Supernatural Short Story - Dream a Little Dream

With Supernatural coming to an end after 15 seasons I delved into their world and combined it with a horror movie favorite A Nightmare on Elm Street for a fun fan fiction experience.

SUPERNATURAL FAN FIC

Dream A Little Dream

by Cynthia Vespia, © 2016 All Rights Reserved

Another day, another job. Sam Winchester enjoyed the simplicity of it, like when he and Dean first started out hunting together. The air was chill causing his breath to fog out in front of his lips. What were they hunting this time? Somehow he couldn’t recall. Ghost maybe? All the signs pointed to it.

Armed with an iron fireplace poker, Sam moved through the worn-out house seeking any signs of apparitions, or for his brother for that matter.

“Dean,” he called. His voice echoed off the walls until it found a return coming from downstairs.

“Saaammy.”

It was Dean, he sounded distressed.

“Dean, where are you man?” Sam called again, continuing to inch along through the living room.

A strong part of him knew where he should be going but at the back of his mind something told him not to go.

“Saaammmyy,” Dean called again, only this time it didn’t sound like his brother. The voice was low and guttural.

Finally, Sam sucked up his courage and moved towards the sound of Dean which led him directly into the basement…except it wasn’t an ordinary basement, it was more of a boiler room.

The house was an older model. Most homes in Southern California didn’t have boiler rooms or even a furnace anymore. That would account for why it was so dilapidated but there was more to it. Something terrible had taken place in this house. The horror of it was etched on the walls.

Sam could almost smell the blood and hear the wails. As soon as he stepped through the door to the boiler room, he felt the heat rising to greet him.

“Dean!” he called out, an involuntary lump catching in his throat.

“Saaam.”

Dean’s voice sounded a million miles away and was followed by a metallic ping, almost like nails scraping against a blackboard.

Sam shuddered at the sound but he pressed forward. As he moved further and further down the winding staircase he felt the heat intensify until finally he reached the boiler itself.

He looked around the empty chamber and saw no one. With sweat running down his forehead, and his shaggy dark hair sticking to his cheeks, he called for Dean once more.

“Dean, where are you?”

“Right here, Sammy boy.”

The reply was not from Dean. When Sam turned to face the new arrival, he stopped cold in his tracks. This creature in front of him was unlike anything else they’d run up against in the past.

At first blush he looked like an average man, maybe even a little on the small size especially considering Sam’s substantial height. Upon closer inspection, the man’s countenance was straight out of hell. He wore a dirty brown hat and a red and green striped sweater that looked like Christmas had gone mad. His face was horribly burned and the burns matched his left hand telling Sam that his entire body had been engulfed in flame at some point. But it was what was on his right hand that spooked Sam the most.

He had knives for fingers, or more accurately, he wore a crude hand-made claw fashioned from knives and welded together to create something of a makeshift weapon. Sam didn’t have to wait too long to get a close look at the knives as the horrible little man lashed his hand out to slash Sam across the face. At the last possible second Sam managed to get an arm up and block the attack.

The knives were silky smooth and cut through his flesh like it were warm butter. Pain seared through him and he fell to his knees, blood dripping down around his feet. The man stood over him, claw raised high in the air, his gnarled lips giving way to a smile from his ruined teeth.

“You’re making it too easy, hunter,” he said with a growl.

As he swung his hand down Sam closed his eyes for the impact of those knives once again. Instead, he felt a hand grasp his shoulder and push him out of the way. When he looked up he saw a young man with dark hair and dark circles under his eyes staring down at him.

“You have to wake up, Sam,” he said. “I’m sorry, I pulled you in. But you have to wake up before he gets you too!”

Sam opened his eyes to find himself inside the Impala, his head pressed against the glass of the passenger window as he slept. His brother Dean sat in the driver’s seat of his “baby” as usual, shaking Sam awake from what apparently had been a horrible nightmare.

“Wake up sleeping beauty,” Dean told him. “We’re here.”

Sam shifted awake trying to piece together the nightmare and reality to decipher which was which.

“Here where?”

“The job, chucklehead,” Dean said. “Remember, a young guy named Jacob Johnson died in his sleep.”

“Died in his sleep? What’s so strange about that?” Sam said. “We should all be so lucky.”

“That’s what I asked you, and you said that he died from internal hemorrhaging from deep lacerations. To which I said, yeah that is strange, let’s check it out. Any of this ringing a bell, Sammy?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just had a crazy dream is all.”

Sam reached up and brushed his hair out of his face, as he did he noticed blood dripping down his arm soaking into his flannel shirt.

