Nightmare Fuel / Locke & Key

A casual stroll through the mind of a sadistic demon.

Just like his daddy, Joe Hill has a fantastic and terrifying imagination. Add in an incredibly detailed artist like Gabriel Rogriguez? Pure nightmare fuel.

Be wary: per wiki policy, spoilers are off on Nightmare Fuel pages!

Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft

• Right away, we know Sam Lesser and Al Grubb are bad news by the cut-away reveal that they murdered a random couple just because they needed a vehicle to get to the Locke house.
• Sam and Al's home invasion itself. Incredibly terrifying to consider two strangers showing up on your doorstep, sweet-talking their way into your home, and then having their way with your entire family.
  • Sam murders Rendell Locke by shooting him in the face with a high-caliber revolver. The image of his face with a gaping, bloody hole where his right eye should be haunts Bode and Tyler throughout the entire series.
  • We see Al standing in the Lockes' bedroom doorway, pulling up his unbuttoned pants. Behind him, there are bloody handprints on the wall and a shoe casually thrown on the bed. It's strongly implied through the art alone that he has just finished raping Nina Locke.
    • Made even worse when we later find out that Al had been watching Nina while he washed her car. Because of how she dressed, he fantasized that she wanted him sexually. It's horrifying insight into the mind of a rapist and how he excuses his awful behavior.
  • The image of Kinsey and Bode cowering in fear on the roof as Sam stalks the yard with his revolver raised high.
  • After fending off Sam, Tyler returns to the house only to find his dad's corpse and Al waiting for him. He raises the revolver and fires... only to find it empty. Al grins and heads to find his hatchet. Only his mother's timely intervention saves Tyler's life.
• As Tyler is staring into the Keyhouse pond at one point, he sees an image of himself covered in blood and holding both Sam's revolver and the brick he used to bash his head in.
• The first we see of Dodge in this tale is of her face appearing to Sam Lesser via the sink in his cell. Her reptilian eyes are very creepy and she seems immediately to be a creature of unfathomable evil. Even the typeface is different, with her dialogue appearing all-caps and in a different font.
  • We later find out that Sam first meets Dodge when he's in Rendell's office for a counseling appointment. She appears in a drawing of the wellhouse, spelling out H-E-L-P M-E and L-I-S-T-E-N T-O E-C-H-O-E-S. Both Sam and the Lockes never had a chance.
  Sam: Where are you? I did everything you asked. You promised me a new home. And a new face.
  Dodge: [referencing his scars and prison cell] You have both.
• Bode opens a door with a new key he has found, walks through it, and immediately crumples to the ground, with his spirit having left his body.
  • The design of the Ghost Key itself is plenty scary, highlighted by the skull's glowing red eyes.
  • Bode tends to use his spirit-walking for good, but does spy on his family quite a bit, including catching Tyler grieving in the shower. Very uncomfortable to imagine an invisible being spying on you without you even noticing.
  • There's a scary moment when Bode tries to show Kinsey his new power, only for her to think he's pulling a prank. Bode could have been permanently separated from his body and no one would ever have known what happened to him.
  • Gabriel Rodriguez draws Bode as if his body has actually died, with a bulging tongue and saliva dripping from his mouth.
• Bode has a nightmare where he's holding hands with his dad, who is telling him a knock-knock joke. The next panel zooms in on his gory eye-hole. In great detail.
• Dodge luring Bode into the well, gaining his trust, and getting him to get the scissors and mirror that will help Sam Lesser escape from prison. Gets at the very fears of your small child talking to an evil stranger without your knowledge.
  • We get a glance at Dodge's true face when she looks in the mirror. It's bloodcurdling.
• Sam's escape from San Lobo. He brutally stabs a guard passing by his cell with the provided scissors and then shoots a fleeing electrician in cold blood as he pleads for his life.
• The look on Kinsey's face when she overhears that Sam has escaped is one of pure terror. She is so traumatized by what happened to her family that she later vomits in school upon smelling fresh paint, since Tyler knocked over a paint can during the assault.
• Even though it ends up being Kinsey, it's very tense watching Jackie go to open her door without knowing who is on the other side, given what has happened in the story so far.
• Bode has another nightmare where he's playing in a morgue under a body bag that's lying on a table. A voice begins to come from the bag. As Bode peeks up, the bag unzips itself and we see the biggest close-up yet of Rendell Locke's mangled face. Bode wakes up crying uncontrollably.
  • When Duncan later likens Bode's knock-knock joke (that Dead!Rendell told him in the dream) to an "echo," the thought comes to mind that Dodge may be the one tormenting Bode with nightmares.
• The truck driver that Sam hitches with casually suggesting that he can make some extra money by prostituting himself via a glory hole at the truck stop. Sam ends up killing him by driving a tire iron through his eyeball.
• The horrifying reveal that Sam Lesser kills Rendell Locke because, in a fit of adolescent rage, Tyler had openly asked him to.
  Sam: Yeah. I understand that. You can't imagine how often I wake up thinking I ought to kill my dad today.
  Tyler: Ha. Well. You ever decide to kill your dad, do me a favor and kill mine while you're at it.
• Sam Lesser, a once kind-hearted kid driven mad with child abuse, bullying, head trauma, and the influence of a demon, is now so far gone that he murders everyone on a bus because he doesn't like the way a woman is staring at him. The woman, mind you, who was holding a baby in her arms.
• Sam then murders a fisherman who he had forced to boat him out to Lovecraft. We haven't gotten close to most of the eldritch horrors to come, but the sheer awfulness of Sam's murders in this volume is very depressing.
• When Bode lets slip that he told the others about Dodge, she immediately comes up from the well and grabs him. She coyly teases the relationship she (as Luke Caravaggio) once had with Rendell and threatens to kill him if he doesn't get her the Anywhere Key. Bode, six-years-old, mind you, is shaken and in tears.
• Kinsey then goes to look for Bode and is greeted by Sam Lesser, who proceeds to beat her head with a flashlight repeatedly. He then locks Nina and Duncan in the wine cellar and takes Tyler at gunpoint, holding Kinsey's unconscious body hostage to get the keys for Dodge. Who, all the while, is taunting Bode in the wellhouse about his family's impending deaths if he doesn't get the keys for her.
• Tyler finds out about the Ghost Key's effects not by playing, as Bode had done, but when Sam is choking the life out of him. He floats above his body, in pure shock, and genuinely thinks at first that he's dead.
• Dodge, now a man, keeps his promise to Bode. He breaks Sam's neck and throws him through the Ghost Door, essentially dooming him to a life as a ghost haunting Keyhouse.
• Dodge suddenly shows up at the door of the kindly track coach, Ellie, covered in Sam's blood and claiming that he killed her mother... and then a suspiciously familiar looking boy named Zack starts attending Lovecraft and befriending the Lockes. Just what in the world does Dodge have planned for them?

