guessed that she was of Latino-descent. He also guessed that she was at least seven years old, which made him wonder what sort of mess he had gotten himself into.

Lance kept his voice low, his eyes always flashing timidly over too the door. "There's… there's this guy, Injun Joe, his name is. He's a freak! He's got a bunch of kids kidnapped down here. Some are boys, some are girls. Most are younger, like Kim, here. You and I are probably the oldest. But I haven't even seen into some of the rooms… he takes kids off the street and locks them up here."

"To do what?," Corey pressed, the fear in his voice cracking despite all attempts at control. "What happens here?"

Lance's facial expression dropped and it visually looked like his heart was breaking. "I'm sorry, man," he said, and the concern was genuine. "He does a lot of stuff. He touches. He rapes. He beats us or yells at us. Some kids get killed."

Kim covered her eyes and started to cry, and Corey felt like doing the same. "No," his voice quivered, and alone in this dark room, he sounded very much like the child he was.

Lance didn't say anymore. He just walked over to Kim and told her some jokes under his breath to try and calm her down. Eventually it worked. Corey just pulled his legs up close to his chest, and hugged them tightly, staring off into one of the blackest corners of the room to collect his thoughts.

Where are you?, he screamed inwardly, his thoughts traveling to the Spectre. You appear out of nowhere to ask me questions or badger me about something. You saved me that night in the church. You go out every night to kill some new, evil person, but now there's one who could be right outside this building, ready to come inside and kill me, or any of these other kids and you're nowhere! Where are you?!

However, his internal reverie stopped cold when he heard a door slam shut outside of his own. Kim started to whimper and buried her head in Lance's shoulder. Lance, for his part, could only try to hold his jaw steady to keep it from quivering. His eyes were locked on the door and for five minutes, he didn't even blink.

Corey, on the other hand, wasn't even breathing.

A little slot opened on the door, and half of Joe's shown through. The smiling half. From behind him, a small pillar of artificial light strained through into the room. Corey recoiled at the sight of him as he lowered his head, unshaven head disappearing to reveal dark, reddish little eyes.

"One of you is next," he stated flatly. His eyes scanned from wall to wall. "You. The boy. The black one…"

Corey froze. His eyes widened in horror and by impulse alone he backed up against the wall. Lance's muscles tensed, and inwardly, he wondered just what the punishment would be if he tried to start another fight. His hand brushed against his latest wound, a deep gash just above his knee, when Kim directed his attention to something.

"What is that?," she whispered, pointing over to the furthest corner.

Lance followed her finger over to the corner. At first, the complete dark prevented him from seeing anything, but a tiny shaft of light seemed to pass over some form. A faint, dark green outline was shown, and it was crouched over, looking like something draped in a heavy bed sheet. He couldn't imagine how it had gotten in there.

Injun Joe heard the whisper and his little eyes flashed over to the girl.

"What'd you say?," he barked.

He glanced over into the corner…

And from the shadows, some great green form arose. It's form snapped, and whipped around, a cloak whirling around it. Fluidly, in less than a second, everyone in the room saw the top half of it's stark white body, contrasted and highlighted by the completely black settings around it. Without even pausing in it's movement, it leapt at the door, mouth open in a silent roar, and Injun's Joe's eyes were still stock on the empty corner, even as The Spectre's long pale arm reached through the hole and grabbed him around his neck.

"Hrrgh! URNH!," he gurgled as he tried to scream in surprise. Kim did scream, long and shrill, and Lance grabbed her by instinct and shuffled her off into a corner, trying to protect her from the strange white man in the green cloak.

Corey on the other hand, was not as dominated by fear.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!," he screamed indignantly.

The Spectre only gritted his teeth and fought for a grip on Injun Joe's neck. On the other side of the door, the man struggled as his body was pulled against the door. He pushed off and broke free of the Spectre's grasp, breathing in sharply, the rush of air painful to his damaged neck. He huffed in more oxygen as he turned and ran, terrified down the dark corridor.

Ignoring Corey's earlier question, the Spectre only reared back… and punched, the door exploding around his bare, white fist. "Get the children out," he said back to Corey, as he hovered slowly out the door.

"Right…," Corey grumbled and shook his head. He walked over to Lance and Kim, and ushered them both into a standing position.

"C'mon," he soothed the shrieking girl. "I think everything's going to be okay now."

Injun Joe raced forward like a bullet train, slamming into the wooden basement door and flinging it open. It slammed against a solid rock wall and the bang echoed out the halls. In each of the little rooms extending off of the small corridor, curious children pressed their ears to the door to hear what has going on.

