A/N: Here is the penultimate chapter. I felt it best if we separated the big climax into two parts, this one beginning with the build up and the last one ending with the denouement.

I've got a few ideas in mind for what I want to do next. I am doing something different this time. I am outlining my multi chapter projects to see how much I like them. I don't want to start out with something because I like the setup and I haven't even thought about where I want to go with it.

Rest assured, I will keep writing and if I'm following you or your story, I will read and leave reviews.

Take care and please, please leave your feedback.

;-)

Cat sat up in her bed, crying into her pillow. She hasn't left her room since the nightmare where she saw Robbie getting killed. She didn't understand why sometimes she was able to see into someone else's dream and then other times not at all. If only she could have led him out of danger; he might have been still alive.

At first, Cat thought it was only a dream and not the bad kind. Once she woke up she tried Robbie's cell and someone identifying himself as a medical examiner answered. Hours later, her mother stepped up to give her the grim news so it had to be true.

Her mother.

Cat remembered when she was a little girl and sitting at the table with her father and brother. The boys would start talking endlessly about some sort of nonsense while mother and daughter gave knowing smiles while sitting across from one another. She was too young to understand it at the time but they were having private conversations. Cat's mother had a gift. She was able to move in and out of a person's dream and sometimes could bring someone else in.

And since dreams, though irrational on the surface, were windows into the subconscious; Cat and her mom knew what was on their minds even if they never told each other.

"Momma," Cat asked her once. "How can you be in my dream with me?"

She smiled and picked up her daughter and they both sat at the foot of the bed. "Well, honey – I've actually had it for a long time. It's a gift, sweetheart. A very brave girl gave it to me. She saved my life."

Cat's eyes grew wide at the revelation. "Did I meet her?"

Her mother's eyes grew sad and she forced a wise smile. "I'm afraid she passed. She was trying to protect me…well, all of us really."

"From what?"

"Bad things."

"Like what?"

Cat's mom gave her a big bear hug. "I hope to God you never find out."

"Alice?" Cat's father shouted from downstairs. "Where are you?"

"Up here, Dave!" she responded.

Cat's dad sighed and took both females by the hand. "Let's get a move on, ladies; don't want to be late for Jacob's big game."

Alice Valentine, born Alice Johnson, was really fortunate how Dave valued her son from a previous relationship just as much as the girl they had when they got together. He understood the first years were difficult raising him without his father but it wasn't his fault.

He died before he was born in a bizarre traffic accident.

"Okay," Alice smiled at her daughter. "Let's go."

Cat shook her head from the memory of her mom. For a long time, it was a secret between them. But when this monster was terrorizing her friends while they slept, Cat had to find out what it was; even if he scared her to death.

She has attempted to call Jade numerous times but it kept going to voice mail.

She didn't know what else to do so she started drawing with her colored pencils. Cat had a few sketches of Freddy on her bed and she stared at them intently.

"Why won't you leave us alone?" she asked the markings on paper.

Cat questioned her sanity every time she drew the burned man. What was she going to do? Turn them into the police so they could arrest him?

Her thoughts didn't cease even when her bedroom door opened.

"Cat?" her mom asked. "Are you alright?"

"Not really, mom" she replied.

Alice couldn't believe what she was seeing. It was the perfect antithesis to her usually jovial daughter. But she understood the horrible news of a friend dying so suddenly. It still hurt to see her baby so broken. Something laying in front of her daughter made her blood run cold.

"Caterina," she pointed. "What is that?"

Cat looked up, confused. She only heard her full name when she was in trouble but she hasn't done anything.

"What?" she asked.

"THAT!" Alice insisted. "Where did you get that?"

"I drew it."

"How?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean where did you see this?"

"In my nightmare."

Those three words made Alice almost faint. She never saw such a thing in what felt like ages.

"Mom…" Cat stood up and approached her mom. "Mom, what's the matter?"

She watched her mother sit down, practically hyperventilating. Alice took Cat's hand and squeezed hard.

"Mom," Cat's voice faltered. "You're scaring me right now."

"Cat listen to me; remember when you were little and asked me about our gift?"

Cat nodded nervously.

"This was the bad man that tried to hurt all of us," she said in all seriousness.

Cat thought she was going to faint. The same man her and her friends saw in their dreams was the same that her mother and her friends saw years ago.

"Mom," Cat started to tear up. "This isn't possible, is it?"

"Honey, you're whole life you are led to believe things until something makes you stop. This man could get to us and kill us in our sleep. So far, nothing convinced me that he didn't exist. And for a long time, I thought at least he could be stopped. For a while, it felt that way. I finally felt safe enough to have my child and then have another."

She touched her daughters face with her hand, softly smiling at those last words.

"Sometimes you see things, even though they defy everything you've learned, you can't deny them because you know they are real. Sometimes the unexplained and the irrational are the reality."

Cat wiped her eyes and looked out her window.

"I know what to do, mom."

"What?"

"I...I...need to visit Tori," Cat lied.

Alice cleared her throat. "You're sure?"

"Yes," she nodded. "I need to make sure she's alright. Jade's probably already there." She looked back at her mom.

"They're your friends, honey; you can't help but worry."

"Right."

Tori proceeded with caution behind Cobb's back. She felt silly about being hesitant in being the guide for this expedition.

After all, it was the mind of her girlfriend.

And her girlfriend happened to be Jade West.

"Hey, Tori...Does Jade like scissors?" Cobb asked.

"Oh yeah," Tori responded looking up.

"Good. Then this should be normal" he inflected the last word as if asking a question.

The two outsiders marveled with awe and a little apprehension of the massive pair of scissors forming a metallic arch. They cautiously pass under them. Cobb couldn't help but think of Virgil leading the reader into the depths of Hell. He shook his head, trying to shake off the thought. This was the mind of a teenage girl and it made him more nervous than when he was asked to go inside the mind of a serial killer.

One thing was for sure, he figured. This Fred Krueger was going to have his work cut out for him.

"Whoa," Tori breathed.

That arch was only the beginning.

It was a virtual field of scissors of varying heights and shapes; all black with shiny silver blade that gleamed against the grey sky. A razor-sharp forest.

Cobb started to lose his footing. The ground was beginning to quake.

"DOM!" Tori called out, grabbing for his hand.

One of the tremors sent the longer half of a large pair overhead crashing down. Cobb pushed Tori away from him as the gargantuan blade bisected the space between them, just missing them both.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Tori clutched her chest. "I thin-"

Her words were cut off by a sinkhole she fell into. Her screams echoed as Cobb ran over to her. Tori was hanging by a branch over a deep abyss. It was pitch black way down there with no sign of a bottom.

"Tori," he grunted trying to reach out to her. "Try to get my hand."

Tori stretched herself and almost slipped off of the branch. "I...can't...reach..."

The earth started to loosen beneath Cobb's body. Before he could react, the two began plummeting into the hole.

Tori and Cobb shrieked their lungs out.

Then the screams stopped...