Volume 2: Head Games

• In the prologue, Professor Ridgeway has a dream of a time when he and his wife, Callie, went skinny-dipping in a lake. She jumps in the water and threatens to stay there and drown unless he comes and rescues her. His terror mounts as he dives in the water and looks for her, but is unable to find her...
  • We shortly find out that Callie has passed away. The poor man's literal nightmare fuel is no longer having the love of his life with him.
• After Ridgeway figures out that "Zack" is really Dodge, he sneaks into his home with the Anywhere Key and murders him with a pistol. He dies sinking into his bathtub, calling out for his dead wife. After, "Zack" forces Ellie to help him send an email from the dead man's computer, and we get a detailed picture of Ridgeway's naked corpse, blood flowing from every orifice.
• "Zack" is ingratiating himself very well with his new friends, to the point of comforting Kinsey by bringing her ice cream, who is upset about the very murder he just committed. They have no idea a horrific killer, possessed by much worse, is hiding in plain sight next to them.
• Tyler and Kinsey stare, horrified, as Bode inserts a key into his neck and opens his head up like it's on hinges. Even worse, it barely registers with Nina, who almost acts as if this is completely normal. When the two older siblings look in Bode's head to check out his memories, they turn to find Bode, impossibly, staring into his own head with them.
  • Even worse, Bode next demonstrates the ability to cram books into his head for instant knowledge. Cool in theory, but what if someone forces something in there that you don't want? Or worse, what if someone wants to take something out?
    • Kinsey does just that, removing a couple of Bode's memories. He instantly forgets what has been taken out. The Head Key is literal Brain Bleach.
  • Later, when Tyler opens his head up for company, Jordan is so disturbed she runs away screaming.
• When Kinsey opens up Tyler's head to cram his Ethics textbook in, she catches a glimpse of his psyche. Poor kid is haunted by memories of the funeral, Sam Lesser, and his dad's eyeless head.
• After returning home from school, "Zack" sees Ellie sitting in the shower in her underwear, with the water running. He turns it off, taunts her, and starts kissing her while taking her bra off. Ellie has a horrified look on her face and says out loud how scared of him she is. It's strongly hinted that he rapes her. He even jokes about it to the Lockes when he heads over to the Keyhouse later. Ugh.
  Zack: Aunt Ellie shoved a bunch of hot cherry pie in my face and wouldn't let me go until I ate myself sick.
  • Later, after his attack on Duncan and Brian, "Zack" approaches Ellie menacingly in bed. It's implied that he rapes her again and that this becomes a normal routine.
• Duncan and his husband, Brian, are assaulted by homophobes in a local pub. It's incredibly sad given that Duncan, not wanting the extra attention, initially wanted to head to a gay bar, before being rebuffed by Brian. He hears two women talking trash about gay folks and can't stop himself from speaking up for himself. This earns Duncan a beer bottle to the head and Brian a broken nose. A horrific slice of real-life ugliness amidst all the magic and demons.
  • To cap it all off, while unconscious, Duncan finally recognizes that "Zack" is the Dodge he knew as a child, but is unable to warn Tyler in his condition.
• Kinsey's fear and sadness sprites. One is completely black, with sharp teeth, and wields a knife that it stabs Kinsey with. It is constantly voicing Kinsey's worst fears while the other weeps constantly and berates itself.
  • Kinsey herself, after they're removed from her head, starts acting... odd.
• "Zack's" attack on Duncan and Brian. He grabs a machine gun from a random armory and forcibly removes all memories of Dodge and "Zack" from Duncan with the Head Key. He makes it clear he's only keeping him alive because he might need him later. "Zack's" gun jams after Brian tries to jump him with a knife, giving him time to leap out his window... right into the path of the homophobes, who had been staking out their house. They callously run him over with their truck and leave his broken body in the street.
• After this assault and his visit to Ellie, "Zack" visits Kinsey. He seduces her and, now fearless, she kisses him. With her fear sprite shouting at her from the bottle it's stuck in that he's not who she thinks he is. Thoroughly unpleasant.
  • Along with the earlier mentioned rape, this visit to Ellie also involves "Zack" completely mind-wiping her with the Head Key. Apparently, she had tried to kill him in the past and warn Professor Ridgeway, but she was never able to stop him. "Zack" confesses that, long ago, he had put a piece of himself in her head that has been controlling her this entire time. He then details how he'll implant fake memories in her brain so that she'll really believe he is her cousin. Yeesh.
    • A flashback further reveals how this happened: In some years past, Ellie had stumbled upon a jar hidden in her bathroom. It contained the piece of Dodge's memory, the Well Key and the Gender Key. A shocked Ellie slips on some water and passes out, freeing the sprite and allowing it to take control of her, leading to the imprisoned Dodge getting a hold of those keys and beginning her escape. For-want-of-a-nail, indeed.
• In the epilogue, we meet Ellie's mother. She likes to put out her lit cigarettes on the face of her mentally-impaired grandson. Ellie all but says outright that her mother used to do the same to her. The abuse is so awful that at one point Ellie tries to kill her.
• It couldn't have happened to a worse person, but Dodge does break Ellie's mother's neck, leaving her to gruesomely bleed out in her daughter's arms.
• At the very end of the art gallery, despite his absence from the volume proper, we see Sam Lesser's ghost glaring at the viewer through a door, with a horrific grimace on his face.

