Welcome back, loyal readers! This is the moment we've been building for: some real horror action! Our tale now kicks into a higher gear, and secrets about certain characters come out of the dark and into the light! What happens here will affect the rest of the story, so don't miss this thrilling chapter! And we're only just getting started, so don't fall asleep...

CHAPTER 11

THE BOILER ROOM

Earlier...

Walks always helped Jake clear his head. Ever since he was young, he found that walking, jogging, or biking helped him calm down whenever something was nagging at his mind.

Jake was taking one such walk right now. He'd heard from his mom what had happened to Amy and felt like it was more than just a simple "hallucination." And it was because of that that he actually had a solid destination in mind this time.

He was less than a block away from his house when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display: Carla.

He sighed heavily, debating whether or not to answer it. He hadn't talked to her since Monday, and maybe his mom was right; a good talk with Carla might do him some good.

"Hello?" Jake held the phone to his ear.

"Jake, hey," Carla spoke softly from the other end of the line. "How are you doing over there?"

She always asked that. Every time she called, she always asked Jake how he was, and she only did it with him; it usually brought a smile to his face, but not today.

"Not so great," Jake admitted. "I've been wrestling with that problem we discussed earlier this week."

"Do you want to come over, and we can talk about it?" Carla asked. "You know my bed always has a spot with your name on it."

"Actually, I'm going for a walk. I was wondering if you wanted to join me, perhaps."

"Just walking? Sounds boring," Carla answered. "I'd love to. Where do you want to meet?"

Jake was silent for a while, and wondered if he should tell Carla where he was actually going. He took a deep breath, and finally answered.

"The boiler room," Jake said.

...

The sun hadn't completely set, and was casting an eerie orange glow on the massive power plant. The rail yard a couple hundred yards across the dirt lot was quiet, the large storage cars full of scrap metal resting nearby on a track that ran next to the massive building.

The building itself had once been a busy electrical plant, but time and circumstances had caused the town's people to forget that fact. The place had closed up back in the early seventies after it was linked to the murders, and had been completely abandoned after the fire that nearly destroyed it completely. It had been suggested many times that the building be completely demolished and the land repurposed. However, no serious proposals ever moved forward, and the landowner, a farmer who also owned the fields of corn a mile away, refused to sell the land back to the city.

The place held significance for Jake for a number of reasons, none of them good. He hated this place with a passion, and wanted nothing more than for it to burn to the ground. But he was still inexplicably drawn to it, and was standing in the shadow the building cast even now.

Darkness had fully descended before he finally heard the sound of approaching footsteps in the dirt; he turned and saw Carla walking briskly towards him with a bag slung over her shoulder. She also had a pair of LED Mag-lite flashlights in her hand and was casting a death glare at Jake.

"You're lucky I don't smack you upside the head with one of these," Carla spat. Jake took one from Carla's hand, but she held it firmly, not letting go for a moment as she continued. "Why are we here? Are you actually trying to stir him up?" She clearly sounded pissed off.

"You can still walk away," Jake retorted. "Just give me the bag, and I'll go alone."

Carla glared at Jake, and begrudgingly let go of the flashlight, holding up her own and turning it on in his face.

"Not a chance in fucking hell am I leaving you on your own. And you're lucky I don't tell your mom about this."

Jake nodded and turned towards the double doors entrance. He picked up a nearby heavy pipe and placed it through the padlocked chains holding the doors closed, and twisted until the rusty chains broke, rattling loudly to the ground.

Jake quickly ushered Carla in through the doors and closed them as he entered behind her. All light vanished, and the inside of the building was enshrouded in total darkness. Jake turned his flashlight on and shone it down a corridor that was lined with lockers and multiple doors on either side.

"This way," Jake motioned.

"You still haven't said what we're doing here," Carla said.

"I'm making sure," Jake answered as he headed further down the hallway.

"I hate it when you're vague like that," Carla added. "Making sure of what?"

"That he's still there..." Jake's eyes darted about the hall, as if searching for something hidden. Carla shone her light on the wall and noticed an old cork pin-up board filled with dissolving employee notices and missing children posters. Carla recognized the children in the posters as the murder victims. One poster was falling off, hanging by one thumbtack, and Carla plucked it from the board and shone her flashlight on it.

