In the Interrogation Room of the Springwood police station, the air was stale, charged with cigarette smoke and static tension.
A fluorescent light flickered rhythmically from the ceiling, emitting an annoying electric buzz and casting Lief and Airam's shadows onto the metal table.
The one-way mirror on the wall reflected the scene.
Lieutenant Donald Thompson was sitting across from them with an ashen face, weathered by years of patrols and double shifts, while he held his pen suspended over his notepad, but the page remained totally blank.
He had been like that for ten minutes.
His mind was desperately trying to fit the pieces together.
That door, the deep wounds that appeared out of nowhere on the Lantz boy's chest, and that light... that soft golden halo that had emerged from this young man...
Donald closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing his temples hard, trying to erase the image of Glen being swallowed by his own bed.
Finally, he let out a sigh that seemed to empty his lungs.
"Let's go over this one more time, you're telling me that Freddy Krueger... has returned?"
"And that he has become some kind of... vengeful ghost? And that now he is hunting the town's children?"
Lief, who was leaning back in the metal chair with relaxation, gently shook his head.
"It can be understood like that for simplicity's sake, Lieutenant, but the term 'ghost' is inaccurate."
He leaned forward, interlacing his fingers on the table.
"He is not a spirit that moves chairs. Freddy is more like a parasitic entity. A conglomerate of pure hatred and resentment that has managed to hijack the dream realm. In the real world, it's normal. But the moment your daughter or her friends close their eyes... they enter his territory. And there, Lieutenant, he is God."
"A sadistic God," added Airam.
She had remained silent until that moment, observing Donald with curiosity. She had seen countless twisted human souls through the mirror, but the nature of this case, the fusion between reality and nightmare, was something exotic even for her.
"He enjoys playing with his food before eating," she continued, "He feeds on fear. The more they fear him, the more real he becomes."
Donald dropped his pen and ran a hand over his face, suppressing the urge to lock them up and call a psychiatrist.
But he couldn't.
"Let's say I believe you," he conceded. "Let's say that for a minute I swallow all this shit about nightmares and demons because I have no other explanation for what I saw in that room."
He leaned over the table toward Lief.
"But now I need you to tell me the truth. Who the hell are you two exactly? You don't appear in any local database. Are you Feds? Some special division? And don't tell me you are exorcists sent by the Vatican, because you don't look much older than my daughter."
Lief held his gaze without blinking.
"We are private consultants," he replied with total calm. "Part-time demon hunters, if you prefer a more direct label."
The answer was so absurd and, yet, said with such conviction, that Donald's fingers closed around the pen with such force that the plastic creaked, threatening to snap in two.
"Demon hunters... part-time?" he repeated, chewing on every syllable with disbelief before taking a deep breath to keep from exploding.
His gaze fell on Lief's hands, those that had shone minutes before... no matter where these two came from, or what crazy title they gave themselves, the undeniable fact was that they had just saved Glen Lantz's life in a way that no one else could have done.
"How is Glen?" asked Airam, breaking the stalemate the room had sunk into.
Upon hearing the name, Donald rubbed his face with both hands.
"The paramedics managed to stabilize him. He has lost a lot of blood and the wounds on his chest are deep, they reached the bone, but... he will live," he replied with a hoarse voice. "The problem is the report. There is no forensic explanation for what happened to him. There was no one else in that locked room. Officially, we will have to classify it as a severe psychotic episode and self-harm."
He let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head.
"But I know what I saw. Tina Gray's death, Rod being treated as the killer, and now Glen.... Everything fits exactly with that story that Nancy has been repeating for days."
"So, Lieutenant, you no longer need us to convince you. Now you believe what your daughter says," declared Lief.
"..."
Donald kept silent for a long moment, staring at his distorted reflection on the table and finally, he nodded dejectedly.
"You haven't left me another choice. Logic ended the moment you kicked down that door."
"Good. That saves us valuable time. We can skip the skepticism part and get straight to the point," said Lief. "Call your daughter, she is the key to solving this."
Hearing this, Donald slammed his hand on the table.
"No!" he almost shouted, his paternal instinct overriding his police logic. "No way! She just watched her boyfriend get gutted by a bed! I'm not going to let her get involved in this madness again! My job is to protect her."
"She is already involved, Lieutenant. In fact, she is the main target," replied Lief with a coldness that cut through the father's protest. "Freddy has already set his sights on her. Do you honestly believe that locking her in her room will keep her safe? Or keeping her awake with coffee? The human body has a limit. Sooner or later, her eyes will close."
He held Donald's gaze.
"Running away will only cause fear to accumulate, and fear is the gasoline that fuels Freddy. He will become stronger and stronger and one day, the instant Nancy nods off from exhaustion, he will drag her into his boiler and you won't be able to do anything to stop him."
Every word fell like a heavy hammer on Donald's conscience... He knew the boy was right.
"Then... what the hell am I supposed to do?" he asked cracking for the first time, feeling total helplessness before this young man.
"Bring her in. We will discuss a strategy together," repeated Lief, softening his tone. "We are here to finish this, not to use her as unprotected bait."
"..."
