A/N: Sorry I took so long to update. The plan was to have chapter 4 posted sooner, but I was distracted for a few days because of some bad news. My dog has been sick (pooping blood, barely eating anything we give him), so we took him to the veterinarian. They said he has cancer in his liver and it spread to his lungs, and he's dying. He's been a part of our family for 11 years (since I was 8 years old), and they're saying we have to have him euthanized.
I don't like to make excuses, but that's the reason why it took me so long to post this (that, and my coursework for school). Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story.

And thank you to Darkness Takes Over for reviewing chapter 3. She has some awesome stories, so be sure to check them out! My pesonal favorites of hers are I Won't Tell, Fear the Nightmare, Dream Boat, Family Counseling, Reunion, and My Big Krueger Nightmare Wedding. I know that's a lot of favorites. Shut up. The rest of her stories are awesome, too, but these are the ones I ADORE.

Also, thank you to "Freddy K Fan" for reviewing chapters 1 and 2. I couldn't send a thank-you reply because the review was left as a guest, so I'll put it here: THANK YOU FOR REVIEWING! It's readers like you that motivate me to keep writing even when life gets shitty and all I want to do is zombify in front of the television.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.

WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.


Chapter Four: Trial # 172

Vodka sloshed around inside the long-necked bottle as Sheriff Thompson tipped it up, putting his lips to the glass mouth. His senses had dulled to the bitter taste and the burning air that puffed from his nostrils. He slipped two fingers under his collar and tugged it loose. Another great fucking day at work, he thought. But the words felt distant, and it gave him the impression that they weren't in his head, but circling around it.

And that was exactly where he wanted them. Out.

He was a mess in uniform, sitting slumped over in the backseat of his own police cruiser with a cold bottle cradled against the side of his head. The zipped-up windbreaker had bunched under his arms as he slid lower on the seat, and it pressed the gold sheriff's star into his chin. He took another swig.

The blue-shuttered windows of 1428 Elm Street stared at him through the windshield like huge, square eyes that never blinked. He remembered the evenings years ago when he'd come home from the station and pull into the driveway like this (except the car wasn't parked crooked like it was now), and Nancy would be perched on the windowsill with a toothless grin. No matter how many times he and Marge had told her not to sit on it, she was always there waiting for him with her tiny hands on the glass pane.

Here he had to stop, because the thoughts were starting to get inside again. And he didn't want them to get back inside. He swallowed another mouthful of booze. It scorched his throat, but didn't stave off the flow of afterimages.

Little Nancy looking through the window. Little Nancy rushing out the front door to say hello to him. He saw her everywhere. That was why he was afraid to go inside.

Glancing down into his lap, he wondered why he was being such a fool. The cuts on her arm couldn't have been an accident. Any other good parent would have done what he did. At least, he hoped that was the truth. Part of him wondered if maybe he had done it to take her from Marge.

The last of the vodka flowed out of the bottle and drained into the pit of his stomach. He left it on the seat beside two crushed beer cans. If sending Nancy away had been the right thing to do, he didn't understand why he couldn't rinse the nasty taste of guilt out of his mouth.

xxxxxx

The people searching the hospital grounds looked like ants to Nancy. She peered down at them from a high window in the tower as they crawled around between the tiny green trees. All of them were wearing white; not a single one was in dark blue. But it was no surprise that the police hadn't been involved, considering who her father was and the questions he would ask.

The afternoon sun glared off every smooth leaf and fluttering blade of grass, and it made her head throb. She squinted, pinching the bridge of her nose. Even if there weren't a pack of orderlies hunting for her, she was too delirious to go anywhere now. She would have to wait until tonight to sneak back in. After taking one last look at the frantic little people, Nancy turned back to the hallway.

She had to stare at her feet to be sure they were touching the ground. The stone floor felt like vapor under her, swirling and dissipating. When she looked back up, the ceiling started to spin as a fit of dizziness seized her. She braced a hand against the wall, and the stone pulsed under her fingertips. It felt alive. It breathed.

