A Nightmare Reborn: FVJ 02

Only Lori did not show it. Alice thought that was interesting, as she knew Lori's fear ran the deepest of them all.

Alice asked the others to step outside while she and Lori talked.

***

"Cigarette, Doctor?" Sean offered Loomis a smoke from his rumpled pack of Camel Lights.

"Thank you," Loomis smiled appreciatively and took the cigarette.

"No sweat," Sean handed the doctor his lighter.

"So," Tessa asked from the chair at the far end of the porch, "You think this chick is the genuine article?"

"How do you mean?" Loomis lit up and inhaled, handing the small gold lighter back to Sean.

"This Dream Master stuff," she said, "I mean, it all sounds pretty for out there, right? You think she's for real?"

Loomis nodded, "Yes, I think so."

"After what I've seen here lately," Sean laughed half-heartedly as smoke jetted from his nostrils, "I'd believe elephants can fly."

"God this is all so fucking weird," Tessa rubbed her eyes and ran a hand through her dark hair, "I mean you've got a guy who kills people in their dreams, masked psychos and a woman called the Dream Master. This shit would make a great movie."

Loomis chuckled, "I suppose it would."

Sean rubbed his shoulder and grunted, his dark skin still a pale shade of what it normally was. He scratched his chin and then took another drag on his smoke. He looked to Loomis and asked, "Can I ask you something, doctor?"

"Of course," Loomis replied.

"What's your story?"

Loomis shrugged, "It's a rather long tale, officer..."

"Sean," he corrected him, "We've almost been killed together today on more than occasion. You can call me Sean."

"Okay then," Loomis smiled gratefully and took a deep breath, "My father was the psychiatrist who cared for Michael Myers after he killed his sister back in 1968. Judith Myers was only seventeen when Michael took a large kitchen knife and stabbed her to death. At first, my father believed Michael could be cured, but after awhile he realized that Michael was beyond help."

"No shit," Tessa leaned her head back against the wall, "Talk about sibling rivalry..."

"He even petitioned for Michael to be executed at one time, but the state of Illinois had rather archaic laws at the time regarding the death penalty," Loomis continued as the rain began to fall again, "My father knew Michael could never be reintroduced into society, so he devoted his career to keeping Michael locked away. But Michael escaped in 1978 and went after his other sister in Haddonfield. She escaped, but my father was badly burned in his capture of Michael. Michael claimed a dozen victims that night."

"Damn," Sean cocked an eyebrow.

"He escaped again during a prisoner transfer and succeeded in adding another twenty people to his long list of atrocities. My father tracked him and pursued him. It was his obsession really, to the point where my mother left him and took me along for the ride. In the end though," Loomis said, "Michael and my father had to reckon with each other and finally fought for the last time in a sanitarium not far outside Haddonfield. He stabbed my father repeatedly until he was dead and then left."

"Mathew," Tessa looked to him, her eyes wide, "I am so sorry."

"Oh," Loomis thanked her with a look as he took another drag on his smoke, "My father died doing what he felt he must do. He didn't give up."

"And so you've picked up his work?" Tessa limped over to the banister where Loomis was and stood beside him.

"I worked very hard profiling 'super-killers' like Fred Krueger and Jason Voorhees in the hopes understanding Michael Myers better," Loomis explained, "Mary, my ex-wife, was my partner in the research until she found other interests."

"So what are our chances then?" Sean asked bluntly, "You're the expert here doctor, and I have a bad feeling that the odds are not in our favor."

"And you'd be right," Loomis agreed hesitantly, "We have very little hope of success. But we can't give up either, Sean."

"Spoken like a true realistic optimist," Tessa said.

"Thank you, Tessa," the doctor smiled.

"Officer Alexander," she said sternly and glared at him.

"Oh," Loomis stammered, "I'm sorry-"

"Doc?" Tessa interrupted.

Loomis looked thoroughly embarrassed.

"I'm just fucking with you," she slapped his shoulder.

Loomis laughed.

It felt good to laugh.

***

"What do you know about dreams?" Alice asked Lori.

Lori shrugged, "Not a lot, really."

