Written By...Wes Craven

Nightmare music theme begins as we fade up on a series of shots, all close and teasing.

A man's feet, in shabby work shoes, stalking through a junk bin in a dark, fire-lit, ash-dusted place that’s revealed as a boiler room. Then we see a man’s hand, dirty and nail-bitten, reach into frame and pick up a piece of metal.

Another angle, as the hand grabs a grimy work glove and slashes at it with a straight razor, until its fingertips are off.

Close on same hands dumping four fishing knives out of a filthy bag. Their blades are thin, curved, gleaming sharp.
More angles, even closer. We can hear the man’s wheezing breathing, but we still haven't seen his face. We never will. We just see more metal being assembled with crude tools, into some sort of a link, against a background light of fire, and a deep rushing of steam and heavy, dark energy. The linkage is attached to the glove. Then the blades attached to all of it. Then the man’s hand slips into this glove-like apparatus, filling it out and transforming it into an awesome, deadly claw-hand with four razor/talons gleaming at its blackened fingertips. Suddenly the hand arches and strikes forward, slashing through a dark canvas tearing it to shreds.

***
Los Angeles. San Fernando Valley. Night. Music fades and you hear a hushed rushing of wind and distant sirens. The sky is lit with a strange greenish light. Camera zooms swiftly into the valley's web of light. Cut to a concrete passageway. Tina Gray, strong girl of fifteen in a thin night shift, moves towards us down a dark concrete corridor. Her steps quicken. Distant insane laughter can be heard. Slamming iron doors. A lamb, white and blank-faced, skitters across her path and on into the dark. No reason why it's there. Then the slithering scrape of something like fingernails across slate that sends Tina running. Suddenly Tina's running among huge boilers steam pipes and catwalks. She stops, listening intently as the sound of tiny hooves suddenly turns into the rattle of rain. Then she hears ripping fabric. Someone is shouldering behind a ragged screen of dirty canvas, approaching her. The long curved fingerblades suddenly punch through, flashing in the firelight, and begin ripping through the thick fabric, making a hideous, ripping sound. Tina rushes away, hands over her ears as the blinded girl stumbles backwards. Then the canvas flaps free. The blades are gone. Everything goes silent. Tina’s looking right into our eyes. A deep, ragged voice whispers at her as the camera closes in on her face.

Voice: (Off Screen) One two, Freddie's coming for you.

Tina opens her mouth to scream but only a dry, yellow dust pours out. And at that precise moment a huge shadowy man with a scarred face lunges at her. Tina dodges away but her legs suddenly slow. The man seizes the hem of her nightgown and hauls her back. Tina manages to tear free - the man lurches after her with a hoarse shout...

Cut to Tina’s bedroom. She convulses in bed with a scream, looking around wildly. Someone is knocking on her door.

Woman’s Voice: (Off Screen) You okay, Tina?

Tina’s mother sticks her head in with a worried look. Tina sits up and blows out a breath, groggy.

Tina: Just a dream, Ma. (more to herself) Damn dream, is all.

Her mother steps into the room. A man hovers in the background. Tina’s mother waves him away without looking. She looks at her daughter.

Mother: Some dream, judging from that. (nods at Tina's nightshift)

Tina looks down at her nightgown, only now aware of the chill penetrating it from the room. There are four long slashes up its middle, cleanly cut as if by scalpels.

Man: (Off Screen, distant, annoyed) You coming back to the sack or what?
Mother: Hold your horses. (lower, to Tina as she stands to leave) You gotta cut your nails or stop that kind of dreaming, Tina. One or the other.

She shuts the door behind her. Tina looks back to her nightgown.

Tina: (low) Oh, shit. (She grabs the cross that hangs over her head, her face white as her sheet)

***
Fade to black. Children are singing…

Children: (off screen) One two, Freddie's coming for you. Three four better lock your door. Five six grab your crucifix...

***
High School. Day. Tina climbs out of a cherry-red 1959 Cadillac convertible with two other students, best friend Nancy Wilson and Nancy's boyfriend and owner of the car, Glen Lantz. In the foreground, several grade schoolers are playing jump-rope, and the old ditty they sing continues unbroken from Tina's bedroom.

Rope Jumpers: Seven eight, gonna stay up late! Nine ten - never sleep again!
Tina: (to Glen and Nancy) That's what it reminded me of - that old jump rope song. (shudders) Worst nightmare I ever had. You wouldn't believe it.
Nancy: (nods) Matter of fact I had a bad dream last night myself.

Tina turns to Nancy, but before either can say more, Rod Lane, a young guy in black leather and new wave studs joins up with them and interrupts.

Rod: (to Tina) Had a hard on this morning when I woke up, Tina. Had your name written all over it.
Tina: (Tina cracks her gum with a look of indifference) There's four letters in my name, Rod. How could there be room on your joint for four letters?
Rod: (stopped in his tracks) Hey, up yours with a twirling lawn mower! (he walks off)
Tina: Rod says the sweetest things.
Nancy: He's nuts about you.
Tina: Yeah, nuts. (makes a face and rakes her fingernails across a tree as she passes. Then she yawns) Anyway, I'm too tired to worry about the creep. Couldn't get back to sleep at all. (pause) So what you dream?
Nancy: Forget it, the point is, everybody has nightmares once in a while. No biggie.
Glen: Next time you have one, just tell yourself that's just all it is, right while you're having it, y'know? That's the trick. Once you do that, you wake right up. At least it works for me.
Tina: (looks at Glen sharply. He kisses Nancy and darts off for class) Hey! You have a nightmare too?

Glen’s gone.

Tina: Maybe we're gonna have the Big Earthquake. They say things get weird just before that.

Bells are ringing and students crowding in to the school. Tina and Nancy are drawn into the crush.

***
A valley street. Night. Tina’s house. Every light in the house and yard is turned on. We hear the rock group Madness played at a 'No adults home' volume. Enter the livingroom. Glen dialing the phone. Nancy and Tina are watching, giggling.

Tina: I can't believe his mother let him come over here.
Nancy: Right. Well, she didn't, exactly...

Glen shoves a cassette into Tina’s radio.

Glen: (to Tina) See, I got this cousin who lives near the airport, that it's okay for me to stay with, right? So I found this sound effects tape at Licorice Pizza, and. (The phone is answered. He pushes the play button. ) Hello, Mom? Yeah, out here at Barry's. (A plane begins to make itself heard on the tape. Glen moves the radio closer to the phone) Huh? Yeah, noisy as usual. Glad we don't live here - huh? Yeah, Aunt Eunice says hello. (The plane is screaming in the background. Nancy and Tina dissolve into muffled giggles. He shouts over the noise) Right, right - I'll call you in the morning! Right! Huh? Yeah, sure, I, huh? (Suddenly the tape goes silent. Glen blanches. Next moment another plane engine is heard. Reacting to his mother's reaction) Uh... some kid's drag racing outside, I think... (The sound effect changes abruptly to a speeding car in a collision. Nancy tries to find the right button to turn it off, but misses. Glen improvises desperately.) Listen, Mom, I got to go – I think there's been an accident out front. I... (Nancy jumps back from the cassette player – World War II bursts out at top volume. Glen makes a last-ditch dive and flings the cassette out of the machine. Silence.) Right. I'll call the police. No, just some neighbors having a fight, I guess. I'm fine, I'm fine! Call you in the morning! (He hangs up and sags back)
Nancy: Worked like a charm.
Glen: Jesus.

Tina shoves another cassette in, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” blasts from the radio. The kids relax, the camera moves past them to the window. The wind is moving a tree branch outside. Camera pans back to the comfortably threadbare room, uneasy. Nancy pokes at a flame in the hearth as Tina comes foreground to draw the drapes.

Nancy: Nice to have a fire.
Tina: Really. Turn 'er up a little.
Nancy: (turns a valve handle, and the gas fire climbs brightly over its artificial log. Tina joins her.) Maybe we should call Rod, have him come over too. He might get jealous.
Tina: Rod and I are done. He's too much of a maniac.
Glen: He should join the Marines, they could make something out of him. Like a hand grenade.

Tina laughs despite herself. Nancy brightens.

Nancy: See? You've forgotten the bad dream. Didn't I tell you?
Tina: (shakes her head, wishing she had forgotten) All day long I been seeing that guy's weird face, and hearing those fingernails.
Nancy: (looks up and flinches) Fingernails? (blinks, laughing) That's amazing, you saying that. It made me remember the dream I had last night.
Tina: (looks up) What you dream?
Nancy: I dreamed about this guy in a dirty red and yellow sweater; I dream in color, y'know; he walked into the room I was in, right, right through the wall, like it was smoke or something, and just stared at me. Sort of ...obscenely. Then he walked out through the wall on the other side. Like he'd just come to check me out...

The story has left the room deathly quiet. Especially Tina seems affected.

Tina: (quietly) So what about the fingernails?
Nancy: (remembers) He scraped his fingernails along things - actually, they were more like fingerknives or something, like he'd made them himself? Anyway, they made this horrible nose - (imitates) sssssccrrrtttt....
Tina: (pales) Nancy. You dreamed about the same creep I did, Nancy...

The girls stare at each other.

Glen: That's impossible.

They look at him. He looks away, as if suddenly listening.

Tina: What?
Glen: Nothing.
Tina: There's somebody out there, isn't there?
Nancy: I didn't hear anything...

Then there's an unmistakeable sound. A distinct scraping against the house, just outside the window. Something multiple, thin and sharp. Something like metal fingernails. Nancy’s mouth opens a fraction of an inch. Camera pans on the front door, the bolt unlocks, a key turns, a chain is removed. The door swings open and Glen swaggers out.

Glen: I'm gonna punch out your ugly lights, whoever you are.

No answer but a slight rustle in the bushes. Glen does a 180 and walks right back inside. The girls prod him right back out, giddy with giggling fear.

Glen: It's just a stupid cat.
Nancy: Then bring us back its tail and whiskers.

The girls push him farther. Glen edges towards the shadows. Then the scratching again. Glen stops; Tina edges back into the house.

Tina: Anyway, I don't have a cat.

Glen sobers, listening. From his point of view, we see the street. Silent houses. Motionless trees on empty lawns.

Glen: Kitty-kitty? Chow chow chow?

Nothing. Glen turns back to the girls with a shrug. Instantly, a large figure pounces and throws him to the ground with a shout. The girls scream in panic and run for the house. Suddenly, Rod leaps up off Glen and shouts like a sportscaster...

Rod: And it's number thirty-six, Rod Lane, bringing Lantz down just three yards from the goal with a brilliant tackle! And the fans go wild! (Rod dances into the light, flashing a grin at Tina. The girl's are relieved and frightened at the same time.)

Tina: What the hell you doing here?
Rod: Came to make up, no big deal. Your ma home?
Tina: Of course. What's that?
Rod: (takes the hand rake he found and scrapes the house's wall. He grins and tosses it aside.) Intense, huh? (looks at the three of them) So what's happening, an orgy or something?
Glen: Maybe a funeral, you dickhead.

Rod turns, a knife suddenly in his hand, as if ready to take Glen's throat out. Nancy breaks between them.

Nancy: Just a sleep-over date, Rod. Just Tina and me. Glen was just leaving.

Rod eyes Glen, laughs and flips the knife closed and away, putting his arm around Tina's shoulder and laughing as if it's all a great joke.

Rod: You see his face? (lower) Your ma ain't home, is she? (to Nancy & Glen) Me and Tina got stuff to discuss. (he pulls Tina inside)
Nancy: Rod...
Rod: (heading into the livingroom) We got her mother's bed. You two got the rest.
Nancy: (to Glen) We should get her out of here.
Tina: (darts to the front door, her blouse half out) Hey - you guys're hanging around -right? (fake laughing/whine) Don't leave me alone with this lunatic - Pleeeeze, NANCY!
She disappears. Glen looks at Nancy.
Glen: So we'll guard her together. Through the night. (moving closer) In each others' arms like we always said.
Nancy: Glen. Not now. I mean, we're here for Tina now, not for ourselves.

She kisses him lightly, then pushes him back.

Glen: (frustrated) Why's she so bothered by a stupid nightmare, anyway?
Nancy: Because he was scary, that's why.
Glen: Who was scary? Glen: (gives her a funny look) Me? I don't dream.

He takes her inside. They lock the door.

Tina’s livingroom. Just past 2 AM. Glen is on the couch, cacooned in sheets. He's listening miserably to the sounds of lovemaking coming from the next room. Tina peaks, Rod howls. Then silence.

Glen: Morality sucks.

Tina’s mother’s bedroom. Tina and Rod lie in each other's arms in the middle of the big bed. Sated.

Tina: I knew there was something about you I liked.
Rod: (yawns into the pillows, happy) You feel better now, right?
Tina: Jungle man fix Jane.
Rod: No more fights?
Tina: No more fights.
Rod: (sleepily) Good. No more nightmares for either of us then. (He pulls the covers over his head. He's almost out already)
Tina: (pause) When did you have a nightmare?
Rod: (under the blankets) Guys can have nightmares too, y'know. You ain't got a corner on the fucking market or something.

