CHAPTER ONE

As Kyle Rayner watched - breathless - the shambling, sallow-cheeked figure heaved a heavy stone over its head, and brought it down on the head of his unsuspecting victim. The target of the ghoul's attack crumpled on the grounds of the cemetary, and the attacker fell on his prey. From this angle, Kyle couldn't make out exactly what the attacker was doing to the other man's corpse (for it was obvious the blow had killed the man), but when a woman screamed nearby, the attacker's face came up, slathered with blood from the chunk of flesh he'd gnawed out of the man's neck.

"Awwwww, gahhhhhh!" Green Lantern said with a wince. Repulsed as he was, he found he still had an appetite for Sour Patch Kids. He dug into the plastic bag blindly with questing fingers, unable to take his eyes off the screen. Next, he knew, was Barbara's race to the farmhouse, where she'd find another half-eaten -

"Green Lantern." A cold, black-gloved hand landed on his shoulder.

"Yahhhhh!" Kyle cried. He jumped in his seat, and tart, sugar-coated candy flew in all directions. Recovering himself, Kyle clutched at his heart and turned around. "Dude, what the..." He lost all color in his face. "Oh. I should have figured."

"No," the Batman said. "You shouldn't have had to think about it at all. Because you should have been watching the monitor. That is - since you seem not to know - why we call the assignment monitor duty."

"Heh." Blushing furiously, Kyle tried a sheepish grin. He soon thought better of it. "Have a heart, okay?"

"No."

"Aww, come on! It's Halloween! Have I ever told you how much I love Halloween?"

"No."

"Well, I do!" Kyle said. "And, I mean, I could be at a party right now, or even just home handing out candy...y'know, but I'm not. I'm stuck here. Totally missing it. I feel like Sally in 'The Great Pumpkin,' man! Frankly, this sucks. So if I wanna try and kind of halfway compensate for it by watching horror flicks, then I don't see..."

The Batman stared at him.

"...Okay. Look, what exactly am I supposed to be looking at, anyhow?"

"If I knew that, Green Lantern, then I suppose there would be no need for any of us to do monitor duty."

"Yeah." Kyle nodded. "See, I think...you never saw 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,' did you?"

"Just watch the monitor." With a swoosh of fabric, the Batman turned his back and began to stalk away.

"Watch the monitor," Kyle muttered under his breath. Rolling his eyes, he scooped up his Sour Patch Kids and turned to face the screen. "I was watching-"

A brilliant white light flooded into Kyle Rayner's suddenly-staring eyes-

"...oh."

...And then everything went dark.

Brilliant white light was reflected from a window off the Batman's shoulder. The dark spectre of a man went still, then instinctively shaded his eyes and turned-

Just in time to see Kyle Rayner's helpless form be sucked into the monitor screen.

The screen went black.

Green Lantern was gone.

"J'Onn," the Batman said aloud. "Do you--?"

I'm here, Batman, the Martian Manhunter said into his mind. But otherwise you're quite alone. The brainwaves of half the League have vanished. Should I be concerned?

"It doesn't look good," the Batman said. "Find a transporter and get here quickly. I need-"

"Bruce Wayne," someone said.

Batman? J'Onn said. What's happening? What startled-

Get here NOW, the Batman thought at him.

"There's no need for secrecy, Mister Wayne." The chalk-colored man in flowing white robes looked upon the Batman with dark, dreaming eyes that evinced nothing like fear. "I am as privy to your waking notions as I am to your thoughts in repose; indeed, you are perhaps more a creature of my world than you are this one. But I wish you no malice."

The Batman regarded him evenly. "What are you?"

"I am Dream, Mister Wayne," came the reply. "But there are many dreams. Your species is most skilled at making them. Some are hatched at night, when you rest, and come effortlessly and unbidden; others are the product of blood and labor. And dreams have a life unto themselves..."

"I don't understand you. My people are gone! Where are they?"

"I am telling you," Dream said. "Is a book an object, Mister Wayne? A pound or two of paper, nothing more? No. Not simply. It can be held in the hand, but it is yet a dream...a world unto itself. I expect you understand. You grasp the meaning of symbols."

"Yes," the Batman said. "But how does this concern-"

"A novel is a dream. Your films are perhaps an even closer approximation of a human's night visions. And - though they are created from scripts, peopled with actors - they are real. Quite real. In the Dreaming."

"I see. Now tell me where to find the League."

"I have, Mister Wayne."

	The World's Greatest Superheroes.....
JLA Halloween Special	by Mike McGee, Mike Exner III, Will Short, James Hickson, Chris Munn, Derrick Ferguson, and Russ Anderson

CHAPTER TWO

"...Great Scott," Clark Kent said as he fell squarely on his hindquarters. A few kernels of popcorn slipped from his fingers and danced down his long-sleeve checkered farm shirt and settled in the lap of his jeans. His bright blue eyes flicked up at the scene before him and he blinked - purposefully - several times in an attempt to clear his vision.

He was sitting squarely on the wooden floor of a high school gym. A very familiar high school gym filled with hundreds of high school-aged students who were all enraptured by the scene before them. Clark furrowed his brow and switched his gaze to the high ceiling of the gym. Banners were hung from the ceiling along with furls of ribbon and nets filled with balloons and confetti. Clark's eyes widened and he gasped aloud. The white banners were imprinted with red lettering that would have been plain even to a man who hadn't been gifted with telescopic vision.

EWEN HIGH SENIOR PROM

"What in blazes is going on here?" Clark muttered and slowly rose to his feet. Some of the children glanced at him as he brushed the popcorn from his pants, but they all appeared to be fascinated with the events taking place on the makeshift stage erected in the far corner of the gymnasium. Clark put his hands to his temples and rubbed gently. His head was pounding with a sickly, rhythmic beat behind his eyes. The headache was slightly disturbing - Clark didn't get them often - but the headache wasn't the greatest of his concerns.