Volume 3: Crown of Shadows

• After hearing of Brian's injuries, Nina's alcoholism worsens to where Tyler is the one consoling her and helping her to bed. It must be very scary to see your parent in such bad condition to where you have to be the caretaker while still a child.
  • Later, Kinsey finds a few empty liquor bottles and lets Nina have it, right before she is set to drive to the ferry to visit Duncan and Brian. Nina responds by chugging more liquor before getting in her car.
    Kinsey: You crash the car driving drunk, I'm not going to cry over it. I'm all cried out these days and you know what you're doing. In theory.
  • Nina later calls Tyler telling him she's missed the ferry by accident and will need to stay the night. In reality? She's at a bar, getting more and more drunk...
  • At one point, she tries to drunkenly juggle some plates to impress her kids. When they crash to the floor, she instantly blames Kinsey. All three of her children just stare at her and walk away.
  • After finding the Mending Key, Nina, drunk, has the bright idea of using it to try to bring Rendell back to life. She puts his ashes in the mending cabinet and showers, dressing afterward in her fanciest lingerie. She spots who she thinks is Rendell and lovingly embraces him from behind... only to find out it's Tyler instead. Ick. In the ensuing struggle, Rendell's urn falls to the ground and breaks, spreading ashes everywhere. Kinsey again lets her mom have it with a shocking statement and gets a slap in the face. Everyone only stops when Bode walks in and bursts into tears. It's a very harrowing and authentic portrayal of domestic violence.
    Kinsey: And nothing you've been through, even being raped, gives you permission to treat the people you love like - [slap]
• The entire conflict for this volume involves "Zack" breaking into the Keyhouse at night without the Lockes ever knowing a thing. He could have killed them all and been none the wiser (and still does plenty regardless).
• "Zack" uses the Ghost Door so he can talk to Sam Lesser. When we see his spirit, there's a black... thing embedded in his spine. It has tendrils embedded in his brain and multiple yellow eyes with black slits for pupils. What in the world happened to Luke "Dodge" Caravaggio?
  • Upon further inspection it almost looks like... a giant key. A living key, with the head of the key (and biggest eye) right where Dodge's heart should be. Dodge even describes the thing as a kind of key.
• A flashback reveals that Dodge had been spying on Rendell Locke via his sink. Without him ever knowing.
• When fighting the spirit of Sam Lesser, Dodge hints that he's destroyed other souls before. How? And who? Do you reach the afterlife if your soul has been destroyed?
• The spirits of Sam and Dodge enter "Zack's" body. At the same time. Sam immediately begins choking "himself," with Dodge fighting desperately to make it back to the door. He barely manages to retake control and escape with his life.
• "Zack" then immediately has to use the Anywhere Key to just barely escape Nina's notice while dropping the Well Key and leaving it behind. There are so many times during the series where he effortlessly gets his way that to see him flirt with his nightmare of being caught in his schemes and potentially returned to the well is... exhilarating.
• The near-death experience in the caves. Kinsey, Jackie, Jamal, and Scot head down to see Rendell's name carved in the rocks. When a rat scares Jamal, the stairs collapse, stranding all four kids in freezing cold water without a way back up to the platform where the exit is. All four come this close to dying of either drowning or hypothermia before Kinsey's quick thinking gets them out of there. No one would have known what happened to them and no one was close enough to hear their screams for help.
  • We see one of the glow sticks they dropped upon leaving float all the way to the bottom of the water... where it illuminates a very old and very creepy looking corpse.
• "Zack," now rocking a sleek black turtleneck, finds a mysterious key in a jar of jelly. He opens a door with it and comes upon a sinister looking crown. After putting it on... he immediately summons a legion of shadow creatures and orders them to find the missing keys.

"Zack": Hello darkness, my old friend

• The shadows begin to terrorize the Lockes
  • Bode's shadow turns into a mirror image of him and drags him throughout the house.
  • Kinsey's shadow turns into a facsimile of her fear sprite, but huge and much more deadly. It holds her down on her bed, but she manages to get away by shining a bright light in its face.
  • Tyler is beaten savagely and captured by a giant shadow centurion, who slightly resembles both him and his dad. He is greeted by "Zack" disguised as a shadow version of the female Dodge. After spitting in his (her?) face, Tyler is nipped and bitten by a number of shadow animals, torturing him for spite because he won't give up the keys.
  • The group is almost saved by Detective Mutuku, but the shadows get to him first and use the Head Key to force him to leave.
  • Upon initially failing to retrieve the keys, "Zack" morphs into a giant shadow wolf that's nearly as big as Godzilla.
• Tyler uses the Head Key on Bode to erase his memory of the shadow attack. He has the good intention of saving the kid some lifelong trauma, sure, but he still tampered with his memories against his will.