He rolls over, practically snoring, and pulls another cover over his head. A dirty red and yellow cover.

Tina: (sleepily) Where'd you get this snotty old thing?

Snores from Rod. Tina yawns, turns off the light and snuggles against Rod, pulling the cover gingerly over herself, too.

***
Tina’s bedroom. Camera moves across the room of the original nightmare to find Nancy alone in Tina's bed, staring at the slanting ceiling above the bed. Thinking. We can just hear her heart beat. She sighs and turns on her side. Immediately the wall above her head turns a faint reddish hue, with a broad yellow smear across its center. All unseen by Nancy, the wall begins to pulse in exact time with her heart's beat. Nancy closes her eyes. On the ceiling just above her head, something presses against the surface from the inside. The plaster buldges out as if suddenly elastic, taking the shape of the thing pressing from inside - taking the shape of a man's face. The face opens its mouth. The knives rake through the surface. Plaster dust snows down on Nancy. She jerks awake, sitting bolt upright. The face retracts suddenly - the wall is normal. She looks up to the ceiling, touching her hair and feeling the plaster dust. There are three parallel cuts in the plaster above her. She draws the covers around her and shivers. Eyes wide open.

Tina’s mother’s room. A pebble bounces off the pane of a window. Another pebble strikes, with a sharper rap. Tina opens her eyes. Another pebble clatters off the glass. Tina gets up slowly. The trees brush the window with their shadows. Then another pebble. Tina slips to the window. She looks out on an old yard with a patch of bananna trees. It seems deserted, but the dark won't let her be sure. Then another pebble. Tina jumps back, startled. She hadn't seen that one coming. But she's drawn back to the glass out of curiousity, straining to see in the dark. It's as if the stones are materializing out of thin air. This time a heavier stone, and a thin crack bristles across the glass.

Tina: (low) Who the fuck you think you are, whoever you are?

She heads downstairs toward the backyard. Turns on a light and appears in the doorway.

Tina: (listening) Somebody there?

She can see through the backward to a yawning gate and the back alley. No one there. But a word is spoken, as if by wind.

Voice: (garbled) Tina.

Tina straightens, unable to swallow. There's a ragged, obscene giggle. Deep in the throat.

Tina: Who the hell is that?

Tina charges across the yard and through the gate, the music chasing after. She brakes in the middle of the alley and whirls around. Listening. Shivering in the same thin slashed nightgown. A sharp crank of metal, and fifty feet down the alley the lid of an ash can rolls from the dark like a huge tin coin and spirals noisily down. Despite herself she comes over and touches it. She comes up with long worms on her fingers. Next moment the exact same shambling man from her nightmare staggers into view fifty feet behind her. Tina falls back into the shadows, shaking the worms off her fingers in repulsion. The man turns and starts directly for her, something shining on his right hand as he spreads his arms wide. He starts scraping the steel fingernails along a cinderblock wall. Orange sparks spurt out - his arms elongate until they reach from one side of the alley to the other - and Tina is cut off from her home! She begins to shake uncontrollably.

Tina: Oh, shit, please God...
Killer: (softly, approaching) This is God...

He holds up his steel-tipped hand and Tina runs for her life. The man is fast; the distance between them closes with each heartbeat. Tina overturns ashcans - claws her way through a rotten back fence, hammers against a window. Ashen faces appear, recoil, pull curtains closed and disappear in fright. She runs out onto front lawns, screaming for help. The man roars out from behind a tree - nearly upon her! She runs in panic - at last making her own home, only to be trapped against its locked front door. She pounds against the wood.

Tina: Nancy! Open the door - Nancy!
Man: She's still awake. Nancy can't hear you.

Tina turns and looks full at him. Smudged by deep shadow, he's big and hideous. He wears the same dirty yellow sweater from the first nightmare and has the same sagging hat and leering grin over his misshapen face. And on his fingers are the steel talons. He takes the blade on the end of his right index finger and lopes off one of the fingers of his left hand. Then another. We see the pieces of fingers fall past Tina’s face in slow motion. The fingers squirm on the ground, one flopping onto Tina's naked foot. She leaps back, sickened, and begins stamping on then as if they were huge bugs. The man snaps up his arm and the fingers fly back into place on his hand. He leers at Tina - then suddenly lunges at her, sweeping with his cutting hand! Tina blocks his arm, deflecting the spines, and grabs the man's ugly face with her other hand. But the face only slides off to the bone. The man presses in, and Tina contorts in horror as the knives slash across her shoulder, cutting her deeply. Tina staggers backward, groaning, her foot now caught in her bedclothes. She falls over her bed's conformter, twists away from the man and, like a child, pulls the cover over her. The skull-faced man crushes down, and there's a fierce grappling - punctuated by his grunts and the girl's deafening screams and they both become totally wrapped in the comforter until they're beneath it, fighting for life and death.

Rod lurches up into close up in the lightless bedroom, half-awakened by the tremendous struggle somewhere, somehow inside the dark bed. Rod grabs groggily, lifting the blanket. Two shadowy figures flail and claw under the bedspread - Tina and the man - or a shape that could be a man raging against each other. Rod drops the blanket and leaps from the bed, scared full awake and terrified. Then Tina's gasps change to the cries of a terribly wounded victim. Rod instantly jerks back the bedspread. From his point of view, we see Tina struggling and flailing along on the sheets, the man nowhere in sight.

Rod: T-tina!?

Suddenly Tina - eyes turned inward to her tormentor - give an awful jolt - her arms and legs are pinned to the bed. Next instant, her nightgown flies apart and four long gashes chase across her torso. From no visible instruments. A huge irrigation of blood floods the bed. Terrified, Rod dives for the light but at the same moment something invisible grabs Tina, wielding her body in the air and bringing it around in a swift blow that knocks Rod crashing into the light smashing it to bits. He struggles around and sees Tina sliding up the bedroom wall in a dark smear, dragged feet first. Rod is paralyzed by terror as the camera angles on Tina’s dying eyes - moving with her up the wall and bumping around the corner onto the ceiling. She's just looking at who's dragging her, eyes glazing. Reverse in her point of view to the shadowy man, dragging her with fierce glee across the ceiling, literally swabbing the ceiling with her bloody body. Rod is on his hands and knees - the lamp next to him blurting blue sparks and strobing the nightmare room. Rod's screaming up at Tina’s invisible tormentor.

Rod: What the hell's going ON here! Tina!

Tina, upside down, clawing at the hanging swag lamp above her mother's dressing table - desperate for some anchor. But she's dragged away from it. The lamp swings back, it's wires gushing more sparks. Tina rakes a long furrow in the ceiling with her fingernails. But her eyes are glazing, glazing. And then they fall closed. Wide, up on the ceiling, as her body suddenly flops loose, hanging for an awful moment by the feet over the bed. Rod stares like a terrified child.

Rod: Tina…

The body falls like a sack of rocks onto the bed, in slow motion, striking with a huge splash of blood. A sick, awful giggle floats around the room, then echoes off into infinity. Rod staggers up, staring around as if hoping to see this phantom.

Rod: You motherfucker! I'll kill you for that!

In Tina’s bedroom…Nancy is sitting straight up in bed, terrified. The cries of Rod are ringing through the whole house. She forces herself to move, bolting from the bed despite her terror and sense of dread. She flies into the dark hall, crashing directly into Glen. She screams and jumps back.

Glen: What the hell's going on!?
Nancy: Oh jeez Glen! Rod's gone ape!
Rod: (Off Screen, sobbing) I'll kill you!

Nancy grabs the door; it's locked; she pounds on it. Things fall into sudden, awful silence on the other side. Glen's voice cracks with fear.

Glen: Rod? (silence) Rod, you better not hurt Tina...

Rod erupts into terrible hoarse laughter and sobbing. Then they hear breaking glass. Glen barrels into the door like the football player he is. The frame splinters and they're in. Just inside the door Nancy slips and goes down hard. Glen finds her in the dark more by touch than sight.

Glen: You okay?
Nancy: Yeah. Something slippery all over here. (feeling) Tina?

No answer. The room is quiet as a tomb. Except for a stead dripping, from all over. Then Glen finds a light switch. There's blood everywhere: up the walls, over the clawed ceiling, soaking the killing floor of the bed, and pooling in the dark red puddle where Nancy has slipped and fallen.

Glen: Oh, shit... (Nancy wobbles up and sees Tina dead in the center of the bed. She presses against the wall, then contorts and chokes. Glen is numb) I...I'm gonna call the cops.

He bursts from the room. Camera on Nancy. She turns away from the body in repulsion, sticking her head through the shattered window Rod used for his escape, sucking in the cold night air and moaning.

***
Police Station. An unmarked police car speeds to the curb. Lt. Don Thompson, a decent-looking man in his mid-40's, exits and pulls a cigarette from his pack. His shaken aide, a uniformed patrolman named Parker, greets him. They head into Thompson’s office.

Parker: Lieutenant Thompson. Sorry to wake you, but -
Lt. Thompson: I'd've canned your ass if you hadn't. What you got?
Parker: (stumbles to open the door for Thompson as the man heads into the station at a furious pace) Her name was Tina Gray. It was her home. Father abandoned ten years ago, mother's in Vegas with a boyfriend. We're trying to reach her now.
Lt. Thompson: What's the Coroner got to say?
Parker: Something like a razor was the weapon, but nothing found on the scene.

Thompson is already to the desk officer Sergeant Garcia. The big man shoves him a sheaf of papers.

Garcia: (wary) Lieutenant. You know who –
Lt. Thompson: Where is she?
Garcia: I put her in your office.
Parker: (scurries after) Looks like her boyfriend did it. Rod Lane. Musician type, arrests for brawling, dope -
Lt. Thompson: Terrific. What the hell was she doing there?
Parker: She lived there.
Lt. Thompson: I don't mean her.

Interrogation room. Thompson enters and confronts Nancy and her mother, Marge Simson.

Lt. Thompson: I mean you. (accusingly, to Marge) What the hell was she doing there?
Marge: Hello to you, too, Donald.
Lt. Thompson: (stops, the steam suddenly out of him. The girl is a wreck and he winces to see it.) Marge. (he glances at Parker and the other cops who are in the room. They all head for the door. He turns to Nancy. She fumbles a smile) How you doing, pal?
Nancy: Okay. Hi, dad.

Nancy’s dress is dark with dried blood, her skin clammy and the color of paste. Marge shoots her ex-husband a worried glance. Thompson pulls a chair close to Nancy.

Lt. Thompson: I don't want to get into this now, god knows you need time. But I sure would like to know what the hell you were doing shacked up with three other kids in the middle of the night - especially a delinquent lunatic like Lane.
Nancy: Rod's not a lunatic.
Lt. Thompson: You got a sane explanation for what he did?
Marge: Apparently he was crazy jealous. Nancy said they'd had a fight, Rod and Tina.
Nancy: (quietly) It wasn't that serious.
Marge: Maybe you don't think murder's serious -
Nancy: (sits bolt upright in her chair, her eyes flashing) She was my best friend! Don't you dare say I don't take her death seriously! (lower, near tears) I just meant their fights weren't that serious. (She looks her mom in the eyes for a moment, then looks away, then to herself) She dreamed this would happen.
Lt. Thomspon: What?
Nancy: She had a nightmare about somebody trying to kill her, last night. That's why we were there; she was afraid to sleep alone.
Marge: She's been through enough for one night. You have her statement.
Lt. Thompson: (to Marge) I suggest you keep a little better track on her - she's still a kid, y'know.
Marge: You think I knew there were boys there!? You try raising a teenager alone.

They walk out. Thompson glares at Parker.

Lt. Thompson: See they get home okay.

***
Nancy’s Kitchen. Morning. Marge opens a new bottle of gin, pouring herself a shot, drinking it, then chasing it with coffee. Nearby a TV drones the morning news.

TV Newscaster: (Off Screen) In the headlines this morning - a local teenage girl was brutally murdered during an all-night party.

Marge turns, startled, seeing Nancy coming downstairs. The girl looks a little better than she did in the Police Station, but her eyes are still red-rimmed, and stress masks her face. She looks to the TV. Stops.

TV Newscaster: Police say the victim, fifteen-year-old Christina Grey, had quarreled earlier with her boyfriend, Rod Lane, a punk rocker with a history of delinquency. Lane is now the subject of a city-wide manhunt. According to -

The TV picture has begun featuring a shot of a dark rubber body bag being carried to a coroner’s van. Just before the thing is lifted inside, Tina’s bloodied, white arm slips from its zippered side and lolls into the dark night air. A man rudely shoves it back inside and pulls the zipper up the rest of the way. Nancy pales. Marge darts to the TV and slaps it off, then turns to Nancy. She looks at the girl a moment, then goes to her and hugs her.

Marge: (softly) Where you think you're going?
Nancy: School.
Marge: I could hear you tossing and turning all night, kiddo. You've no business going to school.
Nancy: (pulls away, determined) I gotta go to school, Mom. Please. Otherwise I'll just sit up there and go crazy or something.
Marge: (studies her face a moment) Did you sleep?
Nancy: I'll sleep in study hall, promise. I'd rather keep busy, you know?
Marge: Right home after.
Nancy: Right home after. See you.
Marge watches the girl disappear outside, then lights a cigarette from the one already burning in her fingers.

