NIGHTMARE MUSIC THEME begins as we FADE UP on a SERIES OF SHOTS, all CLOSE and teasing.

– A man’s FEET, in shabby work shoes, stalking through a junk bin in a dark, fire-lit, ash-dusted place. A huge BOILER ROOM is what it is, although we only glimpse it piecemeal. Then we SEE a MAN’S HAND, dirty and nail-bitten, reach INTO FRAME and pick up a piece of METAL.

– ANOTHER ANGLE as the HAND grabs a grimey WORKGLOVE and slashes at it with a straight razor, until its fingertips are off.

– CLOSE ON SAME HANDS dumping four fishing knives out of a filthy bag. Their blades are thin, curved, gleaming sharp.

– MORE ANGLES, EVEN CLOSER. We can HEAR the MAN’s wheezing BREATHING, but we still haven’t seen his face. We never will. We just SEE more metal being assembled with crude tools, into some sort of linkage – a splayed, spidery sort of apparatus, against a background light of FIRE, and a deep rushing of STEAM and HEAVY, DARK ENERGY.

– And then we see this linkage attached to the glove.

– Then the BLADES attached to all of it.

– Then the MAN’S HAND slips into this glove-like apparatus, filling it out and transforming it into an awesome, deadly claw-hand with four razor/talons gleaming at its blackened fingertips. Suddenly the HAND arches and STRIKES FORWARD, SLASHING THROUGH a DARK CANVAS, tearing it to shreds.

A PULSATION OF LIGHT AND SHADOW. MUSIC DROPS AWAY to a hushed RUSHING OF WIND and DISTANT SIRENS. CAMERA RACKS INTO FOCUS on a HIGH PANORAMA of the San Fernando Valley, its night sky lit from within by a strange GREENISH LIGHT. TITLES BEGIN.

CAMERA TILTS DOWN and ZOOMS SWIFTLY into the valley’s web of light.

TITLES CONTINUE as TINA GRAY, a strong girl of fifteen in a thin night shift, moves towards us down a dark concrete corridor. Her steps quicken as TITLES appear in the portion of frame she leaves free.

A subliminal COLLAGE of SOUND threads in and out of the MUSIC. Distant insane LAUGHTER. Slamming iron DOORS. A bleating animal CRY. A LAMB, white and blank-faced, skitters across her path and on into the dark. No reason why it’s there.

Then another SOUND, much nearer – the slithering SCRAPE of something like fingernails across slate. It sets our teeth on edge, twists the MUSIC, and sends TINA running.

Suddenly TINA’s a tiny figure running among huge boilers steam pipes and catwalks – a shadowed forest of iron and stone. She stops, listening intently as the SOUND of tiny hooves suddenly turns into the rattle of DISTANT RAIN.

Then she hears RIPPING FABRIC.

Someone is shouldering behind a ragged screen of dirty canvas, approaching TINA.

CLOSER ON THE CANVAS. The long curved fingerblades suddenly punch through, flashing in the firelight, and begin ripping through the thick fabric, as easily as scalpels through flesh. They make a hideous, extended RIPPING SOUND.

TINA rushes away, hands over her ears.

CAMERA CIRCLES until TINA’s looking right into our eyes. The light from a nearby boiler pours through her thin night dress, leaving her naked and vulnerable. Then a deep, ragged VOICE whispers at her as CAMERA CLOSES IN ON HER FACE.

VOICE O.S.

TINA opens her mouth to scream but only a dry, yellow dust pours out. And at that precise moment a huge shadowy MAN with a grimey red and yellow sweater and a weird hat pulled over his scarred face lunges at her. And it’s his fingers that are tipped with the long blades of steel, glinting in the boney light and giving the hulk the look of an otherworldly predator.

TINA dodges away, her legs suddenly elephantine and slow. The MAN seizes the trailing hem of her nightgown and hauls her back.

The MUSIC shrieks as TINA manages to tear free – the MAN lurches after her with a hoarse SHOUT as we –

TINA convulses in bed with a SCREAM, looking around wildly. Someone is KNOCKING on her door.

WOMAN’S VOICE O.S.

TINA’S MOTHER sticks her head in with a worried look. TINA sits up and blows out a breath, groggy.

TINA

The woman, once attractive, ventures a step into the room. A MAN hovers BACKGROUND. TINA’S mother waves him away without looking, shoving a strand of bleached hair from her eyes. She appraises her daughter.