Volume 4: Keys to the Kingdom

• The opening panel after the title page... is an extreme close-up of a sparrow with its head torn off, clutching the Animal Key in its talons.
• The cutesy Bill Watterson homage is interrupted by an absolutely horrifying fantasy sequence of "Zack's" where, after being hit in the head from a Bode-thrown snowball, he grabs him by the throat and throws him down in the snow. In the next panel, Bode is dead, his neck snapped, and "Zack" has now torn out Kinsey's eyes with his bare hands and is sinking his teeth into her neck. All the while, Tyler is begging for their lives. The background panel shows all three Locke children dead, blood seeping into the snow, with a blood-drenched "Zack" grinning evilly and holding the Omega Key. All on less than half of a page.
  • So far, "Zack" has largely composed himself in front of the Lockes, but this plainly shows that he's this close from snapping and murdering them all gruesomely at any point.
  • Even worse, back in the real-world, Kinsey cheerfully confesses that she and "Zack" are now officially dating. Whole situation is horrid. His dialogue during his fantasy lets us know just what he really thinks of her.
    "Zack": Give me the key to the black door or the whore dies like your little fuck brother.
• When "Zack" uses the Animal Key, he turns into a fearsome black wolf. He gathers a pack and mauls an innocent deer, not for food, but for cruelty and the taste of blood. Gabriel Rodriguez helpfully illustrates the dead doe's ravaged body, guts and blood spilling into the snow.
• The pack, led by the Dodge Wolf, corners Tyler and Kinsey, who are alone arguing in the woods. They only escape by the timely intervention of Bode, who had used the Animal Key to turn into a sparrow, and his new flock of birds. The pack still tears into many of the sparrows, leaving a bloody collection of dead birds on the ground.
• The racist snow-shoveler, who goes from talking garbage about Barack Obama to openly insulting a black caretaker pushing another black woman in a wheelchair. Later, he mocks the disabled woman's mental illness. Being a victim of racism and/or ableism is an unrelenting nightmare for every non-white and/or disabled person that steps out into the world every day.
  • The danger is real even among friends, as the later conversation between Kinsey, Jamal, and Scot proves. It must be incredibly uncomfortable for Jamal to sit there and listen to his friends spout reverse-racism, before Scot automatically assumes his dad is a janitor. He recounts the prejudice he and his dad endured growing up, including racist bumper stickers and someone scratching the n-word on one of his uncle's cars.
  • On top of that, as the kid on the bus points out to a now black Kinsey and Bode (thanks to the Skin Key) as they later head to visit Erin, along with dealing with direct acts of racism, there's an incredible amount of anxiety in analyzing the social actions of the white folks that interact with you on a day-to-day basis. Did that rich white woman on the bus just want to stand because she had a stop soon? Or, did she not want to sit next to the black kids?
    Kinsey: Maybe it doesn't matter why she wouldn't sit with us. Maybe is just sucks not knowing.
    Kid with glasses: Mostly is just sucks not knowing.
  • To top it all off, Dodge, in lady form, seduces the racist dude in a bar and ramps up his bigotry so he'll take a picture of Erin and her room (so she can later enter with the Anywhere Key). After snapping the picture, the racist lughead racially insults Erin again before closing the door and walking toward her. Shudder to think at what he might have done if not for Dodge interrupting...
  • Later, while fleeing the psych hospital, the black-skinned Kinsey and Bode are unable to hail a number of cabs. After using the Skin Key to turn white again... no problem whatsoever. Tyler later expresses happiness that, instead of Kinsey, the police are looking for "two black kids." Kinsey, earlier expressing belief in reverse racism, is now horrified at the notion of the cops likely arresting an innocent girl because of her. The chapter ends with a look at a police sketch of black Kinsey's face, with a newswoman informing us that she should be considered "armed and very, very dangerous..." The chapter can handle the issue clumsily, but this ending is a stunning look at the nightmare that the criminal justice system is for black folks.
• The heart-rending moment when the woman in the wheelchair, whose name is Erin Voss, suddenly shouts Dodge's name as Tyler, Jordan, "Zack," and Kinsey walk by. It's never ever good whenever someone recognizes "Zack" as actually being Dodge and considering Erin Voss is one of Rendell, Dodge, and Ellie's old classmates...
• Another instance of "it couldn't have happened to a worse person," but Dodge, dressed like a ninja in black, shivs the racist dude dead in Erin Voss's room before murdering the janitor who overheard the ruckus.
• Kinsey opens up Erin's head with the Head Key and finds... nothing. Whiteness. Dodge had cleaned out her memory so thoroughly all those years ago that she remembers nothing but the names "Dodge" and "Rendell."
  • Kinsey takes the mask off of the Dodge sprite in Erin's memory to try to ascertain his identity... but instead sees a bald person with no nose or mouth. Ick.
• One of Tyler's hockey teammates is slammed against the glass so hard that he is clearly dazed and leaves a trail of blood spewing from his mouth. Tyler goes into the game right after and gets a black eye, knocked-out tooth, and has to walk with a cane. Hockey is no joke.
• "Zack" and Kinsey, late at night, are sitting in her room. They're both dressed down to pajamas and it instantly feels like an intimate moment. Her shirt has pink hearts and a safety pin on it, resembling a pseudo-chastity belt. Kinsey then begins proposing that they do something fun together and it seems like they're about to have sex. Instead, she proposes using the Head Key to exchange happy memories. "Zach," seeing as how this would instantly give up his facade, refuses angrily, and huffs off before he loses control, his reptilian eyes beginning to show through. It's incredibly disturbing that they're this close given what we know he's capable of; Kinsey even admits that they've made it to second base together. It serves as a frightening takedown of toxic relationships.