Donald stared at him, evaluating his options, which were nil, and finally, exhaled with resignation, grabbed his portable radio.
A few minutes later, the room door opened. Nancy entered, with red and swollen eyes, and when she saw Lief and Airam sitting there, her expression changed; there was gratitude, but also a desperate curiosity to understand who her saviors were.
"Sit down, Nancy," said Lief, pointing to the empty chair beside him.
Nancy obeyed silently, sitting stiffly. She looked at her father, seeking answers, and then at Lief, hoping he could make sense of her nightmare.
"Freddy Krueger."
Lief got straight to the point.
"The parents of Elm Street should remember that name very well..." he continued without taking his eyes off Nancy. "A school janitor. A predator. A twisted killer who kidnapped and mutilated more than twenty children in his boiler room a decade ago. He was arrested, but due to a technical error in police procedure, a missing signature on a search warrant... he was acquitted."
He narrated the dirty past of Springwood. Donald's expression turned into a mixture of shame and renewed horror. It was clear that he knew every detail; he had been part of that history.
"Justice failed," continued Lief. "So the neighborhood parents decided to take justice into their own hands. They cornered him in his own boiler room, doused the place with gasoline, and burned him alive."
"H-How... how do you know those things?" stammered Donald, looking at him as if he were a ghost from the past. "Those files were sealed. No one talks about that."
"How I know is irrelevant," Lief cut in. "The important thing is to understand the nature of the threat. His body died, Lieutenant, but his evil... his malice was too dense to dissipate. It fused with the fear of his victims and the essence of that boiler room. He made a deal with something dark to gain the power to transcend death through dreams."
Nancy listened with a pale face and eyes wide open, the puzzle pieces finally fitting together in her traumatized mind.
"So how should we deal with him?" she asked, gathering her courage.
"In the dream, he is God and you are just a toy," Lief replied with brutal frankness. "But here, in the real world, Freddy Krueger is just an old, burned, and pathetic man."
He held the girl's gaze and laid out the plan.
"So the plan is simple. You need to enter the dream. You need to find him. And at the exact moment he attacks you, when he grabs you... you have to grab him back. You have to hold onto him with everything you've got and force yourself to wake up. You have to drag him through the veil, from his nightmare into our reality."
"No! Absolutely not!"
Donald stood up from his chair with such violence that the metal screeched against the floor.
"This is insanity! It's too dangerous!" he shouted, pointing at Lief. "I asked for your help to protect her, not for you to ask me to serve my own daughter on a silver platter!"
"Dad, listen!" Nancy stood up too, confronting her father for the first time in her life. "It's the only way! Don't you see? We can't let anyone else die!"
"Tina is dead. Rod was wrongly accused, Dad. Glen almost.... I can't keep hiding!"
"But Nancy..."
"Dad, please. Trust me," Nancy pleaded. "And trust them too. They saved Glen and seem to know what they're doing. They have a way to end this."
"..."
Donald looked at the firmness on his daughter's face, a maturity that no parent should see. Then he looked at Lief, and the scales in his heart oscillated violently between the instinct for protection and the stark reality that he had no other options.
"Can you guarantee her safety?" he finally asked.
"I guarantee it," Lief affirmed with total confidence. "I will be by her side every second and Krueger won't be able to touch a hair on her head once he crosses to this side. You have my word."
That promise was the breaking point for Donald's resistance. He exhaled lengthily and slumped back into the chair.
"Alright...," he said with difficulty. "What do you need me to do?"
"Very well. We need to set the stage," said Lief, counting on his fingers. "First, I need a holding cell. The most secure one you have. Preferably solitary confinement, reinforced walls, no windows, a single heavy steel door. We need to contain the fight."
"We have one," Donald nodded. "Done."
"Secondly," Lief continued, raising another finger, "I need epinephrine. Medical-grade adrenaline injections, the kind paramedics use to jumpstart a stopped heart."
"Adrenaline?" Donald blinked, confused. "What do you want that for?"
"Freddy is a master of mental manipulation. He can create 'false awakenings', dream loops within dreams to trap you," Lief explained patiently. "When Nancy has him, we'll need the most potent alarm clock in existence to pull her out of there in one go and drag Freddy with her. The physiological shock of adrenaline straight to the heart is the only guarantee that she wakes up instantly."
Donald understood the logic behind the request, he didn't waste another second. He grabbed his radio and began barking orders at his subordinates.
"Attention all units. I need solitary confinement cell number 3 in Block C emptied out. Now! Remove all loose furniture. And I want a patrol sent to the hospital urgently. I need three doses of high-concentration epinephrine requisitioned under police authority. Move!"
With every order, the machinery of the Springwood police station began to silently turn around them.
"..."
Meanwhile, Nancy watched the young man in front of her, organizing the trap with an alluring calm. For the first time in days, the knot of terror in her stomach loosened a little, replaced by a warm spark, hope.
"When do we start?" she asked, ready.
Lief looked at the wall clock. The hands marked three in the morning.
"No rush," he said standing up and stretching his back muscles. "Try to relax a bit while the supplies arrive. After all, if we want to catch a big fish, we need the bait to be as fresh and alert as possible."
________
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