In Night Cry we follow a writer named Teresa, she fancies herself a witch and runs a book store that specializes on occult and paranormal books.
She manages so summon Laura, a demon that loves anime, and Laura is willing to concede Teresa one wish, and one wish only.
The problem is, Teresa does not know what to wish for. At the same time, people are disappearing around town.
I like this comic.
Overall the whole thing is shrouded in mystery, from start to finish, and the way the author tells the story can come-off as confusing as the plot itself.
It is quite an artpiece, and the art is great too.
Now, at a simple glance, the plot seems quite simple, silly, even. But truth is, it is quite convulted, and things such as time travel and paradoxes are not out of the question when it comes to theories.
Go ahead and give it a read if you like mysterious occult stories, it's really nice all around.
Spoilers ahead, theories on the plot
Here's my attempt at understanding the plot:
Cristina is the first missing girl, Matilda the teenage otaku, Laura the demon, Teresa the 'witch'.
We can gather that it is somehow Teresa's fault that the ghost is taking people away, and that she feels guilty over this, hence her constant gloom and doom. We can also gather that by the end the ghost was dispelled, whether her wish was to dispel the ghost, or if her wish was to return the people that had been kidnapped is hard to tell, but this is most likely what her wish was.
There's also the fact that the heroine dies in the in-universe story 'night crawl 7', and that we can assume this heroine is the ghost.
Now, Matilda. Matilda knows more than she lets on, we know one of the missing girl's name was Gloria since this is written under the skateboard that's not Matilda's, and we know that Matilda thinks 'they could have been friends'. There is more to this than she lets on, why would Matilda own the skateboard and carry it everywhere, and what's the deal with Matilda's mom?
There's also the fact that seemingly a cult formed around the ghost that's kidnapping people, an internet cult of sorts that somehow has an effect in the real world. The two goth girls tearing down posters seem to be part of this cult. This is important because it seems Matilda considered joining the ghost, just like Gloria did. One must wonder if the girls taken by the ghost didn't just go willingly, disappeared from the world without a trace, as many suicidal people wish they could do.
It is clear that by performing the ritual, Teresa expected to summon the big furry demon seen in the last Night Crawl issue, but instead got stuck with Laura, and if you take into consideration the 'wish' she asked Laura when drinking, about 'making every asshole disappear', it would be easy to conclude that Theresa is frustrated with people, and life.
Teresa wanted to summon that big furry demon, by why? Because she wanted to become the witch with her pink demon, and that was most likely not just to prove to the world that the paranormal exists.
Maybe she wished, in the past, for the ghost to appear so people would see beyond material reality (she mentions being frustrated with this), but this failed because even with a ghost kidnapping people in the streets, people just kept being skeptic and the world kept being the same. The only thing she accomplished was to make people disappear.
As for the 'thing' watching from the woods, it is really hard to tell what it is. In the last frames we see that Teresa's angry eye resembles the eye in the woods, but I cannot make the connection here.
One thing is certain, that eye was watching her when she summoned Laura, and also not long before the ghost appeared. Maybe the eye has something to do with magic being something real in this world, hard to tell, I'm getting tired by now.
By the end of the comic Teresa is looking for Matilda, she does not know where Matilda lives, but Teresa is finally willing to give Matilda the last issue of Night Crawl, probably because she is 'done' with this whole thing and actually wants to befriend Matilda now and is dropping her ideals about making everyone believe in magic, and all that;
But Teresa cannot find Matilda, she ends up in the cinema and sees the poster for the movie the first missing girl (Cristina) watched, and begins to cry. This suggests that Cristina probably never returned, she went missing and that's that, Teresa is guilty about this.
For the goth girls laughing at Teresa, no idea, this is getting long and this plot is really obscure. It is easy to figure out that, after she threw the skateboard, something happened.
What happened is a bit hard to tell, maybe Teresa disappeared because she was not really real, like the ghost, maybe the forest consumed the whole city cause it was not real, I honestly don't know, but it is weird to see both the skateboard and the magazine on the floor like that.
And through the whole comic we get a few images where the forest seem to be crawling in and consuming everything, almost as if none of this existed.
I guess a theory could be that this is all just Matilda's doing, but well, I don't know.