“What happened? You cut yourself on something?”

As Dean asked, Sam flashed back to his nightmare. With great clarity, he saw the glint of sharpened blades stretched out from the maniac’s hand. He remembered with vivid detail how they felt when they pierced the flesh of his arm.

Dean’s face held too much concern as he looked at Sam with questioning eyes. Sam knew better than to try and tell him his concerns about how realistic the dream felt. Dean would go into their past and start asking Sam whether he was having visions again, or if his brain snapped again. They’d been through far too much over the past couple of years and Sam just wanted to put it all behind him and move forward with the simplicity of the case in front of them. So, he wrapped up his arm and spun a small lie.

“I guess I caught a piece of loose metal jutting out from somewhere.”

This lie didn’t sit well with Dean either but for a completely different reason.

“There is no stray metal sticking out of baby,” he said. “Maybe you should just cut your finger nails.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Sam nodded and slipped out of the car to get suited up before they headed inside the guy’s apartment. As he did he could still feel the heat of the boiler room on his skin. It made him shiver.

“Agents Craven and Englund,” Dean said flashing the fake FBI badge at the girl.

She was pretty for a cop. Creamy dark skin and dark hazel eyes. But behind those eyes Dean could tell she was hiding a secret. He couldn’t help himself, he always went for the damaged birds. This one was especially telling. He knew right away that Yvonne Miller knew more than she was letting on.

“This is my crime scene, agent,” Yvonne told him trying to usher he and Sam out the door.

“Whoa sweetheart, FBI trumps local statey,” Dean told her.

His charm had no effect this time as Yvonne started to close the door on them. Only Sam’s massive foot wedged between the door and the frame could stop her.

“We’re just here to help,” Sam said pushing the door back open.

“Believe me when I tell you there is nothing you can do to help,” she said.

Dean motioned for Sam to check out the body while he stayed to talk to Yvonne.

“Sounds as if you know what we might be dealing with here,” he said. “Maybe even some personal experience.”

Yvonne’s eyebrows raised in question. “Did you read my file?”

The accusation was harsh rather than telling and Dean did his best to sway the situation back into a more conversational tone.

“What? No, I just…I can read it on your face,” he said. “Did you know the vic?”

Yvonne nodded. “He was my best friend’s son.”

“Where’s your friend now?”

“Alice died a few years back,” Yvonne told him. “I’ve been looking out for Jacob ever since then. Seems like I didn’t do a very good job. If I were you, Agent Craven, I’d get the hell out of here. Believe me when I tell you that you don’t want no part of what is going on here in Springwood.”

When Sam saw Jacob Johnson laid out across the bed he looked very familiar. He was a young man with dark hair and his skin was very pale except for the peculiar pooling of blood coming from the lacerated organs.

Sam leaned in closer to uncover the wound. There had to be something telling about a punctured liver. Those things didn’t tend to just happen on their own. Unless of course they were dealing with a witch or some sort of spell.

He moved through the room looking for a hidden hex bag. What he found instead were multiple bottles of pills labeled “Hypnocil” used to suppress dreams. There were also quite a few empty cans of energy drinks, and a coffee maker in the bedroom.

“This guy didn’t want to sleep,” Sam said aloud to himself.

At his words his arm began to ache. The name on the label read Jacob Daniel Johnson. Reading it aloud stirred up images from Sam’s dream. He looked back at the dead man on the bed, though lifeless now Sam remembered in vivid detail how he’d been in the boiler room with him…in his dream.

The dream reassembled itself in his mind. When all the pieces were back in place Sam knew they had a problem on their hands. He hurried out to find Dean who was still in deep conversation with the female cop.

“Dean, I think I know what…or rather who killed our victim.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know his name, but I saw him before.”

“You saw him when? Is he here?” Dean asked going for his gun.

Sam spoke quickly to calm Dean down. Only he knew what he was about to say was going to freak everyone out.

“I saw him in my dreams.”

“Like the man of your dreams?” Dean asked in sarcasm.

“Hardly. This guy was horribly burned and he has razors for fingers. He cut my arm before now its bleeding for real. I think he is somehow responsible for Jacob’s death.”

“How’d you get to that conclusion?”

“Because Jacob was in my dream too.”

Sam waited to hear the disbelief and general dismissal of his wild and crazy story. Hearing himself say it out loud even he did not believe it. But instead he got a little shock of his own.

“His name is Freddy Kruger,” Yvonne told them. “He was a filthy child murderer. A mistrial set him free so some of the neighborhood parents of Springwood took it upon themselves to exact vengeance for his crimes. They burned him alive. Since that day he has been tormenting the residents here through their dreams.”

