He was slipping. The longer these times lasted, the further he went into something barely eligible to be called existence. His incorporeal senses dimmed and dulled, leaving him restless yet without a form to rest. If he fell far enough, he felt as if he leaned against the precipice of non-existence. Some fate where those without a home even in hell were cast. His thoughts, never what any would consider balanced, flickered in and out of his control. In his worst moments, he raged against the boundaries of this stream of consciousness and hoped to fall over its edge into a peace he suspected he didn't deserve.
Yet something tangible rested on the edge of his will. Something he could still shape and craft to his desires. Something that demanded more of him.
Another entered his space, just barely within his grasp. He collected himself. His arachnid nature sprang to life, enticed by the thought of another kill. He wove a rough tapestry of images, sounds, and smells that provoked the girl's horror and made her run, her young heart battering against her chest. He felt tendrils of thrill tickle the back of his mind again. He could smell her as she raced through his world. He could practically taste her blood on his blades. But in the end, she left his space as intact as she had entered it. His impotent vengeance left to boil down to a simmer on its own. Without his legacy, his legend, he was just another nightmare. And, again, he began to fade.
It wasn't the first time they had tried to erase him. In death, as in life, they attempted to clean away that which he had sullied. But they couldn't kill him. At least, not for good. Now they had drugs to make his children forget him. They sought to deprive him of what was his. But he would find a way. He always did.
In these times of tattered existence, he wasn't left with much other than time and memory. Memories of souls collected and souls stolen from him. Of chases in the dark that left him panting and howling like something ancient and rabid, blood pounding through his veins as he watched viscera spill across the floor. Frozen terror in the eyes of those he had claimed painted itself in glorious colors. He relived what he could and waited for his time to come again.
Yet as he weakened his thoughts inevitably shifted to corners he had cluttered and hidden away. Things that didn't mean anything to him anymore, if they had ever meant anything at all.
No matter what silly little children sang in rhymes or adults whispered to each other in hushed conversations, he was not Fred Krueger. Fred Krueger had been a man who lived and died in the spaces between the golem he had crafted and the entity he was always meant to be. The flash of life such a pantomime of a man had lived was merely a ripple in time, blending into the depths of something greater. A facade of normality. He would confess only to himself that he had once believed it himself.
He knew early on that he didn't love them. He had thought, when the prospect of a normal life had first begun to haunt him, that he could fake it long enough to convince himself. He was good at going through the motions. Small talk, nights out at the movies, and dates with a woman who was easy to lie to. He had crafted a mask that nobody could see. Sometimes not even himself. But when Katherine had been born and he held her tiny little helpless body, her mother sleeping in the hospital bed next to them, he knew. He saw Loretta's eyes light up with an emotion so alien to him that it fascinated him. When his own eyes failed to cast the same light, she had been quick to dismiss it. "There's a reason God left child-raising to us women." He would smile in the way he knew she liked. He would protect them because they were his. And if anyone threatened what was his, he would correct them. That would just have to be good enough.
At times, the pressures of domestic bliss wore on him. Bosses and deadlines and kids birthday parties and a host of other shit that meant nothing more than more hours of the days he had to keep up an act he valued less and less. He crafted a space for himself, behind the wall of the basement. A den for his will, his moments within it were the only ones of sincerity. He protected those moments, hiding away the monster that scratched and tore away at his fleshy facade. In this private world, he could surround himself with his particular tastes. Flesh and metal was strewn about in fabulous displays of his victories. Animals, then whores, then other things. His special work. As the years went on, he craved it more and more. Couldn't stand the moments without it.
When night would finally come, he would walk the halls of the house he held. The house he stole from the man whose bones were still buried under the roses. His house. He would pass Katherine's room as Loretta sang her to sleep with songs her mother had sung to her. Gentle words from a gentle woman who allowed him to do anything he wanted to her. He remembered her before they were married, young but never beautiful. The type of girl who would do anything for affection. So he gave it to her and he took it from her, as he pleased. Their wedding night, he had ripped her mother's hand-me-down dress and taught her what it meant to be his. He enjoyed playing with her boundaries. He savored violating her and her wishes. Because she was his. Part of him suspected she enjoyed it as much as he did.
He watched from the darkness of the space between the door and the wall, just as Katherine's eyes closed for the night, wondering how long it would take for him to tire of this completely.
He remembered a young dog Underwood once bought to guard his goats from coyotes. A drunken purchase from another hick who just wanted to make the dog someone else's problem. It didn't take long before they found it, tail wagging with fur and face sticky with blood, the body of the newly born kid torn up next to its den. The dog just wasn't bred for that sort of work. It was only a lousy mutt. Genetic trash. As Underwood shot it in the field, the early winter sky dark and heavy with rain, Fred wondered then if pure bred dogs ever turned on the creatures they were meant to protect.
It didn't take long for him. When Loretta screamed, he had clasped her throat until the only noises she could make were sputtering gurgles of futility. A part of him hoped the neighbors heard. Hoped they would poke their nosey fucking faces over the fence and see what they lived next to. He saw his child, her own little nosey fucking face staring at him through tears that moved nothing in him. He let her watch as her mother's body slumped to the ground, her skull cracked and dripping after he had repeatedly slammed it into the wooden planks that led up to Katherine's treehouse. He had built it just last summer. He turned and saw his sobbing child, considering his options. He knew his child was not stupid. She would mind. She wouldn't tell.
He supposed he could be wrong from time to time.
He remembered the look on her face when they pulled him away from her, for the last time. A look of innocence, not appreciating all that had just happened. As innocent as she had been when she was born. She had been his and had been something that was his to keep unsullied. But he wasn't bred for that kind of work. As he watched the police car take her away to be delivered up to some other family, he wondered if it was possible for her to find something worse than him. He wondered if, given enough time, if they would have found her blood sticking to his skin. A spark of something other, something he could never be, silently hoped she would forget him entirely. In these moments when he slipped, he still hoped for it.
The trial had been marvelous. A grandiose circus of stupidity and a chance to shove in their faces what he had done to them. Faces he knew and saw daily. Now without his mask, he reveled in their awe at the depth and significance of his work. Finally, they would know him. He grinned and chuckled until mothers wept and fathers lunged towards him. But it wouldn't bring back what he had taken from them. Nothing could. It didn't matter what they did to him. When the judge dismissed the case and he walked between rows of people beside themselves with outrage and despair, he wasn't sure if life could get any better.
But it did. They couldn't appreciate him or his work. So they tried to punish him for it. They tried to erase him, but instead birthed something they couldn't possibly destroy. He spent years cultivating his new powers, waiting for just the right time.
In his slumber, he grinned in satisfaction at his accomplishments. Whatever could have been, he had become exactly what he needed to be.
Somewhere, another mind stirred and brushed against his. Another pull on a thread of silken webs. This time, it was much stronger than before. A mind thick with fear. A mind that knew where they were. In the recesses of their thoughts, he heard his name. Someone remembered.
There was still so much work to be done.