The simple act of walking became difficult for her as she stumbled along, leaning on the wall for support. The dull colors of the dusty old hallway turned vibrant to the point that it hurt her eyes to look as they expanded beyond their natural surfaces. A hazy spectrum of violets and greens floated into the air like a halo. She staggered on through the distorted tower and felt the sedatives like hooks in her skin pulling her down into unconsciousness.

The corridor slithered beneath her, and she fell into the wall. Both her hands smacked flat against the stones. She lifted her groggy eyes to her fingers as the black numbers written on her skin began fading in and out.

Screech…

Nancy balled the hand into a fist and swung it into her cheek. "Fuck," she whispered, fighting the urge to collapse. He was coming back, and who knows what those twitchy claws wanted from her this time.

Running made no difference, but she ran anyway. Maybe she thought the adrenaline spike would keep her awake. Doors flew past her as the hall snaked and twisted, drawing her forward.

She slowed down when she felt a sense of clarity return. The motion in the walls and the strange colors were gone. For a few seconds, she almost laughed because she thought she was safe. Then her gaze dropped to her fist, and she saw that the numbers had disappeared.

The ear-splitting sound of steel carving into metal reverberated past her from behind. She spun around, but Freddy wasn't the one standing there.

"I warned you, child," said the old nun. Her white robes looked dingy in this light, draped over her frail body like a funeral gown. The garment didn't swish around her when she stepped forward as it had before; it hung with a weight that looked oppressive on her brittle shoulders.

"What do you want?" Nancy asked, keeping distance between them.

"I want to help you," the woman said. "You don't know where you are."

Nancy glanced over her shoulder to see if Freddy was around. "Yes, I do. I'm in the tower, and I'm asleep."

The old woman's wrinkled eyes showed a hint of pity. "That's not what I meant, dear."

"Then what did you mean?" Nancy asked.

"You need to listen to me carefully, Nancy," the nun said. "This isn't an easy thing to explain to you, but you need to hear it."

"What?"

The woman hesitated, pursing her thin lips. "You think you know what's happening now, but you don't. My son is just using you for-"

The nun threw her head back as she clutched her throat. She dropped to her knees, coughing and sputtering while an unseen hand crushed her windpipe. Her serene eyes were now bulging out of her head. Nancy stood frozen against the wall, staring at the gagging old woman.

"Bitch talks too much," said a familiar, gravelly voice. The first thing Nancy saw in the shadows was the gleam of his blades as he swished them together. Then the flash of his predatory eyes. Freddy strolled past the nun like he didn't notice her, gaze fixed on Nancy.

"Stay the fuck away from me," Nancy shouted. She took a few more steps backward before turning around and bolting down the hallway. She didn't notice it at first, but the floor rolled under her like a treadmill, pulling her back with every step. The same door flew past her again and again. She glanced over her shoulder and was mortified to see that she'd barely moved at all.

Freddy lifted his claw and flicked the blades inward, making the stone floor of the hallway bunch up like a carpet under Nancy's feet. She jumped over the rippling bumps as they came at her in waves. Diving through the next doorway that passed her, she tumbled across the hard floor. Her elbows took the brunt of the impact, throbbing and stinging as she grit her teeth. She rolled out on her back and lifted her head to see if anyone had followed her.

The doorway was clear.

Crawling on her knees, she passed between a sturdy old desk and a row of filing cabinets. The light coming in from the windows was blood red, and it made her skin look like it were roasted raw. She glanced up at the sky, which had turned into a flat-wash of crimson with no clouds or even a sun. She was scared to see what else had changed outside, so she crawled along with her head low.

Past the small archway in the back of the room was a winding staircase that descended into a huge chapel. The tiniest sound echoed up into the dome ceiling. Nancy pulled herself up to her feet and climbed down the steps, clinging to the curved face of the wall. As she slipped off the last step at the bottom, it flattened out like closing mini-blinds. Only smooth stone remained where the stairs had been.

