A Nightmare Reborn: FVJ 02

Campbell sighed and looked at them all with weary bloodshot eyes, "He is growing stronger. I see him in my dreams now. He no longer hunts just the children. His anger and vengeance is too strong now. He can't stop. It's our fault, Lori. We thought we were protecting you, but we only made him stronger. And now he's loose again."

The doctor shook his head, trying to form the jumbled thoughts in his head. He waved his hands and then, "Think of it like this, okay? We protect forests from fires, yes? We go to great extremes to make sure that a fire doesn't burn out of control. But nature... a forest fire by itself, naturally caused in a natural event. It's part of life. Who knows why it happens? But it happened long before man could intervene and it happens now despite out best efforts. The longer man staves off the fire, the greater the risks... there is no balance..." The doctor trailed off, frustrated.

"Where do we find Alice Johnson?" Lori asked, feeling both sorry for and angry with her father. The decrepit shell of a man before her wasn't the man she had known growing up, or even the questionably ethical doctor she had left a few years back. He was broken and driven by his guilt, another victim of Freddy Krueger. She had to remind herself to think of him that way. If she considered him anything other than that, he would be a monster. And she couldn't handle that.

"It's too late, baby," he covered his face in his hand, "Burn the town and go."

"Where is she?"

"Let it die."

"I don't accept that!" Lori roared and gave him a look that divorced her from his authority once and for all, "I don't have time for your bullshit, Daddy! You fucked up and that's it! You can't change it! You either help me now or you'll have all of our deaths on your conscience!"

Dr. Richard Campbell moaned pathetically and looked to his daughter, his eyes flooding tears as his mouth worked open, "I am so sorry."

"Where is she?" Lori whispered and touched his cheek. It was the only act of tenderness she had inside her at the moment. The death of her husband had hardened her heart and calloused her soul to a rough lump that sat heavily inside her chest.

"Help us now," Loomis spoke up, "Make a difference now."

Campbell looked to him and then back at his daughter, "He can't be killed."

"I don't intend to kill him," Lori said, "I intend to balance the equation."

Campbell nodded gravely and looked down at his feet.

Lori closed her eyes, "You said there was no Dream Master after Alice left. Where did she go?"

"Alice Johnson left Springwood shortly after the birth of her son," he said finally, "If there is anyone who can help you, it's her. But you mustn't expect much, Lori... don't make the mistake I did."

"Where is she now?" Loomis asked. A fire truck went roaring down the street, horns and sirens blaring.

"Her life has been lived in secret," Campbell looked at Loomis, "In that file folder you're holding is the address."

"I'm sorry," Sean spoke up, "But why do we need this Johnson girl?"

"Because," Loomis said, "When a fatal disease is running loose in your body, you go and find a doctor with the medicines to cure you."

"Surviving Jason and Michael Myers won't be worth shit unless we can take care of Krueger," Lori said evenly, "He's the cause of all this."

Tessa nodded, "Jason and Michael are the symptoms, Freddy is the disease."

"And if we can't kill the disease, then we can at least find a way to vaccinate against it," Lori added.

"Balance," Campbell muttered, "It's all about balance... you don't understand..."

***

Sean and Tessa sat outside on the front porch of 1428 Elm Street.

The idea of there being three supernatural killers on the loose in Springwood had become a casual idea to Sean. He was amazed at how quickly he had accepted the crazy notion of a man killing people in their dreams. The notion that a man in a hockey mask could be killed over and over and then rise again might have made him laugh at one time. It was all urban legend. But Michael Myers and his ghostly mask made it all much more than a simple urban legend to him.

These fuckers were real.

"I feel so bad," Tessa lit her cigarette and inhaled.

"About what?"

"Dr. Loomis ex-wife," she looked at her smoke, "That poor woman. She never had a chance."

"That shit was fucked up," Sean shook his head as recalled the horrible death of Mary Stilfreeze back at the police station, "This whole situation is fucked up. You think anyone is still out there?"

"Well," Tessa shrugged, "I know Malone and Daniels were out in the north end of town. They're probably at the station now helping put out the fire."

"I feel so fucking useless," Sean said, "We should be there too."

"Sean," she put a hand on his shoulder, "We're needed here. It's our job."

"This is bullshit," he muttered and rubbed his eyes.

"We'll carve all their names into those fucker's foreheads, okay? I promise," Tessa smiled and touched his face, "You know, if it wasn't for you we'd all probably be dead."

