A Nightmare on Elm Street: Five, Six, Grab Your Crucifix…

Adapted by E.L. Flood
Transcribed by Rob Nimmo

Five, Six, Grab Your Crucifix…

That evening, Glen came over to see Nancy. She told him she wanted to try an experiment. All he had to do was stay awake. “I’m going to go and look for somebody. I want you to stand guard. Okay? Here’s what we’re going to do…” In her dream, Nancy went out the front door of her house. She walked down Elm Street in her pajamas. Then suddenly she found herself at the police station where her father worked. She looked through a window into a jail cell. It was Rod’s cell. The cell door opened, and a man in a shapeless hat walked in. Freddy!

Nancy banged on the window to warn Rod. But he was fast asleep. He didn’t move. Freddy stood over Rod’s sleeping figure. He looked up at Nancy and laughed. Then he vanished. “Nancy…” a sad voice murmured. Nancy turned around. Wrapped in a body bag, Tina stood in the courtyard. She looked decayed. As Nancy stared in horror, an eel slid out of Tina’s mouth. Sickened, Nancy called out, “Glen? Are you there?” “I’m here,” said a deep, awful voice. A figure leaped out from behind a wall. Freddy was after her! Nancy screamed. Where was Glen? Why didn’t he wake her up? She ran all the way back to Elm Street. Freddy was right behind her. Finally she reached her own house. Panting, she slammed the door behind her and ran up the stairs. But the steps turned into marshmallow under her feet! “Glen!” Nancy screamed again. Her feet were stuck in the stairs. She struggled against the sticky stuff. Then the window in the front door shattered, and Freddy’s claw poked through.

Nancy barely made it up the stairs. She raced into her bedroom and shut the door. Glen was right there where she had left him, fast asleep. She stepped forward to yell at him. Suddenly the mirror on Nancy’s door burst into a thousand pieces. Freddy leaped through the hole. He dove for Nancy. Nancy grabbed her pillow and held it in front of Freddy’s slashing knife-hand. He sliced the pillow right open! As they struggled, Nancy screamed Glen’s name again and again. But he slept on. Nancy’s alarm clock was the thing that saved her. It went off with a loud jangle. Suddenly Freddy wasn’t there anymore. She was struggling with thin air. Nancy was furious with Glen. But now was not the time to fight. They had to save Rod.

Freddy Kills Again

When Nancy and Glen got to the police station, Lieutenant Thompson was there. He laughed when they told him Rod was in danger. So did the desk sergeant. “The guy’s sleeping like a baby,” he declared. Finally Nancy and Glen convinced the policemen to let them see Rod. But when they got to his cell, it was too late. Rod was dead. He had been strangled by his own sheets. It looked as if he had committed suicide, but Nancy knew it was Freddy’s work again.

At Rod’s funeral, Nancy told her mother and father about the man she had seen in her nightmares. As she described him, her parents turned pale. Nancy wondered why. Did they know who she was talking about? Her mother insisted that Nancy needed help. She took her daughter to a special clinic where dreams were studied. There the dream specialist, Dr. King, put electrodes on Nancy’s head so he could monitor her sleep. No one was prepared for the nightmare Nancy had, though. She thrashed and shrieked until Dr. King ran in and woke her up. Then she pulled something out from under the covers. A battered, wide-brimmed hat. The name FRED KRUEGER was written inside it. Nancy had torn it from Freddy’s head in her dream. She brought it back into the real world!

The Truth about Freddy

The next day, Nancy’s mother had security bars put over every window in the house. When Nancy came home, her mother took her downstairs to the basement. She led Nancy to the big iron furnace. She had something to tell her daughter. “You want to know who Fred Krueger was?” Mrs. Thompson asked. Nancy was shocked. So her mother did know something about the nightmare man! “He was a filthy murderer who killed at least 20 kids in the neighborhood. Kids we all knew. It drove us crazy when we didn’t know who he was. But it was even worse after they caught him.” Mrs. Thompson reached into the furnace and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle. “Did they put him away?” Nancy asked. Her mother sighed. She told Nancy that the courts had let Freddy go because of a technicality. The parents were so outraged that they tracked him down after his release. “We found him in an old abandoned boiler room where he used to go.” “Go on!” Nancy said. She was horrified but fascinated. “We took gasoline, poured it all around the place, and made a trail of it out the door,” Mrs. Thompson said. “Then we lit the whole thing up and watched it burn. He can’t get you now. He’s dead, honey. Because Mommy killed him.” She unwrapped the bundle she held. Inside was a glove with four razor-sharp knives welded onto it. Freddy’s claw! “I even took his knives,” she whispered. “It’s okay now. You can sleep.” But Nancy knew how wrong her mother was. It wasn’t okay at all. Freddy wanted revenge, and he was taking it out on the kids on Elm Street!

Chapter 2: Three, Four, Better Lock Your Door… | Chapter 4: Seven, Eight, Gonna Stay up Late…