The girl in the poster was a pretty young girl, about nine or ten, in a schoolgirl dress with shoulder-length blonde hair and a hair band. The missing date was 7/17/70.

It was his last victim, she knew that, because they torched the factory, and him inside it. They never found her body.

Carla stuffed the missing poster into her pocket and walked after Jake. As they got deeper into the building, Carla could see scorch marks on the wall from the fire. She traced her finger along the stone wall, and half expected to come away with ash on her hand.

"It's so surreal, isn't it?" Carla asked Jake, who was at the end of the hallway looking about.

"Yeah, it is," Jake said. He shone his light down the hallway and motioned for Carla to join him. "It's down here, come on."

The hall was longer than the one they had just come down, and this was one was visibly more destroyed; some of the walls here had been drywall, and had been burned away by the fire. Several holes had been burnt into the wall, exposing the inner struts of the wall and hundreds of yards of metal wiring. The pair walked down the burned out hallway came to a massive metal door with a plaque across it that read two eerily familiar words: boiler room.

"You don't seriously want to go back down there, do you?" Carla asked, her voice quivering with fear. "Aren't you afraid you could...?"

"No, I'm not," Jake said firmly. "Because I'm not afraid of him. He can't get you if you're not afraid of him, remember?"

"But you were saying earlier this week that you were worried he could come back," Carla placed a cautionary hand on Jake's shoulder. "You're flopping back and forth on this, and it's all so confusing. Make up your damn mind, Jake," Carla finished, breathing heavily.

"Do you trust me?" Jake asked after a period of silence.

"Jake, what has got you so worked up about all this all of a sudden? Is this about what happened to Amy this afternoon?"

"You know about that?" Jake asked in disbelief.

"Of course I know," Carla answered sharply. "It was your mom that stitched her up; I'd be surprised if there was anybody in our group who actually didn't know."

"Mom said Amy had a hallucination," Jake said. "I think it may have been more than that."

"Do you think she had a full blown nightmare?"

"No; according to Cameron, she was awake the whole time, just punching the mirror into splinters." Jake mimed punching in the air. "And then she split her hand open on the wall behind it. But I do think she saw Freddy, and that's why she shattered the mirror. Or she saw something that really frightened her, and I don't know what else that could be."

"Could she have skipped her meds?" Carla asked. "I mean, she lives with you guys, so maybe your mom could check that."

"It's possible, but I want to cover every possible angle," Jake said as he looked back towards the door. "If he's still down there, we'll know we're safe."

Carla nodded in agreement and put her hand on the push bar to open the door; it was jammed. "Jake, a little help?"

Jake put both hands on the bar and started pushing on it. The door budged slightly after a couple pushes, but still refused to open.

"Do you hate your mom for taking in Amy?" Carla asked as Jake backed up slightly and Sparta-kicked the door.

"No, of course not," Jake said with a grunt as he brought his foot into the metal door. "I hate Amy's parents-" BAM! "-for abandoning her-" BAM! "-in the fucking-" BAM! "-NUTHOUSE!" Jake leaped into the air and kicked the door with both feet, finally forcing the door to swing wide open as he fell flat on his back with a thud. The hallway extended slightly beyond the door, before curving downward into a set of spiral stairs.

"You know, I haven't been down here since that night," Carla said as she bent over to help Jake to his feet, who let out a wince of agony.

"Me neither," Jake answered breathlessly, brushing himself off as he stood. "Apparently, neither has anyone else."

A shudder shot up Jake's spine, as he knew what that could mean, but he said nothing as he stepped through the doorway and started down the spiral steps.

He reached the landing onto the first elevated walkway, but the last four or five steps were missing. He jumped to the walkway below and turned back as Carla was coming down.

"Jump," he said, holding his arms out. Carla did so instinctively, and landed in Jake's arms; he closed them tightly around her tiny frame and set her down.

"Thanks," she said softly. Carla wrinkled her nose; the acrid smell of smoke still lingered in this room, even after forty years. The walls and other equipment and machinery were scorched solid black, most of it melted into twisted and grotesque shapes. Metal support columns towered from the floor below to the ceiling just overhead, and ash clung to all surfaces here. Carla again wiped her finger, this time against a metal railing and came away with a fingertip blackened with soot.