Dean couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They’d been through a lot of impossible situations during their time hunting but this one took the cake. He tried to wrap his head around the details from both Sam and Yvonne to make some sort of sense to it all.

“How do you know all this?” he asked her.

“Because a few years ago he targeted me and my friends. Alice and I were able to escape his wrath but Kruger hunted her down a few years later.”

“So what’re we dealing with here, some sort of Djinn.”

“No,” Sam said. “This is something I’ve never seen before.”

Yvonne looked both of them back and forth and finally asked the inevitable question most people asked when it got down to the meat of the situation.

“Who the hell are you guys?”

To that Dean could only give a small smirk.

Back at the hotel they were crashing at for this job researched commenced as usual. Sam poured over the Internet seeking any information they could find on Freddy Kruger while Dean poured over a beer and a cheeseburger.

“So far Yvonne was dead on about this Freddy guy,” Sam said.

“All that stuff about the kids was true?” Dean asked.

“Yeah.”

“Bastard should burn in hell,” Dean said pushing away his half-eaten burger. The thought of such child abuse made his stomach turn.

“That’s going to be a little tough,” Sam told him. “Considering he was already torched not once…but twice.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked popping a fresh beer open and handing one to Sam.

“The lore that Yvonne spoke of where Kruger inhabits dreams is documented here from multiple sources. Dozens of kids claimed the same guy was chasing them in their dreams trying to kill them. Most of the accounts were refuted and some of these kids even landed in a psych ward. But it was during that time that a doctor named Neil Gordon started believing the kids thanks in large part to a graduate student named Nancy Thompson who herself had run into Freddy before and survived.”

“So where’s this Nancy now? If she survived him she could have some answers.”

Taking a swig off his beer, Sam scrolled through the different web browsers he had open until he found the answers to Dean’s question.

“Says here Nancy was found dead along with two other kids during what’s being called a botched hypno-session.”

“Yeah, they always call it something except what it actually is.”

“Per Neil Gordon he and Nancy’s father found Freddy’s remains,” Sam continued. “Then they buried, burned, and blasted them with holy water.”

“And the bastard is still coming?” Dean knocked back the rest of his beer as his aggravation began to rise. “Where is the good doctor now?”

“In a coma,” Sam said shutting his laptop with equal aggravation. “Said he wanted to be with Nancy.”

“But Nancy is dead.”

Sam shrugged.

“So where does that leave us?”

“We keep running into dead ends, Dean. I think it’s time we called out the big guns.”

Dean nodded then looked up at the cheap stucco ceiling and called out one name.

“Cass.”

When Castiel appeared wearing his usual rumpled suit, battered trenchcoat, and stern look upon his face Sam felt a small sense of relief wash over him. The first thing Cass did was heal Sam’s arm which gave him a relief from the pain as well.

“I sense the distress,” Cass said. “How can I provide assistance?”

“What do you know about a dream demon named Fred Kruger?” Dean asked.

“I know of him,” Cass said. “His mother was a holy woman.”

“How is that possible?” Sam asked. “He’s one evil son-of-a-bitch from what I’ve read.”

“A product of his conception,” Cass continued. “A young nun named Amanda Kruger was impregnated at the hands of a hundred maniacs through forceful measures.”

“Well this keeps getting more twisted,” Dean said. “How do we end this nightmare?”

“I don’t follow you,” Cass said in confusion. “It was said that Kruger was extinguished by his own daughter, Katherine Kruger.”

“Well he’s back with a freakin vengeance!”

“And according to what I found online,” Sam added, “Katherine Kruger, a.k.a. Maggie Burroughs died in a freak accident a few years back along with another young woman named Tracy Swan. These so-called accidents, along with the latest death of Jacob Johnson, are all Freddy related.”

“Let me see what I can find out,” Castiel said. “But in the meantime, if this Kruger is attacking people through their dreams…whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.”

With that, Castiel disappeared leaving Sam and Dean to face the immediate trouble in front of them.

“Well since we’ve got no bones to burn I say we go into dreamland and face this guy head on,” Dean said laying down on the small twin bed.

“Didn’t you hear what Cass just said?” Sam asked. “It’s a suicide plan. We’ll be on his playing field and he’d have all the advantage. Besides, you didn’t see what I saw.”

“How did you see him anyway?”

As Dean shifted his weight on the bed the stiffness of the spring coils sounded out in a screech. A shiver of fear ran up Sam’s spine as he remembered the finger knives scraping against the rusting pipes and at the thought of seeing that burned face again.   

