What's Gone Before: Blacklight, Kid Gloves and the Rajah were attacked at the train station by a mob of controlled people, while the villainous Puppet and his entourage head off to bring about the culmination of their plan. Attempting to ferret out just what that mysterious plan is, the Dreamstalker has entered the dreamplane, and encountered deadly danger...

On the dreamplane, the adventurer known as the Dreamstalker staggered to his feet at the base of what he had taken to be a dune, erupting out of the blistering, sand-strewn scape.

He saw now that it was no dune. Displaced sand hissed as it tumbled off the hard, flat planes that angled upward, ever upward, till they met in a brutal point that seemed nearly to pierce the sky, jabbing the heart of the sun and sending blinding light stabbing away like the fingers of God. He stood at the base of a pyramid.

The wild, inhuman howling raked the air again.

Suddenly, the face of the pyramid directly before him melted away and a great, yawning aperture stood there, disgorging blackness into the blinding daylight. Something moved in the shadows of the pyramid's tunnel.

The Dreamstalker stumbled back. Never had he been in a dream of such violence, such force. Never had he been in a dream that so clearly threatened him. The dreamer was aware of him, which had rarely happened before. It was aware of his intrusion into the dreamplane, and it meant to punish his invasion. And it meant to enjoy itself.

The howling came again, and it came from inside the black tunnel.

The sand shifted and lurched evilly beneath his feet as he turned and ran, the ground itself trying to hold him back, to prevent his flight. Strange shapes burst from the ground, forming into crude hands of sandstone that grabbed at his feet. He cast a frantic glance over his shoulder.

The shape/creature/thing in the tunnel was just emerging into the shimmering light. He stopped, gasping for breath, and shielded his eyes against the glare of the imagined sun. The sun was so bright, so overwhelming. Did that mean something? he wondered. Should he ascribe a significance?

Lurching comically into the light was a grotesque marionette, fully twelve feet high, dancing a bizarre jig that seemed somehow obscene, even blasphemous.

This was not a manifestation of the master of the dream, the Dreamstalker realized. The howling projecting from inside the tunnel was a ruse, used merely to distract him. Then where --?

He whirled and leaped back as a great, ragged hand clawed at the air where he had been.

A figure towered fully twenty feet above him, a gaunt, unholy vision wrapped in a crisscross of dirty bandages, black and mouldering on the edges. The wrappings had fallen away from the face in spots, and he could see the dessicated, dead skin, all dark and grey, the yellow teeth that sprouted in spots like tombstones in a graveyard mouth. And the eyes. The Eyes! Unholy caves, empty, but glowing like Hellfire.

For a moment he took it to be another manifestation, like the marionette -- a toy of the dream master. Then, as the monstrous thing threw back its decayed head and let out a bone-chilling laugh, he knew the truth.

This was the dream master.

"Dennis!"

He clawed at the sands, shifting beneath his fingers, like trying to grasp water itself. He tried to crawl away before it was too late.

"Dennis!!"

The ground shook as the giant strode forward, to claim him utterly.

"Dennis!!! WAKE UP!!!"

Dennis Welbeck lurched up on the couch in the refurbished meeting quarters of the Fellowship of the Midnight Sons. Sweat cascaded down his cheeks, mirroring the rain storming outside. Artie Trent, who when he wore a mask was the Man-Fly, was shaking him by the shoulders. Dennis clutched Artie's arms, unutterably relieved by the feel of a human touch. "Water," he croaked, eyes rolling wildly in his head.

"What happened?" Artie demanded.

Dennis hesitated, feeling an unpleasant warmth beneath one hand. He looked and realized one of Artie Trent's arms was soaked with blood. Artie's blood. "What happened here?"

"It's bad," admitted Artie as Roberta, the robot, handed Dennis Welbeck, the Dreamstalker, a glass of water.

"Thank you," he mumbled, sipping carefully. Then he said, "It's not bad, Artie...it's unbelievably worse."

A black limousine raced through empty streets as water flooded over sidewalks and bubbled through grates up from over-taxed sewers. Overhead, the jet black sky would momentarily exploded with blinding light, as fissures of golden blood would snake across the heavens chased by thunderous claps of deafening fury.