The two women sat on the floor in the dark living room, legs folded underneath them and no more than a few feet apart. Lori felt surprisingly at ease with Alice, despite the fact she didn't know her very well. Still, there was a strong connection between them. She could feel an unspoken bond of kindred experience and shared pain. Until now, Lori had believed her grief was insurmountable and beyond what anyone could really understand. But even being this close to Alice Johnson proved to her that she knew nothing of the true nature of pain.

"The Dream Master," Alice began, "Is a guardian. The world that lies between sleep and awake is powerful and filled with paradoxes and impossibilities, Lori. It's a place where the rules of this world no longer apply. Those who understand this have a great power there. Freddy Krueger is unbound to the rules that govern our daily lives here and in the dream world for the most part. He can affect things in the real world as easily as he can in the dream world. In a world where such an evil man can exist, there has to be a balance. For every wolf, there must be a shepherd. Understand?"

"Yes," Lori nodded, "I'm becoming acquainted with that concept intimately."

"I was chosen to be the Dream Master," Alice explained, "I don't know why, Lori. I don't why it was me and not someone else. And it took me awhile to understand what had happened to me. All of my friends died before I realized the power I had been given. The Dream Master protects the dreams of the living, and when I fought him the first time I thought I had killed him."

Lori started feeling sleepy, her eyes growing heavy as she listened. The strange part was the further she began to fall into sleep, the clearer Alice's words became to her. Lori had the distinct feeling that she was beginning to dream as her eyes closed and yet remained open.

"I didn't succeed," Alice told her, "But I stopped him."

"I feel so sleepy," Lori managed, her hand to her forehead and eyes fluttering briefly.

"Don't be afraid," Alice comforted her and put a hand on her leg, "We're both going into a dream."

"Why would we dream?" Lori asked, feeling uneasy, "Freddy will find us."

"He might," Alice agreed, "But I can't really explain to you what is happening. You have to see it for yourself."

"But-"

"No," Alice put a finger to her lips and then Lori realized that they were no longer in Alice's house but in a church.

The chapel was ancient looking, the pews rotted and chipped and the walled stained with years of neglect. Cobwebs the size of picnic blankets were hanging from the ceiling in ghostly tangles. Dead weeds and plants were rooted in the cracks of the dirty floor. Lori could smell the dusty aroma of rotted leaves, browned and brittle from the passing of time and an even more powerful undercurrent of wet soil. It reminded her of the time she had hidden from her father in the crawlspace under the house. It was dark and damp, cold with drafts and alive with things that feared the light. The dirt had been soft and wet giving an earthy smell she had never forgotten.

Elegantly colored stain glass windows gave the chapel a bizarre aura of red, blue, green and orange light. Lori thought they were beautifully crafted windows, but also that they were ugly and foreboding at the same time. The once cherry-stained wood that made up the table and decorative choir boxing and pit was run down and covered with a thick layer of dust. Lori followed Alice up the center aisle of the chapel until they arrived where the preacher's pulpit might have been.

"This is where I fought him," Alice looked around and held her hands out as she stood in the colorful array of lights from the window, "This place, this chapel is a dream hub."

"A hub?" Lori asked.

"Like the house at 1428 Elm Street," Alice said and ran her finger over the dusty banister lining under the windows, "Like the boiler room at the old power plant... like Springwood is."

"This is a real place?"

"As real you want it to be," Alice said, "Just like anything else."

Lori looked down and saw a rumpled pile of clothing. She gasped, not because a dark brown fedora was upturned and gaping at her like an open maw and not because of the red and green striped sweater underneath it. She saw the glove, the simple workman's glove than any gardener or utilitarian might have worn to his work every day. Except this glove was modified, adorned with metal and stained with blood. Lori felt another chill arc up her spine like electricity as the long, wicked blades at the four finger tips glimmered in the dream light.

"Krueger?" she pointed down at the pile.

"That was how I left him after the fight," Alice nodded, "He looks pretty dead, doesn't he?"

"Yes," Lori agreed, "No body even."

"That's just it Lori," she said, "No body. You're thinking like I did. I saw him die here and then I assumed he was. But that's where I went wrong. He can't die, Lori. He's not even a man anymore. He's an idea, a universal fear. He's gone beyond the flesh and beyond the dreams now. I've been watching him for a long time as he's changed and evolved."

"I don't understand."

"Freddy Krueger is about to fulfill his destiny," Alice explained, "He is becoming a variation on a very concept of evil."

"That doesn't sound very frightening, Alice."

