This story began with Nightmask boating about in an icy waste, when some tribal types pulled up to him and suggested he row in a specific direction. A bit later, he was on a tropical isle, where he spied this magnificent flying bird. After he saw it, it transformed into a beautiful woman, who decided to have her way with Keith. Of course, once he realized who it was, Keith freaked out.

Waking up, he was met by his sister, Teddy, who had sensed his panic reaction in the dream. Curious about what was going on, they went to talk to Doctor Ballad about the whole deal, who himself was acting odd. Challenging him about this, Keith witnessed him and Teddy transforming into werewolves, and the two began to tear him apart. With that, Keith woke up. Again.

This left poor Keith somewhat out of sorts, as this wasn't the first dream-within-a-dream he'd had in the last few weeks. As such, this fouled up a fencing match he was having with Lita Mercado that day, as his mind simply wasn't there. Lita managed to beat him cold. Laughing at him all the way to a nearby bench, Lita asked him what the deal with him was, since he usually didn't suck that bad.

After he described the dreams he'd been having to her, Lita told Keith that it sounded like he was running away from something, instead of facing it down. Later on, Doctor Ballad essentially mirrored that opinion when the two were checking out several museum exhibits. So, that night, Keith decided to try to do just that while he was dreaming. It didn't start out troublesome, however.

Keith wandered out into a bizarre cityscape which, at first empty, was suddenly filled by a carnival of all the favorite fictional characters of his youth. He saw Bert (from Sesame Street), the Cat in the Hat, Jason (from Friday the 13th), Doctor Doom, and more. Though these fictional figures were amicable at first, they went bad after midnight, and began to menace poor Keith.

After he accidentally killed some sort of executioner, Keith's fictional favorites got downright nasty: Bert pulled a gun, Jason came after him with a switchblade, and the Cat in the Hat turned surly with his claws. Of course, there were just too many of them, and Keith managed to get away while they tripped over each other. Keith then fled into the night, though Bert took a few parting shots at him.

Hitching a ride in the back of a passing truck, Keith then ran into that woman from his other dream, and when she kissed him, they were moved over to a deserted beach. Keith enjoyed this for a bit, until his fears caught up with him again, and he fled from his dream woman anew. He did this because he didn't want to hurt her; he believed that everybody that he loved wound up getting dead.

Like his parents. Of course, she finally caught up to him, and refused to let him go, at which point Keith woke up. He was surrounded by Teddy, Doctor Ballad, and Lita Mercado, who wanted to make sure he was okay. By listening to him while he slept, they pretty much got the gist of what was going on: Keith was smitten with Lita, and was scared of loving anybody, because he might lose them.

Of course, Keith didn't like having this shared amongst everybody, and was rather embarrassed about the whole thing...

After six weeks, it had all come down to this day. He finally had her measure, and as such, Keith had a hunch about how to deal with Angela Saltzberg and her irrational fear of driving. Working her through several exercises throughout the dream, Keith finally managed to make a breakthrough, allowing her to feel somewhat in control behind the wheel again. With that, he left her dream - for the last time.

After Doctor Ballad scheduled several follow-up appointments with Angela to make sure she was, in fact, all right, he came to Keith and Teddy with a proposition. You see, he was going to attend a special conference down in New Orleans, and he wanted them to attend. This was, of course, because he wanted to make his findings about Keith and his dream powers public, in order to help people.

Not too sure about this, Keith grudgingly agreed. After all, the only person that could possibly lose if his powers were made public was, of course, Keith. Teddy wasn't too happy about the sudden trip, either, as she had a date with Frank Mercado; while teaching him to read, you see, the two had grown rather close. However, knowing it was for the best, she, too, agreed to go.

After a brief workout with Lita, Keith then went to get a haircut, since he was going to be scrutinized by a large percentage of the nation's psychologists that weekend, and wanted to look his best. When he arrived, Keith found that his normal hair stylist was gone, only to be replaced by the mysterious Martine, a woman who, after cutting Keith's hair, took a sample for later use...

Meanwhile, Doctor Ballad received a letter informing him that his mother had recently passed away. Unfortunately, it arrived somewhat late, so he wasn't present for the funeral. This, combined with the bizarre streak of ill luck he'd been having that day, started to arouse irrational fears from his past. You see, Doctor Ballad was from Haiti, and had gone into medicine to avoid the 'silly' elements in his life.

Elements like voodoo. You see, his mother was a mambo, a sort of priestess of voodoo, but Lucian nonetheless didn't want to believe in such things, preferring the logical (and proven) methods of modern medicine. Nonetheless, old fears and beliefs die hard, and this whole bad luck episode was beginning to take its toll on Ballad's steely resolve.

