| The Darkness: Close Your Eyes | |
|---|---|
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| Writer(s): |
Aleš Kot |
| Penciller(s): |
Marek Oleksicki |
| Colorist(s): |
Sloane Leong |
| Cover by: |
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| Published: |
June 4, 2014 |
The Darkness: Close Your Eyes is a one-shot comic book issue published by Top Cow Productions.
Synopsis[]
Los Angeles more than a hundred years ago: a different place, yet the sun still burns down the ground and the oilfields flow. This is a story of another Estacado. This is a story of love. This is a story of death.
Characters[]
Plot Summary[]
It's morning in California, march 1912 and Adelmo Estacado wakes up in his bed. He takes out the picture of his fiance, Emma Cayce and looks at it. In three days, Adelmo will be twenty-one years old, he thinks to himself. He's then called by his stepfather, Julian to feed his mother as she can't feed itself. Adelmo's real father raped his mother and cut name into her chest with a piece of sharp glass as he was doing it. Then he died while still inside her. Although, Adelmo's mother got better, she then met Julian and fell in love with him. One day, Julian slammed her head against the door too hard, leaving her in catatonic like state, not able to take care of herself.
After feeding his mother, Adelmo goes to oil rigs were he works six days a week, fourteen hours a day. Although the work is hard, it helps him to get enough money to take care of his family and get a meal. Later that day, Adelmo meets up with Emma in a grass field. Emma would like her father to know about their relationship, but Adelmo is hesitant about this. Then Emma reassures Adelmo, that if her father forbid their relationship, they would run away together. After their meeting, Adelmo goes back to work, where he finds Emma's father, Martin Cayce, mesmerized by the beauty of the plains. This bores Adelmo.
In town, a kid calls Adelmo's mother a whore. Hearing this, Adelmo jumps on the kid and beats him up to the death with a rock. He then begins to smile and laugh. Suddenly, Adelmo feels a sharp pain in his neck. He feels the Darkness slowly coming alive in him. When he gets back home, Adelmo finds Julian passed out on the table, having spent all the money on alcohol. Adelmo keeps some to buy meat in the morning. Outside, half of their potatoes have rotten away. This confuses Adelmo as there was no rain. On Sunday, as usual, Adelmo meets up with Emma behind their garden. Emma comments, that Adelmo smells like oil and sweat and she likes it. Adelmo tells her about what her father told him regarding poetry. After hearing this, Emma promises to bring him a book the next day written by a man named Rimbalid.
Adelmo comes home later than usual, that night. For this, Julian beats him up. Adelmo thinks about killing him again, but he lets go of this thought as he's not like his father. Next day, new men arrive at the oil rig. One of them is familiar to Adelmo. Then that same man, lights up a cigarette just as a surge or gasses and oil surges up from the hole in the ground. The cigarette lights up the gasses and the oil, causing the entire oil rig to explode in flames. Adelmo then remembers, that he's been seeing the same man in his dreams. For this incident, Martin offers Adelmo five hundred dollars if he leaves the city and never comes back. Although Martin doesn't blame Adelmo for this incident and sees him as a worthy worker and a respectable young man, he forbids him marrying his daughter. Martin believes Adelmo will be the death of her. Adelmo tells him, that he's not his father, but Martin knows, that somethings don't change, especially in one generation.
Adelmo refuses the offer and comes back home to feed his mother, hoping that Emma will arrive soon to him. At home, he finds the entire house burning in open flame and drunk Julian in front of it. In a fit of rage, Adelmo attacks Julian. He tries to choke him, but Julian manages to overpower him and get on top of him. As Julian begins to beat him up, the Darkness awakens in Adelmo. With its power, he bites off Julian's cheek and proceeds to kill him. As Adelmo rises his eyes from Julian's dead body, he sees Emma, standing frozen in shock with a book in her hands. Adelmo then kisses her and the two run away. Emma suggests that they could go and stay with her strange uncle, Edgar. About ten miles away, they discover a barn and decide to rest there.
The two then have sex and as Adelmo impregnates Emma, he dies. Nine months later, while giving birth to their baby boy, Emma takes her last breath too.