  Kinsey: You're happy to get your hands under my shirt, but I'm not allowed to touch your off-limit bits
  • Kinsey's emotional health is still quite concerning given her fearless and care-free state.
    Kinsey: Please, it'll feel good. Why can't we make each other feel good?
• Over the course of a month, Dodge ups his/her attacks on the Lockes while a number of awful things happen to them personally. To wit:
  • Dodge uses a key to set massive stacks of living thorns on the Locke children. They only escape thanks to Kinsey's quick thinking and they all are torn and scratched nearly to pieces.
  • Dodge sends a mechanical owl after the kids. They, again, only escape thanks to Kinsey, who uses the Angel Key to fly them away.
  • Kinsey uses the Head Key on Scot and takes away his sanity. Yes, his literal sanity. He only ends up naked in public before they restore it, but, given what insane people do in this story, who know,s what might have happened?
  • Tyler is still being the parent of the whole family and everyone is resenting him for it. Imagine feeling all that responsibility, while dealing with your own grief, and everyone else you love hating you for it.
  • Bode and Jay Bird use the Giant Key to grow huge and play with literal cars as if they were Hot Wheels. They meant well, but Jay destroys the gazebo absent-mindedly with a flick of his foot and they could have killed folks if they weren't careful.
  • Dodge sends an army of evil squirrels to get the Omega Key from Tyler. One is wielding a tiny sword. It'd almost be funny if not for Gabriel Rodriguez's terrifying art.
  • We get an introduction to the Music Box Key when it's used by Dodge to mesmerize Kinsey into nearly stabbing Tyler with a butcher knife.
  • We get an update on Brian, whose condition is still very severe. He's in a coma, with no indication of when he'll wake up. Even if he does, there's no telling how damaged his brain will be. All thanks to homophobia and the machinations of an evil demon.
  • After a night of hard studying, and after Tyler has been so kind and loving to her, he discovers Jordan cheating on him with the hockey captain.
  • Dodge sends an army of evil teddy bears, with glowing eyes and sharp fangs, after the kids. Tyler has to hold them off with a set of steak knives.
  • Tyler gives in to his inner rage and pain and wears the Hercules Key to the next hockey game, mowing down everyone in his path in a trail of bodies and blood. It's not as awesome as it sounds, though, due to his poor mental and emotional health. What's to stop him from snapping off the rink and seriously hurting someone else?
• Dodge's huge, glowing, red eyes that appear to spy on Rufus and Sam's spirit.
• "Zack" using the Philophoscope to spy on Rufus without his knowledge. Later, after Rufus attempts to spill the beans about him to Bode and Kinsey, Dodge drops the disguise, glares at Rufus with the reptile eyes, insults him for being disabled mercilessly, reminds him of his dad leaving because of him, and, for extra measure, tears his favorite soldier toy in half. It's incredibly upsetting. Afterward, as usual, he warmly greets Kinsey without missing a beat and they even get back together, with Rufus looking on helplessly.
• While "Zack" is fencing, we are treated to a montage of a few of his murders. It would seem they serve as his competitive motivation.
• After Tyler finally catches on to "Zack," they all go ice skating. Tyler and "Zack" trade knowing barbs at each other, each knowing the game is up. At the end, "Zack" leads Bode out to skate together while Tyler can only watch. The scene is loaded with tension.
• Soon after, Tyler and Bode visit Ellie Whedon. And it quickly escalates into an unrelenting nightmare.
  • Tyler begins to ask Ellie detailed questions about her relationship with "Zack." Her mind wiped clean, she just smiles at him blankly and offers him a cookie.
  • Meanwhile, Kinsey, unsuspectingly, but horrifyingly, tells "Zack" that Tyler has mapped out Dodge's attacks and is now at Ellie's house. Everything and everyone is headed for an awful collision.
  • After Rufus ominously warns Tyler that the house isn't safe, he heads to "Zack's" room, where he finds the jar containing Ellie's missing memories. Before he even turns around, "Zack" has made it to the room with the Anywhere Key and uses the Music Box Key and his sharpened rapier to hold Tyler hostage. He effortlessly threatens his life and could have easily killed him where he stood if not for his need for the Omega Key.
  • Suddenly, Detective Mutuku shows up, having finally linked "Zack" to the murders of Candice Whedon, Sam Lesser, and Professor Ridgeway. "Zack" cuts him a few times with his sword before spearing Ellie through the gut. He then pretends to be Luke Caravaggio again to he can kiss her. In one of the most horrific images in the whole series, he bites down and tears off her bottom lip with his teeth. He's clearly enjoying himself. Dodge isn't hiding anymore.
    "Zack": If you knew how good this felt, you wouldn't be surprised I'm doing it. You'd be surprised I didn't do it sooner.
  • Mutuku grabs a knife and begins to duel with Dodge. The demon within is speaking freely now, all pretenses off.
    Dodge: I like the way the meat feels. Even when it's bad, it's good.
  • Dodge, reptilian eyes blazing, takes Bode hostage and threatens to kill him if he isn't allowed to leave.
  • There's a horrifying panel of a tear-streaked Rufus kissing his dead mother's face, torn lip illustrated in full detail.
  • Dodge uses the Music Box Key to force Tyler to take out whoever comes into his room next. It's a uniformed policeman; fortunately, due to Dodge's specific language, he only knocks him down otherwise unharmed.
• Sam Lesser's ultimate fate. Dodge, as always, keeps his promises, and uses the Ghost Key to let Sam take over "Zack's" body while he takes over Bode's, leaving Bode's spirit out in the wind. Sam/Zack immediately grabs Dodge/Bode and hauls him off to return him to the well. When he gets there... he finds out that Dodge has replaced the keys "Zack" had with pencils. Then, Kinsey shows up out of nowhere and kills Sam/Zack... by shredding his face to ribbons with her ice skates. Sam is now truly dead. "Bode" is looking on with a purely evil grin, convincingly acts as the real Bode to his family, and now has the Well Key back. A truly awful outcome for our heroes.