“I don’t know. The young guy Jacob was there and he said something about pulling me in.”

“That just proves my point, Sammy,” Dean told him.

He hopped up off the bed readying his gun and grabbing for his car keys.

“If you can get pulled in, we can pull that S.O.B. out and ice him right here in the real world.”

“How?”

Dean paused for a moment to find the answer. Satisfied that he had none, he came up with a plan B.

“I’m not sure, but I’m willing to bet our friendly neighborhood cop will have an idea.”

When they got to Yvonne Miller’s place they found a gruesome scene. Blood stained the walls, lacerations ran deep over her face and neck. Dean had to look away from the amount of carnage displayed in front of him.

Just a few hours ago Yvonne had been a hot and fiery mocha skinned beauty, now she was a cold dead corpse.

“Kruger did this,” Sam said examining the remains.

“She should’ve known better than to fall asleep with this maniac on the loose.”

Sam lifted a bottle of wine from the nightstand in Yvonne’s bedroom.

“I don’t think she had a choice in the matter,” he said. “Booze mixed with lack of sleep will do it to you. I guess she was in mourning.”

“Yeah well now she’s dead.” Dean was angry. “We need to figure out a way to get that son-of-a-bitch and fast before one of us falls asleep and doesn’t wake up.”

“Ok, but what hasn’t been tried yet,” Sam asked. “Everything I found about this guy and his trail of victims says they fought back hard but he never stayed down for long.”

“If holy water and fire didn’t do the trick there has to be something missing.”

“The glove.”

Castiel’s sudden presence made the boys jump. But his words brought pause and reflection.

“The glove is the source of his power,” Cass continued. “It’s what he created in his human form to torture and kill his victims. You need to burn the glove to break him of his power.”

“What do we do pull it off his hand?” Sam asked shuddering at the thought.

“No. You need to find it here on this plane, not the dream world.”

“How do we do that?” Dean asked him.

“When the parents of Springwood burned Fred Kruger one of the mothers, Marge Thompson, took the glove as a souvenir. She wrapped it in rags and kept it hidden in  the furnace of her house. That is why the house has been a significant figure within the dreams of the Elm St. children. The glove remains there, and because of this so does Freddy.”

“Then I guess we’re heading to Elm Street.”

Castiel transported them to 1428 Elm St. but he would go no further.

“This house in cloaked in evil,” he said. “What you’re dealing with is more than just a mere man or even a ghost. This entity, whatever you want to call it, is old, very old, and it's taken different forms in different times.  The only thing that stays the same about it is what it lives for.

“What’s that,” Sam asked.

“Killing innocents, one way or another.”

Dean chambered a round into a shotgun filled with salt shells.

“Not on our watch,” he said. “Not ever again. Let’s go, Sammy.”

On the outside Dean kept a stern façade, but as they entered through the boarded-up door to the old house he felt unsure of what they were about to face.

“We stick together,” he told Sam. “Whatever happens.”

“Agreed.”

It didn’t take long for that plan to go to shit. The ground trembled beneath them throwing them off balance. Dean clutched at the rail of a nearby staircase trying to regain his footing.

“What the hell is that?”

“Feels like an earthquake,” Sam shouted.

“There are no earthquakes in Ohio!”

The rumbling continued until the two of them were tossed off their feet. Sam took a tumble through an adjacent door and down some steps while Dean was thrust into the living room, striking his head on the door frame as he went.

He blacked out for a matter of seconds and when he woke he was no longer in the living room, instead he found himself in an old boiler room. The heat saturated his skin causing sweat to pool down into his eyes.

Wiping the back of his hand across them to clear his vision he saw the entity standing before him. His body stood crooked almost like an old gunslinger as the weight of the knived glove pulled his arm down.

“Fred Kruger I presume,” Dean said.

Kruger tipped his dirty fedora to show rotting flesh that exposed bits of brain underneath it.

“Sorry it’s taken us so long to meet,” he said. “I’ve been distracted with some other little piggies.”

“Why don’t we get acquainted then?”

Dean raised the shotgun and fired off a round into Kruger’s chest. It staggered him backwards and Dean fired again and again until Kruger was knocked off his feet. It only took him a moment before he stood back up, dusted off his red and green sweater, and then laughed.

“The souls of the children give me strength,” he said tearing open the front of the sweater to reveal his burned torso.

Within the wall of his chest and stomach Dean could see faces trying to press their way out. They screamed in pain and terror, aching to be free of the demon who possessed them.