"Jesus," she whispered. She looked down at the railing and saw a set of fingerprints on the metal. Her jaw dropped in disbelief as she reached out to touch it-

-Alexis jumped down from the broken steps and stumbled on her landing, grabbing the railing for support-

-but Carla decided against it. She looked down the walkway and saw Jake shining his light down into the boiler room below.

"Jake," Carla said. "Her fingerprints are still here."

Jake either wasn't paying attention and couldn't hear her, or was ignoring her. He instead found the ladder that descended the walkway and down into the boiler room. Jake quickly climbed down the ladder and Carla followed close after.

"I didn't expect her fingerprints... It's been two years, and they're still there." Carla said, her voice quivering as she reached the ground.

"This place is a grave; nobody's been here to disturb it," Jake answered. "Everything is exactly as we left it."

"It's as if she's still there..." Carla was clearly terrified now, to the point of shaking.

Jake reached out, took Carla's hand into his and gripped it tightly. "Everything's going to be fine, Carla," Jake reassured her. Still holding her hand, he pulled her along close behind him as they ventured deeper into the boiler room.

"Do you remember which one it was?" Carla asked. "There's a dozen boilers in here."

"You'll know it when you see it," Jake answered. "I think its right up here." Jake led Carla into a massive lowered area of the boiler room, which was likely at one point a loading dock, with a short three steps leading down into it. There were three large closed overhead doors on the other side of the small arena, and door entering a large room on the far right side. The wall extended upwards a quarter of the way to the roof, and the rest of it was all metal grates all the way to the top.

"Is that... that's his office, isn't it?" Carla asked. It sure was; she could clearly see the inside was torched completely, covered in ashes and dust.

"Then that means the boiler is just on the other side of that wall." The followed the railing alongside the wall of the office and came to another large area like the loading dock, but this one had a single, towering boiler on the other side.

Jake and Carla descended the steps into this area, and crossed to the boiler.

"That's it, isn't it?" Carla asked. "That's where you put... his body, right?"

"You don't remember?" Jake asked.

"No, I was unconscious at that point, remember?" Carla added the "remember" in a mocking tone, and Jake just chuckled nervously at it.

"Yeah, that's it," Jake answered affirmatively. "Couldn't risk carrying out the bodies, so we stuffed his inside the boiler and burnt it."

"And Alexis' body? What did you do with hers?" Carla asked. She turned around and shone her flashlight along the wall, following it back to the railing, not at all expecting to see a rotting corpse just a couple feet behind where she stood.

"Ahhhhh!" Carla screamed loudly, stumbling backwards and unable to take her eyes off the body. It was charred black, ash-covered from the clothes and flesh that had burned with it.

"Carla!" Jake screamed out. Carla didn't hear him, as she was scrambling backwards on the floor. Jake bent down and stood in front of her to block the view. "Carla, don't look!"

Carla's whole body was now clearly shaking, her voice cracking, and she was on the verge of crying. "I don't think I... can..." Carla started hyperventilating, and placed her hand over her chest as she tried to steady her breathing. "Is that... Is that Alexis...?"

"Carla, look at me, and breath-"

"IS THAT ALEXIS? That's Alexis! I can't breathe!"

Tears welled up in her eyes as she threw her bag to the ground and opened it up, searching or something. She rummaged through the contents, including a one-gallon gas container and a can of salt, but became frustrated when she couldn't find what she was looking for.

"Where is it?" she asked herself. "I can't fucking breathe, and I can't fucking find it!" She stood up and, with an audible sob, kicked the bag as hard as she could, sending the contents flying onto the floor.

Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic inhaler. He removed the cap from the mouthpiece and gently pulled Carla close to him. He put the inhaler to her quivering lips and commanded her to inhale three times. With each sharp inward breath, Jake pressed the button that released the medication into Carla's lungs.

When she was done, Carla threw herself into Jake's arms, and he hugged her and held her close.

"What... What happened to her?" Carla cried into Jake's chest, peeking out at the skeletal corpse. Jake suddenly realized that, even though Carla knew Alexis died, she didn't know how, or what happened to her body.

