A Nightmare Reborn: FVJ 02

Lori jumped, as though startled from a dream. Loomis noticed that dark circles had formed just under her brilliant blue eyes.

"Yes?" she smiled hesitantly, "Sorry. I drifted off."

"It's quite alright," Loomis reassured her, "You were telling me that you haven't been doing well?"

Lori looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. "No, I guess I haven't."

"Please continue."

Lori looked to him, "It's been two years now, and I thought we had moved on from what happened."

"You and Will?"

"Yes," she replied.

"And you've had no nightmares since just before you and Will married, yes?"

"No," she shook her head, "Yes... I mean...only one... I think."

Loomis looked at her quietly and expectantly.

Lori began, "Last night, while Will and I were being... intimate, I felt something happen to me. It was frightening. At first I thought I was dreaming, but then..."

She hesitated.

"Take your time, Lori."

Lori smiled appreciatively, brushing a lock of her thick blonde hair back out of her face. "I think Freddy is back," she said simply, "I started singing that song I told you about before, the one I heard in my dreams before it all started. In my dream, there were little girls playing in front of my father's house, jumping rope and it looked like they were just having fun. But then they start singing that song... last night I started singing it. Will said it was like I wasn't even there, like someone was talking through me. And then my eyes bled."

"They bled?" Loomis said and leaned forward, "Good God, have you seen a doctor?"

"Just before I came here."

"And?"

"The doctor said it was a weak hemorrhage, caused by stress."

Loomis nodded, "That's possible, I suppose. What happened next?"

Lori seemed to visibly shrink in her chair. She looked right at Loomis, trying to find the courage to continue. She said, "I pinned Will down and nearly broke his wrists while I was singing, and I said that Freddy was back. But Will said I sounded like Freddy, not me."

"You don't remember?"

"No, Dr. Loomis," she shook her head, "I don't remember at all. It's like I blacked out or something."

"Isn't it possible you had a waking dream?" Loomis theorized, his faint British accent somehow soothing to Lori's troubled mind. He had often been told his voice was half the reason he had successfully counseled so many of his patients. Lori sat back for a moment, considering the possibility of a waking dream.

Loomis continued, "You've been through a traumatic experience, Lori. Both you and Will survived an incredible ordeal in which most of your friends were murdered. As I've said before, I do believe that you both may suffer from a mild form of Survivor's Guilt. Extreme nightmares, sleepwalking and waking dreams can be common side effects. The mind is replaying those events over and over to understand and process the event so you can move on."

"But Doctor," Lori said, "Will and I take hypnocil. That drug doesn't allow us to dream."

"For all we know... but hypnocil may not have long lasting effects," Loomis interjected, "It was just approved by the FDA a year ago, and you've been on it consistently for two years now thanks to your father's illegal, but well-meaning connections. Perhaps your body has built up a resistance to it?"

"I don't think so," Lori disagreed. The thought of the dream-suppressant being rendered useless scared her to death. She had never considered that she might build up a tolerance to it.

"Either way," Loomis stood up and walked around to the corner of his desk, resting there and looking down to Lori, "Maybe hypnocil isn't the way to go anymore."

"What?" Lori stared at him incredulously.

Loomis straightened his dark suit out with one hand and said, "Dreaming is a normal and essential function of the human brain. Beyond that, we don't understand dreams anymore than we understand the brain itself. Dreams and nightmares are mysteries save for a lot of conjecture and guesswork. Still, for all we don't know, it's been proven that people must be able to dream in order to stay mentally balanced. Very often, what we can't deal with while conscious our subconscious handles for us. It's a survival tool, Lori. You and Will both have been cutting off that tool."

"But if Freddy is back-," Lori began.

"Lori," Loomis smiled warmly, "I'll be honest. I don't know if this Freddy Krueger character exists or not. I've read the stories and heard reports on him. When I took you in as a patient, I made it a point to research him. Over the years there have been a lot of stories about him coming out of Springwood. But again, there's no real concrete proof."

"No concrete proof?" Lori asked incredulously, "Dr. Loomis, I saw him. Will saw him."