"No," he corrected her, "If hadn't been for Will we'd all be dead."

"Stop it," she said, "Don't you dare carry the dead with you."

"I just keep seeing him closing that door," Sean said, "I keep seeing him fall from view."

"He did his part," she reminded him, "And now it's our turn to do ours."

Sean shifted his weight to one leg and looked at his boots. The shine was gone, replaced by dull scrapes and scuffs. His pants were spattered with dark stains that he knew was blood belonging to someone else. Sean held his hand out to Tessa. Her delicate fingers, so strong and beautiful slipped into his gentle grip. He looked at her and said, "Theresa there's something I need to tell you."

"Uh oh," she rolled her eyes, "Anytime you call me Theresa I know something big is about to go down."

Sean smiled as best he could, "At the risk of sounding, you know, over dramatic and sappy..."

He paused, trying to find the right words to express how he felt about her. He looked at her face, taking in her exotic features and trying to communicate his thoughts to her by gazing into her eyes. Sean had never been very good expressing himself to anyone, let alone Tessa. His emotions usually had to be dragged from him with a winch and truck. But as he considered that his fate may very well be the same as Don Ford's or Sheriff Williams or any of the others back at the police station he realized the time for stumbling over uncertainty had passed.

"I... you see, I just wanted to tell you..." he could not find the words.

"Sean," Tessa kissed him on the lips gently, "That may be the romantic thing a man has never said to me."

Sean smiled.

"I love you too," Tessa said.

"Officer Renaud?"

Sean turned to see Lori and Loomis standing in the doorway. They each held a large box of files and both looked deadly serious. He helped Tessa stand up and he said, "What's up, Lori?"

"Feel like taking a trip to Elm Grove?"

"We're seriously going to do this?"

"We need Alice Johnson," Loomis told him and patted the box he held under one arm, "She is the key to catching Freddy Krueger."

"Even if we catch Krueger," Tessa tossed her cigarette away, "What then? You've said it yourself we can't kill him."

"Alice put him away before," Lori said quietly, "She can show us how to do it again. Balance. It's all about balance."

"Okay then," Sean looked at her for a moment and shrugged, adding, "Let's go get killed."

***

Watching the police car pull away with his daughter inside was second hardest thing Richard Campbell had ever done. Letting go of his wife was the first. He knew that Lori loved him, but that didn't change the fact she hated him as well. Her rage had been pure and for all his wishing to the contrary, it had been righteous. He wanted to make her truly understand that his work here in Springwood was for the good of everyone, not just for one town but for a whole world. If only she could see the sacrifices he had made and could be brought to understand them.

"Stop wishing you old fool," he muttered.

Every night he woke up screaming, sometimes having wet his bed and sometimes having fallen completely off the mattress to the floor. Sometimes both. He could see all the children he and the others had condemned to comatose death in the wards of Westin Hills. Oh how they urged him to find another way, any other way to help the children the safe doses of hypnocil were not reaching. Even Dr. Parker, with his kind and always generously friendly disposition had turned away from him and Sheriff Williams in the end.

He hadn't told Lori or her friends that. It only served to intensify his guilt and make him look even worse. Parker and sided with Gordon in the end, and even when Maggie Burroughs had warned against crossing that line in the name of protection he hadn't listened. Maggie had left the day Parker did, and it saddened Campbell to no end. He felt alone and solitary in his fight to save Springwood. He couldn't make them see there were sacrifices that had to be made for the greater good.

"A dying patient," Neil Gordon had said just before the cab pulled away from the Westin Hills main driveway, "This town has a cancer that can go airborne, Richard. As a doctor, can you justify letting this terminally contagious patient live?"

Campbell had only looked at him with a detached kindness, "Absolutely."

"You took an oath," Neil shook his head, "We all did. We promised to do no harm. This is harm, Richard. For God Sakes, your wife has been murdered and an innocent boy is in the mental ward!"

"Sacrifices have to be made, Neil. I ask no more of you or them than I do myself."

Neil shook his head, his eyes heavy and sad.

"Go," Campbell said, "Run away."

And Neil did.

"Maybe he was the smart one," Campbell laughed to himself as he let the curtains Lori had opened fall back into place. He walked into the kitchen and opened the cabinet over the stove. Inside was a single bottle of Scotch, holding 18 fluid ounces of pure satisfaction. He grabbed in and opened it.