TINA’S MOTHER

She nods at TINA’s nightshift.

TINA looks down at her nightgown, only now aware of the chill penetrating it from the room. There are four long slashes up its middle, cleanly cut as if by scalpels.

MAN OS

TINA’S MOTHER

The woman shuts the door behind her. TINA looks back to her nightgown.

TINA low

She suddenly snatches up the cross that hangs over her head, her face white as her sheet.

CHILDREN OS

FADE UP ON SHOT OF this large highschool and its crowds of STUDENTS. FOREGROUND, TINA climbs out of a cherry-red 1959 Cadillac convertible with two other students, best friend NANCY WILSON, and Nancy’s boyfriend and owner of the car, GLEN LANTZ.

FOREGROUND several GRADESCHOOLERS are playing jump-rope, and the old ditty they sing continues unbroken from TINA’s bedroom.

ROPE JUMPERS

TINA referring to kids’ song

Nancy nods.

NANCY

TINA turns to NANCY, but before either can say more, ROD LANE, a lean, Richard Gere sort in black leather and New Wave studs joins up with them and interupts.

ROD to Tina

Tina cracks her gum with a look of withering indifference.

TINA

The guy’s stopped in his tracks.

ROD

He cuts off across the lawn.

TINA

NANCY

TINA

TINA makes a face and rakes her fingernails across a tree as she passes.

TINA CONTD

NANCY

GLEN

TINA looks at GLEN sharply. He kisses NANCY and darts off for class.

TINA

But GLEN’s gone.

TINA CONTD

BELLS ARE RINGING, and STUDENTS crowding; TINA and NANCY are drawn into the crush.

ON GLEN, dialing. Nancy and TINA are watching, giggling.

TINA

NANCY

GLEN shoves a cassette into TINA’s Ghetto Blaster.

GLEN to TINA

The phone is answered. GLEN jerks the tone arm off the record with a SCRUUPT!!

GLEN CONTD

A JET PLANE begins to make itself heard on the tape. GLEN moves the machine closer to the phone. It’s a big plane – sounds like a 747 coming in for a landing.

GLEN CONT

The Jet is SCREAMING IN now, full flaps and howling like a monstrous banshee. NANCY and TINA dissolve into muffled giggles.

GLEN CONT

Suddenly the tape goes silent. GLEN blanches. Next moment another ENGINE is heard, but this one is a FORD LOTUS screaming by at 180 mph.

GLEN CONT

The sound effect changes abruptly to a SPEEDING SEDAN – and the ages-old SCREECH of BRAKES, last-second SCREAM and horrible COLLISION. NANCY gamely tries to find the right button to turn it off, but misses. There’s a loud SCREEK of fast-forward mayhem – Glen improvises desperately.

GLEN CONT

NANCY jumps back from the cassette player – WORLD WAR II bursts out at top volume – MACHINE GUNS, HAND GRENADES, DIVING BEARCATS and SHOUTS of charging Huns. GLEN makes a last-ditch dive and flings the cassette out of the machine.

Blessed silence at last.

GLEN CONT

He hangs up and sags back.

NANCY

GLEN

TINA shoves another cassette in, and MICHAEL JACKSON’S ‘THRILLER’ blasts from the STEREO. The kids relax, the CAMERA GLIDES PAST THEM TO THE WINDOW.

The WIND is moving the bare TREE BRANCH outside. CAMERA PANS BACK to the comfortably threadbare room, uneasy. We see NANCY poking at a flame in the hearth as TINA comes FOREGROUND to draw the drapes.

NANCY

TINA

NANCY turns a nearby valve handle, and the gas fire climbs brightly over its artificial log. TINA joins her, heartened.

NANCY

TINA

GLEN

TINA laughs despite herself. NANCY brightens.

NANCY

TINA shakes her head, wishing she had forgotten.

TINA

NANCY looks up with a flinch.

NANCY

TINA looks up.

TINA

NANCY

The story has left the room deathly quiet. Especially TINA seems effected.

TINA quietly

NANCY remembers, imitating the frightful coincidence.

NANCY

TINA pales.

TINA

The girls stare at each other.

GLEN

They look at him. He looks away, as if suddenly listening.

