A Nightmare Reborn Ch. 04

Loomis was dead serious and on the level. Sean had to respect him for that. He slowly took the doctors hands off him and then wiped his face with the back of his arm. He said, "You could've said so without spitting on me."

Loomis was silent for a moment, and then laughed.

"Alright," Tessa said as Lori leaned against her, "We need to catch them. How do we do it?"

"First we gotta get out of here," Loomis thought out loud, "And then we have to lure them somewhere that can hold them."

The wall rumbled and shook again, pieces of it falling to the floor.

"Is there anyplace that could hold them?" Sean looked at the cracked wall.

Tessa held Lori close and thought for a moment. She remembered a story about Freddy Krueger, one of the older ones that people rarely talked about anymore. He had worked at the old power plant in the south end of town for a long time before it was shut down. There were old turbine housings and huge metal basins in the ground for big generators. Legend had it that Freddy had tossed a particularly difficult little girl down into one of the empty ones as a punishment before he killed her. The housings were large and inescapable, the walls smooth with no means for climbing. It was filled with the makings for a great trap.

"The old power plant," Tessa said, "There's plenty of old generator basins there. If we got them in there and then forced them inside one of those basins, they'd be stuck."

"Are you sure?" Loomis asked.

"Each basin was built to hold a fifteen foot tall generator," she said, "They're mounted in the ground, twenty feet deep, ten feet wide and at least three inches thick."

"How do you know that?" Sean asked.

"My grandpa worked for Springwood Power back in the day."

Loomis nodded. "That's not bad. Not bad at all."

"It's crazy," Sean added.

"Seems crazy may be our only choice," Loomis said and then turned to Lori. She wasn't crying anymore, but her face looked defeated and worn out. She glanced up at him, the whites of her eyes pink and irritated. He said, "Lori, can you go on?"

"Yes," she said quietly, her heart not anywhere near her reply.

"Lori, we need you," Loomis took her hand and squeezed gently, "Can you go on?"

"I think I can."

Loomis stared at her, still unconvinced.

"Yes," she said and stood up, her eyes fixed on his. She held his hand and he could see some of the fight in her return. He didn't expect much after what had just happened, but even the smallest amount of grit in Lori Campbell-Rollins was still more than most people could muster even in the best of circumstances.

"He was a brave man, Lori," he told her.

Tessa nodded and rubbed Lori's back with her hand gently.

Suddenly an alarm went off. It buzzed loudly in the small room and Sean realized that a fire had broken out somewhere in the building. He grabbed the shotgun he had given Loomis off the table, loaded a shell and blasted the gun locker open. Everyone covered their ears as the shot echoed painfully through the tiny room. He tossed a duffel bag to Loomis and grabbed another one for himself.

"I'm on guns," he shouted over the alarm, "You're on ammo."

***

Freddy Krueger waited in the shadows.

All around him, he could hear the souls of his children begging for mercy, begging for release and begging for death. Freddy knew he could grant any of those wishes if he felt like it. He knew he could do a lot of things to improve their situation if he had only felt like it. But he didn't. He wanted them to suffer. He wanted them to feel pain and know the agony of a burn that wouldn't cease.

For far too long had Freddy Krueger wasted here in the open void of the dreamscape, his power unused and his name forgotten. It had been far too long since he had tasted their fear on his tongue and relished in their screams. He was hungry for more, and the children he had collected last night only teased his insatiable need. He was ready. His time had come.

The loss of Mary had been unexpected, but not entirely unpredictable. She had been stronger than most in carrying him. He had used her up for all she was worth, and he had enjoyed it in every way. True, she was old. It was also true that her mind wasn't as fresh as a child's mind, but you had to work with what you got. Mary was a sacrifice, a new addition to his collection.

He could sense the two morons fighting each other, endlessly pounding and wrecking each other. The poor saps didn't really understand that this battle was one of the mind, and while they might have been able to claim the guts and blood Freddy Krueger would claim the glory. It was, after all, a plan of his very own design. They were all pawns in this game, all of them dispensable and disposable.

Floating before him in the dark was a chessboard. It was old and as ancient as the spirits that had imbued him with his power so long ago. Freddy watched the white pieces move against him as he counter moved, thoughtfully laughing to himself. His playing pieces were dark and demonic, gargoyles and minions of hell. His knights, in the shapes of Jason and Michael Myers, were doing precisely what he wanted them to do. Lying to the side of the board were two pawns, one belonging to him and the other to his opponent. The piece that had been Mary Stilfreeze was shriveled and worn out, her likeness crumbling as her soul screamed inside him.

The pawn that resembled Will Rollins rolled to one side and split open. A small burst of blood spattered the checkerboard pattern of the playing area in fat drops. Further back were the pieces he really wanted. The white knight of Matthew Loomis struggled with the two police pawns to protect the Queen that was Lori Campbell. Freddy rested his chin in his hand as he poked a bladed finger at Will's dead playing piece and stabbed it. He lifted the shattered pieces in the air, dripping with blood and flicked them away.