Only moments before he had been sitting with his mother and father on the couch at the Kent family farm. The slick feel of the butter flavoring on his hands was proof enough of that. He had rented a movie in Metropolis and whisked across country to Kansas in an instant. He'd had to duck behind the barn in order to avoid being seen by a group of trick-or-treaters, but as soon as they'd skipped their way down to the car of whatever parent had been mad enough to bring them all the way out to the Kent farm - Martha made one mean candied apple - he zipped to the front door and let himself inside.

His parents had been thrilled to see him as always, and after some gentle convincing from Clark and his father, Clark's mother had agreed to sit and watch the movie Clark had brought with him. His mother had popped corn and his father had grabbed some of the candied apples and the Kents had settled down on the couch for an All Hallow's Eve to themselves.

Now, as Clark stood on the gymnasium floor and peered over the shoulders of the children gathered all around him, his eyes widened in surprise. He recognized the setting of this senior prom. He recognized the faces on the stage. His head pounded again and his vision momentarily grew blurry. When it cleared, he finally realized where he was.

"The movie. Dear lord, I'm trapped in the movie."

"What'd you say, man?" a young man said off to Clark's right, but he barely heard him. On the stage a comely young girl stood with a handsome young man. Clark's eyes flashed to the corner of the stage and then he began to push his way through the crowd of children in front of him.

"Get her off of the stage!" Clark said as he fought to reach the platform with the raven-haired young girl smiling brilliantly upon it. "Please! You don't know what you're doing! You've got to stop!"

"Hey! Watch it!" another student said as Clark slammed into him from behind. The kid lost his balance and in the next moment, so did Clark. He fell on his hands and knees and the student body parted in his wake. In that instant, Clark knew he could fly through the crowd and stop what was about to happen. But he was frozen - as if by some magic spell - and powerless to do anything as Christine Hargensen and Billy Nolan pulled the wisp of rope attached to the bucket of pig's blood on the rafter above the stage. He was powerless to do anything as the pig's blood fell onto the young girl who had been so happy a moment before. He was powerless to do anything as the children silenced and then began to mutter. And then - finally - he was able to get to his feet as Christine Hargensen stepped from the shadows and shrieked in horrible laughter.

"I told you! I told you, you little bitch! I told you they'd all laugh at you!"

And then they did. Clark grimaced, and the throbbing in his head rose to a crescendo as the whole of the assembled high school children began to laugh and point at the young girl on stage covered in blood.

"Carrie..." Clark muttered through clenched teeth. "Stop. All of you. You don't know what you're doing."

And then the throbbing in his head subsided once more. Clark got to his feet just in time to see the first children lifted into the air. He turned around and watched as the doors to the gym slammed shut. And then a rush of air seemed to slam into him. Everyone in the gym fell to the ground and Clark quickly changed. He shed his civilian clothes in the blink of an eye and raced into the air.

"Listen to me," Billy Nolan said as he slowly backed away from Carrie White. "It was Christine's idea. All hers. She made me do it."

"Billy, you asshole! Do something!" Christine said as she shoved Billy in an attempt to keep the psychotic young girl covered in blood away from her. Carrie's eyes narrowed and Billy flipped into the air. He spun in circles and then stopped abruptly. Carrie looked away and the boy began to drop toward the stage.

"Billy!" Christine screamed and then her eyes widened as Superman zipped down and snatched the boy from the air.

"That's enough, Carrie," Clark said as he landed.

"It'll never be enough," Carrie said and then Clark was on the ground. The weight pressing upon him was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. At the same time a presence seemed to settle in his mind. Tears filled Clark's eyes as the rage and embarrassment Carrie White was suffering through brought itself to bear on Superman's mind.

"It. Will. Never. Be. Enough!" Carrie screeched and Christine Hargensen - who had been approaching Carrie from behind with a stage light raised above her head - was torn apart from the inside out.

"My god," Clark said.

"God is dead," Carrie replied and then Superman was airborne. The speed with which he was thrown into the air was intense enough for even his meta-human equilibrium to be thrown out of whack. In an instant he was far enough over the gymnasium to see that it had begun to collapse from within. Fire was beginning to gnaw its way across the sides of the building and towards the roof. Superman fought to pull his body out of the telekinetic grip that was sending it away. But just as the hold on him began to falter, the blinding pain shot into his head again. Superman grit his teeth and a booming voice sounded from within his mind.

"The Dreaming, Clark Kent. It is filled with things we cannot prevent. Things even one such as you cannot bring to a halt. Your spirit is strong. But you are defeated. You will all be defeated. There is nothing else to be done. The Dream is the thing. I am... sorry, but there is nothing left for you in this place. Know that if your brothers fare as you did that you will most assuredly die here. Goodbye."

And then a blinding white light appeared before Clark Kent's eyes and he saw nothing more. Nothing at all.

CHAPTER THREE

The only thing Dinah Lance could ask herself - running as fast as her long, thin legs could carry her - was why. Why was it so hard to run? Why did her lungs burn? She was born to run. Her mother, the original Black Canary, passed on the name and everything that went with it. That at one point included fishnets and, by necessity, runner's legs.

But it hurt. Hurt like it never had. Each bound she took, each breath, set her body on fire. Dinah ached and wheezed and she tripped...on a log. A perfectly, horribly placed log. She came crashing down elbows first into the moist soil. It was a frantic scramble to get up again, barely allowing enough time to notice where she was: the woods. At night.

Cached with dirt, bleeding at the knee, and fighting a sprained ankle, she started back up. Now she had to run even harder, if that was possible; she'd been so damn clumsy. Dinah rushed past the trees conspiring in the foggy darkness, under vines and over logs. They were like hurdles. Under, over, duck, jump-

Fall. Again. And again she rose, almost whimpering at the bite in her leg, which might as well have been a dead weight now. Dinah Lance wasn't used to running like this - away. It wasn't like her to run away, to be so hopelessly grounded. Canaries don't fall; they're supposed to fly.

But the Black Canary could never actually fly - not like the others. Yes, she wished she could, prayed she could now. But all Dinah could think to do was run, run, run.

Then she finally asked herself why.

Why was she in the woods? In costume? Running? It had become a rhythm now that she dared not break the beat of. But that allowed, in the midst of the frenzied feelings, a sliver of rational thought. What did she have to run from? What had Dinah ever run away from in her entire life?