TINA

GLEN

TINA

NANCY

Then there’s an unmistakeable SOUND. A distinct SCRAPING against the house, just outside the window. Something multiple, thin and sharp. Something like metal fingernails. NANCY’s mouth opens a fraction of an inch.

CLOSE ON FRONT DOOR as a BOLT UNLOCKS, a KEY TURNS, a CHAIN is REMOVED. At last the door swings open and GLEN swaggers out.

GLEN

No answer but a slight RUSTLE in the bushes. GLEN does a 180 and walks right back inside. The girls prod him right back out, giddy with giggling fear.

GLEN

NANCY

The girls push him farther. GLEN edges towards the shadows. Then the SCRITCHING again. GLEN stops; TINA edges back into the house.

TINA

GLEN

Not a living, or dead, soul. GLEN turns back to the girls with a shrug. Instantly, a large FIGURE pounces and throws him to the ground with a shout.

The girls SCREAM in panic and run for the house.

ROD

ROD dances into the light, flashing a wild gypsy’s grin at TINA. The girl’s relieved and frightened at the same time.

TINA

ROD

TINA

ROD takes the spindly hand rake he’s found and scraps the house’s wall. It makes a terrible SCRIIITCHING SOUND. He grins and tosses it aside.

ROD

GLEN

ROD wheels, a knife suddenly in his hand, as if ready to take Glen’s throat out. NANCY breaks between –

NANCY

ROD eyes GLEN, laughs and flips the knife closed and away, putting his arm around TINA’s shoulder and laughing as if it’s all a great joke.

ROD

He pulls TINA inside without further ceremony.

NANCY

But ROD’s already got himself and TINA halfway through the living room, heading into the darker part of the house.

ROD

NANCY

TINA darts to the front door, her blouse half out.

TINA

She disappears. GLEN looks at NANCY. Too innocent.

GLEN

NANCY

She kisses him lightly, then pushes him back.

GLEN frustrated

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY turns and looks at him.

NANCY

GLEN gives her a funny look.

GLEN

He takes her inside. Over the SOUNDS of locks falling shut we

FADE UP ON an old 50’s CLOCK, one of those set into the black plaster body of a stalking panther. It’s just past 2 AM.

PAN the cold hearth and darkened living room to REVEAL GLEN on the couch, cacooned in sheets. He’s listening miserably to the SOUNDS OF LOVEMAKING coming from the next room. TINA peaks, ROD howls. Then silence.

GLEN

This is a slightly larger room than TINA’s. Adult. Female. Spare in its appointments. The streetlight throws the narrow bed into broken shadow and light. TINA AND ROD lie in each other’s arms in the middle of the big bed. Satiated.

TINA

ROD yawns into the pillows, happy.

ROD

TINA

ROD

TINA

ROD sleepily

He pulls the covers over his head. He’s almost out already.

TINA beat

ROD under the blankets

He rolls over, practically snoring, and pulls another cover over his head. A dirty red and yellow cover.

TINA sleepily

SNORES from ROD. TINA yawns, turns off the light and snuggles against ROD, pulling the cover gingerly over herself, too.

CAMERA MOVES across the room of the original nightmare to find NANCY alone in TINA’s bed, staring at the slanting ceiling above the bed. Thinking. We can just hear her HEART beating. She sighs and turns on her side.

Immediately the wall above her head turns a faint reddish hue, with a broad yellow smear across its center. All unseen by NANCY, the wall begins to pulse in exact time with her heart’s beat.

CLOSE ON NANCY’S FACE. She closes her eyes.

She jerks awake, sitting bolt upright. The face retracts suddenly – the wall is normal.

Back on NANCY. She draws the covers around her and shivers. Eyes wide open.

Not a car or person in sight. A stricken breeze dies in the trees.

Another PEBBLE strikes, with a sharper RAP.

CLOSE ON TINA’S FACE as her eyes open.

TINA

SNORES FROM ROD. TINA sits up.

PAST HER TO THE WINDOW. The WIND MOVES AGAIN; the trees brush the window with their shadows. Then another pebble. RAP! TINA slips to the window.

She looks out on an old yard with a patch of bananna trees rattling in the Santa Ana winds. It seems deserted, though the welling dark won’t let her be sure. Then another pebble – PAP! – hitting with a sharp RACK FOCUS.

WHAP! This time a heavier stone, and a thin crack bristles across the glass.