Volume 5: Clockworks

• This opening panel? A crazed man with familiar reptilian eyes and a Slasher Smile on his face, dressed in colonial garb, stands in the snowy Keyhouse yard holding a bloodied bayonet in one hand and the Omega Key in other. A man's severed head lies in the background.
• In a colonial-era flashback, young Benjamin Locke and his sister watch as British soldiers callously hang their parents for making artillery for the Continental Army. The soldiers, forcefully quartering on the Keyhouse property, are impatient and rude, and the children are shocked and crying. They are forced to live in the wellhouse after.
• The truth about the death of Joshua Locke. He was butchered by a demon-possessed Harm Timmerman while trying to stop him from killing everyone in the caves.
• The black door itself is plenty terrifying. It has the appearance of a tomb, lidded with yellow eyes with black slits for pupils. From the inside comes a glow of faint blue light.
• The look on the elder Timmerman's face when he catches a glimpse of what lays beyond the black door. His eyes are shining and he grins widely, as if it's the happiest thing he's seen in his life. Only Mr. Fredericks' timely action saves him from damnation.
• From the demons' perspective, the state of what is beyond the black door is so terrible that they'll risk instant death just for a chance to live in our world.
• When the rebels are interrogating a bound Harm, his brother is staring at the door. Slowly, it seems to open of its own accord, and the man, unable to resist the blue light within, sticks his hand in the door. Harm immediately jams his thumb deep into Fredericks' only good eye and bites hard into his neck. Meanwhile, the now-possessed brother rushes at Benjamin with his bayonet, only stopped by a quick shot from Captain Adam. As Harm lies on the ground, wounded by a shot from Fredericks' pistol, he raves about how delicious his blood tastes.
  • A couple of horrifying quotes from Harm betray some of Joe Hill's influences for the series.
    Harm: These fools are blind my brother. Set me loose and we will teach them to see as we do.
    Harm: The blood is hot and good! Oh! Like the rains of Leng! IA! IA SHUB-NIGGARAUTH!
• The horrors of the black door are such that Captain Adam is willing to risk the British killing every single one of them if it means no one else gets possessed.
• One of the dead demons begins speaking to Benjamin. The language is evil and harsh, unintelligible to the reader. As he holds it up to his ear and listens, visions of keys began dancing in his eyes. We thus learn the horrible truth - the magic keys bound to the Locke family are forged from the corpses of the demons that come from the black door.
• In perhaps the most horrifying sequence in the entire series, "Bode" pushes Jay Bird in front of a moving bus when he figures out his true identity. He is able to convincingly play it off as an accident and no one ever is the wiser. Gabriel Rodriguez draws Jay Bird's legs sticking out from under the bus, his blood pooling over the street. All the children on the bus are in tears. It's sickening, a child senselessly murdered at the whims of a demon-possessed little boy.
• "Bode's" behavior in general. It's quite disturbing to see Dodge's cruelty and profanity (and those reptilian eyes) come from a six-year-old boy, especially one that we've gotten to know and love over the past four volumes.
• Jay Bird's poor mother. Her entire life without her little boy is a nightmare.
• Tyler, under the control of Kinsey's fear and sadness sprites, attempts to burn down Keyhouse. With his family inside. He knocks out Duncan and blocks off the staircase so no one can stop him. Ironically, only "Bode" saves the family this time by reminding Kinsey about the sprites.
• When Kinsey uses the Head Key on Tyler to remove her sprites, "Bode" pulls out the Omega Key. Just like that. Turns out, Tyler had kept it in his head the whole time. Now, the most evil being in the universe has the key that will let him make everyone else just like him.
• The kids use the Head Key on Duncan to forcefully remove his memory of the near-burning.
• Thanks to Tyler and Kinsey's time travel, we get a closer look at the hanging of Benjamin's parents. His father's eyes were bulging and blood was pouring out of his mouth as he strained against the noose.
• Kim's racist, bullying tirade against Mark Cho. Someone he thought was a friend snapped and insulted his ethnicity and virginity.
• As we spend time with Rendell and his friends in flashback, we see that Luke "Dodge" Caravaggio was a.... really good person. Very loving and sweet to Ellie and a genuine and kind soul. It's even more horrifying in hindsight to think of how the demon from the black door has twisted him into a brutal, sadistic killer.
• The stunning revelation that Dodge's possession is initially Rendell's fault - it was his idea to open the black door and let a demon through so they could forge another key. A key, mind you, that would only satisfy their vanity. All the present-day horrors of the series are possible because of Rendell Locke's vanity.