***
Nancy walks alone down a sidewalk. She tilts her head, puzzled, as if sensing something. She looks across the street. A man in dark clothes, reading a newspaper, but really watching her. Nancy shrugs and continues on, then stops and looks back again. We see the man is gone. Next moment, a bloodied hand jumps out, clamps over her mouth and drags her into the bushes. She struggles, twisting against her assailant. Rod - barefoot, clad only in jeans and leather jacket, still caked with dark blood. The rest of his skin is pale as a ghost's.

Rod: I'm not gonna hurt you. (He releases her. Nancy makes no move to run or scream, even though several students pass on the nearby sidewalk) Your old man thinks I did it, don't he?
Nancy: He doesn't know you. (eyeing the blood) Couldn't you change?
Rod: The cops were all over my house. (shivers) They'll kill me for sure.
Nancy: Nobody's gonna kill you.
Rod: (runs his hands down his face, trying to believe that. The two study each other) I never touched her.
Nancy: You were screaming like crazy.
Rod: Someone else was there.
Nancy: The door was locked from your side.
Rod: (grabs her hard) Don't look at me like I'm some kind of fucking fruitcake or somehing, I'm warning you.
Voice: (Off Screen) Morning, Mr. Lane.

The boy jerks around. Nancy’s father, his .38 leveled right at Rod's belly, eases out of the bushes.

Lt. Thompson: Now just step away from her, son. Like your ass depended on it. I'm warning you.

Rod backs away, looking once at Nancy with a look of terrible sadness. Then he dives out of the bushes and runs like hell. Thompson snaps his revolver to fire – but Nancy jumps in front of it.

Nancy: No!
Lt. Thompson: (jerks his gun into the air, furious) Jesus -- are you crazy!?

He plunges past the girl. Rod races like a frightened animal across the lawns -but is soon cut off by the plainclothesman Nancy saw watching her before - and then two uniformed policemen, who close from another angle. The chase is short and Rod is soon wrestled to the ground. Next moment one of the cops is holding Rod”s knife into the air for Thompson to see. Thompson looks at Nancy, as if to say 'I told you.' Background, Rod's shouts can be heard as he's shoved into a squad car.

Rod: I didn't do it! I didn't kill her, Nancy!

The car's door slams and Rod is gone. Nancy turns to her father, livid.

Nancy: You used me, daddy!
Lt. Thompson: (exasperated) What the hell you doing going to school today, anyway? Your mother told me you didn't even sleep last night! (Nancy turns angrily and walks away.) Nancy! Hey!

But she just keeps going.

***
Classroom. Nancy in English class, trying to concentrate.

Teacher: According to Shakespeare, there was something operating in Nature, perhaps inside human nature itself, that was rotten - a canker, as he put it. (the teachers eyes glance across the room. Nancy is yawning but listening) Of course Hamlet's response to this, and to his mother's lies, was to continually probe and dig - just like the gravediggers - always trying to get beneath the surface. The same was true in a different way in Julius Caesar. Jon, go ahead...

She nods to a surfer who's been waiting uncomfortably in front of the class. He squints at his book and begins, the recitation a struggle between baked and salted brain and the poetry of Shakespeare...

Surfer: (reading aloud) Uh, In the most high and palmy state of Rome...
Student: (Off Screen) California's the most high and palmy state, man.

The surfer halts with a grin; kids snicker.

Teacher: Can it.

She glares them back into silence. The surfer starts over, as we cut to Nancy. She's nodding off now, barely able to keep her eyes open in the warm, close boredom of the classroom.

Surfer: (Off Screen) In the most high and palmy state of Rome, a little ere the mightiest Julius fell... (Nancy's head pitches forward; she jerks it back up, barely awake) The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman street...

Nancy's head has sunk again, eyelids drawn. By the time her cheek's against the desk, the Surfer’s voice is just an echo. Another voice, Tina’s, is very near, very much present.

Tina: (Off Screen) Nancy.

Nancy starts. Her eyes lock onto something. Out through the open doorway of the classroom into the hall, standing in a black pool of fluid, is a full-sized rubber body bag. Dark red and yellow. Weaving slightly, the merest suggesting of movement within it. Nancy wipes the sleep from her eyes, looks back out the door. The hallway is empty. But there's a dark smear on its floor tiles. She looks nervously towards the rest of the class. No one else has noticed a thing outside the door. All are dumbly spellbound by the Surfer, who recites...

Surfer: O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams...

Nancy slips from her seat, but no one turns as she disappears through the doorway. She turns and looks both directions. No sign of anybody.

Tina: (Off Screen, distant) Nancy.

Nancy sees the bag at the far end of the hall. A pale hand thrusts out of it. A moment later, as if pulled by invisible gravity, the bag slides out of sight into a corridor.

Tina: Tina!

Nancy starts running for it. She races blindly around the turn and smashes straight into a body lunging at her from the opposite direction! Both go down. A dazed freshman hallguard cranks herself up on one elbow. She wears a plastic plaque on her red and yellow sweater that reads 'Hall Guard'. Her nose is bleeding from the impact.

Hallguard: Y-you're not supposed to run. W-where's your pass? You got a pass?
Nancy: (leaps up) Screw your stupid pass!

She turns and sees the body bag halfway down this darker, narrower hall, upright again. But just as she sees it, it tips and pitches headlong through a doorway. She can hear the crunching of it falling down a long flight of stairs. She runs for it again. The hallguard staggers up bleeding profusely from her eyes and ears.

Hallguard: Hey, no running in the halls!

The Hallguard raises her hand and we see it's tipped with long metal spikes. Nancy runs up and turns to check out the HALLGUARD. She's vanished. Nancy turns and looks down through the open door. She edges into the stairwell and looks down. Looks like there's a fire somewhere down there, from the way the orange light dances. But there's only a low white noise.

Nancy: Tina?

No answer. She starts down the stairs into a dank boiler room. The smear trail is there. It runs behind a cracking, red-hot boiler the size of a diesel locomotive. There's a low, sinister giggle. From behind her, Tina’s killer appears revealing his long bladed fingers.

Nancy: Who are you?
Man: Gonna get you.

He brings the bloodied scalpel-fingernails across his own chest, splitting a nipple. Yellow fluid pours out. Maggots and worms. She forgets the question -jerks around and flees in blind panic into the first opening she sees - a dark pipe tunnel. The killer goes towards her; she breaks into a run into the labyrinth of steaming, sizzling pipes, squeezing through smaller and smaller openings. The killer is just yards behind her, and soon she's trapped. She presses her back to the wet bricks. By the time he reachers her ready to strike, she has realized something. She wheels and shoves her arm against one of the scalding steam pipes. In the same split second we hear her flesh scald, Nancy lurches up screaming at her desk, arm raised to ward off the invisible blow, books clattering to the floor - other girls nearby scream in surprise as she stumbles over them. Then she stops, confused and groggy from the nightmare. Everybody is staring at her as if she's gone mad. The teacher rushes over, herself frightened by the terror in the girl's eyes.

Teacher: Okay - Okay, Thompson! Everything's all right now - Nancy! (Nancy jerks around with panicked eyes, expecting the killer to leap from any direction. But there's only a class full of eyes staring at her. She begins methodically picking up her books.) I’ll call your mother.
Nancy: No! No, really, I'm fine. I'll go straight home. I'm okay.
Teacher: You'll need a hall pass!

But she's already gone. Nancy walks out of the building, shaken. Then she pauses at one of the big pine trees out front, stops and rests her head against its bark, teeth set. She starts to shake, and next second she's sobbing. She wipes the tears away with her sleeve. She rubs her arm absently, lost in thought, then reacts in surprise and pain. She lifts her arm and stares at the spot she's touched. The burn is there; about the size and shape of a half-dollar. Utterly, chillingly confused. Tina, against the tree inches from Nancy, turns to her and says...

Tina: Couldn't get back to sleep at all. (pause) What you dream?

***
Police Station. Nancy crosses directly to the Garcia.

Nancy: My dad here?
Garcia: (looks up from his paperwork) Lieutenant.
Thompson: (emerges from another room, sees Nancy) Decide to take a day off after all?
Nancy: Dad, I want to see Rod Lane.
Thompson: Only family allowed, Nancy. You know the drill.
Nancy: Just want to talk to him a second.
Thompson: He's dangerous.
Nancy: You don't know he did it.
Thompson: No, I know, thanks to your own testimony, that he was locked in a room with a girl who went in alive and came out in a rubber bag.
Nancy: I just want to talk to him. (pause) Please, Dad.
Thompson: (wavers) Make it fast.

***
Cell area. Nancy waits warily until the guard is gone, then looks back to Rod who looks haggard. His hair is wet, his clothes are borrowed jeans and a work shirt.

Nancy: (low) And then what happened?
Rod: I told you. (reluctantly) It was dark, but I'm sure there was someone else IN there, under the covers with her.
Nancy: How could somebody get under the covers with you guys without you knowing it?
Rod: How the fuck do I know? (pause) I don't expect you to believe me.
Nancy: What he look like? You get a look at him?
Rod: (looks away) No.
Nancy: Well then how can you say somebody else was there?
Rod: Because somebody cut her. While I watched.
Nancy: Somebody cut her while you watched and you don't know what he looked like?
Rod: (smiles an insane smile) You couldn't see the fucker. You could just see the cuts happening, all at once.
Nancy: What you mean 'all at once'?
Rod: (low) I mean, it was as if there were four razors cutting her at the same time. But invisible razors. She just... opened up...

he catches Nancy watching him and turns away to the back of the cell. He smashes his fist into the wall - bone-crushing blows that scare the wits out of her.

Nancy: Rod!
Rod: (his fist is dripping blood) I probably could've saved her if I'd moved sooner... But I thought it was just another nightmare, like the one I had the night before. (pause) There.. was this guy who had knives for fingers... (Nancy unable to swallow the bile rising in her throat. He turns to her, and to his surprise she's ashen) Do you think I did it?
Nancy: No.

***
Elm Street. Nancy’s house. In the kitchen, Marge scrapes the last of the evening's dishes and slips them into the dishwasher. Marge is well into a bottle of gin. She turns and looks up the stairs, calling.

Marge: Nancy, don't fall asleep in there.
Nancy: (Off Screen) I won't.
Marge: Get into bed.
Nancy: (from the bathroom) I will.

In the tub, so drowsy she can hardly rinse without falling asleep. The water in the tub is filled with suds. Her eyes droop. She slides closer to the surface of the water, letting its heat sooth her nerves. Her eyes stare straight up, glazed; her breathing deepens. There's a ripple in the water between her legs. Then something tiny and shiny breaks the surface between them. It pops up with and catches a sliver of light. Then it begins to rise. It rises higher, soon accompanied by another, then two more shining, gleaming blades, and then the full glove and dark hairy hand and then the wrist and arm, straight up the knives blossoming into a bright flower of razor sharp steel in the air, moving over the girl's belly. The hand rears back, the claws arch to strike.

Marge: (Off Screen approaching) Nancy?

She knocks on the door. The instant she does Nancy jerks up, opening her eyes groggily. The dark wet arm, hand and knifes are gone.

Nancy: What?
Marge: (through the door) You're not falling asleep, are you? You could drown, you know.
Nancy: Mother, for pete sakes.
Marge: It happens all the time. (brighter) I've got some warm milk all ready for you. Why don't you jump into bed? (fading) I'm gonna turn on your electric blanket, too. C'mon, now. (then she's gone into another room)
Nancy: (low) Warm milk. Gross. (she slides down to water level again, and sings softly, thoughtfully to herself) One, two, Freddie's coming for you, three four, better lock your door, five six, grab your crucifix, seven eight gonna stay up late, nine ten, never sleep again...

The next instant she's jerked with incredible violence straight down beneath the surface of the tub - as if the bottom had suddenly dropped out and she was in a bottomless well. Underwater shot. Nancy is pulled sharply down into really deep water, the dim light of the surface and bathroom beyond receding with each yank. And yet she somehow flails and gasps and struggles back towards the surface, managing by pure panic to break the surface with her hand. Marge rushes to the door and listens, alarmed at the wild splashing heard through the locked door.

Marge: Nancy! NANCY!

Marge’s voice reaches to the girl, who thrusts up through main force and breaks the surface with her head and shoulders. Gasping and choking, she breaks the surface of her bathwater. Her mother's voice booms over her, echoed and frantic - and the loud banging on the door finally opens her eyes. She turns and calls gasping to her mother –

Nancy: Mommy!
Marge: (bursts into the room. She rushes across to the tub. Nancy is staggering up in the bathwater) I told you! Hundreds of people a year drown like that! (She throws a towel around the gasping girl, helps her from the tub and begins drying her like a child. Nancy is paralyzed with some sort of weird dread) You okay?
Nancy: Great
Marge: (not believing it for a minute) To bed with you, c'mon.

Marge rushes out to get the room ready. Nancy turns and looks at herself in the cabinet mirror, then opens the medicine chest and begins a quick, furtive search. She takes out the box of No Doz and slips it into her robe. She emerges from the bathroom yawning. Marge follows as the girl plods obediently to her room.

