JSA: Legends of the Golden Age Special #1

1.

The ramshackle house stood under a lowering sky. Black clouds gathered above, and the sound of thunder rumbled across the open dustbowl of Kansas. There was an electric smell in the air, as of lightning or, perhaps, something else.

A streak of red and blue cut across the long, swaying weeds, and Jay Garrick, AKA the Flash, skidded to a halt in front of the hulking derelict. It was abandoned now, the door swinging open on rusty hinges, and nearly all of the windows were shattered, but it was much as he had remembered it from six years earlier: reeking of desperation and neglect.

“What was his name again…?”

Jay looked up as a figure limned in green flame descended out of the sky. Alan Scott, the Green Lantern, landed close by his friend, his magic ring a beacon against the encroaching darkness of the storm that was rolling in.

“He called himself Johnny Tomorrow,” Jay answered, casting his mind back to 1939, and the horrific case that had first brought him to this forlorn place exactly six years ago. “He started out as just a two-bit thief, making his way across the Midwest. Never stayed in one town too long. Here today, gone tomorrow. He claimed he had some device that allowed him to teleport in and out of bank vaults and make off with the cash, but I was never able to make the blasted thing work.” It started to rain, lightly at first, sizzling off Green Lantern’s aura, and tinkling almost musically off Flash’s silver helmet. “How did you know I was here, Alan?”

“Joannie,” Green Lantern said simply. “She said you’ve been thinking about this old case. That you haven’t been yourself.”

Jay felt a moment of guilt. The last thing he wanted was to make his wife worry needlessly. His work with the Justice Society certainly gave her cause enough already, but the war was over now. Sanity was going to return to the world, surely she must be thinking, he would soon hang up his running shoes once and for all.

Jay let out a sigh. “I couldn’t even tell you what his real name was, but I’ll never forget her name. It was Cindy Boggans. She was a bank teller that he took hostage. Twenty-two years old. Graduate of Smallville High School. She was married with a baby on the way.”

Alan wore a stricken expression. He had not heard the story before, but he could tell where it was going.

“By the time I arrived on the scene, the police had surrounded the house, and they were trading fire. One of his bullets hit her. He wasn’t aiming for her, it was an accident, but he put her in the line of fire, and she died. I was three-quarters of a second too late,” Jay dashed water from his eyes. “I’m the fastest man alive, Alan. Time moves slower for me when I’m running. Can you imagine what that’s like? I watched the bullet as it left his gun. I was reaching for it as it hit her. I saw the exact moment she died, and for me, it lasted an eternity.” He looked off into the distance, across the desolate plain. “I can still see it.”

Alan said nothing. There was nothing he could say, he knew. But he stood by his friend, in the rain, and waited.

“We’ve lost people before,” Jay’s voice was low and raspy. “Innocents have died. I’ve seen my fill of war and horrific destruction in the last six years. But Cindy Boggans was the first. Three-quarters of a second… I should have been faster, Alan. I should have ---.” He choked off, swallowing his words.

The rain came harder now, falling in big splashes. The two friends stood there, unheeding.

After many moments, Alan spoke first. “It’s going to get better now.” He nodded, projecting confidence. “Sometimes I feel like the war made us old before our time. But now we can get back to our lives, back to the way it was before the world went mad. It’s going to get better.”

In the midst of the downpour, the two old friends and comrades-in-arms shared a moment of doubt and hope, and in the distance, thunder pealed loud enough to shake the world.


2.

The blasted and ruined landscape reminded him of those sad fields of Europe, the ground pitted and torn beneath a cold, grey sky. Bloodied and mangled things writhed on the ground, and a fog rolled in that carried the stench of putrefaction. A pitiless wind whistled through dead trees, and on it was a rising, moaning sob which came from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

“Dian…?” His voice was hoarse and tentative. He wandered across the fetid abattoir, searching for her face on the ground, dreading to see it, sure he would find it. Somehow, nothing was distinct, the eviscerated things strewn across the field were familiar and strange, and everyone one of them reminded him of someone he knew or loved.

He stumbled over a body. It hissed at him and crawled away, squelching through the mud.

“Dian?” Panic rose as he picked himself off the ground. His glasses had fallen off him when he stumbled, so it was hard to see. His eyes burned from the acrid wind. Tears welled up and started flowing.

“Wes… Wesley…” a voice beckoned him onward. Not a familiar voice. A man’s voice. A teasing, cruel voice. Still, it was all he had out here in this wasteland. Perhaps it would lead him to Dian.

“Here today, gone tomorrow,” sang the voice in a taunting sing-song tone. “All that’s left of me is sorrow.”