She turned toward the front of the chapel, walking down the center aisle that was flanked on both sides by hard, wooden pews. Sheets of dust had settled over everything, and she swiped a finger over one of the armrests as she passed it. On a platform above the altar stood a simple wooden podium. A stained glass mosaic of the crucifixion was fitted into the wall, bathing the church in a flood of red light.

The lines of the glass picture began to shimmer, and Nancy climbed up onto the platform to inspect it. She walked to the back and reached out, running a hand over the image. When she pulled it away, her palm was smeared in red. Fresh drops of blood swelled from between the pieces of glass. They rolled down to pool along the bottom edge of the window frame, dripping onto the dirty old carpet.

She faced back toward the pews and went rigid from shock. Hanging above the altar from a long rope that had been tied high in the rafters was a figure draped in white robes. The cloth was dyed a deep peach color by the light. Nancy circled around to the front of it and was greeted by the wide, perpetual grin of a skeleton. The tilt of its head gave it a sorrowful look as it seemed to be gazing out over the chapel. Delicate finger bones poked out from the robe sleeves on each side of the body, and its white toes pointed down from loose ankle joints.

Pinned to the garment over the skeleton's chest was a tiny gold name plate with Amanda Krueger engraved across it. As soon as she had read it, an uproar exploded from behind.

The pews were overflowing with filthy, haggard men. Some hadn't shaved in weeks, and others had a beard of foam flowing out of their gaping mouths. They cackled and hollered, occasionally falling sideways onto the benches like overgrown toddlers. One man near the front kept lolling his tongue over his bottom lip as he stared at the image of the crucifixion on the wall.

"Hope you don't mind," said Freddy as he leaned his elbow onto the podium behind her, "but I brought a few friends with me. They've been good boys, and they deserve a treat."

The men straightened up in unison, locking their eyes on the altar. One by one, they rose to their feet and started walking towards Nancy like a drove of zombies. They surrounded the platform. Nancy would have run the other way if it weren't for Freddy, who was tapping his blades on the edge of the podium with a wicked glint in his eyes.

She cringed as the horde of lunatics crowded in close enough for her to smell their putrid breath. They pushed past her, reaching up for the hanging body. The first three men that grabbed onto it yanked it down from the cord, which snapped at the knot high above and lashed through the air as it fell. Coils of worn-out rope smacked into the floor like a giant dead snake. The men stepped over it, encircling the body.

They tore at its robes with their gnarled hands and ripped the cloth away in strips. Nancy could only watch as they threw the garment aside and each staked his claim to a piece of the skeleton. They shoved their hands into their trousers, pulling out throbbing erections. One of the men slid himself into the ribcage, another into the eye socket. As the mob crowded around the body, Nancy heard a woman screaming and sobbing. She saw the writhing skeleton of Amanda Krueger in flashes through occasional gaps between the men. It cried out for help, unable to defend itself. Thick strings of semen were draped over the bones like cobwebs, shaking loose as hips pounded into her from all sides. The skull held no expression, but Nancy saw agony deep within the one unmolested socket.

"Tell them to stop!" she shouted at Freddy, who was watching the spectacle with amusement.

He smirked. "Make me, bitch."

She glared at him and rushed into the crowd of lunatics, shoving them out of the way as she tried to reach Amanda. But with each man she pushed aside, it felt like two more took his place, drawing her deeper into a mire of human quicksand. Amanda sunk beneath the pile of sweating bodies until only a skeletal hand stuck out from the tangle of thrusting flesh. And then one of the men pulled it under.

Nancy's head jerked backward as someone fisted her hair. She was dragged out of the crowd and thrown against the back wall, beneath the stained glass window. She curled onto her side, looking up as Freddy stalked toward her. His burnt skin looked like it was on fire in the red glow. The fedora's rim cast a dark shadow to the tip of his scarred nose, and his eyes shone from beneath it when he tilted his head to the side. "You didn't think you were gonna miss out on all the fun, did you?"