Marge: No television, forget the homework, no phone calls.
Nancy: No, Mother. Yes, Mother. No, Mother.
Marge: (in Nancy’s room now) And no school tomorrow, either. You take a little vacation, relax and rest for a change.
Nancy: Yes, Mother. G'night.
Marge: (offers a smile, and a little yellow pill) Take this, it'll help you sleep.
Nancy: Right. (She pops it in her mouth and swallows obediently. Marge leans to her with a kiss.)
Marge: Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.

Marge goes out, relieved. Nancy closes the door, leans against it and spits the pill into her hand. She tosses it straight out her window and takes a NoDoz. Later Nancy struggling to stay awake watches TV yawns. She shakes herself violently and sits up straighter, forcing herself to concentrate on the movie. Her eyes droop shut - then she jerks awake, tumbles out of bed, throws open the window and takes a deep breath of the cool night air. She looks directly across the street to a lighted, open window. Then someone pitches out of the dark at her. Nancy gives a yelp - then clamps her hand over her mouth as she recognizes Glen, balanced precariously on the rose trellis outside her window.

Glen: Sorry! Saw your light on. Thought I'd see how you were.
Nancy: Sometimes I wish you didn't live right across the street.
Glen: Shut up and let me in. You ever stand on a rose trellis in your bare feet?

She looks over her shoulder to make sure her mother hasn't heard. Glen's already through her window and planted on her bed. Nancy points to a chair.

Nancy: If you don't mind.
Glen: (crosses to the chair and plops down) So. I heard you freaked out in English class today.
Nancy: Guess I did.
Glen: Haven't slept, have you?
Nancy: Not really.
Glen: (she tries to smile, but can't fake it very well. Glen looks her over) You look dead and rained on, if you want the ugly truth. And what you do to your arm?
Nancy: (shrugs, trying to keep it casual) Burned myself in Englsh class. (She hazards a look in the mirror, and her jaw drops) M'god, I look twenty years old. (turning back to him) You have any weird dreams last night?
Glen: Slept like a rock.
Nancy: (pleased) Well at least I have an objective wall to bounce this off. (pause) You believe it's possible to dream about what's going to happen?
Glen: No.
Nancy: You believe in the Boogey Man?
Glen: One two, Freddie's coming for you? No. Rod killed Tina. He's a fruitcake and you know it.
Nancy: You believe in anything?
Glen: I believe in you, me, and Rock and Roll. And I'm not too sure about you lately.
Nancy: (thinks) Listen, I got a crazy favor to ask.
Glen: Uh-oh...
Nancy: It's nothing too hard or anything. (pause) I'm just going to... LOOK for someone, and... I want you to be sort of a ...guard. Okay? (Glen makes the Twilight Zone sound) Okay?
Glen: Okay, okay. (pause) I think.
Nancy: (she comes very close to him) You won't screw up, right? I mean, a whole lot might depend on it.
Glen: (the way she's looking at him gives him the creeps) Okay, I won't screw up.

Nancy takes a deep breath. Then without another word turns off the TV and the light.

Glen: Jesus, it's dark in here.
Nancy: Shhh. Now listen, here's what we're gonna do...

***
Nancy, still in her pajamas, walks through the shadowy streets near her home, listening for the slightest sound. We move with her. She peers into the darkness of lawns and trees behind her.

Nancy: (stage whisper) You still there?
Glen: (across the street and a distance away, he steps from behind a tree) Yeah. So?
Nancy: Just checking - keep out of sight!

Glen throws up his hands in exasperation and walks back out of sight. Nancy turns and looks down between the houses, deep into a dark alleyway. Then she forces herself to walk into it as she makes herself go deeper and deeper into shadows. She pauses and waits as if the killer will come screaming out on her at any second. But he doesn't. In fact absolutely nothing happens, and Nancy emerges from the far end of the alley unscathed. The only thing strange is that she now finds her self looking across the mall to the Police Station. It takes her a little by surprise, it just seems to have appeared. She whispers hoarsely back down the dark alley.

Nancy: Still there?
Glen: (his voice is distant and echoing. He yawns) Still here!
Nancy: On your toes, right?

Nancy stares into the dark trying to see him, but she can't. She turns back and makes up her mind to move without him in sight. She crosses the lawns to the police station, creeping to the first lighted window she sees. It's a low, barred basement window, and she reacts as soon as she looks through it. She’s looking into Rod's cell. The boy is on his rough cot, twitching in disturbed sleep. And a long shadow is sliding across the wall. A big shape appears in the shadowed corridor outside the boy's cell, and as it walks closer Nancy can barely see it's the scarred man with the filthy red and yellow sweater and strange slouch hat pulled across his brow. It passes through the bars of the cell, halfway through he pauses, turning to check over his shoulder. He turns back to Rod and moves forward, and within another heartbeat is beside the boy. Nancy draws back sharply, swallowing in terror. She looks behind her for help.

Nancy: Glen? (No answer...louder) Glen?! (Street is absolutely deserted. No motion, and no sound save one: the distant but unmistakable sound of Glen snoring.) GLEN!

Nancy swears under her breath and jerks back around, forcing herself to look again into Rod’s cell. The killer picks up Rod's bedsheet and tests it between his powerful hands. Without thinking, Nancy bangs against the glass.

Nancy: Rod! Look out!

The killer locks eyes with Nancy and she goes white. The man's face is in the light, and it's horrible - seething with hatred and a twisted, insane intelligence. The hold of their eyes is broken when Rod rolls up on an elbow with a deep, troubled groan. The instant Rod does this, the killer fades into the shadows in the cell. But even then his eyes hold on Nancy's until the last second he's visible. Rod looks around the cell groggily, runs his fingers through his matted hair, then collapses back on his pillow. No matter how hard she screams, he never once looks at the window. He just pulls the twisted covers about his shoulders and succumbs once more to sleep. And now the bed sheet is no longer on the bed. The killer, materializing out of the shadow again, is holding it between his hands. He looks up and leers at Nancy, then moves for Rod. She pounds on the window, then turns in frustration and yells into the night.

Nancy: Glen!!

She turns back to the cell in desperation. The cell is deserted save for Rod who is sleeping peacefully. She pulls back from the window, stunned.

Nancy: I swear...

Suddenly Nancy feels utterly exposed. She shivers, chilled and vulnerable to the bone in her thin night clothes. She can't move. She hears the sound behind her. A sort of vibrating scratching. She forces herself to turn and look. Ahead of her, covered with a thick plastic body bag through which we can barely see her face, is Tina. Standing square in the middle of the street. A dark ooze of black eels roil out of its bottom, and at its top, the zipper moves down and the greenish-white face of Tina lolls out. She gestures, supplicating, her watery eyes desperate to convey some desperate message. Nancy backs away, eyes streaming tears.

Nancy: Glen, where are you! Wake up! Glen!
Deep Ragged Voice: I'm here.

Nancy twists around in horror at the same instant the killer grabs for her face with his knife-fingers. The girl intinctively pitches back, then scrambles up and runs like hell.

Nancy: Glen! Glen!!!

Nancy is running blind. She crashes through a sawhorse into a new sidewalk, sinking into the wet cement over her ankles. The stuff sticks to her legs in long gluey globs and she can barely pull her feet loose. The killer looms nearby, mocking her - his scalpel claws gleaming in the streetlight. He just misses the girl as she wrenches free and flees again, now so winded she can only stagger. Time after time Nancy just barely manages to elude the shadowy form, leaping from his reach by inches and pouring on more steam. She tears across her front lawn and into the open front door of her home, slamming it with all her might.

Nancy: Glennn!!!

Her voice is garbled as if she's under water, and there's no answer. The only clue to Glen being there at all is his distant snoring. She stops, breath in shreds, face smeared with dirt and tears. Something is clawing the window in the dark of the kitchen. She looks and catches the man prying at the glass with his big knife-fingers, the sharp blades sizzling against the edges of the glass as they crack it away from the frame. She runs upstairs in blind panic, and into her unlit bedroom, slamming the door and locks it. She listens at the door. Nothing. She crosses to her bed. Next second the killer dives through her window and seizes her in a shower of shattered glass. Nancy twists and manages to grab the wrist of his knife hand with both of hers, barely keeping the blades from her throat. The two fall backwards in a terrible, gasping struggle, crashing onto Nancy's bed. The man stabs and Nancy twists away. Defenseless, she snatches a pillow up; the killer lashes out - disemboweling the pillow and sending a great gush of feathers flying. Nancy dives for escape as he manages to snare her with his other hand, and the two crash across the bedside table to the floor, the table and all its contents cascading around them in a whiteout of feathers. He slashes at her again and just when the points of steel are less than an inch from her eyes, her alarm clock goes off with a jarring ring. Nancy reels up, blinded by the sudden light, screaming and fighting on her bed. Glen, lurches from his own sleep at the frightening noise. He discovers Nancy pressed in terror against her headboard, clutching a pillow. She stares incredulously at Glen, then around the room, untangling herself from her bedclothes. Wary and furious, her voice hoarse.

Glen: (groggy) What I do?
Nancy: (he reaches for her - she flattens against the wall, eyes hard and hurt) I asked you to do just one thing. Just stay awake and watch me. Just wake me if it looked like I was having a bad dream. (eyes wild) But you. You shit - what do you do - you fall asleep! (She stops herself, alarmed at how out of control she's become. And suddenly she sinks into her torn bedclothes and rubs her head) I must be going nuts...
Marge: (Off Screen) Nancy? (Her mother's door opens)
Glen: Oh, shit.
Nancy: (composes her voice as best she can) Yes Mother?
Marge: (approaches outside the door. Glen barrels out the window. Nancy dives for the bed, jams off the light and disappears under the covers. Marge, opens the door and flicks on the light.) You okay?
Nancy: (weakly) Yeah. Just had a little dream. I'm falling right back to sleep.
Marge: Okay... You need anything, just call.
Nancy: Okay.

Marge closes the door. Nancy immediately sits up and looks at the window. A single bone-white feather floats down in the moonlight. Then it's sucked outside and is gone.

***
Police Station. Night. Glen’s convertible careens into the parking lot and screeches to a stop. Glen and Nancy jump out and head for the station.

Glen: You mind telling me what's going on? (Nancy races into the station without answering.) Oh, I see. That makes it all perfectly clear.
Nancy: (goes straight to the sergeant’s desk) Garcia, I want to see Rod Lane again.
Garcia: I thought when I took the night shift I'd have peace and quiet for a change.
Nancy: It's urgent, we've gotta see Rod.
Garcia: It's three in the morning. Your mother know you're out this late?
Nancy: (lying) Of course. Look, at least go back and look at him. Just see if he's okay.
Glen: (Garcia looks at him) We have reason to think there might be something weird going on.
Thompson: (Off Screen) Oh, no argument on that.
Nancy: (jumps around at the sound of her father's voice.) Dad! What you doing here?
Thompson: It so happens I work here, and there's an unsolved murder. I don't like unsolved murders, especially ones my daughter's mixed up in -- what are you doing here at this hour? You're supposed to be getting some sleep.
Glen: Listen, sir, this is serious. Nancy had a nightmare about Rod being in danger, or something, and so she thinks...

He trails off, losing it under Thompson’s glare. Garcia puts his hand on Nancy's shoulder.

Nancy: I just want to see if he's okay!
Garcia: Take my word for it, Nancy. The guy's sleeping like a baby. He's not going anywhere.

***
Rod in his cell. He's asleep, but not safely so. His bedsheet has come alive. It twitches, pulsates, then snakes towards his throat. Rod stirs, the sheet falls still; he slips into deeper sleep, and the sheet moves again, completing the noose around his neck. Nancy makes a move for the cell block.

Nancy: This isn't your average nightmare, Daddy - damn it! (The door's locked; she hauls on it in desperation.)
Thompson: Now look, Nancy, don't push it. You've already rubbed my nose in sex, drugs and violence - don't start throwing in insanity!
Nancy: Just go back and check - please!
Thompson: (waits a beat, then shrugs and nods towards Garcia) Okay, Garcia. What the hell.
Garcia: Right. (feeling in his pockets) Now where'd I put the key...

***
With a terrible snap, Rod’s sheet jerks tight around his neck. The startled teenager is hauled upright -- eyes popping, face purple. He claws at the sheet, but despite his strength he can't get his fingers between the noose and his windpipe. He's dragged backwards across the cot. In the booking room, Garcia finally has the keys. Urged on by Nancy he fumbles with the lock. In Rod's cell…he’s being dragged backwards, gasping and struggling in vain against the powerful pull -- right across his cell and up the wall. He clutches blindly at his throat at the far end of the sheet coils around the bars of the high window. Then there's a powerful wrench of the sheet, and Rod’s neck snaps. The kid's body sags lifeless. Nancy, Glen, Thompson, and Garcia appear in the corridor outside, the girl sprinting ahead.

Nancy: Rod!
Thompson: (too late; Nancy sinks back in horror as her father and Garcia rush into the cell.) Gimme a hand, dammit!