"Think about it... how do you fight an idea?" she asked, "How do you suppress the spoken word of his name? Do you forget him? Can you outrun him? How can you fight what you can't see or touch or even prove exists?"

Lori felt he stomach sinking fast.

"Like Dr. Gordon told me once, Freddy Krueger is an airborne disease," Alice said, "All you have to do to catch him is say his name and he'll be in your dreams that very night."

"A variation on an idea," Lori repeated.

"Look," Alice pointed out to the pews, "And see the legacy."

The pews of the church were suddenly filled. A dozen or so people were seated in the various rows, their eyes looking to Lori. She knew instinctively that every last one of them was dead. She could feel the cold void of death around her like iced water in the middle of December. It felt as though a thousand dead hands caressed her skin suddenly. Lori shivered and felt her nipples go as hard as two chips of ice.

"In your dreams, you can see the dead," Alice said quietly, "They're the people in the background, the ones you never recognize but think you know. But for us Lori, for people like you and me, they're the ones we share our lives with."

"What?" Lori took another step back.

"Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers..." Alice said quietly, "They're all variations on an idea. And for each of those variations, there were those who fought back."

"We're the ones who fought," a woman with shortly cropped dark hair said in the front pew. She stood up, clad in a simple white dress that revealed her to be a slim and athletic woman. Her face was strong and her eyes filled with a powerful inner flame. She smiled warmly at Lori and said, "All of us faced the evil at one time or another."

"Who are you?" Lori asked as she stepped down into the aisle of the church.

"My name is Laurie Strode," she replied kindly, "My brother was Michael Myers."

Lori thought of the man in the white mask at the police station, the one who had killed her husband and the one Loomis had seemed the most afraid of. She asked, "What happened to you?"

"I died," Laurie turned to one side and opened the back of her dress. A vicious stab wound had been deeply cut into her back. Blood was thick and clotted around the gouge and yet there was no stain on her pure white dress, "Michael finally found me. I fell into darkness."

"Freddy Krueger killed me," another woman stood up just behind Laurie. She was younger, her hair full and curly and her face that of a little girl. Her eyes were large and doe-like, and Lori again felt the strangest sense of having known her before. She said, "My name is Nancy Thompson. I beat him once, but he tricked me and killed me."

Nancy lifted her dress up, revealing her naked body and then the four wicked puncture wounds on her flat stomach. Like Laurie, the wounds were bloody and awful but left no mark on the white dress. Nancy let the dress fall back into place.

"You lived on Elm Street," Lori nodded, "Your father was the one who caught Krueger."

"Yes," Nancy replied.

To Nancy's right another woman in white stood and faced Lori. She was even younger than Nancy, green eyes wide and face freckled with a tomboyish innocence. Her hair was short and red hued. There were wounds on her neck that forced Lori to look away. Her head had clearly been torn off along with half her neck, and yet she looked fine and at peace with that fact. She noticed Lori's reaction to her and smiled shyly.

"My name is Alice Hardy," she said, "I was at Camp Crystal Lake once. I killed Jason's mother on the shore the night she murdered all my friends. And then Jason came for me and did this," Alice ran a finger along the hideous line of torn flesh and ragged muscle encircling her neck, "He killed me."

More people began standing up, some of them looking even worse than Alice Hardy. She saw a boy in a yellow shirt that read "Bannon" further back in the chapel. She could see through his empty eye sockets, all the way back to the doors of the church. A woman, badly burned and bald was standing next to him looking sad and tortured. Lori could feel herself becoming light headed.

"Don't fear them, Lori," Alice Johnson put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

"There's so many..."

"Yes, there are," the Dream Master nodded.

"Remember who you are," the burned woman in the back called out, her blue eyes wide and filled with desperation "Don't give in to hate."

"It will never end," the boy with no eyes shook his head, "They never quit."

"Alice," Lori turned to the Dream Master, "Who are these people really?"

"They're like us, Lori," Alice said, "They were the ones who survived the storm and stayed to fight on. They are the balance to the equation. For every Michael Myers, there is a Laurie Strode. For every Mrs. Voorhees and Jason there is an Alice Hardy. For every Candyman there is Helen Lyle and for every Freddy Krueger there is a Nancy Thompson...there is-" she pointed to herself, "... an Alice Johnson... or a Lori Rollins."