TINA low

TINA listening

She can see through the backward to a yawning gate and the back alley. No one there. But a word is spoken, as if by wind.

VOICE garbled

TINA straightens, unable to swallow. There’s a ragged, obscene GIGGLE. Deep in the throat. Phlegmy.

TINA

TINA charges across the yard and through the gate, the MUSIC chasing after.

She brakes in the middle of the alley and whirls around. Listening. Shivering in the same thin slashed nightgown.

A sharp crank of METAL, and fifty feet down the alley the lid of an ash can rolls from the dark like a huge tin coin and spirals noisily down.

Next moment the exact same shambling MAN from her nightmare staggers into view fifty feet behind her. TINA falls back into the shadows, shaking the worms off her fingers in repulsion. The MAN turns and starts directly for her, something shining on his right hand as he spreads his arms wide. He starts scraping the steel FINGERNAILS along a cinderblock wall. Orange sparks spurt out – his arms elongate until they reach from one side of the alley to the other – and TINA is cut off from her home!

CLOSE ON HER as the SCRAPING of the blades gets louder and closer. She begins to shake uncontrollably.

TINA

KILLER softly, approaching

He holds up his steel-tipped hand like a surgical-steel spider. TINA runs for her life.

TINA runs out onto front lawns, SCREAMING for help. No help comes. In fact, the only response is for all the porch lights on the block to be turned off. The MAN roars out from behind a tree – a tree too narrow to have hidden him – nearly upon the girl! TINA runs in panic – at last making her own home, only to be trapped against its locked front door.

She hammers against its thick wood.

TINA

The MAN slows. He has TINA now and knows it.

MAN

TINA turns and looks full at the approaching MAN. Smudged by deep shadow, he’s big and hideous. He wears the same dirty yellow sweater from the first nightmare – from the wall-hanging and blanket too – and has the same sagging hat and leering grin over his misshapen face. And on his fingers are the steel talons.

TINA leaps back, sickened, and begins stamping on then as if they were huge bugs.

The MAN snaps up his arm and the FINGERS fly back into place on his hand. He leers at TINA – then suddenly lunges at her, sweeping with his cutting hand!

TINA’s no weak sister – blocks his arm, deflecting the spines, and grabs the MAN’s ugly face with her other hand. But the face only slides off to the bone. The MAN presses in, and TINA contorts in horror as the knives slash across her shoulder – cutting her deeply.

ROD lurches up into CLOSE UP in the lightless bedroom, half-awakened by the tremendous struggle somewhere, somehow inside the dark bed. ROD grabs groggily, lifting the blanket.

ROD drops the blanket and leaps from the bed, scared full awake and terrified. Then the horrible TINA’s GASPS change to the CRIES of a terribly wounded victim. ROD instantly jerks back the bedspread.

IN HIS POV we SEE TINA struggling and flailing along on the sheets, the MAN nowhere in sight.

ROD

Suddenly TINA – eyes turned inward to her tormentor – give an awful jolt – her arms and legs are spraddled as if by overwhelming force and pinned to the bed. Next instant, her nightgown flies apart and four long gashes chase across her torso. From no visible instruments! A huge irrigation of blood floods the bed.

Terrified, ROD dives for the light – but at the same moment something invisible grabs TINA, wielding her body in the air and bringing it around in a swift blow that knocks ROD crashing into the light – smashing it to bits.

ROD

ROD

REVERSE IN HIS POV – as the body falls like a sack of rocks onto the devastated bed, in SLOW MOTION, striking with a huge splash of blood. A sick, awful GIGGLE floats around the room, then ECHOES off into infinity. ROD staggers up, staring around as if hoping to see this phantom.

ROD

NANCY is sitting straight up in bed, terrified. The CRIES of ROD are ringing through the whole house. She forces herself to move – bolting from the bed despite her terror and sense of dread.

NANCY flies into the dark hall – crashing directly into SOMEONE who lurches out of the dark before her. She SCREAMS and jumps back –

GLEN

NANCY

ROD OS

NANCY grabs the door; it’s locked; she pounds on it. BAM! BAM! BAM!

Things fall into sudden, awful silence on the other side. GLEN’s voice cracks with fear.

GLEN

ROD erupts into terrible HOARSE LAUGHTER AND SOBBING. Then they hear BREAKING GLASS.

GLEN barrels into the door like the football player he is. The frame splinters and they’re in.