She sat up with her back against the wall. "Not one step closer," she warned. But her threats had no teeth, and Freddy wasn't impressed. He moved in and stood over her.

Amanda's screams still echoed through the chapel, mixing with the grunting and groaning of the men. Freddy stooped down to tuck Nancy's hair behind one ear in a mockingly affectionate way, and she seized his hand to crunch down on it.

"You cunt," he roared, clutching at her arm with his claw. The thin razors dug into her flesh. He squeezed her throat with his punctured hand and pulled his claw back, preparing to strike. But he never got the chance. She blinked out.

A second later, she was lying flat on her stomach in one of the tower's winding hallways. She sat up, noticing from a quick peek out the window that it was nighttime. She must have been asleep for a few hours. The thick fog over her mind had lifted, leaving a keen and composed determination in her blue eyes.

xxxxxx

Under the cover of night, Nancy slipped out from between the tower doors and slunk from tree to tree all the way back to the hospital. Sneaking back in would be easy since no one was around. The staff must have given up the search for her after their dayshifts ended. Dangerous female escapee? Not as important as their late-night sitcoms and beauty sleep.

The smashed window was up ahead, and she smiled to herself as she approached it. There might as well have been a welcome mat laid out on the trampled grass. But the closer she got to the window, the more her smile wavered. She stopped in front of the building, placing her hands against the thick plate of glass.

They hadn't found her. But they had found her only way back in.

As hard as she pushed against the glass, it wouldn't budge. It was freshly installed and reinforced. She was locked out.

Tipping her head all the way back, she looked up at the mountainous building in front of her. Roughly laid layers of brick and mortar towered into the sky with the moon peaking out from behind it. Westin Hills seemed as impenetrable as a fortress. Keeping her neck craned, she began to circle the building and survey it for any weak points.

Her search didn't yield much. Every window she looked at was intact, and every wall of the hospital seemed higher and flatter and even more impossible to mount than the last. When she reached the front of the building, she had to wait with her back against the bricks behind the main staircase as two nurses walked out of the entrance. They were cackling and shoving each other over some guy named Jerry, and the younger one kept asking the other, "how big? how big?"

Nancy rolled her eyes. After they had turned into the faculty parking lot and driven out in separate cars, Nancy stepped back to see the front face of the building. Again, everything looked well-built and solid. She glanced from window to window, starting with the lowest, and counted them off.

No. No. No. No…

She paused and squinted. One of the highest windows to the left of the entrance had a hairline crack running through it. It split in opposite directions halfway down the glass, separating the windowpane into three parts that were just waiting to be smashed in.

Gripping the ledge of one of the lowest windows, she was about to lift herself up when she heard more people coming out through the entrance. She slipped into the shadows beside the staircase again and waited for them to pass. A man and a woman walked out in the direction of the parking lot, and Nancy scoffed as the man curled an arm around the nurse's waist.

God damn it. This area couldn't have been more high-traffic if they'd paved a highway through it.

She hoisted herself up to the first window with a plan to reach the top and be out of view before the next interruption. The bricks were like sandpaper on her fingertips. Her bare feet caught the ledge, giving her hands the freedom to dig into the spaces between the bricks higher up. She clung to the flat surface as her toes left the security of the window. The next brick she grabbed jiggled loose and slipped out from the wall, but she clutched the rectangular hole that it left behind and didn't look down. She knew if she looked down she was screwed. Even thinking about the height she had climbed to made her palms sweat.

She ripped her thoughts away from that topic and focused on getting closer to the cracked window. It didn't look that far away anymore, and she would be there in less than a minute-

She froze. The entrance was opening again, letting out a chorus of laughter from a small group of orderlies clocking out for the night. They shuffled down the stone steps, and before Nancy could stop herself, she was already looking down at them. One solid heartbeat pulsed through her. She felt the blood draining from her limbs as they started to tremble. Her hands tingled and the tops of the men's heads started to shrink, getting farther and farther away.