Glen, climbs to the bars and unties the knot. Rod slides down over the Sergeant's shoulders.

Garcia: Goddamn loco kid. He didn't have t'do that. Madre dios!

They lay Rod at Nancy's feet. Her father looks at her in spooked suspicion.

Thompson: How'd you know he was gonna do this?

Nancy says nothing.

***
Forest Lawn Cemetery. Rod’s casket is lowered into its grave. A small group of family and friends watch soberly as the minister raises his hand in benediction.

Minister: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. May God be with this young man's soul. His life and his death attest to the Scripture's warning that he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. (Glen watches while Nancy stands alone not believing it for a minute) But let us recall also our Lord's admonition that we 'Judge not, lest we be judged.' Let us attempt only to love. And may Rod Lane rest in peace.
Nancy: (quietly) Amen to that much.

The mourners walk away from the grave, Marge among them. She pauses near a man and two women in black – Tina’s Mother, Rod’s Parents. They almost speak. Then Marge hurries on. We move with her as she's joined by Thompson. Both are worn and on edge. Thompson absently lights another cigarette, offering one to Marge.

Thompson: How's Nancy doing?
Marge: I don't think she's slept since Tina died. (shakes her head) She's always been a delicate kid.
Thompson: She's tougher than you think. Any idea how she knew Rod was gonna kill himself?
Marge: No. All I know is, this reminds me too much of ten years ago.
Thompson: Yeah. Well... Let's not start digging up bodies just because we're in a cemetery.
Marge: (they stare at each other for a moment and then she walks over to Nancy) Time to go home, baby. (they walk towards the parking area to the car)
Nancy: The killer's still loose, you know.
Thompson: You saying somebody else killed Tina? Who?
Nancy: (smiles a weird sort of smile.) I don't know who he is. But he's burned, he wears a weird hat, a red and yellow sweater, real dirty, and he uses some sort of knives he's got made into a sort of... glove. Like giant finger-nails.
Thompson: (greatly concerned he turns to Marge) I think you should keep Nancy at home a few days. 'Til she's really over the shock.
Marge: I got something better...(to Nancy) I'm gonna get you help, baby. So no one will threaten you any more.

***
UCLA School of Medicine. Day. Marge has taken Nancy to the Institute for the Study of Sleep Disorders. Enter a laboratory sleeping chamber where a nurse applies sensors to Nancy’s head, chest, arms, and fingers. The girl is lying on a simple broad cot, in her pajamas. The room is subdued in color and holds only this single bed. A large mirror set into one wall hides an observation room beyond.

Nancy: But I just don't feel... ready to sleep yet. Please, do I have to?

Reveal Dr. Samuel King, a young, curly-haired internist. He treats Nancy at all times like a young adult, never patronizing. He winks as the nurse finishes.

Dr. King: Don't worry, you're not gonna change into Bride of Frankenstein or anything. (Nancy manages a smile while in the background Marge looks downright distraught) Nancy have any severe childhood illnesses? Scarlet Fever? High temperatures - concussions?
Marge: No, nothing.
Nancy: He means, did you ever drop me on my head.
Dr. King: (he and Nancy share a nervous laugh; Marge doesn't even smile) Nightmares are expected after psychological trauma. Don't worry, they go away.
Marge: I sure as hell hope so.
Nancy: I don't see why you couldn't just give me a pill to keep me from dreaming.
Dr. King: Everyone's got to dream. If you don't dream, you go...(he drills his finger at his temple) All set?
Nancy: No.
Marge: They're just simple tests, Nan. We'll both be right here.
Dr. King: Look, I know it's been frightening, I know your dreams have seemed real. But... it's okay. Okay?
Marge: Please, Nancy. Trust us.
Nancy: (gauges her mother, the doctor, then lowers her eyes) It's not you I don't trust. It's...(gives up) Okay. Let's do it.

Greatly relieved, Marge gives Nancy a goodnight kiss, then follows the doctor through a doorway near the mirror. As soon as her mother is out of sight, Nancy’s eyes drift to the mirror itself. In its reflection she sees herself looking back, alone on the bed. In the observation room, Marge and Dr. King overlook Nancy's sleeping chamber through the one-way mirror. And King monitors the girl even more closely with a bank of instruments. His manner with Marge is slightly more sober.

Dr. King: How long's this been going on?
Marge: Since the murder. She was fine before that.
Dr. King: Not to worry. No signs of pathology in Nancy's EEG or pulse rate. I'd guess what we've got is a normal young girl who just happens to have gone through two days of hell.
Marge: It's just made her think...her dreams are real.
Dr. King: (adjusts a dial, watching the EKG like a hawk) Ever hear the old Buddhist tale about the King who dreamed he was a beggar who dreamed he was a king? (Marge twitches. Then there's a slight alteration in the sound of the EKG. King nods in satisfaction) Okay, good. She's asleep.
Marge: (immensely relieved) Thank God. (Looks at Nancy on TV monitor, asleep like a baby, she lights a cigarette, angry at her helplessness) What the hell are dreams, anyway?
Dr. King: Mysteries. Incredible body hocus pocus. Truth is we still don't know what they are or where they come from. As for nightmares...(leans closer) Did you know that in the last three years twenty Philipino refugees in California died in the middle of nightmares? Not from heart attacks, either. They just died.
Marge: (looks out into the sleeping room. Nancy is motionless as EKG dips to a lower reading) What happened? That needle sank like a rock.
Dr. King: (quietly) She's entering deep sleep now. Heart rate's a little high due to anxiety, but otherwise she's nicely relaxed. All normal. She could dream at any time now. (pause) Right now she's like a diver on the bottom of an ocean no one's mapped yet. Waiting to see what shows up.

In the sleeping room we see Nancy drift into deep sleep. Her hair falls into her eyes; her face relaxes; her shoulders curl round her like comforters. Dr. King and Marge watch the instruments' every move. One of the machines begins a slight chirping. The Doctor scans it, liking what he sees.

Dr. King: Okay, she's started to dream.
Marge: (licking her lips, fighting nausea) How can you tell?
Dr. King: R.E.M.'s. Rapid eye movements. The eyes follow the dream - their movement picks up on this – (prods a dial with his pencil and scribbles the time on a note pad) Beta Waves are slowing, too. She's dreaming, all right. A good one, too. (points to a moving graph. A needle's begun waving lazily between plus and minus three. The Doctor nods, assured.) Typical dream parameter. A nightmare, now, would be plus or minus five or six; she's just around three point –

He stops. Visible through the glass, Nancy’s holding her head. Marge looks from her daughter to the Doctor, color draining from her face.

Marge: What the hell's this? She awake or asleep?
Dr. King: (alarmed, the needle of the graph has pitched up, surging well above the eight mark. He stares at the gauge in disbelief, rapping his finger on its glass) Can't be. It never gets this high...(the needle swings even higher) Jesus H. Christ.

He's cut off by the high-pitched screaming of the girl, the sound cutting through the double thickness of the glass. A warning beeper has begun, the instruments light up like a Christmas tree - and in the sleeping room, Nancy is contorting as if shot through with a thousand volts. King knocks over his chair in his sprint for the door. The Doctor and Marge come in on the run - Nancy's flailing and screaming as if the devil himself were after her. King grabs her to shake her awake; Nancy eyes open, looking in terror sees the killer dressed in King’s clothes reaching for her. Her fist shoots out with incredible force and knocks Dr King flying. The nurse and Marge both descend on her and she sees the killer coming for her so she fights like a tiger with them both. The Doctor fumbles with a hyperdermic needle, spilling most of the stuff on himself with his shaking hands - the screams and curses of Nancy are deafening and her hair is electrified, standing on end and greying before their very eyes. Marge screams at the top of her lungs.

Marge: NANCY!!! IT'S MOM -- NANCY!!!!

Some deep bolt of psychic power smacks through the girl, and her eyes flap open - they're glazed with terror and fury, but open. She stares around like a cornered animal in the middle of the bed, her purple face gasping out gut-wrenching sobs. The nurse and Marge dare to go back in and hold the sweat-drenched girl as Dr. King comes for her with the needle.

Dr. King: Now, this is just going to let you relax and sleep, Nan -
Nancy: (she backhands the hypodermic into a far wall, shattering it into a million pieces) No. That's enough sleep.
Dr. King: (He dabs his split lip, swallowing painfully) Okay, kid. Okay. Fair enough.

He holds out his hand. Nancy at last takes it, and sags back into her pillow, exhausted. Then King comes up with blood on his hand. He stares at it, dumbfounded, then at the girl. Across her left forearm, a deep gash is bleeding freely, as if made by a very sharp instrument.

Marge: Oh my god, oh my god...
Dr. King: (to the nurse) Get the kit!

Nancy: You believe this?

She pulls her free arm from beneath the sheets and reveals a strange hat, filthy and worn - the killer’s hat. The sight of it frightens Marge more than anything that's come before.

Marge: (deathly pale) Where the hell did you get that?
Nancy: I grabbed it off his head.

Marge stares at the hat as if it held her whole future, and her future was a horror.

***
Nancy’s house. Marge is on the telephone, the dirty hat in her hand. Nearby is a nearly empty bottle of gin.

Marge: She said she snatched it off his head in a dream. (listens) No, I'm not crazy, I've got the damn thing in my hand! (listens) I know we did, we all...(hears Nancy approaching) Gotta go.

She hangs up and stuffs the hat and bottle into a drawer, screening the action with her body. Nancy enters. Her hair is ashen, her skin transluscent, and eyes dark-ringed. Her right forearm is heavily bandaged over the slashes. Marge, though she does her best to hide it, is downright frightened of her.

Marge: You didn't sleep, did you? The doctor says you have to sleep or you'll -
Nancy: (pours herself a cup of black coffee) Go even crazier?
Marge: I don't think you're going crazy - and stop drinking that damn coffee!
Nancy: Did you ask Daddy to have the hat examined?
Marge: I threw that filthy thing away - I don't know what you're trying to prove with it, but -
Nancy: (inches closer, her eyes shining) What I learned at the dream clinic, that's what I'm trying to prove. Rod didn't kill Tina, and he didn't hang himself. It's this guy - he's after us in our dreams.
Marge: But that's just not reality, Nancy!
Nancy: (furious, she yanks open the drawer before Marge can stop her and spills the bottle and hat onto the counter. Marge grabs away the bottle protectively -but it's the hat Nancy goes for. She waves it triumphantly – demonically) It's real, Mamma. Feel it.
Marge: (horrified) Put that damned thing down! (She lunges for it - Nancy leaps out of reach)
Nancy: His name is even in it – written right in here - Fred Krueger - Fred Krueger! You know who that is, Mamma? You better tell me, cause now he's after me!
Marge: (swallows, then persists in the lie) Nancy, trust your mother for once. You'll feel better as soon as you sleep!
Nancy: (lets out a hard humorless laugh, holds up her slashed arm) You call this feeling better? Or should I grab a bottle and veg out with you – avoid everything happening to me by just getting good and loaded -
Marge: (slaps her hard) Fred Krueger can't be after you, Nancy - he's dead! (the room falls silent, both women staring at the other) Fred Krueger is dead. Dead and gone. Believe me, I know. Now go to bed. I order you, go to bed.
Nancy: (Marge snatches the hat away. Nancy is livid) You knew about him all this time, and you've been acting like he was someone I made up!
Marge: (pulls away) You're sick, Nancy. Imagining things. You need to sleep, it's as simple as that.
Nancy: (smashes Marge's bottle of gin in the sink) Screw sleep!
Marge: Nancy! (Nancy runs past her for the front door) Nancy - it's only a nightmare!
Nancy: (turns in the doorway) That's enough! (slams the door)

***
Shakespeare Bridge. We hear Glen's voice and pan up to reveal Nancy and Glen high above, two tiny figures walking across this strange white bridge in old Los Angeles.

Glen: Whenever I get nervous I eat.
Nancy: And if you can't do that, you sleep.
Glen: Used to. Not anymore. (he stuffs his face with a Big Mac. Camera zooms out to reveal that he's attacking a huge bag of Big Macs, and furtively eyeing Nancy. The girl's hair is startlingly white in the sunlight. She’s reading a book, hardly paying attention) You ever read about the Balinese way of dreaming?
Nancy: No.
Glen: They got a whole system they call 'dream skills'. So, if you have a nightmare, for instance like falling, right?
Nancy: Yeah...
Glen: Instead of screaming and getting nuts, you say, okay, I'm gonna make up my mind that I fall into a magic world where I can get something special, like a poem or song. (grins hopefully) They get all their art literature from dreams. Just wake up and write it down. Dream skills.
Nancy: And what if they meet a monster in their dream? Then what?
Glen: They turn their back on it. (grins hopefully) Takes away its energy, and it disappears.
Nancy: What happens if they don't do that?
Glen: (shrugs) I guess those people don't wake up to tell what happens.
Nancy: Great. (She leans over the railing, poking her face back into her book. Glen tips its cover and reads its title)
Glen: 'Booby Traps and Improvised Anti-Personnel Devices'!?
Nancy: I found it at this neat survivalist bookstore on Ventura.
Glen: Well what you reading it for?
Nancy: (grimly determined.) I'm into survival.
Glen: (she walks away, leaving him watching after her in astonishment.) She's starting to scare the living shit out of me.