Just inside the door NANCY slips and goes down hard. GLEN finds her in the dark more by touch than sight.

GLEN

NANCY

No answer. The room is quiet as a tomb. Except for a steady DRIPPING, from all over. Then GLEN finds a LIGHT SWITCH.

On the CLICK the devastation is revealed. There’s BLOOD everywhere: up the walls, over the clawed ceiling, soaking the killing floor of the bed, and pooling in the dark red puddle where NANCY has slipped and fallen.

GLEN

NANCY wobbles up and sees TINA in the center of the ravaged bed. Unmistakeably and utterly dead. NANCY presses against the wall, then contorts and chokes.

GLEN CONTD

He bursts from the room.

FADE UP ON RED LIGHTS and SIREN as an unmarked POLICE CAR speeds to the curb.

LT DON THOMPSON, a decent-looking man in his mid-40’s, exits and punches a cigarette from his pack. His shaken aide, a uniformed patrolman named PARKER, greets him.

CAMERA FOLLOWS them from the car straight into the station and eventually to THOMPSON’S OFFICE.

PARKER

LT THOMPSON

PARKER stumbles to open the door for THOMPSON as the man bulls into the station at a furious pace.

PARKER

LT THOMPSON grimaces as if he knows the story.

LT THOMPSON

PARKER

THOMPSON is already to the desk officer SERGEANT GARCIA. The big MAN shoves him a sheaf of papers –

SERGEANT GARCIA wary

LT THOMPSON

SERGEANT GARCIA

PARKER scurries after.

PARKER

LT THOMPSON

PARKER

LT THOMPSON

THOMPSON enters his office and confronts NANCY and her mother, MARGE SIMSON.

LT THOMPSON CONTD

MARGE SIMSON is in her middle thirties; a good-looking woman despite the hour and circumstances.

MARGE

THOMPSON stops, the steam suddenly out of him. The girl is a wreck and he winces to see it.

LT THOMPSON

THOMPSON glances at PARKER and the other UNIFORMED COPS who are in the room. As a man they head for the door. There’s no question who the boss is here. THOMPSON turns to NANCY. She fumbles a smile.

LT THOMPSON CONTD

NANCY

NANCY’s dress is dark with dried blood, her skin clammy and the color of paste. MARGE shoots her ex-husband a worried glance. THOMPSON pulls a chair close to NANCY.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY weaves.

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

The girl is shredding a Kleenex, staring off.

MARGE

NANCY quietly

MARGE

NANCY sits bolt upright in her chair, her eyes flashing.

NANCY

The girl holds the woman’s eyes a moment, then looks away.

NANCY CONTD

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

A tear splashes off the arm of her chair.

MARGE

The mother and daughter rise; THOMPSON raps on the door and PARKER opens it.

LT THOMPSON to MARGE

MARGE wheels on him.

MARGE

Then she and the girl are gone. THOMPSON glares at PARKER.

LT THOMPSON

PARKER shoves his hands in his pockets. ON HIS FACE we

FADE UP ON MARGE SIMSON opening a new bottle of gin, pouring herself a careful shot, drinking it, then chasing it with coffee. Nearby a TV drones the morning news. We can’t yet see the SCREEN.

TV NEWSCASTER OS/FILTER

MARGE TURNS, startled, seeing NANCY coming downstairs.

The girl looks a little better than she did in the Police Station, but her eyes are still red-rimmed, and a vacant stress masks her face. She looks to the TV. Stops.

TV NEWSCASTER CONTD

MARGE kind

NANCY

MARGE

NANCY pulls away, determined.

NANCY

MARGE studies her face a moment.

MARGE

NANCY

She absently drains the woman’s coffee cup – then pecks her cheek.

MARGE

NANCY cont’d

MARGE watches the girl disappear outside, then lights a cigarette from the one already burning in her fingers.

MUSIC slips back in, subtle but tense as we TRACK with NANCY as she walks alone down a sidewalk edged with thick flowering Oleander. She cocks her head, puzzled, as if sensing something. MUSIC mounts. NANCY looks across the street.

NANCY struggles, twisting against the powerful assailant.

ROD

He releases her warily. NANCY makes no move to run or scream, even though several STUDENTS pass on the nearby sidewalk. This reassures ROD just a little.

ROD

NANCY

ROD

NANCY

He runs his hands down his face, trying to believe that. The two study each other.