Casting about through the fog, squinting without his glasses and his vision bleary with tears, he discerned a man coming towards him. He could make out the newcomer’s suit and tie, but his head was indistinct and strange.

“Who are you?”

The newcomer made a sound that could have been laughter or sobbing. “Who am I? I haven’t been myself in years, dwelling beyond the Veil of Tears…”

Wesley Dodds wanted to scream, to cry, to attack this strange, sad figure before him. Instead, he said, “Where’s Dian?”

The newcomer lifted his face to Wes, and through the fog, myopia and tears, Wes saw that all that was there was a blank red theater mask, floating in the space above the body. The newcomer circled Wes, glancing at him sidelong, never stopping that low, almost hysterical keening.

“He wants you, you know,” said the newcomer in a new and deeper, more threatening tone. “He wants you all. He wants pure, unsullied souls.”

“Who…?”

The world erupted all around Wes. Colors and discordant sounds ran riot across his senses, and an image of something be-tentacled and grotesque spread across the sky, blotting out all light and life. Wes screamed and fell on his knees in the muck, burying his head and covering his ears.

Just as quickly as it appeared, the vision vanished. Once again, he was on that lonely, macabre field of slaughter. And the man with no face stood over him, laughing and sobbing.

“Do you really want to know, Wes?” The man asked. “Shall I pull back the Veil again? Would you like another look at the bride this world awaits?”

Wesley Dodds raised his tear-streaked face to the man, but he had no words. Only a deep and abiding sadness that he feared would never go away.

“Make yourself ready.” The man in the mask squatted, gloved hands on his slightly bent knees, peering into Wes’ face. “The Day of Lamentation is coming.” And with that, the man raised one hand to his mask and ripped it away.

Wes screamed.

“Wes! Wesley, wake up! Please, my darling, you’re scaring me!”

Her voice came as if from far away, but he latched onto it, and followed it back. He didn’t know how long it was before he was aware of his surroundings again, but he gradually realized he was in bed, clinging to her, shivering and gibbering.

“Dian!” He gasped, squeezing her arms. His breath came in big heaving gulps, as he kept repeating her name. He had no idea he was crying uncontrollably.

“It’s alright, Wes. It was just a nightmare. That’s all it was.”

In his mind’s eye, Wes Dodds, the Sandman, saw again that vision of tentacled monstrosity engulfing the world. And he knew, instinctively, this had been no ordinary nightmare. He knew that had he seen the horror of the face behind the mask in waking life, he would not have survived to tell of it.

He stayed in bed until Dian fell back asleep, a respite he knew would be denied to him for many nights to come. He wants you, you know. He wants you all. He wants pure, unsullied souls. With those words ringing in his head, he crawled out of bed and headed for the phone in the adjoining room.


3.

A madman owned the skies over Opal City.

Fiery blasts rained down out of the night, without rhyme or reason, striking at seemingly unseen foes. A streetlamp was shot out. A car parked outside the old Port O’ Souls tavern was struck. Chunks of buildings were torn away. A general panic arose in the city as, night after night, this continued and the madman roamed free.

On the third night and at his wits’ end to end the rampage, Chief of Police William O’Dare called upon his contacts in the Justice Society of America for help.

“I want to thank the two of you for coming,” huffed the slightly overweight cop. They stood on the roof of the precinct house, under the stars on a cool November night. O’Dare gestured upwards. “He usually comes out right around this time.”

Hourman and Black Canary faced the Chief, both of them wearing almost identical frowns.

“I don’t understand, Chief,” Hourman rubbed his chin, clearly at a loss. “Do you have any idea what’s triggered this?”

“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me, Hourman,” said the Chief, apologetically. “Opal City owes a lot to Starman, but this wanton destruction has got to stop.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Black Canary laid a consoling arm on the Chief’s shoulder. “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for what’s happening. The Psycho Pirate maybe, or Brainwave must be to blame.”

With a grateful nod, Chief O’Dare retreated back down into the precinct house, leaving the two JSAers alone.

Black Canary stood with one foot up on the ledge of the building, her long blonde hair blowing in the wind. She scanned the skies for some sign of her friend as Hourman came up behind her.

“Brainwave’s in a coma and Psycho Pirate is locked up tight in jail,” he reminded her gently.

“I know,” she bit her lip and glanced over at him. “I just didn’t want him thinking that Starman…” She was unable to finish the sentence.

Hourman put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “I know. Me, too.”

She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. “I think we all saw this coming for months now, ever since the end of the war. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki…”

“Theo never intended his research to be used like that,” Hourman reassured her. “He had no idea they would actually unleash hell on earth. And after the last few months he spent over there, helping survivors…” Hourman let out a long breath. “I don’t know how he’s dealt with it as long as he has.”