"Freddy..." Jake began, his own voice now shaking badly. "After you passed out, Freddy tried to kill me, and she saved me. And he returned the favor by burning her alive. She screamed, begging me to help her, but I couldn't move. I refused to move, and she burnt alive in front of me. She screamed, and screamed, and she continued to scream as her clothes and flesh burned away, until she was nothing but a burnt skeleton. And still, she kept screaming..." Jake gripped Carla tighter, burying his face into her shoulder.

"She's dead because I refused to move... But she fought back, and with her last breath, she took his knives, and stuck them in Krueger's neck."

Jake blinked and-

-Krueger stood over Jake, walking slowly, savoring the moment. Just as Freddy raised his finger blades to end him, Alexis, her body aflame, half her skin and clothes burnt away, came up and grabbed the glove, wrestling Krueger to the ground for it. The pair fell and Alexis gained the upper hand for a brief moment; that was all she needed. She grabbed the glove, still on Krueger's hand, and shoved the four blades deep into Krueger's neck-

-and shoved the image from his head. "We never had a chance to move her. You were dying, and we had to get out of here and get you help. We sealed the doors, and hoped nobody ever found out what happened."

"Let's just do this shit and get the fuck out of here," Carla said with a shiver, pulling away from Jake and approaching the boiler.

"Agreed," Jake said as he approached the boiler. There were scorch marks around the boiler door, and a large white X crossed the door.

"You never answered my question," Jake said.

"Which one?"

"Do you trust me?" Jake repeated his question as he pulled out the pipe he used to break the chain on the door outside. "Just yes, or no."

Carla looked at the door, her heart racing and hands trembling. What if the body really wasn't there? What would that mean? Would Jake be right?

"I..." she started to say. She looked up at Jake, who was positioning the pipe against the handle to leverage it open.

"Yes, and I open this door," he explained. "No, and we pack up your bag and get the fuck out of here. No questions, no judgments."

Carla sat silent for a long moment, but she soon nodded. "Yes, I trust you," she finally said.

Jake nodded back, and lifted the pipe out of the door. He brought it down quickly and whacked the door handle with it, jarring it loose. The door swung open freely and the dark insides of the boiler were revealed. Jake held up his hand and motioned for Carla to step back away from it. He bent down and peered inside.

Before he had the chance to raise his flashlight, something moved inside the boiler and was flung out the door. Jake leapt back and Carla screamed sharply again as the object landed between them. It was round, and dark brown, ripped and tattered along the edge.

"It's just his hat," Jake said. He picked it up and peered inside the boiler with his flashlight. Just as he expected.

The rotten skeletal remains of Freddy Krueger lay at the bottom of the boiler, completely intact. The muscles had dried and rotted, leaving the skin to wrap tightly around the skeleton. The glove lay in the ash pile near the head, still attached to the hand that wore it.

"Rot in hell, you fucking bastard," Jake whispered. He tossed the hat back into the boiler and walked over to Carla's bag. He grabbed the one-gallon gas can, as well as the container of salt, and took them both back to the boiler.

"Today, Freddy's body. Soon, we're gonna burn this whole fucking building down to the ground." Jake said firmly as he opened up the salt container. "I should have done this a long time ago." He threw the salt on Krueger's body until the container was empty, then threw it in the boiler. He opened up the gas container and began tossing the gasoline onto the body. Once the gas container was empty, he dropped it to the ground and pulled a matchbook from his pocket. He struck one match, and used it to light the others in the book before tossing it into the gasoline.

Krueger's body erupted into flame, burning the skin from the skeleton, the stench fouling both Jake and Carla's nostrils. Carla stepped close to Jake and took his hand in her's.

"What are we going to do about Alexis?" Carla asked.

"One day, I'm going to come back and burn this whole building to the ground," Jake said. "On that day, I'll take her body as far away from here as I can and bury her somewhere nice. Like Lake Eerie, perhaps. She always loved that place."

"Sounds nice," Carla said. The two sat and stared at the burning boiler, holding hands and remaining long after the fire had burnt itself out.

Proceed to next chapter...