She remembered a night at home; one of the nights for her, not the League or Barbara or even the Canary. The kind of night to curl up on the bed, draped in sheets, eating Ben & Jerry's in the light of the TV. No kids came to the apartments on...

Yes! That's it. It was Halloween. That's why she was watching TV; there was a marathon. Cheap thrills stuff. Hacker flicks. But one of the greatest cheap hacker flick runs ever, truly deserving a marathon:

"Friday the 13th." The title of the fourth installment had just come on the screen - and that was the last thing she remembered.
Before running like a hunted animal. The overwhelming anxiety weighed her down as much as her ankle. Maybe she could stop for a second. Whatever it was, maybe it could wait. So she slowed down. The throbbing really started up. Dinah leaned against the tree and held her ankle up to get a better look.

The breaths were coming long and heavy, filled with the humidity of the air. She hadn't noticed that before. It was bad air that made her sweat sticky. Her lungs felt sticky too, like the air wouldn't come all the way in or out. Breathe in, breathe out. In. Out...

The breath was on her neck. It was a different sticky. Sticky like blood. She could smell it. Right. Behind. Her.

Dinah remembered why she was running.

"Maghhh," she cried, falling forward where a good ankle usually would have been. Without it she tumbled to the ground again. Something went clank in the bark; something she had felt push the air right past her cheek.

A meat cleaver, stained brown-scarlet, was being pulled from the tree. Behind it was a hockey mask; behind that, eyes of mad lust.

He stumbled out from behind the tree and loomed over Dinah as she pulled herself through the leaves and dirt. She didn't want to look over her shoulder and at the same time couldn't help it. And yes she wanted to get up and run - Jason was coming at her. Jason. But oh God did her ankle hurt, and it seemed so easy to accept the fact that time was up and say hello to oblivion.

But...that was someone else. Not Dinah Lance. Not the Black Canary.

His knee dug into the middle of her back and pinned her writhing body. Jason held the meat cleaver high - too high for too long. Ignoring her ankle, Dinah spun his weight off her back and somersaulted backwards into a stand.

"Ah," Dinah breathed from the pain. She'd have to do better than that. But her ankle - that's all she could think about. That and getting away.

Jason had recovered, making maniacal, muffled grunts as he lurched at her. A well-placed kick to the stomach put him on the ground again. That meant it was time to run.

She did the best she could, gritting her teeth and bearing the painful, limping steps. Dinah went "hngh" with each, riding the burn. Something was always rustling behind at her very heel. Jason followed. Back to stage one.

And how long could she keep it up? If Jason matched her before, why wouldn't he overtake her now? His breaths were simply forced out of him, like a charging beast. This was all he wanted. He would keep going forever. Would this forest?

No.

Dinah came to a clearing. Of course there was a cabin. A big, wooden cabin with a porch over the lake and no lights on. That was better than out here. It was only a little further...

"Hngh, hngh, hngh," went Dinah.

"Hngh! Hngh! Hngh!" went Jason.

The door was feet away. Just a few more limps, fast as Dinah could take them. Her hand found the old knob and wrestled with it feverishly. Yeah. Okay. So there's a cabin with a locked door. She kept turning it back and forth, back and forth, as she felt the heat closing in behind her.

And then the door popped open. Dinah hopped through the crack and took one fleeting look back as she pulled it shut with her weight. He had been right behind her. Now there was pounding on the door, massive strength pulling against hers on the knob. She took one hand to push the lock firmly in place but held on anyway for a few seconds.

The pounding faded. Slowly, cautiously, Dinah let go of the knob. She was left with only the mostly-dark of the room, the nipping in her ankle, her own deep, gracious breaths...and the firm hand gripping her shoulder.

"Yagh!" She spun on one foot and knocked the hand away, almost falling in the process. The strong hands grabbed her. She sighed as her eyes finally adjusted to the dark. "Jesus, Diana...

Wonder Woman, in all her beauty, helped Dinah up. "Are you injured?" she asked.

"Yeah - no. Just a twisted ankle." She leaned on Wonder Woman's muscular shoulder as the latter helped her over to the corner.

"There," said Diana. "A twisted ankle? You were running, then?"

It felt good to finally rest. "Was I running? Jason's out there!"

"Who?"

"Ja...okay, look. I don't know how or why or anything, but I was just chased down by a character from a movie. Jason. He...he was trying to kill me and..." Dinah exhaled deeply. "And what are you doing here?"

Wonder Woman sat next to Dinah, leaning against the wall of the small area, likely a utility room. She looked straight ahead. "I..."

"What is it?"

They both jumped at a bump and a crash a few rooms away. It was getting closer. Black Canary looked at Wonder Woman, who looked down again.

"...I was running, too."

Dinah's eyes lit up. "You...you? You were running? But - Diana, why would you have to ever run?"

"Because she is playing her part, as are you."

The shifty voice came from a column of white fire in the corner opposite them. It slid upwards like burning liquid until a tall, terribly thin male form was made. He stepped out of the darkness in whitest samanite.

"Who-?" Wonder Woman began. She studied his dark eyes and the green gem hanging from his neck. Diana recognized it as an eagle stone.

"You know who I am. The part of you that only awakens when you slumber knows me. You especially, little princess."

"A-Apollo...?" she asked. The man stopped right before them.

"No," he said. "You may know me as Oneiros."

"Then...then this is just a dream?" Diana asked. The Canary watched them converse and felt she had no place to speak.

"Just a dream?" asked the white man. "No. This is not just a dream. Tonight is All Hallow's Eve. The darkness of humanity is fresh on all minds. And each mind dreams. This is much more than just a dream. This is a play that must be finished, as the sum of the dreaming souls' have created it."

"Wait." Dinah felt brave. "This is happening to us because...just because everyone's thinking about it?"

"Thinking. Dreaming. Believing. They are what truly bring life to this and any realm."

"Why us?" Diana asked.

"You are not the only ones. Your friends are playing their parts as well. You are already the fables of their waking lives, the myths and gods. They look to each of you to make sure the show is an entertaining one."

"What do we do to stop it?" Dinah felt faintly dizzy. Dream eyed her like a king would.

