The Forest, The Chair, and Those Forsaken There by James McCulloch, Dan Charnley, Robin Jones

In the dark our mistakes come to visit us. Their torments keep us awake and when we finally sleep they haunt our dreams and twist our nights with nightmares. You find yourself in the woods, you see a cabin. In the cabin there is a man tied to the chair, tormented. He is staring at a door but begs you not to go to it.

In a hospital bed a man, Si, has a mysterious illness. Once a hot singer in a band he has a wasting disease and lies paralysed. Trapped in his body he is tortured by his mind. But other people are drawn into his dreamworld and there is something dreadful lurking there.

You were in my room. You’re my care worker. I know this doesn’t make sense but please believe me. You’re going to hear a voice from behind that door. Don’t go towards it. This place fucks with your head. You need to move towards me.”

The Forest, The Chair and Those Forsaken There

The Forest, The Chair and Those Forsaken There brings our night horrors to life. Is our nightmare losing everything? Being humiliated? Having those we have wronged take their revenge? Or maybe it is losing our youth and vitality, our body or our mind.

James McCulloch talks in his notes for the comic about his mental health and the struggles he has faced feeling like “a prisoner in my own mind”. Rooted in real life horror The Forest, The Chair and Those Forsaken There captures the chilling feeling we have after waking from a fading nightmare, the adrenaline still flowing and the cold sweat drying on our skin.

Dan Charnley‘s art moves from soft daylight to an inky world of dreams. Spattered and stained, it evokes the musty, rotten air of the forest of nightmares. Robin Jones lettering fits this mood perfectly.