The darkness of the night had fallen over the town of Springwood, plunging the streets into a deadly and deceptive silence.
In his room, Glen lay in his bed, deeply asleep. Or at least, that is what his body was trying to do.
The discussions of the day and Nancy's neurotic and contagious fear had left him physically and mentally exhausted.
His rational mind had fought for hours against the evidence of the cuts on his girlfriend's arm. In the end, exhaustion had won. He just wanted to sleep and cast all that absurd rhetoric about dream killers into oblivion.
But rest did not come.
The beginning of the dream was insidious.
The comforting blackness of his room dissolved, replaced not by light, but by heat. A humid, sticky heat smelling of burnt oil and sulfur.
Glen blinked, finding himself suddenly standing in a place he did not recognize, but which his instinct feared deeply.
It was an industrial basement, an immense and labyrinthine boiler room.
The air was stale, vibrating with the low and constant roar of a gigantic furnace that burned somewhere nearby.
The pipes crisscrossed on the walls and the ceiling like veins, spitting jets of scorching steam.
An icy chill went up his spine until it made the hair on the nape of his neck stand up.
He recognized the place.
Not because he had been there before, but because Nancy had described it.
'This isn't real,' he thought, trying to force his mind to wake up.
He tried desperately to free himself, to pinch himself, to scream, but the logic of the dream trapped him. His body felt heavy, clumsy, as if his veins were full of molten lead.
His eyelids weighed tons.
He was trapped in someone else's narrative.
"... Are you sleeping well, Glen?"
Suddenly, a deep, almost demonic voice, which had a mocking nuance, violated his personal space.
With terror blocking his throat, Glen turned around and saw a figure come out of the gloom.
It was him....
A man of slight build, dressed in a red and green striped sweater, a brown hat...
But the worst was what was underneath.
The exposed skin of his face, burnt flesh, melted and scarred in red and brown tones, shining with moisture under the light of the boilers.
And on his right hand... the glove. A leather glove with four long, sharp blades welded to the fingers.
"Clang... Clang... Clang..."
That figure, Freddy Krueger gently tapped the pipes with the blades while advancing step by step.
"Nancy says I'm the boogeyman," laughed Freddy strangely. "But you didn't believe her, did you? You thought they were children's tales."
Glen was paralyzed, his soul about to leave him from panic. "No! You don't exist!"
"Oh, I exist, Glen. I am the only thing that exists now," whispered Freddy, raising his gloved hand and letting the light play with the edge of the blades. "Your girlfriend likes to stick her nose where it doesn't belong. She is a very naughty girl. But don't worry about her..."
He stopped a few meters away, and his twisted smile revealed rotten teeth.
"First I'm going to play with you. I'm going to open you up to see if you have anything other than doubts in there. And then... well, Nancy will come down soon to keep you company."
Survival instinct broke Glen's paralysis, who turned and ran toward the darkness of the hallway screaming for help, although the steam drowned out his voice instantly.
And running felt like torture. His legs felt like they were made of cotton or submerged in molasses, turning every step into a titanic effort over an infinite ground.
Behind him, Freddy didn't even bother to run. He simply walked, appearing and disappearing among the shadows to close the distance with pleasure, while his voice enveloped everything:
"Run, Glen! Run all you want! Let's see if you can run faster than your own fear!"
Glen ran blindly through the labyrinth, but dream logic played its last card. His foot caught on something on the ground that wasn't there a second before.
He tripped violently and fell face down against the grate, feeling how the metal burned his palms. Desperate, he turned and crawled backward until his back hit a hot brick wall, there was no longer any way out.
Freddy emerged from the smoke blocking the only escape route and stood before the trembling boy.
"You didn't believe in me, did you, Glen? Well... now you will believe."
Swish
The cold steel claws came down with brutal violence.
"Ahhhh!"
Glen let out a miserable scream that died drowned in his throat, trapped by blood and the reality of the dream, unable to cross the barrier toward the waking world to alert his parents.
He felt with atrocious clarity how the metal tore his shirt and sank into his sternum, separating skin and muscle while a pure pain paralyzed him instantly.
…
At the same time, Glen's body, which lay on the mattress, arched over the mattress in an unnatural spasm, as if struck by an electric shock.