“None of us have exactly had an easy time of it since the war ended,” she turned and looked up at him. “Have you had a day yet you haven’t taken a Miraclo?”

She felt him stiffen, and he pushed her away, muttering, “Don’t lecture me, Canary. There’s still a lot to do. Miraclo makes me better. That’s how I deal.”

“Well pardon me for caring,” she said with mild exasperation, following him as he stalked across the rooftop to get a view from another side. “I’m just saying you should be careful with all the pills. I don’t need another teammate having a nervous breakdown.”

He whirled on her, finger stopping just short of her nose. “And I’m just saying stay out of my business and mind your own. You’ve been out on patrols and missions with me every night for two weeks, instead of home with your husband. And don’t think I don’t see you coming back from his phone calls with your mascara running.”

“How dare you---!” she pulled her arm back to slap him, but he caught her up by the wrist and matched her glare for glare. She tried to yank her arm away, but succeeded only in pulling him towards her. The kiss came out of nowhere. They reached for each other at the same time, his mouth falling on hers, she pressing herself against his body. For several long, sweet moments, neither seemed willing to end it, clinging to each other with an urgency that had been building to this for a long time.

The blast of cosmic energy hit the rooftop and sent them sprawling. With the sound of it still ringing in their ears, they looked up to see Starman hovering just out over the edge of the building, his Cosmic Rod pointed directly at them.

“Jeez, buddy, you could have killed us!” Exclaimed Hourman, rolling to his feet. He glanced over to make sure Black Canary was alright, then asked, heatedly, “What’s wrong with you?”

The look in their wayward teammate’s eyes was almost unrecognizable. Frantic and hopeless. “What’s wrong with me, Rex?” Starman laughed sourly. “You’re the one kissing a married woman,” he turned his red-rimmed gaze on Black Canary. “How could you? Do your marriage vows mean nothing?”

Black Canary looked as if she had been struck, and had no reply for him.

Starman just laughed sourly at her speechlessness. “What does it matter, anyway, huh?” he asked, and they saw there were tears in his eyes. “None of us are going to live long enough to pay the price for our sins. We’re doomed. The war may be over, but it was just the beginning. You have no idea what we’ve unleashed.” He shook, as if unable to contain what was inside him. He pointed his Cosmic Rod at the heavens and fired a blast at the moon. The beam arced up and away out of sight, to fall somewhere within the city limits. A scream of unadulterated anguish and guilt escaped him. He held his hands on either side of his head, as if to block out the world or contain whatever was struggling to burst from him. “All because of me,” he muttered. “All because of me…”

He raised his arm for another shot, but never got it off. Black Canary sprinted forward, kicked off from the ledge of the building, and launched herself at him. She tackled him in midair, causing him to sail backwards.

“Well, I’ll be a sonuva---.” Hourman rushed to the ledge, watching as the two of them wrestled two hundred feet above the cold, hard concrete of the Burnley Street Precinct House.

The conjoined pair floated in a haphazard fashion, the only thing keeping them aloft Starman’s grip on his Cosmic Rod. But Black Canary had one hand on it too, and was scrabbling for it with the other, her stockinged legs wrapped around her opponent’s torso.

“Get off me!” Starman shrieked. “I don’t want to hurt you, damn it!”

Hourman saw his friend losing his control, the pair of them zig-zaging across the sky. He couldn’t be sure Black Canary could even figure out how to control the Rod, even if she could get it away from its creator. They were further away now, drifting in spurts towards the next rooftop. In horror, Hourman saw Starman rip the Cosmic Rod free and he twirled it like a baton, reversing it to blast her.

He didn’t even think. The Miraclo surging through him, he surged off the rooftop with a powerful push of his legs. No ordinary man could have made the leap, but Rex Tyler was no ordinary man. He slammed into them with what felt like the full-force of a runaway steam train, his momentum carrying all three of them across the gap between buildings, to come down atop the roof of the nearest building. They hit it hard, scattering at the impact.

Fueled by his paranoia, Starman scrambled to his feet and leveled his Cosmic Rod at Hourman, who was slower to rise, having landed badly. But before he could get off a shot, a noise behind him alerted him and he turned in time to catch Black Canary’s spinning back kick in the face. He staggered backward, stunned, directly into Hourman’s grasp. “That’s enough, buddy,” Hourman grunted, catching his friend in a sleeper hold. “Go to sleep. Go to sleep…”

Starman struggled vainly, but he was caught. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed, weakly. “I don’t know what…” He sank in his friend’s relentless embrace and blacked out, his Cosmic Rod clattering to the rooftop.