Inside the car was the driver -- a big man named Jerry -- while at his side was the diminutive Puppet, dressed garishly in a tux and a make-up job that approximated his namesake. In the back seat was the super-powered mercenary, the Raven, and beside him was the brainwashed former-hero, Mr. Amazing, now dedicated to the Puppet's villainy.

"Gee, boss," muttered Jerry, squinting up at the celestial war raging overhead, "it's one heck of a night. I don't know if we should be drivin' on a night like this or nuthin'. Y'know, it's almost like...like nature herself don't want us to do what we're doin'."

"As if we are about to violate some primal commandment, Jerry?" asked the Puppet, a smirk to his painted lips. "Indeed, perhaps we are. Perhaps we are about to throw away commandments altogether, in favour of new tablets -- mine!"

"And what happens if some of those costumed adventurers figure out where we're going and try to stop us?" demanded the Raven.

"Unlikely," said the Puppet. "They have hardly enough clues to piece it together. But if they do, what of it? That's why I have you, and our good friend Mr. Amazing. As well, I've got a trick or two up my sleeves that will keep the Fellowship of the Midnight Sons off my back for the duration of tonight's enterprise."

And with that, he laughed, and his laughter echoed in the rain-thick night even as the limo raced away toward its meeting with destiny.

While in the trunk of the automobile, the Silhouette shivered from the wet and shifted uncomfortably on a bed of metal poles. She waited for her moment to strike...knowing that she stood very little chance against the combined might of those in the car.

"This is a heck of a night, sister," remarked the cabby, chewing on his smouldering cigarette as he peered in the rearview mirror at his passenger. "I'm only out in it 'cause I got a hungry bookie to feed. You sure you don't want me to take you to a local convent, or even a motel?"

The young nun in the back seat, Sister Maria Bonnier, looked up, as though roused from her brooding by his words. She glanced out the window just in time to glimpse a tongue of lightning lash the belly of the black heavens. She flinched.

"God 'imself is in turmoil dis dreadful night, monsieur. An' I fear dat I alone know de reason."

A scowl marred her pretty face as she once more lapsed into silence. God had put such a heavy burden on her shoulders these past few months, and she feared that she was not up to the task, that she was not worthy.

But then, who was worthy in these troubled times, when the pure could be revealed as tainted and, perhaps, the tainted have a streak of purity?

She had known a young prostitute who had taken her -- Sister Maria shuddered -- her earnings, to invest in war bonds, while Father Michel, a man she greatly admired, a man of the people, a man of God, continually raged against the "Englishmen's war", saying that it was no business of the Quebecois what Hitler and the others did in Europe and the Pacific. Why should French Catholics die for English Protestants and for...dirty Jews? he demanded rhetorically. Even now, Sister Maria trembled, remembering with shame how she had said nothing, even nodded faintly, thinking that Father Michel must know of what he spoke.

And then God touched her, blessed her or cursed her, she knew not which, and she realized the penance of her silence, of acquiescing to the evil of bigotry, was to take up the struggle against evil herself.

"Cripes!" snarled the cabby as a garbage can was flung by the wind into the street. The cab swerved, water blooming up from the left tires, and narrowly avoided a collision. He slammed on his brakes and the vehicle skidded to a halt. He twisted around to glare at her.

"Look, sister, I don't know if you realize it, but I sure hope someone somewhere is building himself an ark, 'cause pretty soon that's what we're gonna need out there. Now I can take you to a motel, but that's it -- no way am I going on in a night like this."

The nun looked at him, then looked at the rain pelting the window like the tears of God. She nodded. "Merci," she said quietly. Then she flung open the door and ran out into the night. Behind her, the cabbie hollered for her to come back, that she was crazy. But Sister Maria knew that the museum was not far.

Not very far at all.

They had returned to the headquarters of the loose organization of adventurers known as the Fellowship of the Midnight Sons; Blacklight and the terrific twosome, Kid Gloves and the Rajah. Now was a time of pooling information...and making some terrible sense of it all.