And then there was a presence in the dark with him, subtle and far away, just out of his reach, but a presence nonetheless. It was her.

"Where are you?" he whispered to his unseen opponent. He hadn't told Mary about her. He knew he had to be careful. His nemesis had not been around in a long time, and he hoped she would stay that way. If she did arrive, he imagined she would be a grown woman too old to do anything to threaten him. Still, he had not wanted to tempt fate. She had beaten him before, and he would not underestimate her now. So he kept her a secret for now.

He growled, "Where the fuck are you, bitch?"

The white pawns moved again.

Freddy chuckled.

***

Lori jumped as one of the killers outside the cracked wall was slammed against it again.

"Damn," Tessa looked at the crumbling concrete wall by the door, "They're still going at it."

The wall thundered yet again, and this time a huge chunk of the structure fell to the floor in a plume of dust, revealing a long spike of rebar and ruined concrete. Loomis wondered just how much punishment Jason and Michael would be able to withstand. A normal man would have been killed upon the first blow to the wall. But Jason and Michael Myers were not willing to forfeit this fight. For whatever reason, they were determined to destroy each other.

"They're going to destroy this entire building," Loomis muttered. He thought it might be a simple case of territoriality between super-killers. But he believed in his heart that they had been tricked just as he and the others had been. He wondered what dream Krueger had shown the black mind of Michael Myers to arouse him from his slumber and make the trip from wherever he had been hiding to Springwood.

Loomis had to admit that he was a little envious of Krueger in this respect. The dream killer had something no other person on the planet could hope to have: access the mind of Michael Myers, a first-hand look at what made him tick. Loomis would have given almost anything to be able to peer into that psyche, even for five minutes.

The wall smashed again.

"All right people," Sean hefted a full duffel bag of handguns over his shoulder. He had made a point to include the two Uzi automatic machine pistols the department had confiscated six months ago in a drug bust out by the old water tower. "Let's do this."

Loomis supported Tessa against him with his right arm and held Sean's sidearm in the left. Sean had shown him how to reload the gun as fast as he could, a crash course in basic firearms in about three minutes. Tessa had the duffle bag full of ammo slung over her free shoulder while Lori looked at the shotgun she had received. Her eyes were distant and glassy.

"Are you ready?" Loomis said to her.

"I have to be," she said and began loading the shotgun with shells.

"We gotta be quick," Sean told them as he took a small wad of C4 and pushed the compound into the door lock.

When Will closed the door, he had locked them into a key-only access room. There was no means of unlocking the heavy door without a key. The door was built to withstand most types of guns in the event of an emergency. The down side was that they couldn't blow the lock off as Sean had done the gun locker. So with the precision of a surgeon, even while Jason and Michael tossed each other around just outside the door, Sean set the white malleable explosive into the cracks and contours of the door lock.

"Get down and cover your ears," he said and flipped the table over on its side for cover. The four of them knelt down behind it as Sean chambered a round into his gun. They all covered their ears and prepared for the blast as something huge slammed against the door. He waited for only a second, turned and aimed his gun at the explosive. He squeezed the trigger and then threw himself down. The room filled with dust and smoke as the explosive tore the door apart in a deafening release, blowing it into the hall and taking most of the damaged wall with it.

"Go go go!" Sean screamed through the smoke and ran. Loomis hauled Tessa up and followed close behind as Lori brought up the rear. Debris was everywhere and Loomis realized he could barely see as they charged blindly into the cloudy soup of destruction. He hoped that Michael had been caught in the blast, maybe even torn apart. But he doubted it.

As Lori stepped through the doorway, she saw the remains of her husband. His body had been thrown away and down the hall back towards the holding cells. She couldn't see his face, and knew now that she didn't want to. His legs were twisted at odd angles and as the dust settled, she knew that they were shattered beyond repair. Not that it mattered anymore to Will. He had been dead long before the explosion threw him fifteen feet down the hall.

From under the smoking hulk of the door a burn-blackened hand reached out and grabbed her ankle hard. Lori screamed and aimed the shotgun. Her ears were already ringing from the blast, so when the gun went off she barely heard it. The arm attached to the hand spattered and rained blood. She felt the strong hand spasm and release. Lori ran.

Sean kicked open the exit door and they were all greeted by an empty stairwell and daylight. It was still that muted daylight Loomis had noticed when he first arrived, but it was welcome anyway. He looked around for any sign of Michael Myers or Jason and found nothing. Only an empty parking lot and three police cruisers lay ahead of them as they ran. He grunted under the weight of his load, but did as much as he could to help Tessa run. Behind him, Lori bolted out of the now smoking doorway and up the stairwell after them.

"Get in the fucking car," Sean bellowed at them and he threw the duffel of guns into the open trunk of his cruiser. Loomis angled Tessa to the trunk and she dropped the ammo bag in as well before slamming the trunk shut. With a grunt his lifted Tessa into his arms and fell into the back seat. Lori opened the passenger side door and sat down in the cruiser and Sean turned the key. The car roared to life and the tires squealed against the pavement as they backed out of the parking lot.