Hourman sank with him, and laid him gently on the rooftop. He looked up at the approach of Black Canary. Both of them were breathing heavy, and both of them had tears in their eyes.

“Dinah, I---.”

“Rex, please,” she knelt and touched his hand where it was scraped and bloodied. Hers was, too. The look they shared said more than words ever could.


4.

“I’m gonna miss this joint,” Wildcat said to Doctor Midnight, as they trudged up the Helicline, the spiral walkway that partially encircled the enormous Perisphere. It was a cold and overcast day in November, and the Justice Society of America was meeting for the last time in their headquarters on the site of the 1939 World’s Fair; the next day they would be returning it to the city of New York, which had leased it to them for the duration of the war. “Lots of memories here, Doc.”

Doctor Midnight glanced sidelong at Wildcat, even in the dim, gray light squinting behind the special goggles that allowed him to see after the accident that launched his career as a Mystery Man. He noted the beer bottle in Wildcat’s hand, and he reasonably assumed it wasn’t his comrade’s first that day. “The thing about memories is you always get to make new ones,” he tried to sound reassuring, but Wildcat looked dubious.

“I’m not so sure,” Wildcat took a long pull on his bottle. “After Hiroshima, what does the world need with a punch-drunk slugger like me and a guy who can see in the dark? No offense,” he added hastily, when the owl on Midnight’s shoulder gave a decidedly aggrieved hoot. “Maybe the day of the Mystery Man is over.”

The despair and resignation in his friend’s voice caught Doctor Midnight by surprise. Wildcat, he knew, was having a hard time with the recent departure of Wonder Woman, the Amazon queen returning to her Paradise Island after the war, to the duties she owed her people. The two had shared a passion the others only suspected but given Wildcat’s melancholia, now seemed all but confirmed. But before Midnight could summon the words to console his friend, they were joined by a figure materializing out of the ether in front of them.

Their reflections stared back at them from the gleaming golden Helm of Nabu.

<The sun has not yet gone down on the Justice Society, Wildcat,> intoned Doctor Fate, <But the hour is late, and we have much work to do before the fall of night.>

The two heroes were taken aback, but before they could respond, Doctor Fate turned and swept the rest of the way up the Helicline. Without a word, they followed him inside the Perisphere.

They were the last to arrive. Inside, the circular meeting room, benches lined the walls, curving inward halfway around, facing a central dais where the chairman usually conducted the meeting. On the dome ceiling overhead was painted the eagle emblem of the team. This last meeting in the Perisphere was a smaller gathering, hastily and unexpectedly called. So unexpectedly, in fact, that even their chairman was not in attendance; Hawkman and his wife Hawkwoman were on a retreat in Feithera, the newlywed Atom was on his honeymoon out West, and others, like Wonder Woman, had returned to the lives they’d lived before the war. And some, like Starman, were absent for more personal reasons.

Along with Wildcat, Doctor Midnight and Doctor Fate, Hourman and Black Canary sat huddled close together on a back bench; the indistinct form of the Spectre sat by himself, hood drawn over his pale face; and Flash, Green Lantern, and Captain Marvel stood at the foot of the dais talking with Sandman, his mask off, looking hollow-eyed and weary.

Wasting no time, Doctor Fate strode to the dais and addressed the assemblage. <Friends! The war may be over, but our labors are not done. A new, and far graver threat has arisen. Something terrible has found its way into our reality, something from a dimension not our own. Something that wishes to devour all light and hope. And Sandman has seen it.>

All eyes turned to the bespectacled hero. Wes Dodds shook slightly. It was obvious he was exhausted. In a tremulous voice, he told them all about his nightmare, articulating the feelings of dread and despair all of them seemed to share lately. When he was done, they all exchanged the same look of grief and worry.

“But what exactly is this Lamentation Day?” asked Black Canary, her smooth brow furrowing. “And is this why I feel like I want to cry all the time?”

Not caring that anyone saw, Hourman reached out a hand and covered hers. Grateful for the comfort, however fleeting, she smiled at him.

Behind the eyeslits of the Helm of Nabu, glowed a fierce mystic energy. <Since Sandman contacted me three days ago, I have endeavored to discover just that, Black Canary. No earthly annals, mundane or arcane speak of it. So I dared much: I chanced an excursion beyond the Veil of Tears, into the Subtle Realms, hellish places outside of our understanding, wellsprings of gloom and great evil. I almost didn’t make it back…> the Master of Magic faltered a moment, gathering his thoughts. <Only my tether to Inza saved me, drew me back to my Tower in Salem when all hope seemed lost. I learned little from my sojourn, but perhaps just enough. The Day of Lamentation describes the Advent of the King of Tears, a being so monstrous, so vile and alien that his very presence devours light and life and hope. He is an Unmaker! Reality cannot long survive around him.>

The room was rapt; an appalled silence fell.