Of all the warnings he got, the one from Maggie Burroughs rang true now more than ever. He had listened to her account of the fight with Freddy Krueger in Elm Grove and how she had defeated him. It was frightening, the description of this man from beyond life and death who simply hunted for the sake of the masochistic and sadistically pure thrill of the kill. Campbell remembered how beautiful Maggie had been, just as beautiful as his own wife before Krueger had somehow invaded her dreams and killed her. He still wondered now as he did then how Krueger had been able to leap the boundaries of his abilities. How had he gotten into her dreams?

"The mistake we all made was assuming we knew what he was capable of," Maggie told them one night shortly before she and Dr. Parker left to return to Elm Grove, "We all assumed my father had limits. Even the Dream Master did. That's why she left. She believed he had been contained. She was wrong."

"Someone will always have to keep watch," Parker mussed to himself, "Unless we destroy the host."

"Destroy the host?" Sheriff Williams had scoffed, "The governor is not willing to burn a whole town to the ground and then leave it be. Are you insane?"

"This town is sick," Parker insisted, "I thought through the hypnocil we could contain Krueger... even drain his power. No dreams, no fear and power... but we were wrong. It's been two years since people moved back to Springwood and there are more and more substantial incidents of Krueger appearing in dreams."

"It's controllable," Campbell insisted.

"If you follow this through, Richard," Maggie warned, "It's not. Krueger will come back. I recommend Springwood be destroyed to stop Krueger here. If there's no host body to invade, there's no way he can survive and spread."

"We are his jailers," Campbell said, "We can control him. Unfortunately, sacrifices are necessary."

Parker stood up to leave, "And will you tell that to yourself when it's Lori on the slab, doctor?"

"Sacrifice," Campbell said to no one as he poured the scotch all over the kitchen, "Sacrifices must be made, Dr. Parker! Dr. Gordon!"

The alcohol splashed across the floor and collected in a puddle at the foot of the refrigerator. He showered it over the countertops and across the walls, making his way down the hall and to the living room where he continued until the bottle went dry. He then opened the tinderbox beside the hearth of the fireplace and grabbed the squeeze bottle of lighter fluid.

"I ask nothing of you that I wouldn't ask of myself!" he screamed at the memories of his colleagues. He looked into the kitchen and saw kids standing there, shoulder-to-shoulder and dressed in hospital gowns. Their eyes were covered with strips of bloody gauze, soaked with gore and hellaciously red in the dimming light. Campbell laughed a crazy chuckle and pointed at them all, "All of you! It was for the good, you fuckers!"

He stumbled through the living room, spraying the boxes of records and reports from the cover-up and all the evidence he had of Freddy Krueger. He bellowed and raved like a madman as lighter fluid soaked his bare feet. The carpet was wet with kerosene and liquor as he threw the half empty bottle of whiskey through the living room. It shattered against the wall by the door.

"I will not be responsible anymore!" he shouted defiantly, stomping up the stairs and spraying lighter fluid along the walls, "You sons of bitches aren't going to judge me!"

As he reached the top of the stairs, he suddenly stopped.

In the doorway leading to Lori's old room was the ghostly apparition of Will Rollins. His face was transparent and faded, yet possessed of a horrible ethereal energy that made Campbell want to scream. His son-in-law's eyes were sunken in and his wounds were hideous. Spectral blood dripped from the wounds and collected on the floor at his feet. The ghost pointed at him and laughed wildly.

"Not real!"

The dead man watched him and smiled.

"Stop laughing at me!"

The laughing was so loud it made Campbell's head throb.

"Fuck! STOP!"

So loud... so loud...

"It's not my fault!" Campbell screamed, breaking into hysterical sobs as he ran through the upstairs floor, letting loose the last of fluid from the squeeze bottle, "We didn't know!"

Campbell knew he had lost it. He could feel the giddy horror of his fall into the mental abyss like the potent rush of adrenaline from a really good erection. He was smiling and laughing to himself as he slammed doors and opened them, his face contorted in a leer of panic and lunacy. He stubbed his toe hard on the crown-molding base around the banister of the stairwell. The toe nail ripped off and he fell. A muted cry of pain issued from his throat as his nose smashed into the floor along with the rest of his body. Blood gushed from the shattered bridge of his nose and stained his flannel robe.

"Fuck it!" he cried out, both laughing and wailing, "Fuck it fuck it fuck it!"