***
Nancy’s house. Evening. A half dozen Hispanic workers are loading tools, extension cords and hardware. Marge appears and hands a check to the foreman of the crew and he scrutinizes it.

Foreman: And the other...
Marge: (forks over a wad of cash, hands trembling in her half-drunk, helpless rage) Where's your mask and gun?
Foreman: (counts the money swiftly.) Don't bust my chops, lady. If the city found out I put 'em in without inside releases I'd lose my license.

He shoves the money in his pocket and climbs in his truck. Marge goes back into the house. The truck pulls away as Nancy walks across the street from the corner. Alone. Dispirited. She lifts her eyes to her home and stops in her tracks.

Nancy: Oh gross...

Nancy walks across her front yard to see every single window has been covered with brand-new ornamental iron bars, bolted deeply into their frames. Nancy gives a set of bars a powerful shake. They don't budge. Then girl looks up and sees even the window to her second floor bedroom is barred. And the rose trellis has been ripped down and heaped at the foundation in a tangle of wood, thorns and broken flowers. Nancy heads inside and goes to Marge’s room.

Nancy: Mom, what's with the bars!? (Marge is propped against the headboard of her bed, a crooked shadow in the gloom. A fresh bottle of Gin glints in her hand) Oh, Mom...
Marge: (Nancy reaches gently for the bottle. Marge snatches it away) 'S'mine. (She rocks the bottle in her arms.)
Nancy: What's with the bars?
Marge: S'curity.
Nancy: (sits on the bed, more compassionate) Mom, I want to know what you know about Fred Krueger.
Marge: Dead and gone.
Nancy: I want to know how, where - if you don't tell me, I'm going to call Daddy.
Marge: (gives a laugh) Your father the cop. That's a good one. (colder) Forget Fred Krueger. You don't want to know, believe me.
Nancy: I do want to know. He's not dead and gone - he's after me and if I sleep he'll get me! I've got to know!
Marge: All right.

***
Cellar. Marge drags Nancy down the cellar stairs and across the room with a crazy fury, twisting her down near the foundation. And she thrusts her face so close to her daughter's that Nancy reels from the alcohol.
Marge: You want to know who Fred Krueger was? He was a filthy child killer who got at least twenty kids, kids from our area, kids we all knew. It drove us all crazy when we didn't know who was doing it - but it was even worse when they caught him. Oh lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but someone forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place, and Fred Krueger was free, just like that.
Nancy: So he's alive?
Marge: (smiles grimly) He wouldnt've stopped. The bastard would've got more kids first chance he got - they found nearly ten bodies in his boiler room as it was. But the law couldn't touch him. What was needed were some private citizens willing to do what had to be done.
Nancy: (hushed) What did you do, mother?
Marge: (cradles the bottle) Bunch of us parents tracked him down after they let him go. Found him in an old boiler room, just like before. Saw him lying there in that caked red and yellow sweater he always wore, drunk an' asleep with his weird knives by his side...
Nancy: (dreading it) Go on...
Marge: (reaches over and taps a dusty two-gallon jug of gasoline near the lawn mower) We poured gasoline all around the place, left a trail out the door, locked the door, then... (she mimes striking a match) WHOOSH!!! (hushed, remembering) But just when it seemed not even the devil could live in there any more - he crashed out like a banshee, all on fire - swinging those fingerknives every which direction and screaming he... he was going to get us by killing all our kids. (she stops with a sudden quake and drinks for a long moment. Her face bathed in tears, she looks at her daughter and shakes her head.) There were all those men, Nancy, even your father, oh yes, even him. But none could do what had to be done - Krueger rolling and screaming so loud the whole state could hear - no one could take your father's gun and kill him good and proper except me. (she sweeps her hand across the air in a terrific slash, then stops, her hand shaking, her voice hoarse and terrified. She looks at her daughter, begging) So he's dead Nan. He can't get you. Mommy killed him.
Nancy: (takes her mother in her arms and rocks her) Who was there? Were Tina's parents there? Were Rod's?
Marge: (sags back) Sure, and Glen's. All of us. But that's in the past now, baby. Really. It's over. (slyly) We even took his knives. (opens the door on an old furnace. She fishes inside the cavity and the next moment she pulls out an object wrapped in rags, opens it and displays the long, rusted blades and their glove-like apparatus) See?
Nancy: (stares at them, chilled) All these years you've kept those things buried down here? In our own house?
Marge: Proof he's declawed. As for him, we buried him good and deep. (shoves the knives into their hiding place, closes the little iron door) So's okay, you can sleep.

She lurches up and staggers upstairs. Nancy shivers and looks down at her arm. The cut beneath her bandage has begun to bleed again. And from inside the furnace, as if from deep below, the pulsing of the boundless nightmare-boiler room can be faintly heard.

***
Camera pans on both Glen and Nancy’s homes. A telephone rings. Glen, yawning, crosses and picks up his telephone.

Glen: Hello?
Nancy: Hi.
Glen: Oh. Hi, how y'doing?
Nancy: (looks out the window and touches her hair) Fine. Stand by your window so I can see you. You sound a million miles away. (Glen moves into sight.) Much better.
Glen: I heard your ma went ape at the security store today. You look like the Prisoner of Zenda or something. How long's it been since you slept?
Nancy: Coming up on the seventh day. It's okay, I checked Guiness. The record's eleven, and I'll beat that if I have to. (pause) Listen, I... I know who he is.
Glen: Who?
Nancy: The killer.
Glen: You do?
Nancy: Yeah, and if he gets me, I'm pretty sure you're next.
Glen: (appalled) Me!? Why would anyone want to kill me?!
Nancy: Don't ask - just give me some help nailing this guy when I bring him out.
Glen: (pales) Bring him out of what?
Nancy: My dream.
Glen: How you plan to do that?
Nancy: Just like I did the hat. Have a hold of the sucker when you wake me up.
Glen: Me? (switching back to a more comfortable reality) Wait a minute, you can't bring someone out of a dream!
Nancy: If I can't, then you all can relax, because it'll just be a simple case of me being nuts.
Glen: I can save you the trouble. You're nutty as a fruitcake. I love you anyway.
Nancy: Good, then you won't mind cold-cocking this guy when I bring him out.
Glen: What!?
Nancy: (simplicity itself) You heard me. I grab him in the dream - you see me struggling so you wake me up. We both come out, you cold cock the fucker, and we got him. Clever, huh?
Glen: You crazy? Hit him with what?
Nancy: You're a jock. You must have a baseball bat or something. Come to my window at midnight. And meanwhile...
Glen: (weakly) Meanwhile..?
Nancy: Meanwhile whatever you do don't fall asleep. Midnight.
Glen: (she hangs up. His eyes bug out) Holy shit! Midnight. Baseball bats and boogeymen. Unfucking real.

***
Police Station. Night. Thompson arrives in an unmarked car.

Cop: (passing) Lieutenant Thompson – what you doing in at this time?
Thompson: Can't sleep, thought I'd come break up the poker game.

The cop laughs and goes his way. Thompson's smile evaporates. He enters and checks the log. Nearby, Garcia pours coffee.

Garcia: If it was any more quiet we could hear owls farting.
Thompson: Is quiet, isn't it?
Garcia: How's your girl?
Thompson: She's sensible. She'll sleep sooner or later.

***
Glen’s living room. His father watches eleven o'clocks news sipping a beer.

Mr. Lantz: You'd think they'd have something 'bout the Lane kid hanging himself.
Mrs. Lantz: (walks through the room, drying her hands on a dishtowel) Maybe we're all making more out of it than we should. (She heads upstairs. Mr. Lantz changes the channel. Johnny Carson...)
Carson: (on TV) I wouldn't touch that line with a ten foot pole.

Ed McMahon and the audience laugh.

Glen in his bedroom. His mom comes along the upstairs hall and knocks gently at a his door.

Mrs. Lantz: Glen? You all right? (puts her ear to the door and listens) Glen honey?

No answer. Inside his room, Glen lies sprawled across the bed, long legs flung over the end, head not visible. His mother enters. She looks at the boy, turns off the TV. Looks at him again. She can see his head, earphones crammed over it. But no movement from the kid at all. Mrs. Lantz crosses and pokes him in the ribs. Glen lurches up, arms windmilling.

Glen: Whuu? (refocuses his eyes, takes off his earphones)
Mrs. Lantz: How can you listen to Carson and a record at the same time?
Glen: (swings his legs over the edge of the bed and shakes his head) Wasn't listening to the tube, just watching. Miss Nude America's supposed to be on tonight.
Mrs. Lantz: Well how you gonna hear what she says?
Glen: Who cares what she says?
Mrs. Lantz: (gives up) You should get to sleep soon, Glen. It's almost midnight. Goodness knows we've all had enough of a time the last few days.
Glen: I will, Mom...in a while. You guys turning in?
Mrs. Lantz: Pretty soon.

She sighs and goes out, closing the door behind her. Glen flips the TV back on and glances at the clock. It's 11:42. He clamps the earphones back on, and turns the volume up high. The music is so loud we can hear it. Camera moves past his window, then zooms through to Nancy’s barred second floor bedroom. Marge at the edge of Nancy's bed, stroking the girl's hair.

Marge: We'll go away, take a vacation. Get your hair colored nice, the way it was. No one will ever know. (sniffs) This whole room smells of coffee, y'know? (She gathers up Nancy's coffee cups and empty NoDoz boxes, leans down and kisses her) It's all over now, baby. The nightmare's over. Please.
Nancy: (nods her head, half stubborn, half sadly. She can barely keep her eyes open now) Okay. (she scrunches into her pillow. Marge smiles haggardly and shuts off the light, taking the coffee pot with her as she leaves.) Night-night.

Marge smiles, relieved. The girl pulls the blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes flutter closed, her breathing becomes regular and deep. She tiptoes out of the room, closing the door behind her. Nancy’s eyes remain closed another beat, then open wide. She quietly jumps out of bed and shakes herself savagely to scatter the sleep settling so quickly. Still in the dark, she fishes a full electric coffepot from under her bed and pours herself a fresh fix into a mug she digs from beneath her pillow. She drains the cup, then crosses to her closet, retrieves a pitcher of ice water from behind a heap of clothes and splashes her eyes and the back of her neck. She eases open her window and presses her face to the bars, sucking in cool night air until every shred of sleep is gone from her brain. Then she starts pulling on clothes. Downstairs Marge checks the lock on the backdoor. She walks into the livingroom in the dark, feeling her way to a wall of shelves and takes down a book. Then another, and a third. Then reaches in and fishes out a bottle of gin. Outside thunder rolls Camera zooms to Nancy’s window. She hovers in the darkness, her eyes turned towards Glen's. She draws back when she sees Glen's father, standing on the front porch of his home, looking straight across and up at Nancy. He draws on his cigarette; his face glows red. Nancy pulls down the shade. Glen's father grinds the cigarette beneath his shoe.

Mrs.Lantz: Shouldn't stare.
Mr. Lantz: Know what I think? I think that kid's some kinda lunatic.
Mrs. Lantz: Shouldn't say such a thing about the poor child. If you mean the bars, Marge's just being cautious, her being alone and Nancy acting so nervous lately.
Mr. Lantz: (Mrs. Lantz heads in. As he goes inside he takes one last look) Well, she ain't gonna hang around our boy no more.

Once the two are inside, the door is locked.

***
Nancy’s room. Her eyes stare ahead, red-rimmed, anxious. She picks absently at the thick bandage covering her forearm. The long cuts from Fred Krueger's fingers are bleeding again, but she doesn't even care anymore. She crosses the room. Nancy pours herself the last of the coffee and drinks it, then looks to the clock. Ten minutes to midnight. Her eyes go to the door. Fully clothed and in a jacket now, she creeps to the door and cracks it, just to make sure. Then freezes. In the hallway, through the door we see Marge, rummaging around in the linen closet not fifteen feet away. There's no way Nancy can get past her. The woman pulls out a full bottle of gin in satisfaction and begins fumbling with its cap. Nancy eases the door closed again and sinks to the key hole, watching through it with a sinking heart.

Nancy: (very quiet, very intense) Hang on Glen...

***
Glen’s room. His coat now on, goes to his window, checking. Nancy’s porch is deserted; front door closed, lights out. No sign of her. He shrugs, takes off his jacket and plops back onto his bed.

Glen: Well, I'm not gonna risk sneaking out until she does. (puts the earphones back on)

Back at Nancy’s room. Nancy turns to the window. She opens the blind and eases back the curtain. She looks at Glen’s window. Glen lies on his bed, fully clothed, earphones over his ears, Carson droning from the TV. And the boy's eyes begin to droop. Nancy picks up her phone, bites her lip, then begins dialing. Glen’s phone begins ringing loudly. Glen is asleep, the music still loud in his earphones. Just as Mr. Lantz is turning out the lights for bed. He stops in the dark, scowling.