He never even looked behind him, eyes locked on whatever was in front of his feet as they flew up the stairs.

Gotta' get to the gun…Gotta' get to the gun…, he thought.

He unhooked the latch on the door at the top of the stairs, and pushed open a small, metal gate. Outside the window, a small-town business district was exposed. Injun Joe lived here, in a small apartment on the floor above. The floor he was on now was his living space. The floor below him used to be the customer service section of a old meat store, now run down. The basement below that was where animals used to be slaughtered.

He rushed through the tiny gray hallways, jumping up over a slick linoleum countertop, remarkably spry, and landed in front of a dusty, white refrigerator. He threw open the freezer door, which was bare, except for a long, jagged, silver hunting knife. He pulled it's partner, two bought as a matching set, out of the bag of his pants. He moved slowly and quietly, easing himself flat against the walls, then moving forward. He turned a corner and stuck both of the knifes out in front of him. Just a few feet in front of him, the gate was open to the basement, and from the rectangle that was the entranceway, onward, it was pitch black. He waited for his attacker to come up the stare, poised and ready, knifes in hand.

He stared at the black rectangle nervously. His eyes fluttered as he tried to blink sweat out of them. But nothing came.

He waited longer but nothing in the room changed except that the sweat on his head increased. He tried to ignore it, but as his panic grew, so too did his perspiration. It started at the base of his hairline, then ran diagonal now the wrinkle in his forehead. He twitched his forehead trying to get rid of it. Eye stayed focused on the doorway, but the trail of sweat rolled down his head to his eyebrow, sliding in over his nose, before landing right in his right eye. His vision went blurry and he blinked his eye once, then twice to get rid of it.

The second time he blinked his eye he saw a blurry white figure mixing together with the blackness of the hole.

When he blinked his eyes once more, he screamed.

The Spectre lunged at him, reaching for the wrist that held the long knife. He jerked it down and forward, and though Injun Joe's arm held it strongly, he lost momentum, and control of that hand. Instinctively though, he followed through and swung the other knife up, jabbing for where the Spectre's ribs would most likely be. The Spectre sidestepped, his airy form flowing smoothly from side to side, and he pushed Joe up against the wall. The Spectre grabbed the man's head with a smooth white hand and bashed it against the wall. When he pulled the head away, the wall was dented and cracked, and the plaster foundation underneath.

Injun Joe grunted desperately, trying to pull his head away. The grease and sweat of his hair allowed him to free himself for a moment, but the Spectre's cold hands just came back and grabbed a hold of his hair in a firm fist and slammed the man's head against the wall. Once. Twice… The plaster came more and more loose, leaking out as dust onto both of the combatants.

"No! Stop!," Injun Joe yelled, but the Spectre did not listen. Joe surged backward, using all of his strength to swing back on his legs, pulling all his weight away from the Spectre. The Wrath of God lost his grip, and Injun Joe fell to the floor. He landed painfully on his leg, but was still glad for the respite.

He pushed away, rolling over himself clumsily trying in vain to find his feet. He set his boots on the floor and ran, faster than he ever had before, for his living room. Throwing himself over the couch, he knocked the wind out of himself as he collapsed on the floor. He ignored it though as his fingers scrambled blindly to find the shotgun he had stashed under his couch cushions.

He tried to smile, but winced, even though his heart soared at the feel of the gold metal firmly in his grip. He propped himself up on one knee. In the room, only the high-pitched in-and-out wheezing of his returning breath could be heard. And it was really, really dark.

He thought he heard a slight creaking sound coming from the kitchen, and without a thought, he turned and fired, blowing a huge hole through the plaster wall. He waited again, and heard a creek in the bedroom directly to the right of him. Whipping his body around again, he fired off two shots, blasting through the thin, bedroom door. A creak to the left and he turned and fired, shooting a bullet outside his apartment and into the street somewhere.

Suddenly, the Spectre rose up from the other side of the couch, just looming there in the air, his body a complete blank almost, save for the few indications the light gave, of green cape, or white skin. But the one thing that Injun Joe surely could see, even in the darkness, was the dark grimace of a very unhappy face.

He cried out, and fired off shot after shot. The muzzle would flash again and again, but the Spectre never moved, and the sound of the bullets connecting with anything never came.

He pushed back with his feet, pitifully trying to squirm away, but he backed up into his own table, and kept firing, long after his gun only greeted him with a series of click's.