<Somehow, the King has taken notice of this reality, and covets the hope and life he senses here. What’s more, I believe we in the Justice Society are--- specifically!--- under attack.>

“He wants you all. He wants pure, unsullied souls…” muttered Sandman. He was hunched over on a front bench, his face in his hands.

Wildcat’s laugh was a bark of derision. “Unsullied? We just fought a war! Not a one of us came outta that pure or unsullied.”

<That is the creeping influence of the King working through you, Wildcat,> Doctor Fate told him. <Even from beyond the Veil of Tears, he reaches out to despoil us. He has felt the nobility of purpose that has brought us together, the sanctity of our fight for true justice, and he hates us for it. It is through the corruption and sacrifice of us that he will be manifest on this plane of existence. He will seek us out, one by one, and by insidious means, destroy us. And then woe betide our poor world!>

“Starman!” Black Canary stifled her startled intake of breath with a shaking hand to her mouth.

Captain Marvel crossed his arms, looking grim but resolute. “So how do we stop him?”

Doctor Fate was silent for a long pause, contemplating the question. <We may not be able to stop him, Captain. This is no terrestrial foe we face. This entity is a god in its own dimension. Nevertheless, we must face it, and we must bar the door against it. First we must find his acolyte, the man in the mask who taunted Sandman.>

“I think we know who he is,” Green Lantern spoke up. He looked over at Flash. “Here today, gone tomorrow…Sound familiar?”

Flash nodded, his eyes downcast. “Johnny Tomorrow. I don’t know how he’s embroiled in all this, but I’m sure it’s him. I can’t seem to get him out of my mind these days.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked away. “He’ll return to the house in Kansas, I think. There’s something about that place. Something unutterably profane…”


5.

Shoes of the finest Italian leather clattered on the floor, the loose boards creaking under his weight. He moved slowly and deliberately from room to room, reliving moments. This is where Daddy beat Mommy. Over here is where Daddy died, rotting from the inside. There is where Mommy drank herself to death. And on this spot, I caused the death of an innocent and opened my soul to the King of Tears…

More than people perished in this house. Here, hope died and despair was born. He had a different name back then, but it meant nothing to him now. Now and forever after he was Johnny Sorrow.

“I never even had a chance,” he mused, looking out the dusty, grease-smeared window onto the featureless prairie. The desolation reminded him of the Subtle Realms, where he had found his King. Where he had been lured. Perhaps he had been marked from birth (in the very room in which he now stood), because, as he now knew, the Subspace Prototype Machine he had stolen and thought could teleport him in the course of his petty crime spree, had actually never worked; it had always been the King jerking him across fractional dimensions, subtly warping him into a tool to be used. All it took was the blood of an innocent to finish the task. Blood spilled in this very room.

When the King had appeared to him in his jail cell, weeks later, revealing the deception, revealing the years of manipulation and seduction, he realized where his life had been leading him--- so the man who had been Johnny Tomorrow gave himself wholly over. His body was shredded and reconstituted in the Subtle Realms, and he became an abomination to look upon. He became Johnny Sorrow.

A chill fell over him, and he felt the presence of his King. It waited, ravenous and relentless, just beyond the Veil, seeping though the weak spots humanity daily punched through with their venality and violence. It warned him that the JSA was coming, that the time was drawing near…

Johnny Sorrow started towards the front door. “Oh, the humanity! Well, we had a good run.” he sighed theatrically. “But better a murder than a suicide.”


6.

They appeared under the slate gray sky, teleported by the magic of Doctor Fate, to the lonely, dilapidated house. Wind skirled across the dusty ground, stirring capes and blowing dead leaves around their feet.

On the porch, a figure emerged from the house. He was well-dressed in a suit and tie, but only a red mask floated where there should have been a head.

“Welcome, Justice Society. I’m so happy you got the message. My name is Johnny Sorrow, but some of you already know me…”

“I don’t care what you call yourself, or what you’ve become, you’re nothing more than a penny-ante crook and we’re taking you in,” Flash announced, and wasted no time; he ran up the steps, across the porch and straight at Sorrow. The speedster moved through the immaterial Sorrow, and collapsed out the other side with a cry of pain. He lay on the porch, curled into a ball, twitching.

