I managed to duck out of the house that morning without Mom noticing the cut on my face, but at school...everyone was staring. Even though I had gotten it to stop bleeding, cleaned it, and did my best to cover it with makeup, the gash was still quite obvious. I had been thinking of a story about how it had happened on the way to school, but couldn't think of anything less shallow than that I had fallen whilst holding a knife or scissors or...something.

Even with all the eyes on me, I at first felt comfortable in the knowledge that outside of Phil, I had no other friends there. I mean, there were several who I recognized, whose names I knew, and people I had talked to on occasion, but nothing as personal as the relationship with Amy, Phil, and Jessie. Then I got to wondering if that would work against me... If kids kept having these dreams and then dying off...would they start to think the loner girl at school who showed up with random wounds might be the one behind these occurrences? Especially since the first death in their grade had been a close friend of hers and the second would be too...

The first bell rang shortly after I arrived on campus and as I made my way to English class, I was happy to find out that the teacher had called in sick and everyone was to report to study hall. Not seeing Phil in the room, I got a pass to go to the library, the coach watching over study hall doing his best not to make it obvious that his focus was on the cut across my cheek. Would the teachers report something to do with my face? Like to the cops or to my mom? Ugh. I was not looking forward to explaining it to her when she did finally see it...

I stepped outside of study hall and strolled the few paces down to the library. Inside, the air was very stuffy and smelled strongly of old books. The librarian felt no need to clear the outdated texts and replace them with newer things that would actually be accurate and of interest to the students. She was behind her desk there reading Romeo and Juliet, a book she had to have read a thousand times as it was the only one anyone ever saw her with. Besides her and me, there was only one other person in the room.

"Are you okay?" my words seemed sincere as I approached a rather somber looking Phil.

"Yeah, I'm ok," he answered, rubbing his eyes. "Just didn't sleep well last night."

I pulled out the chair at the table next to him, taking notice of the piles of papers he was looming over as I sat down. There were several newspapers, files, and clippings...all, from what I could tell, referred in one way or the other to Freddy Krueger, the Springwood Slasher.

"Bad dreams?" I poked.

Phil let out a sigh as he leaned back in his seat, "Yeah," he mumbled, but when he didn't say anything else, I glanced back over the papers on the table and spoke again.

"What's all this?"

He leaned forward in his seat again, beginning to stack all of the information together neatly, but his eyes weren't on me. "You know that name I saw written on...on Amy's back?  Well...I think I found out who he is."

"Well," his hands were flipping through the papers, his eyes studying the texts again. "I think I found out who he is."

He was sliding a newspaper article across the table to me. Fred Krueger arrested as Springwood Slasher. There was a slight pause where I wasn't sure how to approach the situation. I knew this already. Well I knew the gist of everything. But more than my morbid curiosity, I was on a mission to keep Phil from fighting Freddy or getting others to. Everyone needed to stay afraid.

"This is from the seventies," I observed, "That's decades ago. You think someone is pretending to be this guy?"

"Well, I don't-" he turned to face me for the first time. "Woah! What happened to your face??" he blurted.

The librarian shushed him loudly, gazing at him with fury in her eyes. Phil's attention had gone from me, to her, and now slowly returned in front of him as he slunk down in his seat. After a few moments, he looked back up at me.

"Seriously," he whispered. "Are you alright? What happened?"

My cheeks had flushed, no doubt showing the cut off better, and I tripped over my words, "Well, I um..." As proud as I was to wear Freddy's mark, I realized that it could cause trouble not only for me, but for him as well.

"Did..." Phil started speaking again, "Did he do that to you?"

"What?!" I burst out, barely able to come up with an appropriate response quickly enough, "Who? The killer? He, no, I just fell."

Phil sat up in his seat. "You're a terrible liar, Frankie."

I stared back at him, thinking about the irony in those words. I was a bad liar and yet I was perfectly efficient in pretending I was not such a freak...or maybe I wasn't...Phil's words had me wondering what how I looked to others...truly. I knew that they thought me weird, but dangerous or insane?...or just meek? Maybe some people did realize I was hiding something... They just didn't know what or thought it was something it wasn't. Kind of like Phil right now...

"I got into a fight with clumsiness and clumsiness won, OK?" I spoke adamantly.

Phil inhaled, "Sorry, I just...Im not quite myself since Amy... And this has got my mind racing. It's hard to sleep. I keep seeing him... And I know he wants me dead."