“You ruined your ugly Christmas sweater,” Dean told him.

“Laugh it up,” Kruger said. “Fun time is over.”

He came at Dean much faster than Dean had anticipated. The gloved arm had much more striking distance as the long knives flashed out towards Dean’s face. He lifted the shotgun just before the strike and put it in Freddy’s path. The knives slashed right through the gun, cutting it in half and knocking Dean to his back. Freddy stood over him, a gruesome smile plastered to burned lips.

“Say hi to your father for me.”

When Sam woke, he found himself in the belly of the beast just as he had in his dream. He scrambled to his feet and felt panic start to take him over. Freddy was close he could sense him.

“Dean!” he shouted.

Just like in his dream he heard Dean call back to him.

“Saaammmy.”

This time Sam did not hesitate. He hurried towards the sound of his brother’s voice sensing the distress. But before he started down the same spiral staircase from his dream, he stopped short at the furnace Cass told them about inside the bowels of the house.

The glove

Sam fell to his knees and ripped open the grate to the furnace. He stuffed his hand far inside and felt around for Kruger’s glove, but it wasn’t there. All he managed to pull out were some old, dirty rags.

He couldn’t waste any more time looking. Dean was in trouble. They would have to find another way to eliminate Freddy Kruger.

At Kruger’s mocking words Dean found a new fire in his belly. He kicked his boot straight up into the monster’s crotch and hit pay dirt. Kruger doubled over wincing in pain.

“So you’ve got some balls afterall,” Dean said standing. “Why don’t you take on a full-grown man instead of going after helpless kids.”

“With pleasure,” Freddy told him.

He reached out and caught Dean by the throat. Dean struggled against his grip but he was too strong and then it was too late. Freddy plunged his knives deep into Dean’s stomach just as Sam came around the corner.

Dean heard Sam cry out but soon his voice grew distant. Freddy threw him aside as he went after Sam. As Dean fell in a heap he tried to reach out for Sammy and somehow protect his little brother. But his energy drained and soon he fell into blackness.

Sam made it around the corner just in time to see Freddy run Dean through the stomach with his claws then pitch him aside like so much garbage. He cried out in anguish which seemed to feed Kruger with even more pleasure.

With a haphazard strike to the face, Sam went on the offensive using whatever he could find in the bowels of the boiler room to attack Kruger. For the most part it was working. Freddy had to defend attacks from loose pipes coupled with Sam’s long limbs. But as Sam pressed Freddy back they passed by Dean laying upon the ground. Sam took just a millisecond to look over to his brother and that was enough for Freddy to catch him off guard.

On Sam’s next kick, Freddy managed to side step him and tear a gash into Sam’s thigh. It dropped him to his knees right in front of Kruger.

“I’m going to have fun with you, boy,” he said. “No one survives Fred Kruger.”

Dean woke with a start. He found himself nose first in the dank carpeting of the old Elm Street home. Castiel was kneeling over him saying an incantation. When he saw Dean open his eyes, Cass hugged him.

“Whoa, easy big fella,” Dean said pushing him off. “What happened?”

“I heard you cry out,” Cass said.

“But I thought you couldn’t come inside here.”

“I admit I asked for a little divine intervention,” Cass told him. “Considering the specimen you are up against there was no hesitation in aiding my request.”

“Sammy!” As the realization hit him, Dean became frantic. “You have to put me back under. Knock me out or something, Cass. I need to help Sam.”

“I thought this might prove more useful.”

Cass pulled a dirty pile of rags from his trench coat that revealed Fred Kruger’s glove underneath. Dean didn’t hesitate to burn the accursed glove and forever put a stop to the nightmares that plagued Elm St.

Kruger had Sam by the hair, knives pressed to his throat, when suddenly he released him. His body began to disintegrate and as it did, Sam saw the souls of the children begin to float up out of their captor. He saw Jacob Johnson’s face smiling at him and whispering “thank you” as the spirits moved on to their rightful place. Finally, Freddy Kruger was truly dead.

Back at the motel as they finally lay down for some shut eye Dean was quick to remark.

“At least I know I’ll be getting back to my usual dreams.”

“Busty blondes?” Sam asked.

Dean leaned back against his pillow and smiled.

“No, redheads.”

Authors note: I wanted to include the remaining victims from the Elm St. movies who survived. Upon doing research I found that Alice Johnson and Maggie Burroughs had been killed off in the comic book series so I decided to let that stick while focusing on the remaining survivors and ultimately, the Winchesters as it is their story and their triumph.