He ran into his room and grabbed his shotgun from under the bed. The shells were already in it as he knew this day would eventually come. He had known ever since Lori found out about his involvement in Will's disappearance and stay at Westin Hills. The fact that her love and faith in him had been shattered had destroyed him, finishing the job Freddy Krueger had started when he killed Campbell's wife. That was when he had died. Campbell knew he was already dead only his body just hadn't come to grips yet.

Campbell thought of burning bodies. That's what he had to do. He threw his head back, eyes wide as he began chanting his favorite old chestnut like a ritualistic pagan, "Try to set the night on fire... set the night on fire... try to... fire..."

Campbell bolted back into the hallway to find the ghost of Will Rollins standing before him. The dead man grinned at him as rotting skin fell from his face and hung in tattered ribbons. He was no longer a ghost, but an opaque and very real creature. Campbell could smell the rot on him and knew he was either dreaming or was having the most realistic fucking breakdown in the history of world lunacy. Either way, Campbell was scared shitless.

"You killed me," the dead man croaked as tendons in his exposed jaw pulled and stretched, "You fucking killed me."

"TRY TO SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE!" Campbell hollered and brought his gun to bear, "SET THE FUCKING NIGHT ON FIRE!"

"You know I fucked your daughter," the zombie chuckled, only it wasn't just the voice of a recently dead son-in-law. It was the watery voice of Freddy Krueger, "I fucked her so hard my dick was tickling the base of her skull."

"FIRE! SET IT OFF MOTHERFUCKERS!"

The Freddy/ Will Rollins creature laughed, "Jim Morrison is rolling in his grave, doc..."

Campbell was babbling now as he squeezed the trigger of his shotgun. The head of Will Rollins exploded in a shower of skull fragments and bloody gray matter. It spattered on the floor and walls as black, shiny beetles skittered from the smoking stump of Will's neck. Their iridescent carapaces shined in the stormy lighting of the upstairs hallway as they fell to the ground and scrambled towards him. Campbell turned and began running. He tripped over the top step and tumbled down the stairs, end over end and his legs flailing wildly.

"For God Sakes your wife has been murdered!" Freddy Krueger howled from the top of the stairs as Campbell crashed into the front door. The demon in the fedora slashed at the wallpaper and tore it to shreds as he laughed, "Sacrifices, Doctor!"

"I'm dreaming!" Campbell screamed as he managed to right himself and stand on legs that shook badly.

"What dreams may come, Dick," Freddy tapped his bladed fingers on his dusty brown pants, "This is no dream... this is reality now."

Campbell aimed at the television set and fired. The set exploded in a hail of sparks that immediately lit the alcohol and kerosene soaked carpet. The entire living room was engulfed in flames within moments as he turned and fired up the stairs. The blast tore apart the ceiling and echoed through the burning house. No one was there. He had imagined both Krueger and the dead corpse of Will Rollins.

"NO!" he yelled, "I know you were here!"

Campbell looked around as the house began to surge with living flames that crackled and popped loudly. The heat was almost unbearable as he slid down the front door and sat. He could feel his hair beginning to singe as flames followed his trail of lighter fluid up the stairs, along the walls and into the bedrooms. He laughed to himself and placed the shotgun between his legs. He managed to place one toe against the trigger and then looked into the black barrel of the gun.

"They say fire purifies," he laughed and took a deep breath, suddenly feeling very clear and lucid despite the smoke and his drunken stupor, "It smelts out the imperfections."

The house groaned as the flames destroyed it.

"I ask nothing of you," he said quietly as his robe caught fire and burned his flesh, "That I would not do myself."

Campbell lowered his mouth to the shaft of steel and closed his eyes.

"Purify me," his toe jerked the trigger, the loud report of the blast accompanied by the splattering remains of Campbell's head all over the door. His body wavered a moment and then fell to one side as smoke curled around him. The flames ate away at the wood of the house, destroying the flesh and skeleton of Freddy Krueger's home away from home. In the crackling hell of the inferno, there was a bellow of pure rage as the dream killer watched it burn. All the times it had been fixed up and saved were worth nothing now. Fire was one element Krueger could not control.

Once a young, brave girl had faced Krueger here. She had stood her ground and renounced him, turning her back on him and defeating him by denying him his power. A mother had been killed here, stolen from her husband and daughter through the safety of her own bed. A young boy had lost his soul here, taken over by Krueger in much the same way Mary Stilfreeze had been. In the netherworld between sleep and awake, a dream warrior had died here and yet the house had set a dream master on her course. The house had been the centerpiece to countless nightmares for so many. It was a place of evil, no matter how pure the soul that lived there.