"The building is on fire," Lori told them.

As they drove by the front of the station, they saw the windows bright with firelight. The whole front reception area was flaming and burning beyond control. The windows exploded out from the pressure and sucked in the cool morning air to fuel the inferno. Sean gave one fleeting look to the police station and said goodbye to his friends. Tessa felt tears burning her eyes as she thought of all the men in there right now. Good people...

"At least they won't feel it," she whispered and leaned her head back against the back seat, "Son of a bitch..."

Loomis tried to remember the last time he and Mary had spoken civilly to each other, the last time they had even smiled at each other. He could accept the finality of death, but the fact that she had gone without there being an understanding between them hurt him deeply. She had died thinking he hated her. Loomis knew in his heart he didn't hate her. To the contrary, he had loved her very much and even after the divorce he had continued to love her despite himself. Perhaps that was where the long lasting bitterness had come from? Now, only in perfect retrospect, he thought so.

So Loomis silently forgave his wife and laid her to rest.

Lori thought of Will and tried to say goodbye, but she couldn't. She couldn't say goodbye until she had finished her business here in Springwood. There would be no resolution until she had answers and she had Freddy Krueger's severed head in her hands again. She bit her lip and forced the tears back. She harnessed the anger inside her and tightened her grip on the shotgun. She looked to Sean and said, "We need to go to Elm Street."

"Why the fuck would we go there?"

"My father is there," Lori said as rain began to spatter the windshield, "He has the answers."

***

Standing alone in the Springwood Memorial Cemetery was something Alice Johnson had gotten used to.

The first time she had come here was on a sunny day in the spring of 1988, when she had been a junior in high school. She and her father buried her brother Rick that day. She had dreamed he was still alive, that his death had been a trick and that all had not been lost. She still remembered his smile and easy going love for her that only a brother could have for his sister. She remembered what it was like to hear him laugh, to hear him in the garage practicing his karate. She smiled at that memory. Rick always whooped and yelled like those guys in the badly dubbed Hong Kong action flicks he loved so much. All that had been his life.

But his life had been stolen from him.

Her father was lying beside him in the ground, eternally asleep and never to know another breath. Dennis Johnson had died two years ago, ironically a few nights before the massacre in Springwood. He had died of a heart attack in his sleep, his face contorted in fear and surprise. She wondered then as she did now if Freddy Krueger had come to him in his dreams and taken him. And why shouldn't he have? Krueger took her brother and the only man she ever had loved. This was the nature of her relationship to Freddy Krueger. It was always give and take whenever they met up. Only Freddy always took, no matter how much she hadn't wanted to give.

She looked at the three head stones, all lined up and perfectly shaped. They were three of the four men in her life, the loved ones she couldn't save. She read the names to herself as rain drizzled down her long black overcoat and pattered on her umbrella. The final tombstone belonged not to her love, not to her Daniel. His family had not allowed him to be buried anywhere near the Johnson plot. When she wanted to visit Dan, she had to walk to the eastern corner of the cemetery and wade through generations of the family Jordan to see him.

This third head stone belonged to her son, Jacob Johnson. He had died at the age of ten from terminal cancer of the pancreas.

She knelt in front of her family and looked down at the green grass that covered them, protecting them from the outside world. There were times when she wished more than anything that they had never come to Springwood. The maybe if things had been different, they would all still be alive. But even leaving Springwood after Dan died didn't change the course of her life or that of her son. The Springwood Slasher had marked her and her family for all time.

Alice Johnson put her fingers to her lips and then placed a soft kiss on the stone-carved name of her son. She said into the rainy morning, "I miss you so much."

A long time ago, she had been the Dream Master. She had protected Springwood from the evil of Freddy Krueger. She had defeated him and sent him to depths of Hell. She had freed the souls of his countless victims and watched them ascend. But even death after death hadn't kept Krueger away. He had come back after hiding inside her. He had used her unborn son to do his killing. In the end, it had been Jacob who defeated Freddy, not her.

When he died after a long battle with the cancer, she wondered if Krueger's presence while he was still a baby inside her womb hadn't marked and defected his body. She could never find a way to prove it. Even if she had found proof, who would have believed that a dead serial killer gave her son cancer?

Alice stood tall in the rain and looked out over the town of Springwood. She could feel him here again. He was in the town, searching and preying on the children as he had done when she was a young girl. A shadow had fallen over Springwood, thick and oppressive. Even now she sensed him in the back of her mind. And she was certain he could sense her too. Alice shivered, gave one last look to her family and began walking away.

As dark as the presence of Freddy Krueger was, she could also feel something else trying to break through. Someone else had come here to Springwood. Alice could feel the conflict between them, the way she remembered the conflict between her and the dream demon. Something was about to happen here. The rules were about to change and the world was never going to be the same.

Alice left the cemetery and unlocked her car. Once inside, she closed her eyes and tried to remember what it was like to be the Dream Master.

...to be continued...