The junkyard was quiet on a full moon night. Crows stirred, cawing loudly from minor disturbances, but other than that it was silent as a graveyard. A gentle breeze swayed the tall grass that covered the majority of the ground. A few buildings littered the area, but it was the crushed car piles that could be seen for many meters.

A glass shattering scream broke the silence, sending a shiver up the spines of the three running towards the large exit gate. Red lights appeared over the gate switch as a woman dressed in dirty jeans and a sports jersey pulled down the switch to open the gate. Her name was Meg Thomas, and as sweat fell from her face she held onto the switch handle with shaking hand. She looked back over her shoulder, calling to those who were struggling to keep up. "Come on! Hurry!"

A few meters behind her, a man in a black military uniform and in a thick black beard carried another man effortlessly towards the gate. With an arm behind his neck, the man stopped behind the woman and stared up at the gate. It was taking its sweet time opening, and though the man couldn't speak, he grunted in frustration. As if that would be enough to get them to open faster. He was known only as Point Man, or PM to the others, and refused any other sort of name.

The three bulbs above the switch slowly, but surely began to light up, and as gears began to turn a loud buzzer went off signaling the coming of salvation...

"Wait for me!"

The trio looked back the way they came, and another person, a man in dark clothes running frantically towards them could be seen through the thin layer of fog. That was Jake, a survivalist who had a penchant for being a loner.

The woman kept one hand on the lever and waved her other arm frantically for the man to join them. "Get your ass over here!"

The gate began to open, rusty gears forcing the mechanical structure to move and open a safe route out of the junkyard, and to freedom. Jake ran as fast as he could and stopped short of PM and tried to catch his breath.

It was at that moment that the gate finally opened. Without missing a beat Meg let go of the switch and ran through them, feeling confident that the others would follow her. She disappeared into a cloud of thick Fog.

PM carried the other survivor named Dwight, who had been wounded in the last few minutes by some unseen attacker.

"Let me help you," even though Jake was somewhat still out of breath he tried to help by taking Dwight's other arm and put it back over his neck like PM did.

PM nodded once and tried to lead his allies to safety.

They got within feet of the exit when Jake screamed. The sudden lurch of his body forced PM and Dwight to fall forward through the exit gate. PM, a military man who would fight to his last breath, quickly stood back up to assist Jake.

He was too late, as the blood shot out of Jakes chest, a fatal wound delivered by an attack from behind. As thick grey fog engulfed him from all sides, PM saw Jake's body fall to the side. Right behind him stood a man in a fedora and a black and red stripped wool sweater. His right hand, clad in a metal claw with four knives for fingers, rested on his chest. It was drenched in fresh blood. A short but triumphant chuckle echoed loudly as PM lost sight of the nightmare man, but his glare didn't vanish until he was swallowed in darkness.


"Lost three, but I got one at least. Better luck next time then," the man in the sweater looked down at his fallen victim. His claws dripped with blood, the blades sharp as razors even after the countless deaths he had caused in the time he had been in these games.

Freddy Krueger didn't mind, however, as long as he got to slaughter people he could entertain himself for as long as possible. As he walked back through the junkyard, the fog that had prevented him from going after the others began to envelope him. He didn't flinch as its cold embrace took him from one place to another. Such was the Fog, in its own way a living creature that did whatever it wanted no matter what he did or said. The Entity, the god of this place, controlled the Fog. Freddy was merely participating in the games it offered him.

In a way Freddy thought of these games, or Trials as they seemed more likely were, like a real game children would play. He would then hunt down and kill these people, or they would get away, and that would be it.

They tried to survive, he was to kill them before they could escape. Yet he would more than likely run into them again somewhere down the road. As boring as that sounded on paper Freddy didn't mind. Each Trial was like a game of hide and seek, except there was no counting to ten and more importantly, if he found them first he could slice them to pieces. And he knew a lot about how children's games worked, having been a gardener for a preschool once upon a time.

He had done terrible things then, had fun doing them too, until he was chased down and killed with fire. He had been burned to a crisp and his body left in the ruins of an old boiler room. Yet after he had died, Freddy had not simply gone away. He was bad before, but after he died he became something much worse. He had become a nightmare for the dreams of children and had taken their lives while they had slept. How or why he didn't know, nor did he care. He was free to do what he wanted and he did so with glee and his trusty claws.

And he didn't regret a single damn thing about.

Well, except for one.

"That little shit is here somewhere. I know it." Freddy was talking about the one that had gotten away. He hadn't always been a part of this strange place. Once he had been haunting the nightmares of the children of Springwood. He had been doing do at whim and unimpeded, slaughtering the former little boys and girls who he had been around at the Badham Preschool after they had grown up. He had given them a taste of what real fear had been.

Until a pair of them fought back. One had been a girl, Nancy Holbrook, the other a boy named Quentin Smith. He had them cornered, ready to meet his claws, when the Fog had taken them from him.

Freddy was still pissed at that, but he had one small sliver of compensation out of the deal: like himself, Quentin had been brought to this realm and Freddy would eventually find him.

He just had to wait and be patient. Something he was fucking good at.