"I don't doubt what you saw, Lori."

Lori felt like crying again.

"Just hear me out, Lori. Now, this Jason Voorhees... he seems to be the real deal. His death was never satisfactorily determined and proven. And from what you've told me, he died in the lake that night, yes?"

"That's how it looked."

"Then logically, if he drowned in that lake and you beheaded your attacker, Krueger or not, then doesn't it stand to reason you're safe from harm?"

Lori looked to him in frustration, tears brimming fully on her bottom lids, "How can you help me if you don't believe me, Dr. Loomis?"

"I do believe you, Lori."

Lori closed her eyes and the tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Would you consider that maybe a man masquerading as Krueger attacked you?"

Lori shook her head, her eyes glassy and angry, "If you had been there, you would understand."

"You're right," Loomis nodded, "I wasn't there."

Lori sighed.

Loomis sat quietly for a moment, "I believe that you and your husband were nearly murdered by a serial killer named Jason Voorhees. I believe that this experience scarred you, both physically and emotionally. It's very likely that Freddy Krueger was your mind's way of explaining things you still can't come to terms with. I think it's certain that your were part of a mass hysteria caused by Voorhees."

Lori pulled the V-neck of her blue sweater down with her hand suddenly. Loomis saw a series of wicked slash marks, healed over yet prominent across her chest and the tops of her breasts. He winced in a moment of sympathetic pain, suddenly reminded of the scars on his father's face.

Fire or metal, they both can leave equally permanent legacies on those they touch.

Lori held her gaze on him, sweater pulled down tight and asked, "Does this look like mass hysteria to you? He did this with his glove."

"Lori," Loomis looked away from her chest, "The bottom line here is that you can't rely on a drug to normalize your life. The circumstances that brought you here are relatively inconsequential against how you choose deal with this and move on. Eventually, you will have to confront your fear. You will have to find a way to do it without hypnocil or any other false talisman. The greatest weapon you have against this is your honesty and courage."

"You might feel different if you'd seen what I've seen," Lori said dryly.

Loomis smiled and knelt down beside her chair, placing his hand on hers. He looked at her and decided to commit a breach of practice. He said, "I know all about ghosts that won't disappear, monsters that won't go away. My father was killed by one."

Lori was silent, unsure of what to say.

"Have you ever heard of Michael Myers?"

Lori nodded. "The Halloween killer. He was in the news a little while ago..."

"Then allow me to tell you a short story?"

Lori nodded.

"He found and killed his sister Laurie Strode," Loomis said softly, "Twenty-five years after he made his first attempt on her life. Twenty-five years he waited and pursued her. He's been shot, burned, maimed and stabbed in the process, even declared dead on several occasions. Yet, he always comes back. He seems to be super-human, much like this Jason Voorhees character. You see my father was his doctor. When Michael escaped in 1978, my father chased him, seeking to put an end to him. Father knew, more than anyone I think, that Michael was beyond reason, beyond reach or help of anyone on this earth.

His pursuit of Michael was more personal than official. He felt responsible for him and thus sought to end the madness himself. Few believed in his crusade, and many of his colleagues shunned him. My mother even turned away from him and took me back to England. My father spent the rest of his life chasing Michael, always clinging to his obsession and very much alone. One by one, more and more people fell under Michael's blade until finally, father cornered him in a hospital. But, Michael stabbed him to death right there, and that was end of his crusade."

"Oh doctor," Lori whispered, "I am so sorry."

"I tell you this not to scare you and make light of your experience," Loomis patted her hand, "But to show you what can come from holding onto the past too hard. My father could not let Michael Myers go. In the end, it cost him his family, his friends and his life. Don't make that mistake, Lori. Don't try to control what can't be controlled."

Lori sighed, rubbing her temples gently.

"Let yourself begin dreaming again. You may just find the strength you need to face this and be done with it, so you and Will can move on and have a life."

Lori squeezed his hand. "I am so scared."