The sound of fabric tearing broke the silence when his pajamas were ripped open by an invisible force and three deep gouges appeared out of nowhere on his skin.
Blood gushed out, soaking the white sheets in a crimson red in a matter of seconds.
…
Back in the nightmare, gravity changed and Freddy, amidst laughter, caught Glen's ankle with fingers that burned like red-hot iron.
"Come here, boy! I haven't finished with you yet!"
With a violent yank, he dragged him while Glen clawed at the metal uselessly.
He was dragged toward the darkness, toward what should have been the space under his bed, but his eyes bulged upon seeing that the floor had disappeared, in its place, a black pit roared with huge gears and cogwheels spinning at full speed.
It was an infernal machine, a gigantic meat grinder designed to eat souls and bones.
Glen kicked, crying, watching as his feet approached the spinning rollers.
"No! No, please! God!"
Freddy leaned over him, delighting in his panic, and brought his burned face close until forcing him to breathe the rotten flesh and sulfur of his breath.
"God isn't here, Glen! There is only me!"
With a brutal shove, he threw the boy toward the mouth of the machine: "Let's see if your bones are as hard as your head!"
The mechanical roar drowned out Glen's last scream while he was dragged inexorably toward the metal teeth waiting below.
...
Meanwhile, at the Thompson residence. Nancy paced around her room like a caged animal, unable to fall asleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, the image of that striped sweater and the burned face appeared in the darkness of her eyelids.
In her mind resonated, over and over again, the words that Freddy had spat at her. The next would be Rod, and then them... Rod had already been caught, so the next one...
GLEN!
Her heart seemed to stop for a second, before starting to beat with a painful violence.
A grim premonition made her jump out of bed. She didn't waste time changing out of her pajamas or looking for her shoes; she grabbed the car keys from the nightstand and ran out of the house, barefoot on the cold asphalt.
The streets were deserted at that hour, bathed in the orange light of the streetlamps. Nancy threw herself into her car, turned the key, and floored the accelerator.
The tires screeched against the pavement as the vehicle covered the short distance to the Lantz house, blowing past every stop sign.
She slammed on the brakes in front of the driveway, jumped out of the car before the engine died, and ran toward the porch.
Bang Bang Bang
Nancy pounded on the wooden door with both fists, screaming with a hysteria that tore through the stillness of the neighborhood.
"Open the door! Please! Mr. Lantz! Quick, open the damn door! Glen is in danger!"
The lights downstairs turned on after a few seconds that seemed like hours. The sound of the lock was heard and the door opened, revealing Glen's father, in his pajamas and with eyes puffy from sleep.
"Nancy?" asked Glen's father, blinking at the girl at his door. "What time is it? What are you...?"
"It's Glen! You have to let me in!"
Nancy didn't wait to be invited and pushed past Glen's father with a force born of desperation and rushed inside the house, running directly toward the stairs.
"Wait! Nancy!" shouted Glen's mother, shocked.
"Glen! Wake up!" Nancy took the stairs two at a time.
She reached the second-floor hallway and threw herself against Glen's bedroom door, frantically turning the knob.
It was locked.
But it wasn't a normal lock. The door didn't budge a millimeter, as if it were welded to the frame.
Nancy pushed with her shoulder, pounded with her fists, but the wood felt cold and solid like a tombstone.
"Glen! Open the door! Glen, wake up!"
Glen's parents reached the hallway seconds later, their initial annoyance quickly transforming into alarm upon seeing the girl's genuine panic.
"Nancy, stop, you're going to wake up the whole neighborhood," began the father, putting a hand on her shoulder to pull her away. "Glen is sleeping, the door is probably..."
Then, they heard it.
A wet, gurgling, and choked sound coming from inside the room. It wasn't the sound of someone sleeping.
It was the sound of someone drowning in their own blood, the sound of sheets tearing and a body convulsing violently against the mattress.
Mr. Lantz's face went pale instantly.
"Glen!"
The father slammed his shoulder against the door, using all his weight. "Son! Open this door!"
But nothing.
Inside, the noises became more violent. A dull thud, then the unmistakable sound of something being dragged down.
"Do something! Break the door down!" screamed Glen's mother, falling to her knees, seized by a nervous breakdown.