"Stop it?" he said. "It will not stop. The only end is the ending that has been written. As for you...you will play your parts, as I said. You are both strong souls. You do battle with Destiny like a jest.

"But you are the females nonetheless. Men seek to punish you for their own weakness. They collect you; strike at you for their rejection; put the mask of their mothers upon you. For once you must give into fate - the fate of your roles. Your place, you archetype, requires your deaths."

And the wood on the door Dinah had used splintered under the weight of a meat cleaver as the steps from the other end of the house came ever closer. The king was gone and the women were alone...for the moment.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Oh, joy! 93 years and this is the best Halloween yet!" Eel O'Brien said as he looked at the blood and sweat drenched man who faced him, wearing a torn shirt and a chainsaw where his right hand should be.

"Who the hell are you," the man asked, cocking his sawed off shotgun with one hand and pressing it to Eel's forehead.

"Why I'm one of your biggest fans!" Eel said with a huge grin.

"Yeah, well let's see how big a fan you are of this." The man pulled the trigger, but was astonished when Eel's head split in two like a worm in a biology film, the bullet from the gun passing in-between the two halves and lodging itself in the far wall. The two halves of Eel's head then bonded back together, Eel still with the stupid grin on his face.

"So is this like some secret set for Evil Dead 4? Where's Sam and/or Ted Raimi? CAN I BE A FAKE SHEMP?" Eel said with glee as he stretched his neck around the room, behind cabinets and floorboards.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about Zombie Boy, but you're going down," the man said as he swung his prosthetic chainsaw at the shape-shifter.

"Zombie Boy? No you must be confusing me with my friend Ghost Boy, if you want, I could…Hey watch it with the hardware there, Brucie," Eel said as he just barely dodged the buzzing blade aimed for his midriff.

"The name's Ash, screwhead," the idiot Ash growled as he fired constant rounds at Eel without the need to reload, slowly backing the hero up against the wall. Despite this the shape-shifter remained optimistic.

"Wait a tick…I'm in the movie Evil Dead? Well actually judging by your hand and the setting this is Evil Dead 2, which I always prefe…agghhh." Eel's deadite love fest was interrupted by a multiple set of arms that erupted from the wall, embracing him in sharp nails and decaying flesh. To his own astonishment the nails penetrated his skin, drawing streams of strangely black blood. Eel cried out in pain he hadn't felt in decades; tears streamed from his eyes as the creatures on the other side of the wall tried pulling him through. He felt something biting at his ankles, and managed to look down to see a decaying hell hag embracing his ankle in her sharp jaws through a small space allowed by a chained cellar door.

Suddenly Eel heard the whirr of a motor, and felt blood spatter across his face as Ash took to the zombie appendages with his chainsaw. Then with one final heroic blow he brought his foot down on the cellar door, forcing the hell hag to release the bulldog grip she had on Eel's ankle. "Hey buddy, you okay? Sorry about attacking you back there, I thought you were one of those things."

Unfortunately, Eel was only able to hear a little bit of this, as after he was released he collapsed to the floor in pain, whimpering as he cradled his wounded ankle. It burned. It burned with a fire beyond any pain he had ever felt in his long life. The fire spread up his leg, and to the other. It then spread to his stomach before making a death grip on his heart. It traveled up his throat, making it feel dry and raw, but the pain was too much for him even to cough. The pain grew to his eyes and mind, and suddenly the world around him that he saw through pain-slanted eyes began to fade. At first he was afraid he was going blind, and then became terribly afraid he was going to die. He spent a few mere moments in this dark place before the man appeared to him.

"Patrick O'Brien, is death everything you hoped it would be?" the man said. "You gave up your mortality to atone for your sins. Not through a bargaining of the soul, but a contamination of the body. You prided yourself so much in being the hero, idolized men such as that idiot. Well, Patrick, you will be the villain again, now without morality, now without pure body, now without soul. Kill the hero, Patrick."

Ash helped the strange newcomer up to his feet; spouting apologies about going after him with a chainsaw and shotgun. The newcomer looked over to Ash, and gave him the same stupid grin he had sported earlier. Then, liquid cloud, the shapeshifter's eyes grew white, his skin discolored, and his hands into claws. One of these claws wrapped around Ash's neck as the creature hissed, "Sssssswallow your sssssoul."

Ash flicked his wrist, revving up the chainsaw.

CHAPTER FIVE

Wally West blinked his eyes, disoriented by the instantaneous change of scenery. Whereas only moments ago he had been racing along the darkened streets of Keystone City, he now sat immobile.

In a porno theatre.

"Ummm...hello?" he asked into the darkened cinema, which was an old Victorian Era theatre, probably never renovated from its time as a high-class establishment. The two actors on the screen moaned in passion as they probed their every orifice, and a faint slapping sound came from the man hunched down in the front row.

"Evening, squire," a voice, thick with a British accent, said from the darkness, followed by the quick strike of a match directly beside the Flash. Wally jumped, as he hadn't realized he was sitting directly beside someone. The stranger smiled a wicked grin as he lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke from his nostrils. "Fine night for the scary goblies, eh?"

"Do I, like, know you?" Wally asked, still completely confused at what was going on. The stranger, his haggard, unshaven face slowly changing from the malicious grin to a foreboding scowl, took another slow drag from his cigarette.

"I got a few mates to introduce you to, Wally m'boy," he stated, yet to make eye contact with the speedster superhero. In the sparse light of the theatre, Flash could barely make out the forms of six other people, all sitting in the row in front of him. He found it odd that he hadn't noticed them before. One by one, the figures turned to face the perplexed hero. Wally was taken aback in horror.

"Aw, I know they're not the most beautiful lads in the world," the smoking stranger said, his head now enveloped in a halo of smoke, "but they deserve a little more tact than that. Considering who did...y'know, that...to 'em."

"Alright, look, what the hell is going on here?" Wally asked, finally able to process the situation. He tried not to look at the horribly mutilated people in the row below, despite their burning stares.

"Well, lad, it's like this. Me mates here were murdered, rather gruesomely in fact. Their spirits are trapped in purgatory, and they'll be in this limbo until the bastard that corked 'em is put into the ground himself." The grin returned to the man's face. "Can you guess who that could be?"