If she fell from this height, there would be nothing left of her but a splatter on the cement.

A small whimper escaped her.

"What was that?" one of the men asked, looking around.

"What was what, you idiot?" the blonde one said. "I didn't hear anything."

"Shut the fuck up and listen. It sounded like a girl."

Nancy reached across to the wall beside her, scaling to the left toward the corner of the building. Her numb hands protested every brick they grabbed, but she pushed herself to keep moving.

"I swear I heard a girl." the man said.

"You don't think it's the one that got out earlier, do you?"

"It might be."

"She'd be long gone by now. Why the hell would a patient stick around? It's not like the fences are topped with coils of barbed wire."

"Maybe they should be," the other laughed. "They're as bad as criminals in here, anyway."

"I'm glad you're not in charge, Frank."

As she reached out to take hold of another brick, she could already feel it starting to come loose. She pushed her palm flat against it, holding her body weight with one hand. The muscles in her fingers cramped and twisted, screaming for relief from the strain. She left the faulty brick in place and grabbed a different one. Hugging the corner, she slipped around to the darker side of the building.

The men hung around for a minute longer, shooting the breeze and complaining about their wives. One kept insisting that he heard something, and the others insisted even more strongly that he was an idiot. Or that he'd been working too many shifts. Or both.

When they were gone, Nancy resumed the climb on the front wall. Her slick palm skidded over the first brick she grabbed, grating red crumbs into the sensitive skin. She hissed from the pain as flecks of blood rose to the surface. She swung her stinging hand up and gripped the bottom ledge of the window. Then came the other hand, and she pulled herself up as her toes pushed off against the wall. Her legs dangled for a few seconds, but soon she was sitting on the ledge with her head canted back on the glass. Her chest heaved and her nerves were spiked, begging for a second of rest. She couldn't give herself that, though. Staff members could be coming out that door down there any minute, and what would she say if they looked up? Hi, I just bludgeoned an orderly and escaped so I could enjoy this lovely view?

Taking a deep breath to prepare herself, she smashed her elbow through the windowpane. Shards of glass scattered across the floor inside with a tinkling sound like tiny silver bells. She climbed in through the frame and nudged a few pieces of glass out of the way before lowering her feet to the tiles.

On a small cot in front of her lay an unconscious teenaged boy. A long, curling tube connected the crook of his elbow to the IV drip standing beside the bed. Dark bruises had stained the skin over both his eyes like a mask, making him impossible to identify. As she stared at him, she thought maybe she'd seen him around the courtyard or in the cafeteria sometime.

She dusted a couple of glass chunks off his sheets and left him in the dark recovery room, hoping that the surgeon hadn't done to him what he did to Murdock and Tina.

The door to the patient's room clicked shut behind her as she stepped out into the hallway. The next nurse that went to check on him would sound the alarm, so she needed to hurry. Thankfully, The Doctor's office was on this floor of the building.

She read every door plaque that she passed on her jog down the hall. They were all engraved with the names of different psychologists, but she recognized them. None of them were surgeons. The hallway stopped at a dead end, and Nancy walked to the last door. It had no bronze name plate like the others. No window, either.

The knob turned easily, which surprised her. She thought it would have been locked. A strip of light fell over the floor of the dim room as the door creaked open. She stepped inside and shut it behind her. The shapes that she took for furniture were sparse and plain. He didn't seem to care for decorations or framed photographs. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that nothing but the bare essentials for an office had been brought in, leaving a large amount of unused floor space. The only strange thing in the whole room was the television set in the back corner. The black screen reflected a warped image of Nancy as she walked by.