• Erin's living hell of being in love with her best friend and him being completely oblivious to it.
• Mark Cho casually calling a young Duncan a gay slur when he uses the Gender Key to change into a little girl. He also later calls him an ugly word for mentally disabled folks.
• More awful foreshadowing - Duncan only ends up in the caves to begin with because, out of kindness, Dodge tells him where they're going. His possession is the result of being sweet to a little kid.
• The gang walk past a number of doors while on the way to the black door (which is labeled 11). What are the other 10 doors for? What lies behind them? As they walk past door #1, it creeps open and a familiar blue light seeps out... are the demons behind that door too? If not them, then what? Why is it opening?
• The truth about Dodge's possession. He bravely volunteers to stand by Rendell at the door in case something were to go wrong. As he's looking away, he catches a glimpse of... Duncan, who had snuck back into the caves. He is mesmerized by the demons beyond the door. As Dodge tries to stop him, he turns around himself and is unable to resist. His hand goes in, he turns around, and a now-familiar Slasher Smile with reptilian eyes graces his beautiful face.
  Rendell: Dodge, what's happening? What the fuck is happening?
  Dodge: [grinning wickedly] Something wonderful.
• Dodge sneaks into the Keyhouse and holds a hatchet to Rendell's head, demanding the Omega Key. He is quickly apprehended, but is unable to feel pain or remorse. He spews vile racism and taunts Erin for Rendell not loving her.
• The gang opens up Dodge's head with the Head key, providing the page image above. Some highlights?
  • A giant shadow wolf dangling Ellie in a birdcage
  • Multiple copies of Dodge in fencing gear, with sinister, living masks and sharpened swords at the ready
  • The entire gang, Omega Keys stuffed in their backs like wind-up toys, marching one-by-one into the maw of the black door.
  • Dodge, dressed in colonial garb, waves a flag with the inscription JOIN OR DIE and an image of a man with his legs cut off woven between an omega symbol.
  • Dodge, with angel wings and a butcher's apron, holding Kim's severed head and a bloody butcher knife. The heads of the rest of the group are on pikes. Including Duncan's. Other heads, including Professor Ridgeway's, can be found strewn on the ground, in vast pools of blood.
• When the group uses the Head Key on Dodge to strip his memories, Ellie finally names out loud how horrible the practice is.
  Ellie: What we just did to him is enough. More than enough - it was like rape. It was worse than rape.
• When Ellie later approaches a mind-wiped Dodge at school lunch, he's still nasty enough to spit chewed-up hot dog in her face. When he can't remember a thing about her, he takes it out on the girl he's sitting next to, threatening her with violence.
• Ellie's awful mother bullies her cruelly about Dodge no longer being with her.
• What happens to Rendell's mother's spirit. Ellie regularly goes to the well, where they've hidden Dodge's memories, and speaks to Mrs. Locke's spirit, who comforts her. One time, Dodge follows her. The spirit bravely tries to hold him off, but it's Ellie who pushes her out the door, thus resulting in her fading away into nothingness. In the struggle, the glass jars break, and, just like that, Dodge has his full self back.
  • We get more awful images by glancing at some of the jars. Dodge holding up Rendell's severed head, Dodge wielding a blood-drenched sword... and Dodge biting off Ellie's lower lip. It would seem that he fantasized about doing it for years before he finally got around to it. Revolting.
• The same goes for Dodge running Ellie through her gut with a sword, which is a dead ringer for a sprite he places back in his head. All the while, he taunts Ellie for being unconscious and making him whole again.
• Dodge kidnaps Duncan, as a little girl, holds her hostage with a knife, and immediately begins taking her to the black door. He's only stopped by Mark Cho wielding the mechanical owl and the Crown of Shadows.
• Mark Cho's death. The shadows bring Dodge to him as he commanded... but Dodge is now a she. The first appearance of the "lady from the well" form. Dodge seduces the virginal Mark, stabs him in the gut, and taunts him, stepping on his open wound.
  Dodge: You know, Kim Topher was right about you. You are going to die a virgin.
  • While dying, Mark promises to tell the location of the Omega Key if Dodge leaves Ellie alone. Dodge proceeds to mock his secret crush and cruelly insults Ellie's sexual behaviors, including the noises she makes during climax.
• Kim Topher's death. Her face is crushed into the cave's wall by a shadow demon in an attempt to rescue Duncan from Dodge.
• We find out how Erin Voss loses all her memories: Dodge removes them forcefully to look for the Omega Key's location and as payback for the theft of his own.
• Dodge, as he lies crushed under a pile of cave rocks, only laughs and mentions how good it feels to have his ribs sticking into his organs. Blood is spewing from his mouth and he is cackling as he dies.

