The Dream Merchant #6

written by Nathan Edmondson
art by Anthony Hope-Smith

The Dream Merchant may not have much of a sense of humor about the near absurd narrative gyrations of this dream mythology, but Winslow certainly does:

"Stop the Gatekeeper.  Stop a being responsible for weaving worlds together with his waking dreams.  …Easy.  Stop the Gatekeeper.  Stop his nightmares from reaching my world.  I hardly know what that means."  (The Dream Merchant #6: 2)

An even more honest response might come from the mouth of now mutinous (and probably felonious) FBI Agent Coads:  "What just happened?" (13).  While only scattered sense can be reconstructed for the closing chapter of Edmondson's dream thriller, The Dream Merchant still manages some very fine and sincerely horrific moments.  Winslow is being burned away from the inside by his dream with the Gatekeeper, scorching his hair and steaming with pink dream energy.  It's a nightmare of its own that Anne must witness.  The destruction of the amulets, to send Winslow fully and waking into the Gatekeeper's imagination, isn't exactly a surprise, but Anne pulls it off with quiet resoluteness and just a few tears.  Winslow may be the hero, but Anne is the pulse of the story.

It's a pink saturated dream world, a contrast to the cool blues and greys of the waking world, but apparently it's not at all that simple.  The amulets shattered, Winslow's waking body sent hurtling into the Gatekeeper's world, one rock to the head of the villain, and all Winslow had to do was "wake up".  And so he does, bald and in a hospital bed.  At least I think that's Winslow, though the change of artist makes this less than definitive.  It may also be the Gatekeeper himself or perhaps even the Dream Merchant.  That the "voice" of the narrator is also less than clear makes his plea for "Ziggy" to wake up all the more confusing.  But Winslow and the Merchant also remain in that dream world, stranded after the loss of their anchors.  And so the cycle continues with only the most immediate crisis averted.  But The Dream Merchant was always a story of discovery, not conclusions, Winslow's story of how he became the apprentice of the Merchant, Anne's story of how she became the leader of a task force designed to fight nightmares.  And she never regretted not kissing him.  Bravo.