"I don't understand," Wally confessed, his muscles tensing nervously, "did you kill these people?"

"Not bloody likely," the man replied, his voice slightly tinged with anger, "I've got enough ghosts of me own without going 'round taking bites of me countrymen."

"Countrymen?"

"A werewolf killed these blokes," the stranger stated, "one of foreign soil. An American."

Wally's eyes widened with realization.

The stranger turned, finally looking the Flash squarely in the eyes. "An American werewolf in London."

"Oh my god," the speedster said as he cradled his face in his hands, "I'm in a movie. Yeah, that makes perfect sense."

"I wouldn't know about that, old chum," the smoking man said as he rubbed a hand through tousled blonde hair. "All I know is that me coat is getting all wrinkled sitting here. That and I think somebody got a bit too happy on this seat during the last show. All I know is that you got bit by a werewolf while out on the moors. There's lots of nasties out in the smoke, chum."

"Look, I know what's going on," Wally started, pointing an accusing finger at his associate, "I was chasing the Mirror Master, and while running I looked over into a store window. The televisions were playing this movie. It's all a trick, done with mirrors...right?"

"How should I know?" the stranger stated as he lit up another cigarette. "If you don't kill yourself in the next, oh, three minutes. Well, never mind...I'm just a figment of your imagination...chin chin."

The fastest man alive blinked (which, to a normal person, was a movement that the human couldn't even register), and the stranger was gone. The mutilated people in the next row had vanished as well. Wally breathed a sigh of relief.

That's when the convulsions began.

Wally screamed as his muscles began to snap and distort, his skin ripping into ragged strips as fur burst from his every pore. Several ushers ran into the pitch-dark theatre, arriving in time to bear witness to the Flash's horrible transformation. No longer human in any conceivable notion, the Flash-Wolf sneered with drooling teeth.

It pounced with blinding speed, ripping the men to shreds in the span of one breath. Several others fell throughout the building as the superhuman creature sped through the porno theatre's hallway. Tearing its way through the establishment's planked gate, the werewolf was a blur of teeth and blood, killing the awaiting police officers as if they were there only for amusement.

Finally tiring of the carnage, the creature formerly known as Wally West bounded into the crowded London street, fully intent on escape. Unfortunately, his speed was not sufficiently fast enough to dodge the oncoming traffic. The automobile slammed into the wolf's abdomen, sending it sailing into a skid across the wet street. The creature was back on its feet almost immediately, limping at a still-astounding speed into a nearby alley.

The wolf turned as it reached the dead-end of the alley, its crimson eyes reflecting the light of the police flashlights. The humans were keeping their distance, unsure of how to stop such a monstrosity. The wolf snarled.

"I'm not sure if you can understand me, Wallace West," a voice stated from the middle of the clear night air, "but know that you cannot escape." The spectral image of Dream appeared, floating high above the alley. "It has already been written, after all."

The crying woman in the nurse uniform advanced down the street, rifle in hand. Wally the wolf looked at her with eyes filled with hurt and betrayal.

Then she pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER SIX

Where AM I and WHY does this seem so familiar? Almost like…a dream….

John Henry Irons looked out the window of the limousine as it moved up to the huge iron and stone mansion that lay at the end of the bizarrely twisting road that stretched like a broken backed snake up the side of the hill. He could see that there were other limousines before and behind the one he rode in, all heading toward that iron and stone mansion that looked like someplace he had been before.

As Steel, John Henry Irons was used to his share of unusual and strange events. He was the Ironsmith of Tomorrow, The Forge Master who created technology and weapons that put him on an even keel with men and women who were as far above mortal men as mortal men were above the birds and beasts. He had seen things most humans only heard of in whispers and he had stood in front of the fabled Coral Throne of Atlantis and looked into the burning eyes of The Lord of Apokolips without so much as a flinch or twitch.

But somehow, riding in this long dark car filled him with a dread that he had never known before.

How did I GET here? he wondered. The last thing he remembered was that he was preparing a party for the neighborhood kids. Once they finished their trick or treating, John traditionally threw a party for the kids where they watched horror movies. Not those new ones full of mindless slaughter and needless gore, but those good OLD horror movies, with guys like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and…

The limos stopped at the house and John Irons climbed out. Wherever he was, it sure felt like reality. The night smelled of old moss and aged stone and rusted metal. The very mist that curled about his thick legs seemed to almost have a tangible weight. John shuddered involuntarily as he closed the heavy door of the limo with a thick THUNK and turned to look up at the house. It was a house that could have been built by the architects of Hell itself. It had more roofs and gables and windows than any normal house needed. Mist curled around the front entrance of the door and John found himself almost drawn to join the small group of people who were assembling there.

WHY does this seem SO familiar? John's brain screamed. I've SEEN this before! But WHERE? WHERE?

John joined the others and one of the men stuck out a hand that went along with the lopsided amiable grin. "Lance Schroeder….you're John Irons, aren't you?"

John was astonished to realize that he did indeed know this man. "Yeah..I'm John Irons…you're a...test pilot, aren't you, Mr. Schroeder?"

Schreoder's grin widened. "Wouldn't think that a man of your rep would know a simple jet jockey, Irons…" Schroeder jerked a thumb at the doorway to the forbidding house. "Say, what do you know about our host?"

John's throat was tight and dry as he answered; "Our host…it's Frederick Loren, isn't it?"

Schroeder's grin widened and John had the sudden idea that if it got any wider, it was going to meet in the back and the entire top of the man's head was going to fall off. "Well…sure...who'd you think it was?"

John fell into step next to Lance Schroeder and a smaller, nervous man who had the disposition of an ant that fully expected to be stepped on at any moment, and kept mumbling "The ghosts know we're here," under his breath.

The huge door was opened, groaning as if the hinges were protesting with the voices of those waiting in Hell's antechamber and John walked in with the others into a foyer that hadn't existed for some fifty years.

I KNOW this room! I've SEEN it before! But WHERE? WHERE?