"Me?" Lori pointed at herself, "I'm no warrior, Alice."

"Yes you are," Alice insisted, "Look into your heart."

"I don't know how to beat him," Lori said, "I don't know the first thing about it."

"You don't have to beat him," she replied, "I've realized after years of thinking and deep introspection that my job in life was never to defeat Freddy Krueger..."

"It was to cage him," Lori finished her thought, remembering what Loomis had said about the Dream Master earlier.

"Exactly," Alice said, "It was never my place to kill him. And that's where I failed."

"Face the evil," the ghost of Laurie Strode said.

"You must protect others against them," Nancy Thompson added.

"Don't give in to hate," Helen Lyle called from the back of the church again, her skin smoldering as she raised her hand to Lori, "Don't let them change you."

"Be at peace," Alice Hardy told her.

"Where there is peace..." added the dead sister of Michael Myers, Judith, from behind Laurie Strode.

"... there is no fear," the boy with no eyes finished.

Lori looked out across the church and realized that hundreds of people were in the pews now. It seemed the church had grown in size to accommodate the number of victims claimed by these madman and monsters. Faces, both serene and tortured looked to her with concern and curiosity. The world of the dead had opened up inside her mind and she was now seeing the fluid space between reality and the supernatural. Lori suddenly felt both very safe and very sad.

"It's your destiny Lori," the Dream Master told her, "Take your place and make your stand."

"I can't," Lori shook her head, "Will is dead and I can't-"

"I lost my sister," Laurie Strode whispered in her mind.

Then came Alice Hardy, "I lost my friends..."

"I lost my life," was the quiet lament of the boy with no eyes.

"I lost my soul," Helen Lyle breathed.

"I lost my son," Alice Johnson said, "I lost my brother and my father. I lost the only man I ever loved."

"I lost my husband," Lori began to cry. She looked out into the sea of faces and felt her heart stop as she recognized the broad features of Will Rollins. He was among the dead now, forever withheld from the living. His wounds were hideous like the hundreds of people crowding the church. He was towards the back of the chapel now, which had grown to the size of a majestic cathedral. Will simply looked at Lori and smiled that cocky half grin that had made her fall in love with him in the first place. He seemed at peace.

"Oh Jesus," she covered her mouth and sank to her knees.

"Let him go," Alice knelt beside her as the congregation of the dead watched, "Let him go, Lori. Honor him and love him and let him go."

Lori wept into her hands until Alice pulled her close and held her tight. The older woman felt helpless in comforting the girl. The Dream Master simply stroked Lori's blonde hair and rocked her back and forth. No one had been there for her when her dad died, and no one had been there when Jacob passed away in the hospital. Alice had been alone for so long she feared she might have lost her humanity in the process. But now, as she held Lori Rollins in her arms and cared for her, she found that she wasn't as out of touch as she had thought.

Lori looked up at her husband, immediately finding him in the crowd that now numbered in the thousands. She met his eyes and smiled at him as the thick lump in her throat threatened to steal her voice. Lori whispered to her dead husband the words she had not wanted to say. She knew wasn't ready to say them yet, but she couldn't deny that she felt a new purpose rising within her. Lori was being torn apart by her past and by her future.

"I love you Will," she told him as tears streamed down her cheeks, "But I have to let you go..."

Will smiled and spoke to her in a silent language only she could hear. Lori felt her heart begin to heal a little as her grief subsided enough to give her clarity. Will nodded to her and gave his blessing on her departure from his hand in marriage and life. He knew as she did that their separation would not last long. Here in the world beyond the living, an eternity was a relative matter. Will began to fade away and then disappear into the sea of faces.

"Goodbye," she whispered.

Alice squeezed her hand.

There was a rumbling outside the walls of the church and plumes of dust fell the cathedral ceiling. Lori felt a sudden pang of claustrophobia as the church somehow grew smaller, like an optical illusion. The walls were closing in and returning to their original shape and size as the crowd of ghosts made their exits. One by one, the dead turned and began filing out of the chapel as quietly as they had entered. They stepped through the doors of the church, swinging the heavy wooden gates open wide and returning to their respective eternities. Alice watched them leave as cool draft of the structure suddenly warmed.

"What is going on?" Lori asked and wiped her eyes as dust swirled around her and her feet shook under the power of the dream quake.