The boys voice had grown soft and his vision was scattered. He seemed truly unsettled. Poor thing. "Phil," I leaned in closer, "Do you really think dreams can...can do things like this?" I pointed to the gash on my cheek. "Amy and the others were killed by someone else something real. Not by bad thoughts while they slept."

He sighed, "I don't know. It's just..." he placed the papers in his hands in front of me. "You see this man?" He pointed to a picture in one of the folded newspapers. The adjoining article read Fred Krueger arrested with links to pedophilia and murder.

"Yeah," I mumbled, my focus was on the black and white of the man. So his eyes had always been the same...soft yet strong, understanding yet chaotic... The picture was a mugshot so he was without his hat. He had wisps of light blonde hair that had just begun to show their age. I wondered then how old he was before they killed him...

"Francine? Are you listening?"

Phil's question made me realize he had been speaking more on the subject this entire time and I had drifted into my mind again. "I'm sorry," I finally took my eyes off the picture. "My mom told me about him yesterday," I admitted.

"Oh," Phil seemed disappointed. "You told your mom about this?"

"Well," I cleared my throat, "Sort of. I mean I didn't tell her. She had already heard about all the kids having nightmares," I said.

"So-"

"You think he's the man in our dreams?" I interrupted.

Phil sat back, obviously taking in the fact that I had said 'our.' "You've seen him too, then..." he mused. "Frankie, if he's attacked you, then we're running out of time! I was afraid you'd think I was insane at first, but after seeing you today," he paused to allude to seeing the cut on my face, "I knew you'd understand. The question is...How do we deal with this dream demon?"

I let a smile escape onto my face, but quickly hid it by leaning forward onto the table, resting my chin in my hands. I knew how I would be dealing with him, I thought to myself. But how should I deal with Phil and his newfound evidence fueling his bloodlust? Sighing, I glanced over to him.

"Phil, slow down, I already told you there's no dream demon. We-"

"Bullshit, Frankie!" he spat. "This may sound crazy, but you know something is going on that can't really be explained. I can see it on your face!"

I took a few deep breaths as we locked gazes. I guess I wasn't so skilled at disguise as I previously thought. Staying away from people erased the need for lying too much. Directly like this, though...and he saw right through me. So I sighed, deciding to try a different approach, "I don't know. Perhaps we should try to kill him? Before he spreads to anyone else." The words hurt my heart although I tried to remind myself that it was all in good favor. I would have to play this carefully.

"But how?" Phil thought, cocking his head to the side. "Cops can't help. They're being secretive as it is...acting baffled... How do we kill a dream?"

I hesitated. If I could get Phil to stay so distracted in a goose chase that he becomes too tired to resist sleep, he'd stay in the dream realm long enough for Freddy to kill him. Or...the gears in my head kicked into high, manipulative gear, if I could get him to think he found a way to kill h and jump 8nto a foolhardy battle...  Then not only would he be killed, but if anyone followed this same pattern of wanting to destroy the man in their dreams, then I would have a way to prove to them it was impossible. "How did they kill him?" I asked.

"Um," Phil began ruffling through the papers before retrieving a file and pulling a paper out of it and placed it in my hands. "His death certificate says his bones were turned in many years afterward...charred... Along with a story of how the parents of some of the children he murdered had burned him alive in the boiler room when he worked."

"So, fire, then?" I asked.

There was a pause as Phil looked at me quizzically. "Fire...maybe so..."

"Well, if you really think that someone is killing people through dreams, then kill him," I shrugged. "But if you can't...then I was right. It's just bad dreams."

"Just bad dreams... I can't believe that," Phil shook his head. "Not with everything that's happened...is still happening..."

I was losing him again. "Maybe it's what I suggested earlier... I was thinking that maybe...aybe someone's using this identify to scare kids and kill them. There has to be a chemical or something that can control dreams. I mean, there are mind altering substances..."

"I guess it could be," Phil started just as the bell rang. He began gathering the information sprawled out over the table, "My parents are picking me up after next period to attend Amy's wake," he said absentmindedly. "So I'll see you tomorrow," he added, forcing a smile as he turned to leave with his research.

"Sure," I smiled back, but in my mind I was really thinking, 'No...you won't.'

AUTHOR'S NOTE:: Chapter originally written 10/31/2015
Chapter rewritten 11/1/2017