The man who stood before the long, low mahogany table was quite tall. Just as tall as John himself with a somber face that was quite handsome in it's melancholy humor. "Good evening. I'm your host, Frederick Loren. Welcome. Make yourselves comfortable. My wife will be down shortly."

OH MY GOD! John's mind was screaming. I KNOW that man! He's...He's Vincent PRICE, for God's sake! But that must mean that this is…

John stepped closer to hear what Frederick Loren was saying as the host gestured at seven hand-sized coffins that rested on the table before him. "These are the party favors my wife insisted on for her party. I think them grisly and macabre, myself.." Loren's long, expressive hands darted out to open the lids of the miniature coffins to show gleaming black .45 automatics within.

"It's a pretty puzzle, isn't it, John?"

John turned his head and was somehow not surprised to see a man totally incongruous with the surroundings standing there. This man was of average height with chalk-white skin and dressed in a flowing, brocaded robe and his long ivory fingers drummed upon his richly adorned sleeve.

"But you are not surprised to find yourself in a dream, are you, John?" The chalk-white man tilted his narrow head upwards to smile at John with a smile of utter beauty and grace. "You, who are so used to making your dreams reality…yes...perhaps more than any other, you are familiar with the connections between dreams and reality...because you see NO difference between the two…. For you, to dream IS the reality…"

CHAPTER SEVEN

"...To dream IS the reality..."

"What?" Kyle asked, looking around and somehow managing not to crush his fingers beneath the hammer he was swinging at the same moment.

The broad-shouldered Negro who'd spoken looked at him, then shook his head clear of the mental cobwebs clouding his eyes. "Nothing. Nothing."

"You weren't bitten were you?" Kyle asked, feeling panic rising in his gut.

"No, I wasn't bitten."

"Be straight with me if you were, man! There's a lot more people in here besides you and--"

"I said," John Irons said, turning his intense, walnut-colored eyes on the terrified young artist, "I didn't. Get. Bit."

Something heavy and dead hit the board Kyle had just nailed in place over one of the farmhouse's windows, and he leapt back with a yelp. When he realized the ghouls on the other side weren't coming through the barricade quite yet, he turned shamed eyes on the bigger man.

"What are they?"

"Dead men," John Irons said. He turned and started moving quickly back toward the dining room, where the rest of their party was gathered.

"Dead men that walk and eat and...aw, man...what did they do to Tom and Judy, when you guys tried to make it out to the truck?"

"You don't want to know," John Irons said, and he was right in that, at least.

They emerged into the dining room, where five more people who'd had absolutely nothing to do with each other before this bloody afternoon when the dead had begun to walk and feed on the living, sat or stood. All of them jumped when the two men entered.

"You didn't make it," Eel O'Brien said. "I knew it!"

"Tom and Judy?" Diana Prince asked. She was huddled up next to her high school sweetheart, Clark Kent, and when John shook his head, she turned her face against the jock's shoulder and seemed to sink further into him. Clark, a farmboy from Kansas, set his jaw bravely, but Kyle could see he was just as scared as the rest of them.

"First Oliver, now Tom and Judy," Dinah Lance said, rocking in the heavy oak chair at the head of the table. "They'll get us. They'll get all of us. Eat us alive..."

"Shut up!" Eel trumpeted, leaning over the blonde. "Shut up now or I'll knock you into next week, you stupid--"

Eel's hand came up as he was finishing the threat, but before he could bring it down, another hand was holding his wrist, forcing him back. Wally West, a deliveryman from Illinois, was standing between him and the blonde.

"I think you'd better sit down and cool off, Mr. O'Brien," Wally said. Kyle liked Wally. Of all of the people here, West was the one he could actually see himself hanging out with, shooting pool with, double dating at the drive-in with. At the moment, he wanted to cheer him, but rotten fingers began skittering against the outside wall of the dining room, and everybody's attention turned uneasily in that direction.

"We only have to make it until morning," John began. "Help should be here by then. In the meantime, we better shut ourselves into one room. Easier to defend that way--"

"Since when are you giving orders?" Eel demanded, looking the black man up and down. "I'm not following the lead of one of you peop--"

There was a splintering CRASH from the end of the house Kyle and John had just come from. Kyle's heart leapt into his throat, and he turned to see a mass of rotting bodies punching through the wooden slats they'd just finished putting up over the windows. No, not punching. The first ones through the new opening were squashed nearly to pulp. They'd simply pushed on it with as many bodies as it had taken to break through, unmindful of how they crushed the ghouls in the lead.

John and Wally were slamming the hallway door shut almost before Kyle had realized what he was looking at. Clark had added his shoulder to theirs in the next moment.

"O'Brien!" John boomed. "Move that table over here! Kyle, get some wood to nail up!"

Kyle nodded and darted toward the opposite door, which led to the kitchen. They had pretty much exhausted the supply of non-essential wood in this farmhouse, but there was a pantry in this direction that he'd noticed earlier. It had to have some shelves in it, something they could use. O'Brien, meanwhile, forgot his earlier feelings on following John's lead and began dragging the heavy oak table over to the door with the help of the two ladies.

The kitchen hadn't been invaded yet, luckily. Kyle crossed the mud-encrusted tile to the pantry, ripped the door open, reached past the pasty-white man standing in the small closet, and tore down one of the shelves.

"This is the nadir, Kyle Rayner, the final act," the white man said. "All of your friends are here gathered, and only you hold the key to freeing--"

Kyle shut the door and turned away, two shelves in hand. They would have to do. They had to. Otherwise--

He got three steps before he realized what he'd seen in the pantry. He stopped, eyes going big as saucers, and slowly--oh so slowly--turned back toward the door.

It was closed. He could hear no voices from inside.

John and the others were screaming for him to hurry, but Kyle set one of the shelves down and crept back toward the pantry door. Lifting the second shelf, he reached out a hand and touched the doorknob.

Slowly, the door swung open again. He brandished the shelf in his hand like a baseball bat.

The pantry was empty.

Kyle allowed his eyes to flutter closed for a second in relief and exasperation all rolled up into one. Then he shut the door, grabbed the shelf he'd set down, and turned.