Mr. Lantz: Who at this hour?
Mrs. Lantz: (refuses to turn the light back on. His wife picks her way to the telephone) Hello? (listens, frowns slightly) Oh... Hold on. (covers the mouthpiece) It's her. She wants to talk to Glen.
Mr. Lantz: (crosses to the telephone, suspicious) About what?
Mrs. Lantz: (into phone) What's this about, Nancy? (she listens, covers up again) She says it's private. Very private and very important
Mr. Lantz: (grabs the telephone from his wife and barks into it) Glen's asleep. Talk to him tomorrow! (slams down the telephone and turns to his wife) Just got to be firm with kids, is all. (he takes the phone off the hook and lays it on the table)

Nancy dials again. This time she gets a busy signal. She slams the phone down in frustration and looks out the window.

Nancy: Glen. Don't fall asleep...(she goes and sits on the bed, propping her chin on her fists. Yawns. The telephone rings and she snatches it up) Glen? (She hears the awful scraping of steel fingerknives. Nancy slaps the phone down then, in pure rage, rips the thing's cord from the wall. She puts the receiver back on the cradle and lays it on her bed, chiding herself.) Brilliant. Now what if Glen calls?

She wraps the phone cord around the useless machine and puts it on her bed, then sneaks back to the door. This time she gives an expression of relief, and opens the door. Marge is gone. Then the telephone rings again. Camear moves in on Nancy as she turns slowly. The telephone is ringing despite that the end of its yanked-out cord is clearly visible. She starts to shake. She goes to the telephone, unwraps it as it rings even louder. She's shaking so hard by now she can barely manage to lift the receiver. She brings the phone to her ear.

Nancy: Hello?

The unmistakeable voice of Fred Krueger comes over the phone, garbled, but clear enough.

Krueger: (triumphant) I'm your boyfriend now...
Nancy: (she jerks the telephone away from her and smashes it against her wall, then attacks it with her feet and hands, smashing it to smithereens. She pinches herself hard - until tears come and her flesh is nearly bleeding) I'm awake, I am awake. This is not a dream! I am – (she stops, realizing what Krueger meant.) My boyfriend...!

Nancy barrels down the stairs and across the darkened living room to the front door. It takes her a moment of tugging and fumbling to realize the deadbolt is locked from inside. And there's no key in it now. She races to a porch window and throws it open, shaking and banging on the bars like a mad woman. But there's no getting through. She staggers back, stymied and furious. Then somebody moves behind her in the dark.
Marge: (Off Screen) Locked.
Nancy: (jumps around in shock. Her mother has posted herself on the couch with her bottle.) Give me the key, mother.
Marge: I don't even have it on me, so forget it. (Nancy runs past the woman to the back door, to one window after the other, shaking bars and slamming locks and screaming in teenage fury. But it's no good. The house is her prison) Paid the guy damn good to make sure you stayed put. You ain't goin' nowhere, kid. You're gonna sleep tonight if it kills me.
Nancy: (clenches her fists and screams at the top of her lungs) GLEEENNNNNN!

***
Glen’s room. The earphones still blare the music and the TV sound is distant and echoed. Glen breathes deeply now, slowly and gently. Then, unmistakably, he begins to snore. Very faintly, far in the background, we can hear NANCY.

Nancy: (Off Screen) Glen!!! Don’t fall asleep!!!!!!!

Glen lies sprawled, still clothed, in the middle of his bed. Save for the bedside lamp, the room is dark. A heartbeat's pause. Then with tremendous force, two powerful arms shoot up beneath the red and yellow bedspread and grab Glen around the waist. Next moment, the young man's body is dragged straight down into the bed, as if some huge beast had grabbed him and heaved him down. His feet and his arms shoot up - there's another hauling yank - and the boy disappears except for his hands and fingers - down into the pit in the middle of the bed! His hands are last to go, clawing for a hold. But soon they vanish as well, dragging blankets and bedsheets, wires and stereo across the caved-in bed and into the abyss. There's hideous screeching of music jamming in with Glen's echoing screams - then an unholy, sudden silence. Next moment what's left of Glen is vomited up from the pit of the nightmare bed...a horrible mess of blood and bone and hair and wires...streaming out and over the bed. Then the pit in the bed is gone as if it were never there. Drawn by the terribly screams and struggle, Glen's mother bursts into the room. The women stares for one moment of horrified disbelief, then reels back and lets out the most god-awful scream imaginable. The cry splits the night.

A wailing ambulance screeches to a halt at the curb, followed by two cop cars and an unmarked car. Uniformed policemen spill out. Thompson and Parker exit the unmarked car. Thompson’s eye is caught by a movement; his daughter is at her upstairs window, white-haired, hollow-eyed, looking down on him through her bars. She gives a little wave. Unnerved, he waves back, then walks rapidly for Glen's home. Mr. Lantz, pale as a ghost himself, waits on the porch; we can hear the mother's sobbing inside. In Nancy’s room the camera zooms in on her alarm clock. It’s hands sweep together at midnight. The chaos of police sirens, neighborhood kids and dogs barking is heard while the camera lifts to Nancy’s face. She is set. Unafraid. Ruthless. The girl pulls the window shade on it all, then looks at her bed.

Nancy: Okay, Krueger, you bastard. We play in your court.

Glen’s Living Room. Thompson is halfway across the living room when he stops. Something dark and red is welling from a crack in the ceiling. One of his men is rigging a bucket beneah to catch the leaking. The telephone rings and Parker picks it up.

Parker: Lieutenant. It's your daughter. Says it's urgent.
Thompson: (turns away from the dripping) Tell her I'm not here, tell her...
Parker: Uh, she just saw you, sir...
Thompson: (nods, crosses and picks up the telephone) Hello Nancy.
Nancy: Hi daddy. I know what happened.
Thompson: Then you know more than I do - I haven't even been upstairs.
Nancy: (guessing) You know he's dead though, right?
Thompson: (debates, then admits it) Yeah, apparantly he's dead. How the hell'd you know?
Nancy: (a tear courses down her cheek, but her voice remains firm) I've got a proposition for you. Listen very carefully, please.
Thompson: Nan, I -
Nancy: Please. I'm gonna go get the guy who did it and bring him to you. I just need you to be right there to arrest him. Okay?
Thompson: Just tell me who did it and I'll go get him, baby.
Nancy: Fred Krueger did it, Daddy, and only I can get him. It's my nightmare he comes to.
Thompson: (flinches at the name) Where'd you hear about Krueger?
Nancy: (presses, very firm, very rational) I want you to come over here and break the door down exactly twenty minutes from now – can you do that?
Thompson: Sure, but...
Nancy: That'll be exactly half past midnight. Time for me to fall asleep and find him.
Thompson: Sure, sure, honey. You just do that - get yourself some sleep - that's what I've been saying all along.
Nancy: And you'll be here to catch him, right?
Parker: Lieutenant - they're waiting upstairs.
Thompson: (waves curtly, still speaking to his daughter) Sure, okay, I'll be there. Now you just turn in and get some rest, sweetheart. Please. Deal?
Nancy: Deal.
Thompson: (Nancy hangs up. He starts upstairs. But then he stops, and as an afterthought he turns to Parker) Get outside and watch her house. If you see anything funny call me.
Parker: 'Anything funny' like what?
Thompson: (shakes his head, embarrassed) I don't know - but one thing for sure, I don't want her coming over here. She's way too far gone to be able to handle this.

As Parker exits, the angle cuts to Nancy’s kitchen as the girl hangs up and sinks back against the wall. She looks at her watch. Five past midnight. She switches modes to stopwatch and sets the countdown going at twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile in Glen’s bedroom…Lt. Thompson steps in, anxious to be done with it. He hits a wall of stench and horror even before he takes it in with his eyes, and as soon as he sees the bed he claps his hand over his mouth, pivots and walks right back into the hallway. He sags against the wall, unable to look at the cops who hover there.

Cop: (faint) What the hell did that, Lieutenant? There ain't even a head left.
Thompson: Goddamned if I know. (tries to straighten) What's the Coroner say?
Cop: He's in the john puking since he saw it.

***
Cellar of Nancy’s house. She pulls tools and hardware out with grim resolution. Hammer, nails, spools of wire, an old square of heavy fishnetting, some old shot gun shells, a file - referring only once to the booklet in her hand. Barely able to control her shaking hands, Nancy starts stringing off the spool of wire across the living room, crying and swearing at the same time. She wraps a bare lamp wire around two thumbtacks stuck into the insides of the pinchers of a common wooden clothespin. The wire goes off screen. She inserts a Lifesaver between the two prongs. One end of the fishline is tied to the lifesaver. The whole now is stretched taut about three inches off the living room carpet. Nancy carefully files a hole in a lightbulb. She now pours powder and shots from shotgun shells into the opening in the bulb until it's full, then sealing it with tape. She screws the bulb back into the floor lamp, and placing the thing near the foot of the stairs. Upstairs, Nancy completes installing a sturdy sliding bolt to the outside of her own bedroom door. She screws a hinge into the wall directly above her door. Attached to the hinge is the shank of something - some kind of tool. Nancy tiptoes to her mother's door and peeks in. Marge lies propped in her bed looking back at Nancy. Her drunkeness has been altered by the sirens and babble outside into a sort of comatose clarity.

Marge: Guess I should'n'a done it.
Nancy: Just sleep now, Mom.
Marge: Just wanted to protect you, Nan. Just wanted to protect you...

Marge slides over on her side. Nancy smooths her hair, covers her as she would a child, then exits the room.

Nancy enters her room and turns out her bedside light, slips out of her dress and puts on her nightgown. Then she kneels by her bed.

Nancy: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

She gets into bed and pulls the blankets to her chin. She stares straight up at the ceiling for a long moment, then closes her eyes. At Glen’s house... Thompson trudges down the stairs and confronts Glen’s Father.

Thompson: I know it's hard to think at a time like this, Walter, but can you think of anyone who could've done such a thing?
Mr. Lantz: (stares away, his voice low and dull) He done it.
Thompson: (looks at the man, baffled) Who? Who did that?
Mr. Lantz: Krueger.
Thompson: Krueger?
Mr. Lantz: Had to've done it. No one else was in there.
Thompson: How you know that?
Mr. Lantz: Cause I thought Glen was gonna sneak out to see your lunatic daughter, that's why. So I locked him in his room! (getting control) Sorry. Anyways, the door was still locked when we heard the screams. (pause) Maybe God's punishing us all.
Thompson: (much lower and hard) Keep your head - this is a fucking flesh and blood killer we're talking about.
Mr. Lantz: Like Rod Lane?
Cop: (calling from upstairs) Lieutenant Thompson. Coroner wants to show you something.

At Nancy’s house. She appears at the top of the stairs. As she comes down, the camera moves with her through the hallway to the cellar door. She opens the door. At the cellar door, she hesitates, then goes down. She approaches center of room, stops, then turns. Nancy moves, and camera pans to the cellar's side wall, where another, new doorway is revealed. Nancy opens this door and looks down. She goes through the door and descends a steel stair to the lowest level, then hears the sound of the knives from down another shaft. She sees there's an even deeper place down there. She starts down. Again, and then again, Nancy descends, each ladder narrower or more twisting, each level deeper, wetter, darker, more airless. Soon she's gasping for air, but still she pushes herself on. She doesn't stop until she breaks out at last at the very bottom of the place. The camera pans around with her and for the first time we see the vast maul of the empty boiler behind her. She stares at it. She crosses to it, touching the pile of old, coal-dusted dirt at its base. It looks almost like an old grave. She turns suddenly, listening. Then, hearing nothing, she looks down. Nancy’s point of view as she picks up Glen's earphones. She suddenly drops them, staring at her fingers. They're dripping blood. There's a beep as she looks at her watch - just crossed the ten minute warning.

Nancy: (quietly) Come out and show yourself, you bastard.

No sooner are these words off her lips than the huge bulk of Fred Krueger lurches up behind her. His ragged teeth barred, the great spider of razor-blades flashing from his fingertips. He leaps, but the girl leaps just as fast, a fierce jump, that sends her out over black space and down into a huge well of blackness. She falls, diving, planing through black air, the wind ripping at her hair and eyes. Suddenly the sky light that is the San Fernando Valley is seen from the air, and we see she's falling from high, high over the earth. She continues to fall, falling in slow motion against the spinning lights, free as a sky diver freefalling. She crashes suddenly out of the night and into a hedge just outside her own front door, rolling out at its bottom scratched and bloodied. Somehow she's able to claw her way up and look at her watch once more. She staggers for her house's front door - but a moment later Krueger crashes down atop her. Nancy struggles to her knees just as the man lunges with his handful of blades. Instead of running, she ducks inside the deadly grab and seizes him in a desperate bearhug. The surprise move sends him pitching backwards, her still on him - and they fall into the rubble of the torn-down trellis of roses beneath her window. Almost at that very second we hear the jarring, deafening ringing of Nancy's alarm clock. She sprawls out of her bed onto the floor, twisting from the jabs of the already vanished thorns, briars and brush. Gasping, she takes a second to get her bearings as she recovers quick as she can, snatching up the net, ready for an assault from any direction. But the room is empty. Hardly able to catch her breath, her hair tangled, her nightgown torn, she drops the net. She sits on the bed, turns on the bedside lamp and re-examines her room. No one there but herself. Her face is covered with tears, she's shaking and breathless. She rattles her head in confusion and despair, realizing her own madness.