She went straight to the desk, pulling open the drawers and rummaging through the stacks of paper. But nothing she found looked nefarious. Some patient records, the most notable being Tina Grey's, Kevin Murdock's, and her own, were piled inside the middle drawer. She shoved them away and tugged on the bottom drawer.

It didn't budge. She pulled harder.

Crouching down on her knees, she noticed a tiny metal circle beside the handle. It was a lock. She smirked to herself as she slipped two bobby pins out from her hair and bit one into a slight curve at the tip, scraping off the rubber-nubbed end with her teeth. Looks like all the time she'd spent hanging out with Rod hadn't been for nothing.

After bending the other pin into an L shape, she inserted it into the lock and slipped the curved one in on top of it. The pin jiggled in deeper as it worked though the simple pin-and-tumbler mechanism. She shoved the bobby pin all the way in and turned the bent one sideways, hearing a small click. When she tugged on the drawer this time, it rolled open as easily as a paper scroll.

A file with a string of numbers written across the bottom lay on top of the pile. Nancy lifted it out and opened it. It was a patient record like the others, except that half the information had been blacked out with a marker. Every sheet of paper had missing information, making them almost unreadable. Some still had the patient's names (which were all unfamiliar to Nancy) and dates of admission to Westin Hills, and she saw a few that dated back to the nineteen-seventies. All of the files had one thing in common: The line for the patient's discharge date was blank. None of these people ever left the hospital.

Digging to the bottom of the drawer, she pulled out three more files of blacked-out information and leafed through the pages. Clipped to the back of the last folder was a thin stack of Polaroid photos. She took them out and shuffled through them, cringing at the images. The first was a close-up shot of an exposed nasal cavity, with the soft, bloody tissue spread apart by a small retractor. "Trial # 38" had been written on the wide white border beneath it. The next photograph showed a row of three young women buckled flat onto steel tables. Their skulls had been sawed open and popped off like a lid, revealing the folds of their slimy pink brains. Each woman had a smooth wooden stick between her teeth that had been fastened with straps around the back of her head. Below the picture were the handwritten words "Trials # 84, 85, and 86." As she flipped through the rest, a surge of hot bile threatened the back of her throat. Most of the mutilated people in these photographs were dead. But not all of them.

She clipped the Polaroids back onto the file and set the stack aside, peering down into the drawer. It was empty except for a single VHS tape. After lifting it out, she flipped it over and found a long white label on the side that read "Trial # 172" in block letters.

She flicked her eyes toward the door as it opened. Shoving the files back into the drawer, she pushed it shut and crawled under the desk. She drew in her legs and held the tape close to her chest as heavy footstep shook the floor. They were so evenly spaced and robotic that Nancy almost forgot to wonder why the person hadn't switched on the light.

The footsteps crossed the room, and the man's legs came into view as he stood before the desk. Nancy had never been this close to The Doctor. She tried to sink farther back, eyeing the oxfords and slacks and praying that he wouldn't sit down on the leather rolling chair. But he didn't sit. He remained standing in that spot in the dark for what felt like an hour. She was sure that her thumping heartbeat had given her away, and any second he would lunge under the desk after her.

A few more minutes passed, and he walked out of his office. Nancy waited until she was sure he was gone before crawling back out to stand up and stretch her legs. Crossing to the corner of the room, she knelt in front of the television and pushed the on button for the VCR. A little red light came on in the top corner. She lined the tape up with the slot, pushing it through and listening as it settled into place inside.

She hit the play button and slid back as the screen bathed her in a white glow. Waves of gray static crackled behind the bowed glass. The video timer clocked the first seconds as she sat on the floor, unprepared for what she was about to see.

.

.

.

To be continued…


A/N: No, I'm not above leaving you guys with a cliff-hanger. Have you not realized by now that I like to make you squirm? (At least, I hope you're squirming. And if not, you will be after you read the next chapter.)
Thank you for reading, and please leave a review if you can spare a minute. To be honest, I need all the motivation I can get right now.