The next morning Heather found herself walking out of her bedroom to the empty kitchen to make herself breakfast. Her father, Erick Lantz, was the supervisor for a big business corporation that worked on advertisement. While this gave him and his daughter a good income to support themselves with and enough left over for a lot of luxuries. On the down side, he was often gone for several days at a time on business trips. So it wasn't uncommon for Heather to be on her own for 10 days a month while her father is out on a business trip.
Heather's mother, Rachael Brooks, had ran out on her when she was only a few months old. Her and Erick had been in a relationship for a couple months before Heather had been conceived. Like many children, Heather had been an accident and Rachael had really wanted to have the baby aborted. However Erick had been able to convince her to keep the child. After the baby had been born Erick had proposed to Rachael, but she declined as she didn't know if she really wanted to commit to someone. One morning Erick woke up to find Rachael gone, and a note stating that she just couldn't take what all was going on between him, her, and the baby.
Erick hadn't seen or heard of Rachael again after she left him until two years later. He had been watching the news and she had gone missing for two weeks until her body had been found mutilated in the forest. And just a few days afterward, Erick had quickly become the main suspect for the crime. During this time he really worried that if he were found guilty what would happen to Heather. He wasn't just about to let the baby he had struggled to keep just slip away from him so easily. And even when the case was about to rule him guilty, almost out of a miracle the killer had came out and admitted that he had killed Rachael. Since then, Erick had become extremely protective of his daughter, or at least as protective as he could be with his business trip problem.
Since the trip and the death of Michelle Caulfield had happened on a Sunday, this day would be the day that Heather would have to return to school. After Heather had finished her breakfast she got dressed for school and headed out to school. When she got to school, she expected everybody to be chatting about the camping even that had happened over weekend. Instead she walked into the school hallways to see everybody with upset faces and even some with tears in their eyes. She waltzed her way over to one of her friends that she saw crying, Lisa Kopecky, to ask he what everyone was crying about. Lisa was a slim, black girl with short, black hair tied up in a pony tail. She wore a denim jacket, and skinny jean that went down to her ankles. "Lisa, why is everybody crying?" Heather asked her.
"Didn't you hear?" Said Lisa between sobs "Michelle and Brett were killed last night"
Heather knew that by Michelle, Lisa meant Michelle Caulfield whose dead body she had discovered. However, she assumed by Brian that she meant Brett Anderson, a fairly popular jock. Although Heather wasn't very close to Michelle or Brett, she did know that Lisa was friends with both of them. So she couldn't help but feel sorry for Lisa, losing two close friends in one night. And that got Heather thinking, if that mysterious man who could have possibly broke into her dreams killed Michelle, assuming that it all wasn't just her mind coming up with a reason for Michelle's death, was Brett killed by the same man?
Before the conversation could continue any further, the class bell rang, so they had to head off to class. In her first class, Chemistry, Heather began to make a doodle of the man she had seen in her dream. She had always been a fairly good artist, although she was very incompetent with her drawing skills. So she never really showed anyone her drawings afraid they would make fun of her drawings that she thought were terrible. The boy who sat next to her in Chemistry, Jeff Stevens, noticed her doodle of the man "Hey, that's a really cool drawing. Looks like something out of a dream I had last night."
"R-really…?" Asked Heather, her eyes widening.
"Yeah, funny how those things work out, isn't it?"
"No talking" Shouted the Chemistry teacher at the two of them.
Things went on as if everything was normal for her next few classes, with a few kids crying over the death of a close friend here and there. However, after her third period she headed off for her lunch period when she saw a close friend of hers, Levi Stanton, leaning against the wall of the lunch building. He was a short boy with combed back blond hair, bright blue eyes, and clean clothes that looked like something you would wear to church on Sundays. "Hey, Levi" She said approaching him "It was too bad that you couldn't come to the camping trip with us"
"Yeah… But you know, can't let things get in the way of church" He said forcing a smile although Heather could see the pain behind his eyes.
Levi was one of those kids that you couldn't help but feel bad for. His parents were hardcore Catholics that practically devoted their life to their religion. They control practically control their child's mind, and they expect him to be just as religious as they are. The only thing that really kept him from going to a private Catholic school was the fact that the nearest Catholic school was over fifty miles away. Although he had never told Heather, she knew that he was secretly an Atheist. But of course he could never be able to tell his parents this or else he would be out on the streets or in therapy in an instant.
"Hey Levi… Do you think it is possible to die in a dream?" She asked him, knowing that Levi was a fairly smart, young boy.
"Well, I believe it was Cambodia, there were reports of people dying in their sleep." Said Levi, the sadness draining from his eyes and fascination replacing it "There was a case where a teenager refused to go to sleep because he just knew that if he did that he would surely die. His father, who was doctor, gave him sleeping pills. Instead of taking the sleeping pills he hid them under his bed sheets and put a coffee pot in his closet to help him stay awake. One night while him and his family were watching a movie her feel asleep, so his parents took him up to his room and laid him on his bed. A few hours later they heard screams and thrashing, but when they got to the boy's room, he was already dead."
So, I thought since I use a lot of inspirations to form my dream sequences and characters, I thought I'd tell you guys how I got some of these ideas in a kind of a 'behind the scenes' kind of section in this chapter.
In Chapter 1, as somebody in the reviews already pointed out, the two characters in the story shared the last names of characters in the Nightmare On Elm Street movies. Those being Glenn Lantz and Jennifer Caulfield. The whole hitchhiker girl and being tied to a tree with her body and hair mutilated is based off of a scene at the beginning of the original draft that Wes Craven had written for Nightmare 3. I just thought that that scene would have been really creepy, and was a little upset that it actually wasn't in the movie after I read it. So I added it in here.
In Chapter 2 I introduce the Lane family, which is obviously the same family that Rod Lane from the first family belonged to. The whole through the glass the person looks like a friend but when you open the window it's actually a horrifying monster comes from a dream I had as a child. In the dream the doorbell rang, and from the window beside the front door I could see it was a friend of mine. But when I opened the front door it turned out to be snarling bear-monster.
Chapter 3 had that shower dream sequence that was basically an almost exact replica of a nightmare I had once. I am really afraid of drowning, so that dream always haunted me. However, writing it turned out to be kind of weird, because I had to imagine it in my head as I was writing it. And I'm a gay male (That doesn't mean that this is going to turn into yaoi slash fiction if that is what you are thinking) so I just think that if I wasn't I probably would have been able to write that scene more effectively, but really I just rushed through it because I didn't really want those images in my head. And about the woman that appears in two of the scenes, that is actually a character from the original Nightmare films, but I'm not going to say which character it is. And that scene where Michelle's hair starts choking hair is similar to a scene in the first draft of Nightmare 3 where the Hitchhiker does the same thing to Nancy.
I know chapter 4 wasn't necessarily the most exciting because of the lack of dream sequences. But I got to introduce a few characters you'll see being involved in the story. It also divulged in the backstory of Heather and Levi. Like in the first Nightmare movie I want to make most or possibly all of the characters have really sad and unique dilemmas with their family and past. Like Heather's father who is often absent and her lack of mother. As well as Levi's family who forces their religion down his throat.
If you liked this section please let me know, and maybe I'll start adding it at the end of every couple chapters.