"There will always be monsters," Loomis said, his eyes filled with nothing but honesty and sympathy, "There's nothing we can do about that. I know Michael Myers is still out there somewhere, but I don't lose sleep over him. You keep telling me you know that Freddy Krueger is still out there somewhere. Let's say that he really did come back from the dead and can come after you in your dreams. If he really is drawing power from your fear, then isn't it prudent to release that fear? No fear, no danger, yes?"

Lori smiled half-heartedly, "No fear, no danger."

Loomis could see she wasn't close to buying into his suggestion. He supposed that she might have even known he was lying about not losing sleep over Michael Myers. That was as big a lie as saying he didn't think Freddy Krueger existed beyond the date in his obituary. Loomis wondered when the last time was he actually slept through a whole night without waking up in a cold sweat, the image of that ghostly white mask still burning in his mind.

He stood up and walked around to his chair again, sitting down and hands clasped together. He said, "It will take time, Lori. Healing always does. I can't force you off the hypnocil, but I strongly recommend you and Will both confront this together sans dream suppressants. There's great strength in your dreams. Don't be afraid to explore that."

Lori smiled the best fake smile she could muster. "Thank you, Dr. Loomis."

"Same time next week?"

Lori stood up from that chair and gathered her jacket. "No," she said, "Will and I are going to be out of town."

"And where are you two off to?"

"Springwood," she said, the name of the town tasting bitter and harsh on her tongue, "The two year memorial for our friends is being held on Monday afternoon at the cemetery. I didn't know they were even going to have one, but I got a call this morning. Will says it would be good for us."

"It sounds like your husband and I would get along famously," Loomis said. "Perhaps you could face some old ghosts and lay them to rest?"

"Maybe," she said, and then added, "Maybe just to say hello."

Loomis nodded. "This will take time, of that I have no doubt. But you will prevail. You're a survivor, Lori."

Lori slipped into her dark jacket and paused, "If I need you, can I call?"

Loomis nodded. "Of course you can. I'm your doctor, Lori. I want to help you with this in any way that I can."

"Thank you again, Dr. Loomis," she smiled, this time the smile actually touching her eyes. She turned and left his office as rain began pelting the window of his 15th floor office. She seemed so alone, her hands buried deep in the pockets of the coat. Loomis felt such a great swell of pity for her. He thought of his father's case files, and of how he had written of trying to help a young girl named Jamie Lloyd from being taken by Michael Myers. He also recounted the pain in his father's notes about his failure to save her, as though his pen had captured the blood of his broken heart and used it to write with.

The little girl had been the daughter of Laurie Strode, Michael's sister.

He had believed he could save her.

Loomis turned and looked out the large window at the city sprawled below. New York was getting another shower, and the people below rushed about to find places to stay dry. The clouds hovering above the city reached beyond the horizon, swirling and colored to a deep steel gray. They seemed to be swollen, bursting at the seams and dumping their load on the metropolis below without mercy.

He wondered if he could save Lori from this?

Loomis scratched his bearded chin and thought of his father again. What he must have gone through, living all those years alone here in the states on the trail of a madman? Loomis remembered that even when he was a child, he bore his father no ill will when his parents separated that hot summer in 1981. His mother had been a cast-iron bitch that really henpecked more than she supported the elder Loomis. He could even see how the separation might have been a relief. He could recall many times he had wanted to distance himself from his mother growing up.

When his father had died in 1995, Loomis had immediately taken the first flight available back to the states. At the age of twenty-two, he finally found the courage to escape his mother and at least see to it his father was laid to rest by family. He had spent the entire flight in tears, not only over the death of his father but also over the intention he had of never returning to London, or more to the point, never to return to his mother or her relentless negativity. He had grown up hearing her speak of nothing other than what an ass Sam Loomis was, a fool for chasing Michael Myers. She would rant and rave and try to portray him as an unfeeling monster, no better than Myers himself.

But he remembered the letters from his father, and he remembered the magazine and newspaper articles he had collected over the years. While some agreed that Sam Loomis was just as loony as Myers, others, many others in fact saw him as an unsung hero. He had suffered horrible burns and the metal of Myers blade in his pursuit, and in the end he had suffered a horrible death at the hands of his obsession. As a child Loomis had often imagined his father as being the Van Helsing to Myers's Dracula. Even now, he tried to hold on to that image in his head.

