In Houma, the Swamp Thing pays Abby a surprise visit in her home by generating a body from the flora in her bathroom plumbing. He expresses his worry that Constantine's silence has left him with too many unanswered questions. Abby is unfortunately more concerned about him staining her carpet, and the possibility of neighbours spotting him. The Swamp Thing realizes that he is being an inconvenience, and sadly returns to the swamp.
In Gotham City, Constantine recruits the depressed, heavily-drinking Steve Dayton, reassuring him that the current Crisis is nothing to worry about; it's what comes after that should trouble him. Outside, they encounter Batman, who warns them to go inside due to the chaotic weather the Crisis is producing. However, upon realizing that Steve is actually Mento of the Doom Patrol, he leaves them alone.
Meanwhile, in the Houma swamp, a serial killer who calls himself the Bogeyman claims his latest victim. The killer remembers all of his one hundred and sixty-five victims by their eyes and the order in which he killed them. A shortcut the Bogeyman takes brings him into confrontation with the Swamp Thing, who found the body of his victim earlier. Unable to fight or flee him, the murderer comes to believe that the Swamp Thing is his replacement as Bogeyman. As he struggles to escape from the repeatedly regenerating creature, the killer falls into quicksand and drowns. He finds himself in total darkness, as the spirits of his victims close in on him.
As the Swamp Thing broods once more over his mentor having apparently forgotten him, Abby receives a call from Constantine, telling her to have her lover meet him in San Miguel, California, for the "last stop before the finale."
Tropes
- The Alcoholic: Mento. At this point in the pre-Crisis continuity, he's feeling depressed over losing his Doom Patrol teammates, and his mental amplification helmet is beginning to take its toll on his mind (a process that events in Issues 49 and 50 will exacerbate), so he's turned to drink.
- Arc Words: "Just think of a number" is a game the Bogeyman plays with his unsuspecting soon-to-be victim; see under Reminiscing About Your Victims. It's also what the spirits of his victims taunt him with as they pay him back after his death.
- Being Watched: After Constantine telephones Abby with his message for Swamp Thing, he tells her she can get back to her book. This suggests that he can see, through magical or psychic means, what she was up to at the moment he called.
- Eye Motifs:
- Every time the Bogeyman hears, or even thinks of, an integer between one and the number of his latest victim, he automatically sees in his mind a blue palette close-up of the corresponding victim's eyes.
- When the Swamp Thing finds the killer's 165th victim, he compassionately closes the man's eyes.
- The Swamp Thing's eyes, in the scenes where he confronts the killer, often appear in close-up, albeit in full colour because they aren't flashbacks of the victims' eyes.
- His Name Is...: As the quicksand claims him, the Bogeyman proudly tells the Swamp Thing how many people he's killed, and begs him to tell the world who he was. However, just as he's about to reveal his real name, he goes under.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Not only does the Bogeyman die without getting to reveal his name and thus achieve a posthumous notoriety, he also has to spend eternity tortured by his victims.
- Murderer P.O.V.: All scenes featuring the Bogeyman are from his perspective, so the reader never sees his face.
- No Name Given: As with Nukeface earlier, the comic never reveals the Bogeyman's real name.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: When the killer first encounters the Swamp Thing, he takes him for a local Cajun, and thinks of him as a "goddamn coonass" deceiving him with magic. Although some works employ this trope gratuitously, here its use is justified: the Bogeyman's racism, while not central to his motive for killing, ties in thematically with the earlier Southern Change / Strange Fruit story about the ongoing legacy of American slavery.
- Razor Apples: The Bogeyman killed his first victim, his elementary school janitor, by mixing ground-up glass into his coffee.
- Red Skies Crossover: With the Swamp Thing's mention of red skies, odd weather patterns and shifting constellations, as well as Constantine and Dayton seeing the former two phenomena first hand, together with a Batman cameo, there's somewhat more of a Crisis tie-in than the single offhand reference in Fish Story, but still not anything like a full-fledged plot crossover. That will come in Issue 46.
- Reminiscing About Your Victims: The Bogeyman remembers his individual victims' eyes vividly, and when prompted with the victim's number, describes them poetically. "How can they call me callous," he asks his soon-to-be latest kill, "when I remember every single pair of eyes?"
- Serial Killer: The Bogeyman falls under the "Mission Based" category, as described on the trope page. He sees taking lives as a job, a responsibility, which he inherited from his first victim, the supposed previous Bogeyman.
- Shout-Out: Constantine finds the bizarre colour and lightning patterns in the sky "a bit like 2001." He's referring specifically to the psychedelic "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" sequence towards the end.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Discussed. Although he'd initially been fine with Constantine not disturbing him anymore, now that several weeks have gone by without a word from him, the Swamp Thing finds himself wondering why "the trail...just peters out" after all the hints and warnings John had given him about the coming evil. And although Abby tells him he should be glad, he finds himself wishing Constantine would get back in touch (as indeed he does, at issue's end).
- You Kill It, You Bought It: The killer views "the Bogeyman" as a unique job title; that is, only one person can be the Bogeyman at a time. So after he made his first kill—his elementary school janitor, whom he believed was the Bogeyman—he figured someone else had to fill the position, so it may as well be him. In the present, when he finds he can't escape the Swamp Thing, it occurs to him that the creature is meant to be his replacement.
