Dream On Dreamer

Enter Sandman (Metallica)

Her eyes surveyed the area with avid interest—and fear.

…This wasn’t home, she thought. Why was she here? She hugged her doll closely to her, biting her lip as she stepped carefully through what appeared to be dimly-lit underground tunnels with filthy walls and dirty floors. Wherever she was, she didn’t like it here one bit.

She leaned against a cleaner section of the wall and scratched at her head in frustration. How did she even get here? She had been in her room, last time she checked, trying to fall asleep. Had she been abducted without her mother knowing? She shuddered at the thought. She wanted her mother NOW.

…Wait…

She picked up a rock off of the floor and held it in her hands. Maybe… She concentrated hard, and suddenly the rock turned into a bubble of water that burst in her grip and dribbled down her hand.

She was DREAMING. She smacked herself in the head. Of COURSE. She was having a nightmare! And didn’t her mother always tell her, that if she was having a bad dream, to NEVER be afraid?

‘Fear gives nightmares power, sweetie,’ she had said. ‘If you have no fear, they can never hurt you.’

Okay. No fear.

…Easier said than done, Mom.

“No fear, no fear,” she muttered to herself. Now that she had THAT covered…how did she get out of here? Waking up would be the obvious answer, but quite frankly, she had no idea on HOW to wake up from a dream like ‘that’.

Great. She was stuck here until her alarm clock went off.

She held her doll tighter to her and listened for any sign that she was coming up on an exit. Still nothing but dead, dull silence. Silence that was frightening.

“No fear, no fear,” she kept saying to herself. She felt something scuttle across her foot, and screamed, jumping into a wall. “No fear! No fear!” She thought she heard someone talk down the hall, and she felt a tear run down her face. “NO FEAR! NO FEAR!!!”

“But you’ll ALWAYS have fear here, little girl.” The voice was RIGHT BEHIND HER.

She screamed and took off running, tearing down the tunnels like her life depended on it. Her heart was ramming against her ribcage and her bare feet were actually beginning to hurt from all the stuff she was stepping on to get out. Behind her, she could hear the lights on the ceiling flicker off, catching up to her to engulf her in darkness.

She was sobbing by now, wishing with all her might for someone—her mom, her best friend Mikey from school, Grandpa—ANYONE to come save her from whatever was chasing her. She tripped and fell with a painful THUD on the hard floor, her hand dropping onto what felt like broken glass. She cried out in pain and huddled against the wall, hugging her doll in a deathgrip as the lights flickered and died, one by one until she saw only blackness.

Through her sobs and heavy breathing, she could hear someone with heavy footsteps walk toward her, tapping what sounded like a heavy knife like her mother used in the kitchen to cut beef against the wall. “Little girl,” a man’s voice sung, getting closer, “where are you…?”

She held her breath, feeling her heart in her throat as the steps got closer and closer and closer, and…

“THERE you are, my little hors d'oeuvre,” he said.

His ‘little hors d’oeuvre’ let out a scream. “GRANDPA, HELP!!!”

Almost immediately, a ring of fire burst around where she was sitting, and for a split moment, she saw her stalker. He was deathly pale, with black holes for eyes, and no teeth except for four huge fangs, two on the upper jaw, two on the lower. She took one look at him and screamed again as he let out something between a hiss and a scream and cowered away from the fire. She kept on screaming hard until she felt a jerking sensation.

Then there was no fire.

“LORETTA!!! LORETTA, WAKE UP!!!”

Loretta ‘Lori’ Burroughs snapped awake, still screaming, and saw her mother in a frantic, trying to shake her awake. Lori threw her arms around her mother and sobbed. Her mother held her tightly, trying to calm her shaking daughter down. “Oh God, Loretta, what happened!?” she sobbed. Lori only shook harder.

“N-n-nightmare m-man…!” she stuttered. “Bad…nightmare…m-man…!”

Maggie could only think the worst by this point. She swallowed hard. “…Lori?” she asked softly, “was it…your grandpa?”

“NO!” Lori shouted, hugging her mother harder. “It wasn’t Grandpa! It was…someone…worse…!” She suddenly pulled away from her mother to run to the bathroom and vomit in the sink. Maggie followed her, rubbing her daughter’s back comfortingly, absently noting her haggard reflection in the mirror. When Loretta was done, she helped her rinse out her mouth, then led her into the kitchen for something warm to drink.

“…Tell me what he looked like,” Maggie requested softly. Lori hugged the doll that never left her side and sipped her hot chocolate.

“…Pale…like a vampire…” she replied. “…He looked like a v-vampire.” She gulped. “He had…black eyes…and…four sharp teeth…” She took another sip. “…He called me…his…his ‘little hors d’oeuvre’. If…if it wasn’t for…Grandpa…I don’t know what he would’ve done… He saved me with fire to make the vampire go away.”

Maggie also shuddered, but also sighed with relief. It wasn’t Freddy, her own father. If anything, she should thank him, next time she was asleep. But that still didn’t explain this new nightmare. She put a hand to her face and sighed again. Freddy had mentioned once that there were others like him…but she never expected one to be HERE.

“Let’s go back to bed, okay Lori?” she said. Lori shook her head.

“I don’t want to,” she replied. “…I don’t like it here. The nightmare man’s gonna get me.”

“No he wont,” Maggie replied. “Just remember, ‘no fear’.”

“But it’s HARD!” Lori shot back. “He makes things…dark…!”

Ah, Maggie thought. THAT was the main problem. Loretta had an irrational fear of the dark. She kept the light on in her room while she slept. She was even afraid of the first few minutes before a movie played in the theatre. For Freddy to make the darkness go away with fire was without a doubt no only generous, but genius.

She then sighed for the umpteenth time that night; that would mean that she would have to talk to him; to ask him to keep an eye on Lori for her. She hadn’t talked to her father in almost two years, on Halloween. But as far as she knew, he was still in some form of contact with Lori, though never really any DIRECT contact.

Still.

“Come on,” she said, taking Lori’s hand. “At least get back in bed. If you fall asleep, just ask for Grandpa again, okay?”

Lori nodded and let her mother lead her back into her brightly-lit bedroom and tuck her in. “Mom?” she asked softly. Maggie nodded. “…Can we move? Away from here?”

“I don’t know about that, Lori,” Maggie said softly. “There aren’t many places for my line of work, considering my history. You know that.” Lori nodded back and sighed. Maggie kissed her head and walked out of the room and into her own.

“…Damn it,” she swore softly. There was just no rest for this nightmare nonsense, no matter WHERE she went. She turned off her light and laid her head on the pillows, thinking over things.

‘Well,’ she thought dryly to herself, ‘there was ONE place she could go…’