"Oh Lori, let this go," he sighed to himself as rainwater sheeted down the windowpane, blurring and distorting the outside world. Loomis wondered if this was how they saw the world. He tried to imagine what men like Myers really saw when they looked at the people around them, all form and reason warped into something else vague and uncertain. Instead of rain, their own individual obsessions distorted all that surrounded them and kept them from ever seeing things for what they really were. Obsession fueled them to go on living, driving them to act out on their feelings and kill.

He supposed that was the only similarity between him and them: obsession.

Like his father, Matthew Loomis knew all about obsession, just as he knew that if he were to seriously tell Lori to move on, he should be prepared to take his own advice. His career choice hadn't been random, and when his father had died, he made the decision to succeed where he had failed. The legacy of Sam Loomis would not die in that godforsaken asylum with his body. He was determined to complete what his father had set out to do. After he had attained his PhD in criminal psychology, he used his practice as a platform to begin the study what he and a few others had termed "super-killers."

Loomis had decided very early on if he were going to catch and kill Myers, he would have to broaden his scope. He would have to understand how he thought, what his reasoning was and what ultimately gave him his legendary resilience. His father had never delved into this, and he feared it was a lack of knowledge that killed him in the end. It was clear that Myers wasn't a normal person, and because of that the normal rules didn't apply. He had some kind of an edge that transformed him into an unstoppable juggernaut that always managed to cheat and elude death somehow.

It was all beyond rational explanation, so Loomis started thinking beyond Myers himself. As it would turn out, Myers wasn't the only super-killer out there with more lives than a cat.

In his research, he had come across names like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and other more obscure cases. He had read of a bizarre case in Florida in which local officials found over three hundred bodies in an abandoned church basement after a fire. They had all been sewn together and somehow preserved, displayed all over the walls and ceiling. No one knew who did it really, but there were a lot of strange reports about a man in a trench coat, who had wings no less, driving an old truck and hunting down his victims.

Loomis was surprised to find that even the local police had confirmed claims of a man with wings who kidnapped a young boy from their precinct station. Several days after the incident at the police station, 'a man with wings' who seemed to enjoy eating his victims, or at least the parts he liked, attacked a busload of college freshman basketball players on Route 9.

It was fantastic and wholly unbelievable. And yet, so many people had given the same story about this winged man. So many people had seen the same thing. How could that many people share a delusion so specific and bizarre? Why would the police lie and feed into a mass hysteria? The logical conclusion was that there wasn't a mass delusion. It really happened.

The stranger the truth, the less apt people will be to believe.

He thought of Lori and her story about fighting Freddy Krueger. He had told her it could be a mass delusion, but in his heart he knew better. Loomis was comforted over the lie by telling himself that he was thinking of Lori's sake, Lori's future. He knew deep down that Freddy Krueger was as real today as he was in his heyday of murder. Loomis knew the truth, but had hoped to spare Lori from it.

He supposed covering the truth to protect Lori was a fine idea, but in the end it couldn't succeed. How could it?

As with Krueger himself, the whole disaster in Florida was covered up, and only Loomis's reputation and clout as a renowned psychiatrist had allowed him access to the files. This case, like so many others regarding super-killers was labeled "unsolved" and quickly buried. The authorities decided that everything about the entire ordeal was just too fantastic. They relied too heavily on rational explanations in an irrational world.

And yet, it was no more fantastic than, say, a long dead serial killer who hunts children in their dreams. No more fantastic than a hockey-masked killer that stalked the shores of a lake in Middle America for over twenty years, apparently invulnerable and killing anyone who violated the sanctity of his grounds? Or a knife-wielding psycho in a Halloween mask whose only purpose in life it seems is to hunt down every living relative of his family? All of them impervious to death...

Loomis couldn't believe how people could so blatantly hide the truth about these sorts of things. If it couldn't be explained in ten minutes on the evening news, then they didn't want any part of it. If it made them look bad on television or challenged their beliefs, it simply didn't exist. In almost every case he had looked at, people had turned their backs to the horrific events unfolding around them.