Nancy and Mr. Lantz pounded and kicked the wood, crying, screaming, but total despair began to sink into their stomachs. They were so close, just a few inches of wood away, and yet, they were completely powerless to stop what was happening on the other side.
Just in that moment of absolute darkness, when hope had shattered, a casual voice cut through the panic.
"Do you need help?"
The three turned around sharply.
There, standing at the beginning of the hallway, near the stairs, were two figures that shouldn't have been there.
No one had heard the front door open and no one had heard them walk up the stairs.
One was a young man, with his hands in his jacket pockets and a handsome face that showed an imperturbable calm, totally out of place in that house of screams.
Beside him, a beautiful dark-haired girl observed them with the same serenity.
They were Lief and Airam.
"Who are you and how did you get into my house?"
Glen's father stepped between the strangers and the closed door.
Lief didn't bother answering the question, he simply raised his chin slightly and the atmosphere in the hallway changed instantly.
A halo of golden light emerged silently above his head, not like physical lighting, but like a manifestation of pure spiritual authority.
That glow flooded the hallway, dissipating the oppression emanating from the room, an immaculate force that quelled the panic and left those present totally mute.
"..."
Nancy and Glen's parents stood paralyzed, with their mouths open, unable to process the almost divine presence they had before them.
"Step aside."
At Lief's command, the three backed away unconsciously, pressing themselves against the hallway walls to make way for him.
Lief advanced toward the door and, without winding up, delivered a dry front kick below the lock.
Boom
The wood exploded.
The door, that barrier that Glen's father and Nancy hadn't been able to move even a millimeter, was ripped out completely along with the frame and hinges, flying off like a projectile until crashing with a deafening thunder inside.
And the scene that was revealed behind the dust and splinters made Glen's parents and Nancy stifle a scream of horror.
Glen was being devoured by his own bed.
The lower half of his body had already disappeared inside the mattress, which was behaving like a liquid and viscous substance. Only his torso and head remained visible, convulsing violently while something with immense force pulled him down, toward a darkness that shouldn't exist.
His chest was a map of carnage; deep parallel furrows slashed his skin and his pajamas, gushing blood in spurts. He had his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth open in a silent scream, and his face was a mask of agony.
Lief didn't hesitate, he entered and with a quick movement, his hand closed around Glen's wrist, stopping his descent.
"I got you."
Instantly, a blue-white light flowed from his palm traveling up Glen's arm and flooding his body like an electric shock.
"SKREEEEEEEEE!"
A deep and miserable shriek, that definitely didn't belong to Glen or any human being, exploded in the room.
It seemed to come from the mattress itself, from the walls, from the air itself.
!
Nancy and Glen's parents covered their ears, falling to their knees before the intensity of the sound.
The next second, the invisible force pulling Glen cut off abruptly and he came out of the "pit", the bed becoming solid again.
"Gah...!"
Glen snapped his eyes open, sucking in a desperate breath of air.
His body collapsed onto the blood-soaked mattress, trembling uncontrollably.
He looked with terror at the open wounds on his chest, then at the destroyed room, and finally looked up at Lief, who was standing next to the bed, watching him calmly.
His eyes were full of confusion and fear.
"W-What...? What happened...? I felt... I..."
"You had a nightmare."
Lief let go of his wrist and stepped back, declaring the fact with a tone so flat and devoid of drama that it made the supernatural seem mundane.
The spell of silence broke.
"Glen! Oh, my God, my baby!"
His mother let out a heart-wrenching sob and ran toward the bed, hugging her son's head, staining her hands with his blood. The father quickly began to dial 911.
"Hold on, son! Help is already coming!"
However…
"Nobody move! Police!"
An authoritative voice boomed from the hallway, cutting through the sobs.
A middle-aged man, dressed in pajamas under a hastily put-on trench coat, entered the room with a gun in his hand and an imposing presence.
His face was marked by exhaustion and seriousness.
"I'm Lieutenant Thompson," he said advancing with professional caution. "You two. Hands where I can see them. Now. You're coming with me to the station and you're going to explain to me what the hell is going on here."
It was Nancy's father, who had followed his daughter upon seeing her running out of the house.
________
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