Sorrow laughed, putting his gloved hands on the porch railing, leaning out at the heroes assembled before him. “That was fun. Who’s next? You, Green Lantern? I see you holding your ringhand… You, Captain Marvel? Yes, you…! I can almost taste the purity of your soul. You’ll make a fine vessel for my King. Come at me, then. Surely the World’s Mightiest Mortal has nothing to fear from a petty ante crook?”

But the Wisdom of Solomon held the Captain back. He looked to Doctor Fate for his cue. The sorcerer held up one hand, his gleaming helmet cocked to one side.

<Johnny Sorrow is naught but distraction. Brace yourselves, my friends! The King is nigh!>

Something electric and wrong crackled in the air. The Justice Society spread out; other than the house, the prairie around them was empty, but every one of them suddenly felt surrounded. Clouds roiled in the sky, blotting out what little light there was.

{The Subtle Realms,} Sandman’s voice sounded a little hysterical filtered through his gasmask. {The Veil of Tears has fallen around us.}

A rising pitch of anticipation caused them all to break out into cold sweats.

Hourman reached out for Black Canary, took her hand, and gave her a reassuring wink. “I think Wes means to say we’re not in Kansas anymore.” And silently he mouthed to her, Hang on, baby.

Before she could smile back her gratitude, Johnny Sorrow let loose with a cackle and the sky above them split in a dozen places, huge tears in the fabric of reality beyond which were scintillating colors and indescribable, fractal forms.

“Down on your knees, heroes!” cried Johnny Sorrow. “The King will have you now!”

Bubbling up from the spaces between reality, emerging from someplace sideways yet at the same time engulfing the heaven and earth, came the King of Tears, an undulating, putrescent mass of tentacles and eyestalks, suckers and barbs, and a thousand-million eyes, all of them weeping ooze, lidless and staring straight through them!

Someone screamed.

<Hold fast, my friends!> Yelled Doctor Fate, his cape snapping in the wind. The King of Tears seemed to emerge out of holes in reality all around them, encompassing all of creation. <Now, drive him back through the Veil of Tears!>

That was all they needed. At once, Captain Marvel launched himself off the ground and flew fists-first at a large globular mass of the King. The Spectre swelled instantly ten times his normal size, and though he bestrode the sky like a titan, he was still dwarfed by the immensity of the King. Doctor Fate sent ankh-shaped blasts up at their foe and Green Lantern loosed a barrage of green flame at him. Hourman, Black Canary, Sandman, Wildcat and Doctor Midnight charged up the steps of the house, going after Johnny Sorrow.

<Back, you abomination!> Doctor Fate rose up into the sky, hands extended before him, making arcane symbols with his fingers. <You will have none of us!>

Tentacles wrapped around the arms and legs of the Spectre, whose face was stretched in a soundless howl. Captain Marvel rebounded off the scabbed and cankerous flesh of the King. Green Lantern’s flame had little effect, too. A high-pitched, whining sobbing emanated from the King, a sound of such loss and despair that it nearly drove them mad.

Doctor Midnight knelt by the Flash, trying to revive him. Johnny Sorrow had fled into the house, Hourman, Sandman and Black Canary hot on his heels.

“Jay! Jay, come back to me, buddy,” Midnight shook the Flash by the shoulders, trying to rouse him from the seizure that seemed to be upon him.

The Flash was gasping, his eyes wide and staring. “Sorrow… my god…! N-n-not human anymore…” His face twisted in a rictus of pain, but he clutched at Midnight’s arms. “D-d-d-don’t look at him… His f-f-face… Death!”

Doctor Midnight looked up into the house, where his friends had chased Johnny Sorrow, unaware of what awaited them.

Inside the house, Hourman, Black Canary and Sandman followed the fleeing Johnny Sorrow.

“Get back here,” Hourman roared. A double dose of Miraclo coursing through him, he outdistanced the others and caught up to Sorrow in a large, empty room, spinning him around, arm cocked for a punch.

“You’ve caught me, hero!” Sorrow ripped his mask away from the empty air, revealing what lay behind it to Hourman. “Or have I caught you?”

Hourman screamed and collapsed.

Sandman tore around the corner, and saw with horror the true face of Johnny Sorrow. The sight of it stabbed through him, eviscerated his psyche and hollowed out places of his soul. He fell over the body of Hourman, flopping and bleeding from his eyes, ears and nose, spared instant death only because the full view was obscured by his goggles.

Black Canary piled in behind them, gasping at the sight of her downed teammates.

“Behold, Black Canary!” Johnny Sorrow called to her, arms flung wide. “Look upon me and know your doom!”