And nearly walked right into the albino who'd been in the pantry a minute before. He cried out and fell backward, the shelves clattering onto the tile floor as he landed painfully against the countertop.

"You must listen to me, Kyle Rayner," the albino said, moving toward him as Kyle tried to scramble backward through the counter. "In moments, your teammates will realize who they are, and that must not come to--"

Kyle leaned over, scooped up one of the shelves, and swept it upward at the albino. The slab of wood passed right through the man and out the other side, like he was a ghost or something.

"Your wishing ring is the link between my kingdom and your world, Kyle. You will remember who you are, or I will make you remember."

"Wishing ring? What the hell are you--?"

One of the albino's hands flashed out and caressed Kyle Rayner's brow. The touch was brief, but a flush of warmth spread from the point of contact, throughout Kyle's body until he was aware of every single, baking centimeter of himself. The feeling passed quickly, and when it did, he braced himself on the countertop, ran a hand through his mussed hair, and looked at his right fist.

"Oh," he said. "That wishing ring."

He pointed the fist outward, and a cone of emerald light projected from the green band on his ring finger. Two more strange-looking men appeared in that cone of light, both of them cast the same green as the ring.

"Listen very carefully, Kyle," J'onn J'onnz said, as The Batman stood silent and grim beside him. "This is what you have to do..."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The ghouls had been stymied at the dining room door by the enormous table, but now they were laying siege to the boarded windows, their hunger driving them to destroy themselves as they hurled themselves again and again at the makeshift wooden slats.

"Where's Kyle?" John roared.

Clark looked up. He, Diana, Eel, and Wally had taken to breaking apart the chairs while Dinah sat in a corner, rocking herself and singing something under her breath. "I haven't seen him since he went looking for more wood."

"I'm right here," Kyle Rayner said. He'd appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, and something...something was different about him. His posture was straighter, more assured, but at the same time his eyes looked even more frightened than they had before. Had he been bitten by one of the ghouls. Were they in the house?

"This is a nightmare," he said, raising a fist toward John. "But you guys don't know just how deep we are in it, yet."

A beam of green light leapt from the Oan power ring and flashed over John Irons' strong body. And in the wake of that beam, John changed. Where a strong, dour black man had stood moments earlier, now there was a caped giant in silver armor, bearing a massive hammer in both hands.

"Green Lantern?" Steel said. "What--?"

Kyle swept the ring across the others, and one by one, each of them returned to themselves. In a moment, six members of the Justice League stood beside Steel, wondering at how they'd lost themselves so easily.

"Oh man, Steel," Plastic Man said, slapping a palm to his greased hair. "The things I was thinking about you, man..."

"Night of the Living Dead," Superman said. "We've been pulled into another horror movie. Together this time."

"Well, no problem, right?" The Flash said, cracking his knuckles. "The JLA can take a bunch of horror movie zombies."

"You haven't heard the best part yet," Kyle said, bathing himself in the ring's light so that his costume was revealed. "We have to let the zombies win."

"What?" Dinah demanded. "We have to let them eat us?"

"It's the only way to do it. We gotta live by horror movie rules, and everybody knows the bad guy almost always wins in horror movies. The good ones, anyway. This guy named Daniel, calls himself Dream, he can pull us out of here if we just see the dream through to its logical conclusion." Everyone stared at him, dumbfounded. "Hey, this wasn't my idea, guys. I don't like being some ghoul's main course anymore than you do. This comes straight from Batman. You wanna argue with him...well, you can't, because I don't know how to contact him again. But still--"

There was a crack as the slats over one of the windows splintered. Decaying arms dripping liquid flesh reached into the room, bringing with them the moans of the damned and the fetid stink of their breath and their rot. The Flash curled his lip in disgust and backpedaled from the window as the hands began to tear the boards free.

"Your call, Kal," Diana said. "Do we accept this or do we fight?"

Superman shook his head. His memories were back now, all of them, including his trip to Ewen High's senior prom, and he thought about what Dream had said there. Your spirit is strong. But you are defeated. You will all be defeated. There is nothing else to be done. Standard supervillain dialogue, maybe, but Superman would bet his life that the spirit had been a friend.

Another window exploded into splinters, and more arms came through, more bodies began to pull themselves into the house. But it wasn't just zombies this time. It was a blood-soaked teenage girl in a ruined prom dress, it was a maniac in a hockey mask brandishing a machete, it was the malevolent spirits that inhabited an evil house. And more, more than the Justice League could readily identify. And they all piled into the house alongside the zombies, bringing with them all the horrors and unreasoning fear they had brought to generations of moviegoers, trapped by their own morbid curiosity in blackened theaters.

"Superman! What do we do?"

There is nothing else to be done.

"Do as Batman said! Just--just let them--"

But the Man of Steel's next words were swallowed as the side of the farmhouse cracked vertically, allowing hundreds of monsters and ghouls and vampires and madmen to pile through. Superman felt a pair of rotten teeth pierce his invulnerable skin near the throat.

"This sssuuuuccckks!" Plastic Man cried as a quartet of zombies plowed into him, bending his elongated body double and driving him to the floor.

"Just let him hit you," Black Canary muttered to herself as Jason Voorhees charged her, his machete slung back over his shoulder. "Just let him--oh, like hell!"

She ducked as the blade swung through the space her neck had occupied a moment before, and spun around, sweeping the psychopath's feet out from under him. He went down on his back, and the machete slipped from his grip, flipping lazily in the air before dropping and burying itself in his forehead with a meaty ka-chunk. Dinah scooped up a broken piece of chair and slung it, bouncing it off the head of a werewolf that was closing on The Flash.

"Wally! Watch it!"

"Hey, are we fighting back now?" Green Lantern called. "Good, I like that plan a lot better." A miniature mushroom cloud went up where he was standing, blowing a trio of scantily-dressed vampiresses away from him.

Superman tore the zombie who was trying to chew through his jugular away and cast him aside. Heat vision flashed, precision-cutting the hamstrings of a chainsaw-bearing lunatic in a skin mask that was sneaking up on Wonder Woman.

