DISCLAIMER
NOES belongs to Wes Craven and New Line Cinema. I do change some lines to make it fit. One sort of swear word.
Minutes later, Marge was back at her house, while Rod and Nancy were out and about somewhere. Where, Marge wasn't sure, but Nancy had seemed really shaky, despite Rod's best efforts to calm her down. As soon as she had gotten home, the woman had called her husband to tell him what happened.
"She said she grabbed it off his head in her dream," Marge reported. Then, "No, I'm not crazy. I'm holding the dang thing right here in my hand. I don't know where she really found it." She listened for a few minutes. "Of course I remember. I was there. We all were." Just then, Nancy opened the door and she and Rod walked in. Hearing the door, Marge glanced towards the living room. "I've gotta go," she said, and then hid the hat in a drawer. Nancy and Rod walked to the table, where Nancy immediately got herself a cup of coffee. Marge stared at her.
"You really need to get some sleep," she advised. Her daughter didn't respond. "You know, the doctor says you have to sleep or---" she continued.
"Or I'll go even crazier?" Nancy interrupted, taking a drink of the hot liquid.
"I don't think you're crazy," Mrs. Thompson said. "And stop drinking that dang coffee," she scolded, taking away the cup.
"So, did you ask Lt. Thompson to have the hat examined?" Rod questioned.
"I threw that filthy thing away," Mrs. Thompson responded as she stood in a front of a drawer. "I don't know where you really found it, or what you're trying to prove," she continued.
"What I learned in the dream clinic. That's what I'm trying to prove, Mother," Nancy answered in exasperation. "Rod didn't kill Tina," she continued.
"And I didn't try to hang myself," Rod chimed in.
"It's this guy. He's after us in our dreams," Nancy earnestly told her mother.
"But that's just not reality, kids," Mrs. Thompson said, turning her back on them. Nancy opened the drawer.
"It's real, Mama. Feel it," she dared, touching the woman's arm with the hat. Marge turned around.
"Give me that dang thing!" she exclaimed, trying to grab the fedora. However, her daughter pulled it out of reach.
"It even has his name written in it! Fred Krueger, Mom! Fred Krueger!" her daughter yelled. Marge winced at the name. "Do you know who that is, Mother?" the teen asked.
"Because if you do, you better tell us! Because he's after us now!" Rod emphasized.
"Nancy, Rod. Trust me for once, please. You'll both feel better when you get some sleep," Mrs. Thompson stated.
"'Feel better'?" Nancy repeated, clasping her wounded arm. "You call this feeling better?" she questioned. Marge didn't answer. "Or maybe I should grab that bottle and veg out with you. Avoid everything happening to me by just getting good and loaded," the teen continued. Marge backhanded Nancy in the face. Nancy and Rod backed away.
"Fred Krueger can't come after you, kids. He's dead. Believe me, I know," Marge told them. The teens stared in surprise.
"You knew about him all this time and you've been acting like it was something we made up?" Rod asked in controlled anger.
"Kids, you're sick. There's something wrong with you. You're imagining things," the woman said. She sighed. "You'll feel better once you get some sleep. It's just as simple as that," she continued, grabbing a wine bottle.
"Screw sleep!" Nancy shouted, smashing the bottle on the floor. She threw the hat at her mother and the two teens headed for the door.
"Kids! It's just a nightmare!" she told them.
"That's enough," Nancy said. Then, they left. Minutes later, they met Glen on the bridge.
"Whenever I get nervous, I eat," Glen admitted.
"And when you can't do that, you sleep," Rod surmised.
"I used to. Not anymore," Glen answered. There was a beat. "Did you ever read about the Balinese way of dreaming?" he asked.
"No," Nancy replied.
"They have this whole system called Dream Skills. So, if you have a nightmare---for instance, like falling, right?---" Glen began to say. As he did so, he got their food out of the paper bag.
"Right," Nancy prompted.
"Well, instead of screamin', gettin' all nuts, you say, 'Okay. I'm gonna make up my mind that I fall into a magic world. Make it somethin' special like a poem or a song'," Glen told them. He looked at them. "They get all their art and literature from dreams. Just wake up and write it down. Dream Skills," he finished.
"Well, what if they meet a monster in their dreams?" Nancy wondered.
"Yeah. Then what?" Rod added.
"They turn their back on it. Take away its energy and it disappears," Glen responded.
"But what happens if they don't do that?" Nancy wondered.
"Well, then, I guess those people don't wake up to tell what happens," Glen replied.
"Great," Nancy said. Glen took a look at the book she was holding.
"Booby-traps and Improvised Anti-Personal Devices?" he read. Nancy's face became guarded. "Well, what are you readin' that for?" he wondered.
"I'm into survival," his girlfriend responded with a shrug. "See ya," she said as she and Rod walked off.
"You guys are startin' to scare me!" he called after them. Later that night, Nancy and Rod returned to her home to see bars on her door.
"Oh, gross," she said. She ran up to the porch and surveyed the surroundings. All the windows had bars and her mother had cut down the rose trellis. She hit the side of the house and then went inside.
"Mother!" she called. "What's with the bars?" she demanded. Rod didn't say anything, but his face suggested his own curiosity.
"Security," Mrs. Thompson answered.
"'Security'?" Nancy repeated. "Security from what?" she asked.
"Not from what. From whom," her mother corrected. She opened the door that led down to the cellar. "Come down to the cellar with me and I'll tell you," the woman continued. Nancy put down the pamphlet and followed her mother, who opened the cellar grate and knelt beside it.
"You two want to know who Fred Krueger was?" Mrs. Thompson asked. "He was a filthy child murder who killed at least twenty kids in the neighborhood. Kids we all knew," she continued.
"Oh, Mom," Nancy murmured as the two teens sank to their knees.
"It drove us crazy when we didn't know who it was. But it was even worse after they caught him," Mrs. Thompson said. She sighed, reached into the grate, and took out a cloth.
"Did they put him away?" Nancy asked.
"Oh, the lawyers got fat, and the judge got famous, but…somebody forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place and Krueger was freed just like that," Mrs. Thompson revealed.
"What did you do, Mrs. Thompson?" Rod asked.
"A bunch of us parents tracked him down after they let him out. We found him in an old abandoned boiler room where he used to take his kids," Mrs. Thompson replied.
"Go on," Nancy prompted.
"We took gasoline, poured it all around the place, and a made a trail of it out the door. Then lit the whole thing up and watched it burn," Mrs. Thompson told them.
"How could you?" Nancy wondered.
"What gave you the right to take the law into your own hands?" Rod added.
"Because Krueger took it into his hands to kill our kids. Glen, Tina---even you two---you all had a brother or sister once. You weren't always only children," Mrs. Thompson told them. The woman sighed laboriously. "But he can't get you now. He's dead kids, because I killed him," she told them. "I even took his knives," she stated, unwrapping the cloth. Nancy and Rod recoiled when they saw the offending objects.
"It's all okay now," she assured. She put the cloth back in the grate and placed her hands on Nancy's knees, seeming to have forgotten that Rod was there. "You can sleep," she told her daughter.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I realize the scenes between Nancy and her mother are very personal, but I felt it was important that Rod be there for the friendship angle since for the rest of the story, I'm gonna have them stickin' close to each other.