"What- What are you?," he stammered. "I can't hurt you. I can't outrun you. I can't even shoot you… Are you a ghost?," he asked. "Are you-"

The Spectre leapt upwards, rising above the couch, and touching down gracefully on the other side, in front of Injun Joe. He picked the man up in his strong arms, raising the frightened child molester above his head, then slamming him down on the wooden table.

The man rolled around on his back, groaning in pain. Which is why his eyes were closed when the Spectre came down upon him, covering up his whole body underneath the long green cloak, and killing him somehow underneath.

A crowd of kids surrounded Corey as he used a discarded crowbar to pry open the last lock on the last cell. A bleary eyed, red-headed child emerged wearing only a ripped up pair of jeans. The children were mostly a sorry looking band, caked in dirt with various levels of dress. Some were completely pale and thin, and Corey wondered how long the poor souls had been down here.

"That's it," he called. "That's the last kid. Joe's gone now, you're all safe to go."

They continued to stare at him as if they wanted something more. He searched and stammered, uncomfortable with being in the spotlight. He was also unsure of himself, because he had less than no idea where all the children had come from, or how best to help them. "…I'm not really sure where… I mean, I'm sure if you can find a police station or something… must be one somewhere…"

"Who was that guy?," Lance spoke up. "The green one? He looked like, well…"

"A ghost!," Kim piped up.

"Well, yeah…," Lance finished weakly.

"That? That was the Spectre. Don't thank him. They're both psychopaths."

"But he saved us…," said another child from within the crowd.

"I know. But he has a lot to answer for. You wouldn't understand."

"But-," another child pressed.

Corey pushed away from the group, and started to weave his way through the kids. "Look, Lance," he called back. "Can you handle everybody for just another day? I'm sorry, but… I have to go…"

"Well, yeah sure…. But, where do you have to go?"

"Just away…," he mumbled, and walked off into the dark…

…Out on the street, he pulled his sweatshirt tighter around him, and looked at the faint start of a sunrise. He shivered, trying to push away the fear he had felt in that basement, and the shared look into Tobias Nahkan's past.

A few minutes later, the Spectre appeared beside him.

He looked up at the taller figure angrily. "What was that about? Why did you wait until I got locked up and dragged into the basement to come save everyone?"

"You seek to cut yourself from me. What would have happened had I not been there?"

"So that's it? You let some guy beat me up to teach me a lesson?," Corey asked.

"If I hadn't, you would not have met the children," The Spectre answered.

"And why is that important?"

The Spectre started to walk away down the street as the sun climbed just an inch higher in the sky. "You mourn your station in life. You believe it unfair that you are now alone in the world. But in the basement of that building with that man, you met children who were truly left to their own defenses against the harshness of the world. Be grateful that you have an otherworldly ghost around to protect you in times of need."

And with that, the Spectre's form start to sift away, carried by the winds, dissolving like little particles of dust. They became to small for Corey Jobe to see, but when they entered his body, he could feel the now familiar sensation that was the Spectre entering him for rest.

All Corey did was pull the phone number he had for the Justice Society Museum out of his back pocket, run it through his fingers, and try to guess where the bus station was.

Spirited Writings

Okay, here's issue seven in what will probably get to you, the public, in a block of four straight issues of the Spectre! And for all three people reading the title, I'm sure you guys are loving it!
Just kidding. Actually, as the series as gone on, I've been getting more and more positive word-of-mouth, and that really helps to keep a guy writing, believe me. It appears that people are liking the series, and I think that's great, because I'm loving it. Thanks to Dave Marshall, accomplished writer on the amazing Legionnaires, Birds of Prey, and All-American Comics, (up at FDC now!) for his kind words over on the FDC-Writers mailing list.

I enjoy Corey Jobe as acharacter. I submitted a story about a year and a halfago, in which the title character was a young, blackman. It was too adult for the FDC site, but I did getsome kind words on it from Dale. I'm glad to see someone else pick up my fumble and run with it.

Seriously folks, if you haven't checked out theSpectre series it is an extremely well-written seriesand a fun read. I wish DC offered such an entertaining twist on this character.

It was kind of just a comment in passing deal, but I make no secret of how I use quasi-feedback in the hope that it will generate some more of the same! It's shameless and I love it. But anyway, keep an eye out for his stuff on the site, as it sounds like he has some interesting stuff in the works.
And as for what's near in the future, it looks like you might have a chance to catch The Spectre and his partner outside of the series pretty soon. I'm not sure if I should be promoting yet or anything, but what the heck- Look for The Spectre to make an appearance in the upcoming "FDC Halloween Special," in a segment written by yours truly.
That's all I've really got for now, but remember keep reading, and keep writing! Send all feedback to Jonah_Rite@hotmail.com.

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