Unaware of her danger, she started to look at him, but was distracted by something behind her: an owl glided into the house, raising its voice in an ear-splitting screech. It saved her life. She put her hands over her ears and bowed her head, just as a blackout bomb exploded nearby, plunging everything into darkness. Doctor Midnight burst into the room, knocking Black Canary aside, and barreled into Johnny Sorrow. The two of them fell together in the pitch blackness of the swirling miasma of the blackout bomb.

Outside the house, the King of Tears battled the Justice Society. Captain Marvel was caught up in the grip of a dozen squamous appendages, his muscles straining against them with all his prodigious might, but he was a fly caught in the web of a universe-spanning spider.

<Free the Captain!> Cried Doctor Fate, blasting away at an eyestalk circling him. <If the King devours him, we are lost!>

Green Lantern flew between two snapping pincers, and reared up by Captain Marvel. The beam of his power ring slashed at the roots of the King’s tentacles, to no avail. One of the squirming things lashed out, striking Green Lantern a glancing blow, and sending him tumbling out of the sky.

“NO MORE!”

The sound made the very air vibrate. It was the Spectre. Already enormous, he became engorged, ineffable and somehow more puissant. Even Doctor Fate drew back in fear at the transformation of his teammate.

<Corrigan, no…!> Fate moaned, sensing what was happening: Jim Corrigan was allowing the Spirit of Vengeance, which he contained and tempered with his own humanity, free reign. Such an act, Fate knew, would likely destroy the soul of the Spirit’s host.

“THE KING IS TOO STRONG. IT IS THE ONLY WAY,” moaned the Spectre, his voice hollow and sounding nothing like their teammate. Reaching out, the Spectre grabbed the form of Captain Marvel in one hand and yanked him out of the King’s grasp. The Captain tore free, tentacles snapping and spraying ichor. The giant hand opened, and Captain Marvel dropped, stunned and weakened to the ground. “NOW MEET A FOE YOUR EQUAL, KING OF TEARS!”

The blistering mass of the King writhed and gurgled in anticipation, reforming new tendrils , wriggling crazily as they tasted the air.

The battle between titans was joined.

In the darkness of Johnny Sorrow’s house, Black Canary stumbled blindly. A panic was upon her. Rex and Wes were down and flopping on the floor, like Jay on the porch outside. Doctor Midnight was in the room somewhere, grappling with the villain who had laid out three of them already. Doctor Midnight, whose only talent was that he could see in the dark.

In that moment of greatest darkness, the man who could see most clearly was their greatest hope.

Rolling around on the floorboards of the house, wrapped in combat with Johnny Sorrow, Charles McNider teetered on the precipice of madness. Thanks to the accident that had robbed him of his sight, he saw in a different spectrum than anyone else, and this is what saved his life, what allowed him to look upon the horror of Johnny Sorrow’s true face and not perish. But he was not unscathed. The depthless, spiraling void of the man’s face threatened to plunge Midnight into a drooling and gibbering insanity from which he would fall forever and never find his way back. In seconds, he realized, he would succumb. But Sorrow was part of this somehow, the tether that linked the King to reality, and he had to be stopped.

“Charles!” Dinah Drake Lance’s voice rose out of the darkness. “I’m here! What do I do…?”

She felt something grasp her ankle, insistent but not menacing.

{The mask,} Sandman breathed, alive only because the goggles of his gasmask kept him from a full view of Sorrow’s face. The horror of his dream came back to him. {His power is in his mask!}

Black Canary had heard the mask hit the floor when Doctor Midnight knocked Sorrow over. She went down on her knees and began casting around for it.

On a ground broken and cracked from the titanic struggle, Doctor Fate sheltered the injured Green Lantern and Captain Marvel as their teammate battled the other-dimensional god, and wondered if Jim Corrigan had made a fatal miscalculation: had they just delivered enough power to the King to fully manifest?

The Spectre screamed in pain and despair.

Johnny Sorrow sensed the impending victory of his King. He gained the advantage of Doctor Midnight, straddled him and with both hands on his throat began throttling him. “It’s over heroes! The Day of Lamentation is coming and there is nothing you can do to---.”

“Oh, cry me a river,” Black Canary interrupted him. She reared up behind him, picking him out in the darkness by his voice and in her hands, found seconds ago on the floor, she raised up the mask of Johnny Sorrow and brought it down hard against his back, shattering it into pieces.

Sorrow screamed.

The King of Tears screamed.

Doctor Midnight drove his fists into the midsection of Johnny Sorrow, throwing the villain off of him, and rolled away.