ROD

NANCY

NANCY says this without accusation, just cool observation.

ROD

NANCY

ROD grabs her hard. His muscular body tenses.

ROD

VOICE O.S.

LT THOMPSON

ROD backs away, looking once at NANCY with a look of terrible sadness. Then he dives out of the bushes and runs like hell.

THOMPSON snaps his revolver to fire – but instinctively NANCY jumps between –

NANCY

THOMPSON jerks his gun into the air, furious.

THOMPSON

He plunges past the girl.

ROD races like a frightened animal across the lawns – but is soon cut off by the PLANECLOTHESMAN NANCY saw watching her before – and then TWO UNIFORMED POLICEMAN, who close from another angle. The chase is short and pitifully off-balance, and ROD is soon wrestled to the ground. Next moment one of the cops is holding ROD’S knife into the air for THOMPSON to see. THOMPSON looks at NANCY, as if to say ‘I told you.’ Background, ROD’S SHOUTS can be heard as he’s shoved into a SQUAD CAR.

ROD O.S.

The car’s door slams and ROD is gone. NANCY turns to her father, livid.

NANCY

LT THOMPSON exasperated

NANCY spins angrily and walks away.

LT THOMPSON

But she just keeps going.

FADE UP ON an ENGLISH TEACHER and CLASS, NANCY among the kids, trying to concentrate.

TEACHER

The TEACHER’S eyes glance across the room. ANGLE ON NANCY; yawning but listening.

TEACHER CONTD

She nods to a SURFER who’s been waiting uncomfortably in front of the class. He squints at his book and begins, the recitation a struggle between baked and salted brain and the poetry of the Bard.

SURFER reading aloud

WISEGUY STUDENT O.S.

The SURFER halts with a grin; KIDS snicker.

ENGLISH TEACHER

She glares them back into silence. The SURFER starts over, as we CUT TO NANCY.

She’s nodding off now, barely able to keep her eyes open in the warm, close boredom of the classroom.

SURFER O.S.

TINA O.S.

NANCY gives a start. Her eyes lock onto something.

SURFER

NANCY turns and looks both directions. No sign of anybody.

TINA O.S.

NANCY wheels and sees the bag, prone on the tiles at the far end of the hall, at the end of a long snail’s trail of slime. A pale hand thrusts out of it. A moment later, as if pulled by invisible gravity, the bag slides out of sight into an intersecting corridor.

NANCY

NANCY starts running for it.

HALLGUARD

NANCY leaps up –

NANCY

NANCY runs for it again. The HALLGUARD staggers up FOREGROUND, bleeding profusely from her eyes and ears.

HALLGUARD

The HALLGUARD raises her hand and we see it’s tipped with long metal spikes.

NANCY edges into the stairwell and looks down. Looks like there’s a fire somewhere down there, from the way the orange light dances. But there’s only a low WHITE NOISE.

NANCY

No answer. NANCY starts down the stairs.

NANCY comes off the stairs into a dank boiler room. The smear trail is there. It runs behind a cracking, red-hot boiler the size of a diesel locomotive. Everything about the place feels dreadfully wrong, and the MUSIC is deep into the NIGHTMARE THEME when it pauses.

TIGHT ON NANCY. Slow terror moves into her face. There’s a low, sinister GIGGLE.

NANCY

MAN

NANCY forgets the question – jerks around and flees in blind panic into the first opening she sees – a dark pipe tunnel.

The killer sprints – NANCY tears ahead into darkness.

She flees deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of steaming, SIZZLING pipes, squeezing through smaller and smaller openings. The killer is just yards behind her, and soon she’s trapped, just as TINA was before her.

She presses her back to the wet bricks. There’s no hope of fighting him off, for NANCY is not as strong as TINA. But she is smart as hell, and thinking even in this nightmare. So by the time the creep has raised his knives to strike, NANCY has realized something. She wheels and shoves her arm against one of the scalding steam pipes. In the same split second we HEAR her flesh scald, we

NANCY lurches up SCREAMING, arm raised to ward off the invisible blow, books clattering to the floor – other GIRLS nearby SCREAM in surprise as she stumbles over them. Then she stops, confused and groggy from the nightmare.

TEACHER

NANCY begins methodically picking up her books.

TEACHER

NANCY

She marches for the door.

TEACHER

But the girl’s gone.

