by Doc Quantum
The living room looked festive, still adorned with the remnants of a successful Christmas party. Kathy, a beautiful young woman in her late twenties with long blonde hair, bid farewell to departing friends at the front door of her Florida townhouse.
“Thanks for coming, guys!” she called. “I had a great time!”
As the door closed behind her laughing and smiling friends waving goodbye, a sudden heaviness settled upon Kathy’s expression. Collecting empty cups and discarded wrapping paper, she became lost in her thoughts.
Abruptly, her face began to contort, freezing in place.
“What… what’s happening to me?” she cried, panic and confusion rising within her.
Kathy suddenly collapsed to the floor, her body seized by convulsions. Desperate to reach out for help, she found that her limbs were paralyzed. No matter what she tried, she could not move.
“Relax, Kathy. Take deep breaths. It’ll be over soon.”
“Who… who’s there?” Kathy said, struggling to speak as she listened to the voice in her head. The calm, deep voice resembled that of a doctor at her hospital bedside, but there was nobody else in the room. Who could be talking to her? Strangely enough, the voice also sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. “H-how are you in my head?”
“Calm down, Kathy. Just trust me, and let yourself go.”
As Kathy listened to the soothing voice within her mind, her panic gradually subsided. Ceasing the fight against her own body, her muscles started to relax. In a few tense moments, Kathy’s body began to push itself up from the floor, guided by an unseen presence.
“What’s happening to me?” whispered Kathy. “Wh-who are you?”
“My name is Dr. Emery Thomas Specter, Kathy. I thought I was lost forever, but somehow I’ve managed to cheat death once again. And now… I live on through you.”
Horror soon gripped Kathy as she realized her body was no longer under her control, and she had no idea how to get it back.
No! This can’t be happening! she thought, panicking. And though she tried to scream, no words came from her throat.
Emery Thomas Specter, now in full possession of Kathy’s body, threw his head back and laughed maniacally, shouting with her voice, “Doctor Spectro may be dead — but Spectra lives on! (*) Ha-ha-ha!”
[(*) Editor’s note: See Sentinels of Justice: Another Crisis on Earth-Four.]
The Master of Moods was no stranger to death and resurrection, for he had died once before, some twenty years prior. When he finally managed to regather his dissipated energies, it was in the form of five distinct but much smaller figures resembling the original Doctor Spectro. Each bore a unique hue, four exuding malevolence while the fifth, with a serene shade of purple, radiated kindness rather than wickedness.
It was this benevolent purple Spectro who befriended a young blonde girl named Kathy, who had been confined to a hospital due to an unknown ailment that had crippled her. Utilizing restorative rays developed during his past life as Dr. Emery Specter, the compassionate Spectro managed to heal young Kathy, giving her the ability to walk once again. Later, as the five entities coalesced into a singular Doctor Spectro, the virtuous essence of the purple Spectro endured. However, despite his attempts to combat the others’ malevolence with his own goodness, the overpowering force of evil still subsumed the rejoined body. (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See “The Five Faces of Doctor Spectro,” Captain Atom (Charlton) #81 (July, 1966).]
A grown-up Kathy would pay the price for her childhood friendship with the purple Spectro, whom she had thought to be an elf because of his size and strange appearance. It had been that tenuous connection from twenty years earlier, in which his light-based powers had healed her, that Doctor Spectro’s transient energy form was able to exploit for this, his second resurrection.
Deep within Kathy’s being, the true owner of the body screamed desperately but futilely, trapped and helpless, forever and ever.
The End