This was because it was supposedly extremely bad luck to miss the funeral of a parent, in voodoo beliefs, and doing so would curse the man (or woman) that did so. Ballad tried to simply just call this rubbish, but his long string of silly and pointless accidents during the day were just too bizarre to be mere coincidence. However, knowing that he had work to do, he tried to put his fears behind him.

Going out to relax later, Keith, Teddy, and Doctor Ballad tried to get ice cream floats, but a long string of silly little accidents put a damper on their evening. Giving up after a time, the three simply went home to call it a day. That night, while asleep, Keith had a bizarre dream involving his being consumed by a giant, albino snake, and then running into a voodoo ceremony within the beast.

A ceremony led by somebody that looked just like Doctor Ballad. Wishing to confront Lucian about this the next day, Keith nonetheless let it go, since the poor man seemed too wound up about things as it was. Things just got worse for the good Doctor, however, as he accidentally grabbed the wrong brief case while waiting for his plane at the D.C. airport with Keith and Teddy.

Telling them to go ahead (since they were already on the plane), Doctor Ballad went back into the airport proper in order to track down the brush salesman who he'd apparently switched cases with. Once he got off the plane, however, Doctor Ballad was dragged off by two rather surly looking fellows, one of which was armed, to parts unknown...

He had that nightmare again. The second day in a row, Keith dreamed of being swallowed whole by a giant, albino snake. Once he was in the belly of the beast, however, Keith fought with the voodoo priest that looked just like Doctor Ballad, who mocked Keith for believing that he was, in fact, Lucian. The priest then began to throttle Keith, who finally woke up in a New Orleans airport.

He was waiting for Lucian, who had to catch a second flight to New Orleans, since that bizarre brief case switching delayed him enough to make him miss the first. Once he arrived, he woke Keith up, and the two made their way to their hotel. However, all was apparently not right with Doctor Ballad, as he was acting strangely. His normal, stoic self was replaced with a rather emotive persona today.

However, upon arriving at their hotel, Keith and Doctor Ballad were greeted by Teddy, who was waiting there for them, and several associates of Doctor Ballad's and Keith's parents. After exchanging greetings, his associates left, and Doctor Ballad started making rather... salty comments about the pair, particularly the female one. This definitely surprised Keith and Teddy.

Once they'd settled in, the trio decided to go tour the city, eventually arriving in the French Quarter. They spent most of the day there, then, while Keith and Teddy became more and more suspicious about Ballad. Later, when they walked by a local cemetery, Doctor Ballad went inside, only to be followed by Keith and Teddy, when he suddenly disappeared. Of course, they weren't alone in there.

Looking for Ballad, Keith and Teddy ran into Martine, that 'hair stylist' Keith met in D.C., though he didn't recognize her at first. Once she'd vanished, the Remsens finally tracked down Doctor Ballad, who was using chalk to etch x's on the tombstone of one Marie Leveau, some infamous voodoo priestess from times past. When questioned, Ballad simply claimed this was a local custom.

With that, the trio went home to prepare for the conference. That next day, while speaking to the assembled psychologists, Doctor Ballad went off, claiming that standard psychiatry was a joke compared to the proven results one could achieve with voodoo practices. This caused a massive uproar, especially since Doctor Ballad then insulted the collected professionals right afterwards.

In fact, after he stormed off, his associates followed to see what he was up to. When he spied them, he beat up the one and hit on his wife, only to leave after this in a hurry. That night, Keith tried to enter his dreams to figure out what the heck was happening in his head, only to find Ballad's mind locked up tight; no matter what he did, Keith couldn't get in.

So, going to sleep again, Keith encountered Martine once more, who he recognized this time. She passed him a note, and then Keith was attacked by that albino snake, that Damballah, forcing him to fight it off for several minutes, at which point it disappeared. Finally having a chance to read that note, Keith saw that it implied that he should meet Martine in that cemetery at midnight.

Waking up again, Keith saw that it was quarter till midnight, so he got dressed and made his way to the cemetery. When midnight struck on the local clocks, Martine materialized from nowhere, and when confronted, she admitted that she had been the person messing around with Keith's dreams. However, she claimed that she was only trying to tell Keith something important.

Since he hadn't got it yet, she explained that the Ballad that he and Teddy had been tooling around with was not, in fact, Doctor Lucian Ballad, but instead his twin brother, Tullius, a powerful voodoo priest. He was trying to wreck his brother's name before returning to Haiti to kill him personally. He'd already dragged Lucian off to his ceremonial base there several days ago (his thugs at the airport).

Though it took him a little while before he finally bought it, Keith eventually put two and two together, and ran back to get ahold of his sister, since she was in danger each moment she was in proximity to the evil Tullius. However, by the time he got back to the hotel, Keith found out that Lucian's evil twin brother had already walked off with her...