WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for DC Horror Presents: The Conjuring: The Lover #1 from Scott Snyder, Denys Cown, Chris Sotomayor and Becca Carey, on sale now.
With The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It out now, DC is exploring more of this malevolent universe through backstories in The Conjuring: The Lover. The first issue provides insight into the third film’s evil Occultist, but the back-up focuses on the dark past of Annabelle’s scariest demon: the Ferryman.
This spirit stunned fans in Annabelle Comes Home as it attacked young Judy in the Warrens’ house. The killer doll was trying hard not to end up encased so the Ferryman became one of her nastiest weapons, though they were all eventually stopped. However, this story reveals how unstoppable he was when he was operating freely in the rest of the world. He’s willing to torture people, breaking them mentally for years unlike the other ghouls who want instant kills.
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Here, a man named Everett is in a taxi and reveals how one simple mistake can haunt you for the rest of your life. He tells the driver he murdered everyone he loved and wants to repent. As a kid, he attended a funeral for an old woman named Ida but was egged on by bullies to commit a cruel sin. He stole a coin from Ida’s body, ignoring the tale about how it was passage, so the Ferryman could ship her soul into the afterlife.
Tradition has it that coins be placed over a deceased person’s eyes or in their mouth to pay the toll but if someone steals it, denying the ghoul his transporting fee, they’ll be cursed. And so, over decades, Everett finds himself facing tragedy after tragedy.
First, his parents are killed in their bedrooms after a carbon monoxide leak, then he gets into a car accident in high-school by slamming into a wall, and lastly, his wife and son die in his mature years. It’s only then he reconciles he’s being haunted by a spirit he unwittingly unleashed with his selfish ways.
The Ferryman doesn’t care about peer pressure; it just wants revenge. As such, he tracks the rare silver coin down as he used it to buy a toy back in the day, but he finds that it’s been smelted when he pulls up to a factory. He was going to toss it into the water as his research taught him that would absolve him of his crime, but now, he’s left back at square one.
He asks the man to take him somewhere else as he needs to find it but the kicker is, the driver reveals himself to be the Ferryman. The demon ends the story by telling the heartbroken and depressed man he’ll take him wherever he likes, so long as he pays. It’s inferred that he kills him but that’s not shown. However, this story illustrates how the Ferryman is pretty sadistic, loves mind games and shows why the Warrens would want him and his coins imprisoned in their vault.
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