"Something definitely came in on the train from Montreal," said Blacklight, "there's a station full of controlled people there that won't be free until we introduce this Puppet character to a few thousand knuckle sandwiches delivered Blacklight-style. Otherwise, they could be like that forever..." His voice drifted off as he glanced over at the body of Bartholomew Mortimer, wrapped in an old blanket. He could no longer see the man beneath the fabric, but that made him no less dead.

They all felt the same thing. One death was already one too many.

"The Man-Fly concluded that the Puppet's ultimate goal is the Royal Ontario Museum," offered Roberta, the robot. "The documents he obtained from the insurance office most likely pertained to security measures for a new exhibit."

"Slap me sideways and call me twisty!" exclaimed Kid Gloves, smacking himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. "Of course! Some Egyptian antiquities were touring the country before the war, and kind of got marooned here what with worries about U-boat attacks and all if they were shipped back across the ocean. They had been in Montreal, but it was decided to move them here to Toronto for safe keeping...I didn't know when, it wasn't well publicized. I should've remembered, 'cause I was given a special dispensation to examine them a few months back as part of my studies."

Blacklight stared at him, suspiciously, "I thought you studied neurology under this Puppet fellow -- or was it psychology? No, wait, those gloves would make you an engineer or physicist. Now you're telling us you're an expert in archeology?"

"Oh no, not an expert, per se," the Kid corrected innocently.

"Yes, well," drawled Dennis Welbeck. "I should have made the connection myself ages ago." He grinned modestly and smoothed his mustache. "Being on the museum's Board and a major private financial contributor, I had been invited to a meeting early this evening about the arrival of just that very exhibit. It is dedicated to the reign of the Pharaoh Rath-Det, I believe."

"Right. So that gets us about...nowhere," remarked Blacklight drily. "I mean, we know where the Puppet intends to strike, sure, but I for one still don't know the what. It can't be a simple monetary heist, not if the Puppet somehow figures to take over the city. So what's in a bunch of thousand year old relics --"

"Three thousand," corrected Kid Gloves.

"Whatever. What's this King Rath-Det got that the Puppet figures will give him so much power?"

"There's a legend attached to that Pharaoh, correct?" prodded the Rajah, looking at the Kid.

Kid Gloves nodded. "Yeah. He was said to control his subjects -- not rule, but literally control. He was such a monster that after his death his people rose up -- his name was erased from everything they could get their hands on. His temple was sacked; those still loyal to him were put to death. For centuries historians never realized he had even existed, that's how thoroughly he had been erased. That was until a few years ago, when a fragment of a rumour of an allusion was unearthed by Lord Carnarvan and Howard Carter when they were searching for Tutankhamen. Then, more recently, Rath-Det's actual tomb was unearthed. The sarcophagus itself hasn't even been opened -- there's no telling what's inside. It probably won't be opened until after the war, when it can be shipped back overseas to its rightful owner. There's too much danger of destroying what's inside by exposing it prematurely."

"If Rath-Det did have some strange power of mass control, that would certainly be a temptation for the Puppet," muttered the Rajah.

"I don't know," waffled Blacklight. "I mean, some three thousand year old doohickey? Sounds pretty preposterous, like something out of a pulp magazine."

The Rajah smirked. "You can run fast as a thought, you have a girl who can turn into her own two-dimensional silhouette, and you speak of implausibility?"

"I'm just saying, that's all."

"I'm afraid my young friend is quite correct," interjected Dennis. "The Puppet is not after any object."

"See, I told you."

"He's after Rath-Det himself."

They stared. The Kid said, "The Mummy?"

Dennis nodded. "The Mummy."

"As in Boris Karloff?" asked Blacklight.

"As in, Rath-Det is not dead, not as we understand the term. I realize now it was he I encountered on the dream plane...and he is more evil and more powerful than any of you can possibly imagine. I don't believe the Puppet is aware of this. I think he might even be being psychically manipulated by Rath-Det, prodded subconsciously by the will of the undead Pharaoh -- you said yourself earlier that this was bigger than anything the Puppet would normally try. That would explain the image of a marionette dancing on a string I saw in my dream.

"If the Puppet succeeds, we will not be dealing with a simple petty gangster empowered by an ancient magick, but rather the unleashing of an evil that has endured for three thousand years and once held sway over the entire Egyptian empire!"

Next: "To Waken the Pharaoh"...'nuff said.

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