Volume 6: Alpha & Omega

• "Bode," in giant form, smashes the lighthouse, killing all three folks inside, just because the little girl had caught a glimpse of him.
  • What makes it worse is how excited she is, laughing and telling her parents that she wasn't dreaming after all, but really did see a giant person.
• Ever wonder why Tyler and his dad had a huge enough fight for Tyler to wish him dead? He let Kinsey tag along with him to a party once. A friend of his downed a six pack and took her for a joy ride. Tyler watched the whole time, but just let them go, tired of everyone ragging on him for being a counselor like his dad. Of course, the drunk driver crashes the car. Kinsey ends up in the hospital and the driver loses his football scholarship. All because Tyler was too ashamed of his inherent goodness. Rendell is so spitting mad that he forbids Tyler from going on a summer beach trip, leading to the fight and Tyler later telling Sam Lesser to kill his dad for him.
  • While recounting this story for Scot's documentary, Tyler (and thus the reader) are haunted by another image of Rendell's bloody, eyeless face.
• Dodge finally standing in front of the black door, in full lady shadow form, holding the Omega Key in her hand.
  Dodge: Well, that's that. I win. The end.
• Rufus attempts to choke the life out of "Bode." We know it's an imposter, but the other Lockes don't. All they see is Rufus trying to throttle a six-year-old for no apparent reason. Tyler only stops him by whacking him in the head with a tire iron.
• Rufus recounts to a psychiatrist some of the abuse he's suffered and Gabriel Rodriguez helpfully illustrates for us. We see a flashback of Ellie sitting on her bed naked, blood leaking out of her nose, with "Zack" ruthlessly insulting Rufus for merely asking to go to the toy store. We also see another image of Candice Whedon putting a lit cigarette out on Rufus's face.
• One night, Nina catches "Bode" sneaking out of the house. He drops the little kid act and commands shadows to force-feed wine to her. Multiple bottles. It's incredibly sad and disturbing, especially since at this point in the story she's been sober for weeks.
  "Bode": [as the shadows are choking Nina] Your throat's bothering you? Let's get something to wet your whistle!
  • Kinsey later walks in to find Nina incredibly drunk on the floor of Keyhouse. She, having no idea it wasn't her mom's fault, is incredibly angry and upset and can barely hold it together.
    Kinsey: I don't love you anymore. Remember that. I'm done with you. I'm done.
• "Bode" continues to unleash his master plan by setting shadows on Duncan as Tyler leaves for prom. Poor guy is reduced to cowering in the trunk of his car
• Tyler returns to the garage only to be jumped by shadows in the dark, who knock him unconscious and loom over him menacingly...
• When "Bode" tries and fails to lure Kinsey and the gang down to the black door with a "lost little kid" act, he grins wickedly and summons a giant shadow ape (with two lip rings, natch) to wreck the entire balcony and stairs leading down to the bottom. Scot and other kids are thrown into the abyss, with the cave having been drained of water. Jackie is held tight in the grip of the ape. Jordan is clinging to the railing for dear life while Kinsey and Jamal are cowering in fear on what's left of the balcony.
• When Mutuku and the uniformed cop arrive at Keyhouse to help against the shadows, the cop accidentally shoots Tyler in the gut. The cop is promptly beheaded by a shadow samurai.
• As the cave begins to fall in on itself, the prom kids begin pushing and shoving each other to escape... only to be met at the mouth by two giant shadow centurions.
• Shadow clones of Dodge begin to lead the kids down, one by one, to the black door. A couple kids resist, only to be immediately torn to pieces. One of the them was a girl who had struggled earlier in the series with being brave and gave herself a pep-talk right before letting Dodge have it.
  Mandy: You are a nerd, girl, and nerd's need to be brave, please let me be brave...
• During all of this, Kinsey is adamant that Tyler is coming to the rescue, not knowing he is currently bleeding out on the Keyhouse lawn...
• While Kinsey, Jordan, and Jamal keep freezing on their small stretch of balcony, Scot and Jackie rise from the depths of the cave. They seem fine at first... but then begin acting strangely. And saying awful things. And then, Jackie flashes a familiar pair of reptilian eyes. They've been possessed and are now just like Dodge.
  • Just like with Dodge and Bode, it's incredibly awful to see their behavior after being possessed since we knew them to be good, decent people. "Scot," wearing the Hercules Key, slams Jamal against the wall of the cave and threatens to squeeze his head until it pops Gregor Clegane-style. "Jackie," rocking the Angel Key, spouts some now familiar demon filth: vile racism and virginity mockery.
  "Jackie": I've always wanted to know about black cocks. Is his dick really big, Kinsey? How much can you get in your mouth without gagging?
  • Made even worse by the hinted-at but never-quite-confirmed chemistry between Jackie and Kinsey throughout the series. We find out later that "Bode" has many of the children tortured and butchered for his amusement, so it becomes obvious that he has Scot and Jackie possessed solely to hurt Jamal and Kinsey.
  • "Scot" and "Jackie" offer Jordan, Jamal, and Kinsey a horrible choice. One of them must volunteer to be possessed. One of them must volunteer to be "Bode's" personal slave to be tortured at his whims. The third must die, right then and there, by leaping off of the catwalk to the rocks below. They have five minutes to decide or all three of them will die gruesome deaths. As he walks away, "Scot" casually threatens to rape Kinsey. It's all so unbelievably awful.
• As shadows assault Nina and Mutuku from all sides, a closer look at one menacing Nina provides a horrifying realization: it is the spitting image of Al Grubb. The man who raped her.
• Mutuku's death. A shadow centurion runs him through with a massive sword while he's protecting Nina. We last see him with his body burning on the Keyhouse floor.
• Jordan ends up volunteering to be the one to die to spare the others. Noble right? The nightmare comes upon a sickeningly detailed depiction of her body after the fall. She landed on her arm and the bone shot straight up into the the sky in a horrific compound fracture. There's blood everywhere.
• "Scot" and "Jackie" lead Kinsey and Jamal through the caves by pulling them along via shadow chains around their necks. They look up at on point... and seen multiple kids hung by their feet from the ceiling being tortured by shadows. Some of them are being suffocated, some are bleeding profusely. One has had his eyes torn out. Another has his jaw ripped along its seam into a gruesome smile. Yet another has shadows pouring endlessly into his open mouth. Many of them are begging for help and pleading for their lives. The two demon-possessed threaten to take out Kinsey and Jamal's eyes if they don't stop looking.
• The image of "Bode" sitting on throne of shadows surrounded by scores of dead demon corpses. His ultimate plan? To make many, many more keys. How? By forcing Duncan to forge them until he literally drops dead.
• The demon in Bode recounts what life is like beyond the black door. Basically, everyone is trying to eat the other and only the strongest survive. What's worse is that he hints that his years of possessing humans has somehow made him even worse.
  "Bode": ...I've matured.
• "Bode's" visions of his ideal future. Some highlights:
  • A chubby kid unremarkable except for the tentacle spewing out of his eyeballs.
  • A girl in pigtails licking the blade of a bowie knife.
  • Another girl with gray hair and hoop earrings that has blood pouring out of her mouth.
  • A boy with both eyes closed and a third eye open on his forehead.
  • A possessed Kinsey holding Jamal's severed head.
• "Bode" further reveals that his plan doesn't really hinge on the Omega Key... but instead the Head Key. He wants to let a selective few demons through to be his "family," while farming the rest for keys and enslaving the rest of humanity by making himself a god. Every human on the planet will be completely subservient to him or die.
  • He personalizes this threat to Jamal and Kinsey by threatening to wipe the memory of the one of them that doesn't end up possessed and raping them continuously. It's all so, so awful. And all coming from the mouth of a six-year-old boy. Jamal ends up practically begging "Bode" to wipe his memory so as to spare Kinsey the sexual assault.
  "Bode": I'm going to make one of you more retarded than that fuckwit, Rufus Whedon. After I've emptied your head, we all might rape you just a bit. Don't worry: You'll be so stupid, you'll hardly be aware of what's happening to you. Which is a mercy, when you think about it.
• Tyler does figure out a way to release the hold of the demon possession, but it's horrific: The Alpha Key causes the demons to instantly turn into Whispering Iron while still in the body of the victim, killing them near-instantly.
  • It's worse for Scot, who survives for some time due to the Hercules Key. It's clear he's in near-constant agony, and when he finally dies it's a huge relief.
• Rufus saves the day and drags "Bode" across the well door, returning Dodge to his prison. Hooray right? Wrong. With his spirit still out of his body, Bode is technically dead. His family has to endure his funeral and has him cremated without ever knowing he could have been restored back to normal.
• The wonderful, golden afterlife that Luke Caravaggio describes is a nightmare to the demons. They're deathly afraid of it.
  • The nightmare comes in the reiteration that possession by the demons is a possession of the soul, not the body. Their control not only persists after death, but Lucas explains that they keep possessed victims from experiencing this paradise, forcing them to remain in silent darkness with it just out of reach.