Nancy: I'm crazy after all...

At that very instant Krueger leaps up from the far side of the bed with an explosive shout of rage. He lunges across the table for her, missing by inches as she pitches backwards and scrambles for the window. But she's stopped by the bars. He regains his feet and leaps again – she turns and shatters the coffeepot over his head. As he crashes backwards Nancy flings open the door of her room and dives through - only to rebound off someone on the other side. Marge, knocked flying by Nancy’s charge, hits the floor hard, knocking the wind out of herself. Nancy sees what she's done, jumps over the body and slams the door and throws the new bolt home. Next instant she gingerly ties a string to the door's knob, a string that trails down from the ceiling, attached to something up there that's still just barely out of sight. She drags her mother towards the woman's bedroom as fast as she can. Krueger is already splintering the doorway behind her as Nancy dips and makes it into Marge's room, slamming the door behind her and locking it in a flash. Krueger breaks the bolt and rips open the door. In the act of doing this he of course unknowingly pulls the string attached to the outside doorknob with terrific force. The string jerks against a single-edged razor, which in turn cuts a tight wind of cord holding a heavy wedge of steel to the ceiling. Wider as the thing falls free, pivoting at the hinge at the far end of its handle, and drives straight into Krueger’s groin with a terrific blow. As he catapaults backwards with an incredulous shriek, the twenty pound sledge hammer swings back and reveals to the camera just what it is. Clawing his way up despite his agony, lurching and cursing forward like an enraged bull, he roars out - only to strike the length of wire strung across the hallway, catching it just above the thigh. He cartwheels head-over-heels and lands flat on his back. Instantly the door to Nancy's mother's bedroom flies open and Nancy brings a brass lamp down over Krueger's head with all her might. She slams the door as Krueger struggles up, clutching his head. Enraged, he crashes against the door with terrific force, and rears back and starts smashing against the door like the utter homicidal lunatic that he is.

Nancy jerks open the window to her mother's bedroom and jams her face to the bars. The ambulance is pulling away with a tremendous wail of its siren as Nancy screams down, trying to make herself heard.

Nancy: Help! Hey - Daddy - I got him trapped! Where are you!?

Parker, assigned to guard the house, sees Nancy - hair white, eyes wide - pounding on the bars and screaming like a lunatic. But her meaning is utterly lost in the noise of the ambulance next to him.

Parker: (yelling up at her) Everything's going to be all right! Everything's under control!
Nancy: (incredulous at his response.) Get my father, you asshole!
Parker: You heard what I said! Now get back inside or I'll tell your dad!

Behind her the door splinters. Nancy whirls around just in time to see Krueger bull in. Her eyes go wide - she's trapped against the bars and has nowhere to go. The man bunches his knives into a single thick blade and rushes her, stabbing. Nancy closes her eyes. Then from out of frame, Marge leaps between the two.

Marge: No! (She blocks the knives. Both she and Nancy are slammed backwards against the bars behind. Drunk though she is, is hanging onto Krueger’s weapon hand, keeping the knives inside herself, away from her daughter) Nancy - for god's sake's run!
Nancy: (turns to the window instead, screaming for her father) Daddy! Where are you!

Parker, just about to turn back to the business at Glen's house, sees Nancy and someone else fall just inside the window.

Parker: Poor woman's got her hands full with that kid. Maybe I better tell the lieutenant.

Back in Marge’s bedroom…Krueger hauls Marge up in rage, knocking her senseless across her bed and climbing after her with his knives raised. Nancy wheels behind him and whams him in the kidneys with her fists, spilling him back off the bed, then running past him for the door. She makes it to safety, then turning back. She flips the monster the bird, her eyes wild with pain and fury.

Nancy: Hey fuckface - can't catch me!

The bait works as Krueger leaves Marge and howls after Nancy. As Nancy clears the hall and makes the stairs, Krueger lurches through the shattered doorway after her. She careens down the stairs, across the room and to the front door, banging against it with terrified fury.

Nancy: (screaming) Come on!!!! He's in here!!!! Daddy! Don't let him kill me too!

Krueger is thumping down the stairs, knocking things over, scraping his long steel fingernails along the wall with a horrible sound. Nancy flings a heavy ash tray through the porch window and screams through the bars.

Nancy: HEELLLPPP!!! Daddyyyyyyy!!!!

Krueger, bloody and spewing threats, staggers for her and she dives behind the couch. Camera shows Krueger’s feet as they hit another wire. Close on the Lifesaver jerking out, the clothespin snapping together, completing the circuit with a crackling spark. The explosion rips out of the floor lamp next to Krueger and knocks him sprawling across the room. Nancy peeks out from behind the couch. The man lies in a smoking heap. Nancy runs to the windows and screams out again.

Nancy: Hey -- Daddy! Hey! I got the bastard!

Krueger roars up behind her - she throws herself sideways – he crashes into the window frame, smashing glass and wood to bits. Nancy turns screaming and runs deeper into the house. She careens down the cellar stairs, throwing on the lights, the man thundering after her. Nancy brakes at the wall. Nowhere left to hide. The scraping of the blades against brick turns her to see the huge killer holding his knife-laden fingers up for her.

Krueger: Ready for these?

She ducks behind the furnace - comes out the other side with the big jug of gasoline and lets Krueger have it straight over the head. The heavy container shatters, showering its contents over every square inch of the man. He staggers backwards with a roar of fury, Nancy screaming after him with a box of kitchen matches. Before the man can realize what she's up to, she ignites the whole box and throws it in Krueger's face. There's a blinding whoosh - and Krueger goes up in a terrific ball of fire. Faster than a flash the girl runs past the howling maniac and makes for the stairs, Krueger after her in full rage. Heading up to the kitchen, she holds the heavy door until the precisely right moment. Just as the burning, blind monster tops the stairs, Nancy brings the heavy oak door round with all her might and catches him in a great ringing concussion. It sends him windmilling backwards and down the stairs in a sprawl of sparks and flames. Nancy slams the door and throws the deadbolt home. No sooner does she accomplish this than the man is slamming again and again against the door from the cellar. The terrible screams and curses peak, then grow weaker and more garbled. Then there's just silence. She staggers, half blind, from the kitchen. As the room begins seething smoke from every pore, we cut to the upstairs hallway in Glen’s house. The coroner steps out of the bathroom peeling bloody rubber gloves. Pale and sweating.

Coroner: Found you something, Donald. Should remind you of something...

Thompson The coroner shoves out his hand. Stares at it without touching it. A long, thin steel blade, razor sharp, attached to some sort of ring and armature - broken off. The coroner gives a sweaty, grim smile.

Coroner: Only place I ever heard of such a thing before was ten years ago. Remember that fucker Fred Krueger?

Lt. Thompson has just knocked Parker sprawling in his race to the stairs.

Parker: Hey!! Your daughter's acting kinda - (Thompson’s gone) strange...

Nancy’s home. She breaks another window and presses against the bars. The house shudders and glows orange behind her. She sees her father bursting out the front door of Glen's house.

Nancy: DAD! GET US OUTTA HERE!
Thompson: Oh, Jesus, Nancy! (to his men) Hey! We got a fire!

At the front door, many men batter the door down as black smoke pours from the windows and Nancy’s screams and shouts fill the air. Within moments they've destroyed the door and Thompson has pulled his daughter into the safety of his arms. But she immediately fights free and darts right back to the front door - beckoning him to follow - gesturing like a wild woman.

Nancy: I got him!!!! I got Fred Krueger!

Thompson stares at his wild little girl in astonishment, then runs in after her. The others follow, coughing and choking. Thompson collides with Nancy as she brakes, frozen. The smoke is bellowing out of the cellar, but whoever was locked in there certainly isn't now. The door is flat on the kitchen floor.

Thompson: What the hell are you talking about, Nancy?
Nancy: (sees small bursts of flames up the stairs) He's after Mom! Come on!

She darts across the living room, following the flaming footprints of Krueger up the stairs before Thompson can stop her.

Thompson: NANCY!!!!!

Up in Marge’s bedroom, Nancy stops in the splintered doorway - a ragged gold-red light splashing her horrified face. Krueger, literally a man of fire, has a screaming Marge pinned to the bed and is crawling all over her. Nancy gives a banshee's howl, snatches up a chair and brings it down over the back of the firey beast, stunning him. By the time Thompson races into the room Nancy’s seized a heavy blanket has thrown over both of them, fighting the flames. The father joins his daughter without a second thought, heaving another blanket over the bed and smothering the last of the flames.

Nancy: He's under there! Watch it!

Thompson pushes the girl back - yanks out his .38 and pulls off the first cover. No movement. He pulls back a second one, ready to fire. But the only thing he sees is the blackened half-skeleton of his ex-wife, smoking and seething and sinking into the fluid-like mattress, sinking right down through it as if she were sinking into a lake. A blackened, gnarled hand goes last, then the bed solidifies over the place she's disappeared. And it's as if no one was ever there. Nancy turns and looks at her father, her face white as her ghostly hair. He shoves his .38 back in its holster and finds a cigarette, his hands shaking so badly he can barely manage.

Nancy: Now do you believe me?
Parker: (barges in. The room is filled with smoke, the bed is stripped, but other than that, the place seems normal.) You find him? (looking closer at Thompson) Sir? (Thompson just walks by him. Parker chases after) Sir - here, let me light that for you - Lieutenant? What happened? (Thompson’s gone)

Nancy is alone in the room now. She turns and looks at the bed. The bed has changed color. It's now an ash-darkened red and yellow. Nancy stops when the surface of the red and yellow bed gets a bump in its center that keeps raising, raising until it's a hump that's a head and shoulders, still raising until it looms over Nancy. Then Fred Krueger's entire shape sweeps up into the yellow and red mass - and the garish head, smoking and seething, pops through. Krueger, a burned, sizzling black hump of a killer, clumps onto the floor between Nancy and the door. She falls absolutely still, and her face goes through a strange, almost sublime transformation.

Nancy: (quietly) I know you're there, Krueger.

She turns and faces him.

Krueger: You think you was gonna get away from me?
Nancy: (shakes her head) I know you too well now, Freddie.
Krueger: (smiles bitterly. Coming closer) And now you die...
Nancy: (there's a rattle at his side, and he raises the only thing on him not charred - the gleaming steel talons. Nancy simply shakes her head again, as if seeing a light at the end of her long, long tunnel. And the way she says the words, they might be appearing on the inside of her eyes.) It's too late, Krueger. I know the secret now – this is just a dream, too - you're not alive - the whole thing is a dream - so fuck off! I want my mother and friends again.
Krueger: (grins insanely, confused and amused at the same time) You what?
Nancy: (even, firm) I take back every bit of energy I ever gave you. You're nothing. You're shit.

And then she turns her back on him. Krueger bunches his fingers, producing a single ragged bundle of razor talons and raises his hand over the back of her head and neck. Nancy closes her eyes and steps to the door. Her hand touches the door knob. Krueger’s knife fingers are poised. Krueger stabs down, right through Nancy - as if she were an optical illusion - losing his balance and falling down, down, down... And he's gone.

***
Nancy’s front door. She jerks it open and blinks in the bright, diffused light. We hear birds. Children playing. Early morning sounds.

Nancy: (to herself) God, it's bright.
Marge: (sticks her head out, squinting, and nods. Sober) Gonna burn off soon or it wouldn't be so bright.
Nancy: (turns and looks her mother over) Feeling better?
Marge: They say you've bottomed out when you can't remember the night before. (shakes her head) No more drinking, Baby, suddenly I just don't feel like it any more. (she touches Nancy) Didn't keep you up last night, did I? You look a little peeked.
Nancy: (smiles) Nah. Just slept heavy. (waves and goes off.)
Marge: (calls after) See ya.
Nancy: (turns and waves) See ya.

Nancy walks to the curb. It’s a foggy yet bright day. We notice that Nancy's house no longer has bars on its windows. Then we see a familiar convertible pull up at the curb, top down. Tina and Rod are in the back seat. They all wave to Marge as Nancy climbs in.

Glen: (calling) You believe this fog?
Marge: (laughs) I believe anything's possible.
Tina: (slaps five with Nancy) Lookin' good, girl!

Inside the convertible. Glen slips into the seat next to Nancy. Someone else is driving, it seems. Nancy looks up to the driver. The big man turns and grins at Nancy, a terrible, scarred, hideous leer of a grin - Fred Krueger's grin. Outside the convertible, as its top clamps over the kids within - a bright red and yellow top that closes as fast and hard as a beartrap. Nancy’s frightened face flies to the window, pressing against the thick glass as the car roars away from the curb and into the thick fog. Camera pans to a group of little girls, half-hidden by the fog, jumping rope and singing gayly.

Girls: One two - Freddy's coming for you! Three four - Better lock your door! Five six - Get your Crucifix! Seven eight - Gonna stay up late! Nine ten - Never sleep again!

The little girls fade into thin air.