Cosmic-Riptide

When I was very young (three or so) I used to have a reoccurring nightmare. I dreamt that I would wake up in the middle of the night, wander downstairs, and switch on the TV in our pitch black living room. There I would sit and watch a Claymation show about a blue eyed, pumpkin-headed, boy playing outside by himself. Moments later a tall, lanky, old man would enter the scene bearing a toy, and beckoning to the boy with a finger the two would wander off-screen together. The scene would then cut the a close-up of the boys dismembered body, focusing on his face. His eyes would fall out of his head, at which point I’d wake up terrified, run down the hall, and jump into my parents’ bed.

Looking back, the interesting thing about this reoccurring dream is that even though it always played out the same way, the old man always had a different toy, like he had to keep finding new ways to get the child to drop his guard. I believe there was one with a ball, one with a bike, another with a see-saw, etc.

The one that stands out most in my memory is the one where the toy was a swing. I believe I remember it so vividly because of the unnatural way the swing moved. The old man entered and later exited the screen while riding the swing, as if it were suspended from the arm of a moving crane. The swing itself never once swayed though, rather it stayed completely ridged.

This piece was meant to be for Halloween of 2016 when “Channel Zero: Candle Cove” brought the memory racing back to the forefront of my mind. But seeing as October is always a hectically busy month for me, I wasn’t able to actually draw it until the following October.

Having moved into a second story apartment, I wasn’t able to have a Jack-o’-lantern this year (no place to put it outside, and our cat would have destroyed it if he was left alone with it) so I used the time I would have spent designing and carving a pumpkin to draw and mostly color this.  Then, time ran out again, and I only just now got around to finishing it.

The old man was less alien looking in my dream but no less creepy. I don’t remember much about his face (just that it was misshapen, and emotionless).

Textures are from textures.com save for the fingerprint which came from shmector.com