The Spectre’s mouth opened wide, wider, and impossibly wider still. It gaped like the maw of a black hole, expanding to fill the sky and as it grew, it drew into it the form of the King of Tears. The mouth was everywhere, and the mortals watching had to turn away from the sight that their brains could not comprehend. The last they saw was the tentacles of the King writhing from the event horizon of the Spectre’s maw, like a mouth full of noodles slurped down a cosmic gullet.

Quiet descended. The Subtle Realms receded and the Veil of Tears once again drew back across reality.

On the porch of the sad, old house, Jay Garrick’s breathing steadied. His mind cleared and he got shakily to his feet. From out of the house came his teammates, leading a prisoner. Hourman and Sandman, his mask off and hat gone, looked the worse for wear, but Black Canary looked relieved and Doctor Midnight’s cape was draped over the dejected form of Johnny Sorrow, hiding his face from the world.

Doctor Fate, Green Lantern and Captain Marvel gathered around a small, solitary figure on the prairie. The Spectre, shrank to his usual size, was on his knees in the dust, slouched, head bent and shoulders slumped.

“Jim,” Captain Marvel’s voice was low and tentative, as if he was unwilling to break the almost solemn silence.

The pale face of the Spectre turned up to them. In his eyes gleamed a struggle still not quite won. They began to overflow with tears that glittered with the luminescence of another dimension.

<Alan, quickly! Capture those tears!> Commanded Doctor Fate.

Green Lantern did not hesitate. His ring flared to life. As the tears flowed down the face of the Spectre, they were funneled into a vial of green energy. Alan Scott caught every last drop, then sealed it up and clutched it tight.

<Hide them, Green Lantern,> warned Doctor Fate. <Those tears contain a universe of woe.>

Green Lantern nodded, accepting the essence of the vanquished god.

“I AM TAINTED…” the Spectre muttered, staring at them, looking stricken and lost.

Doctor Fate swept his golden cape aside and knelt by his teammate. <Jim, let me help you. Come to my Tower, Inza and I---.>

“JIM IS NOT HERE NOW,” moaned the Spectre, bowing his head, putting his hands over it. “I AM LOST… LOST…”

The JSAers looked helpless before him.

Johnny Sorrow sucked in a breath and flinched in Doctor Midnight’s grasp. “No, I don’t want to go back!” He groaned. “Help me, heroes. Help meeee…!”

The form of the villain suddenly became insubstantial and Doctor Midnight backed away in surprise as his cape fell to the ground. He picked it up, finding no trace of their prisoner. Johnny Sorrow had vanished.

“Well, good riddance,” Black Canary wrapped her arms across her chest, against the chill November wind drifting across the prairie. “I hope that’s the last we see of him.”

Hourman caught her up in a hug, holding her in a wordless embrace.

“I MUST LEAVE.” The Spectre announced, standing and looking around as if unsure of his surroundings. “I MUST PURGE THIS TAINT…” He stood and began rising off the ground. His teammates watched as he floated into the clear, darkening sky. “O, CORRIGAN, THE PRICE WAS TOO HIGH…” His form dwindled into the distance, past a haze of stars just starting to come out.

Alone with each other on that dusty prairie, the JSA stood victorious but felt anything but triumphant.

“It’s not over, is it?” The Flash was the first to speak, to voice what they were all feeling. “The war may be done, but our fight is never ending. This…” he gestured vaguely around them, at the house, at the sky where the King of Tears had battled the Spectre. “This is what we can expect from now on?”

All of their faces showed the grief and despair at the task still ahead of them.

“We all heard what the Spectre just said,” Wesley Dodds reminded them. “We know the price is too high. The only question is, can we pay it?”

It hung in the air a moment, as they each considered it in their own way. They thought of their wives and husbands and unborn children and futures unrealized. They considered a lifetime of struggle before them, and happiness deferred.

“If not us, then who?” asked Captain Marvel simply. And that was what they needed to hear. They smiled and nodded at this simple wisdom. They were the Justice Society. They would do what needed to be done.

“Alright, we still have a long night ahead of us, folks,” Doctor Midnight reminded them gently, as the tension drained away from them. “We still have to clear out of the Perisphere tonight.”

Doctor Fate beckoned them all closer, as he raised his hands for the transport spell.

“It’s a long time until morning,” Hourman wore a wide grin. “I say we leave the work until tomorrow, and have ourselves a little moving-out party tonight.” There was a twinkle in his eye as he rubbed his hands together. “But we better get back quick, before Wildcat drinks the rest of the beer.”

As they vanished from that lonely prairie, beside that sad house, the memory of tears was banished--- for a time!--- by the lingering sound of laughter and simple, tentative hope that tomorrow would be a better day.