"Hey, I just realized," Steel said, swinging his hammer in a wide arc to clear the space between him and Superman. "That stuff about bad guys winning in horror movies...that's bunk. There are casualties, yeah, but the bad guy usually ends up six feet under by the last reel."

"My thoughts exactly. Flash! Round these figments of our imagination up!"

"But Batman said..." Wally caught himself, smiled at his practiced, unquestioning adherence to the Dark Knight's every word, and then he was gone.

"Lantern! I need something big and heavy! Diana, get your lasso ready!"

The League rushed to comply as the Flash zoomed outside, moving around the mass of shambling bodies in smaller and smaller circles, herding them like cattle until he'd compressed them into a space no more than twenty feet wide. When this was done, Wally broke off, took Wonder Woman's lasso, wound it around the frightshow collective, and finally dropped the end of the rope back in the Amazon's hand. Diana took to the air, gods-given strength drawing the lasso taut and forcing the movie maniacs together.

"Look at them," Black Canary breathed. "What's happening?"

"Wonder Woman's lasso is breaking them down into their true forms," Steel replied. Within the confines of the lasso, slashers and lycanthropes and undead cannibals were starting to blacken and blur at the edges, to curl into smaller and smaller shapes. They looked like nothing so much as images on melting film.

"That'll do," Superman said, grasping the rope and helping Diana to pull it tighter. "Kyle, if you please."

A massive emerald tombstone, resting atop a plinth, fell out of the sky and hammered the captured monstrosities to nothing. The engraving on the tombstone read:

R.I.P.

AND STAY DEAD!

Nothing moved underneath the tombstone. Diana flipped her wrist, and the golden lasso unwound beneath the plinth and whipped back up into her hands.

"Well now...that was cathartic," Green Lantern said, dusting off his hands. "How mad do you think Batman's gonna be when he finds out we beat the bad guys by doing the exact opposite of what he said?"

"I think we're about to find out," Flash said, staring at his hand as it began to fade away. "I hope this is a good thing."

"Of course it is," Black Canary said with a laugh. "It's closing credits time, fleet-feet."

"See you on the other side, then."

And one by one, the JLA winked out of the Dreaming, and back to the daylight world.

CHAPTER NINE

"November first," The Man of Steel said, gazing out one of the Watchtower's viewing windows at the blue-green world below. "All over the world. And no more horror movie manifestations."

"Thank Hera," Wonder Woman said from beside him.

"We still don't know who did this...or how. Batman says that person calling himself Dream did manifest in the Watchtower, but that he vanished after saying something cryptic about movies being dreams. Certainly, Bruce didn't have anything to do with that bad bit of advice Kyle got."

"Doctor Destiny, perhaps? He's attacked us through our dreams before, and when Dinah and I met the white man in our dream, he said something about 'doing battle with Destiny'..."

"Maybe," Clark allowed, as the two of them turned from the window and moved toward the umbilical walkway that would take them back to the Watchtower's core. "But...I can't shake this idea that we've missed something obvious. Some menace who has to be the one behind all this." He sighed as the two of them diminished down the hallway. "Maybe I've just got the heebie jeebies..."

The viewing room lay quiet and still for nearly a full minute after the heroes' departure. Then, a low, throaty chuckle rolled across the space, and a lanky man, smelling of soot and ash and burnt flesh, melted out of the shadows in one corner of the room. He wore a red-and-black striped sweater, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his scarred face. On one hand he wore a leather glove with five silver blades stabbing from the tips of the fingers--their pristine gleam standing in sharp contrast to the rough, soiled condition of the man's clothes and skin.

Once, on the screen and in a dream, he had been a man named Fred Krueger, a maniac who killed children for fun. His ugly end had been brought about by the parents of his victims, and those silver screen adults could never have known how much pain and suffering they would, through that action, bring to their celluloid brethren.

Not to mention how much terror they would spread to the children of what we foolishly call the real world.

Last night, with the fears of much of the world concentrated during a few short hours, he had stepped out of a television screen and realized that he was a master of dreams in this world as well as his own. And dreams could kill in this world just as effectively as in the movies.

Testing the heroes had been a costly expenditure, but a necessary one. He knew now that he could affect these superhumans, pick them off one by one in their sleep so that they could never interfere with his private wetwork. Oh, he was going to like this plane of reality...

"No you won't, little night terror."

The maniac turned, and found a pale man with white, white skin fading out of the same shadow he'd emerged from. He knew who it was immediately, recognizing the deity he'd impersonated to gain the heroes' trust. He swiped his clawed hand, and the blades whistled harmlessly through Dream's immaterial body.

"You dare to cast yourself in effigy of me, o immaterial figment. Your sin is great enough without these futile attempts at attack."

The man was thrown back against the wall, his weapon hand pinned behind him as Daniel approached. "You attempted to kill a host of champions, using my face as a mask. But I sensed you, and knew your story as soon as I had warned The Batman. And I also knew that your clumsy manipulations were doomed to failure. So I let you continue, ready to step in and stop you if it became necessary. It comes as no surprise that it never did.

"Goodbye, insignificant fable."

"Kill...you..." the maniac growled, struggling as his pinned blades began digging into his back.

"In your dreams."

Daniel gestured, and the clawed maniac didn't even have a chance to scream before he was wiped from existence.

Dream stood alone in the viewing area, looking at the space where the child-murderer had been. After a moment, he turned toward the glass. His steepled fingers touched the transparent surface separating him from cold space, and Daniel, King of Stories, smiled down at the Earth below him.

"Boo," he said. And then he was gone as well.

EPILOGUE

In a distant corner of the Dreaming, in a place that none but those who had dreamed it would ever visit, an emerald tombstone the relative size of a house stands. Buried beneath this stand of emerald energy are a motley assortment of horrors and dead things, far out of sight of those they might seek to do harm to.

For John Irons had it right, you see. The bad guys almost always end up six feet under by the end of the movie.

But we are reminded --

As the plinth beneath the tombstone begins to crack, as a hideous, tittering laugh is joined by the muffled roar of a chainsaw, and as a cadaverous hand erupts from the block like a rotten baby from a dead, dry womb.

-- We are reminded that the bad guys always come back in time for the sequel.