NANCY walks out of the building, shaken. Then she pauses at one of the big pine trees out front, stops and rests her head against its bark, teeth set. NANCY starts to shake, and next second she’s sobbing like a broken-hearted, frightened child.

INSERT ON HER ARM and the BURN there; about the size and shape of a half-dollar.

WIDER ON NANCY. Utterly, chillingly confused.

TINA

NANCY is walking quickly, head erect, jaw set. Then she enters her father’s Police Station.

NANCY crosses directly to the GARCIA.

NANCY

GARCIA looks up from his paperwork.

SERGEANT GARCIA

LT THOMPSON emerges from another room, uneasy to see NANCY.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

THOMPSON doesn’t miss a beat.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY flinches; her father shows the first signs of color in his neck.

NANCY

THOMPSON shifts almost imperceptibly towards GARCIA, then turns back to NANCY.

LT THOMPSON

A GUARD exits pushing a cart of food trays. NANCY waits warily until he’s gone, then looks back to ROD LANE. ROD looks more like a captured coyote than a human; haggard, ribbed, expecting poisoned bait. His hair is wet, his clothes are borrowed jeans and work shirt.

NANCY low

ROD

NANCY reacts.

NANCY

ROD

NANCY studies his encrypted eyes. Surprisingly, she looks like she just might believe him. She leans closer with a new thought.

NANCY

He looks away.

ROD

NANCY

ROD

Now the place is so quiet you can hear heartbeats.

NANCY

ROD smiles an insane smile, stuck with a reality no one will buy.

ROD

NANCY gives a twitch.

NANCY

ROD low

By now he’s picking at a clot of dark blood on his jacket, as if it was a scab on his own body. Then he catches NANCY watching and turns away to the back of the cell. He smashes his fist into the wall – bone-crushing blows that scare the wits out of NANCY.

NANCY

He stops, and his fist is dripping blood as he says in a small, sad voice.

ROD

CLOSE ON NANCY, unable to swallow the gorge rising in her throat. ROD turns to her, and to his surprise she’s ashen.

ROD CONTD

NANCY

FADE UP ON ESTABLISHING SHOT as a spooky WIND sets a DOG BARKING down the block. A CAR goes by, then this pleasant residential street falls into silence. CAMERA has MOVED IN on NANCY’s well-tended two-story home.

The house is in shadow. Alone, MARGE scrapes the last of the evening’s dishes and slips them into the dishwasher. Neither she nor her daughter has touched the food. But MARGE is well into a bottle of gin; her appetite for that is growing, right along with her dread. She turns and looks up the stairs, calling.

MARGE

NANCY OS

MARGE

NANCY

NANCY’S in the tub, so drowsy she can hardly rinse without falling asleep. The water in the tub is opaque with suds. Luxurious.

Higher and higher it rises, soon accompanied by another, then two more shining, gleaming blades, and then the full glove and dark hairy hand and then the wrist and arm, straight up light an evil sapling between the girl’s knees, the knives bloosoming into a bright flower of razor sharp steel in the air, moving over the girl’s belly. The hand rears back, the claws arch to strike.

MARGE OS/APPROACHING

MARGE raps on the door. The instant she does NANCY jerks up, opening her eyes groggily. The dark wet arm, hand and knifes are gone.

NANCY

MARGE OS

NANCY

MARGE OS

NANCY low

She slides down to water level again, and sings softly, thoughtfully to herself.

NANCY CONTD

The next instant she’s jerked with incredible violence straight down beneath the surface of the tub – as if the bottom had suddenly dropped out and she was in a bottomless well!

LOOKING UP PAST HER ANKLES we SEE NANCY pulled sharply down into really deep water, the dim light of the surface and bathroom beyond receding with each yank. And yet she somehow flails and gasps and struggles back towards the surface, managing by pure panic to break the surface with her hands!

MARGE rushes to the door and listens, alarmed at the wild SPLASHING audible through the locked door.

MARGE

MARGE’S VOICE reaches to the girl, who thrusts up through main force and breaks the surface with her head and shoulders.

Gasping and choking, NANCY breaks the surface of her bathwater, like a drowning sailer getting one last chance. Her mother’s VOICE booms over her, ECHOED and frantic – and the loud BANGING on the door finally opens her eyes. She turns and calls gasping to her mother –

NANCY

REVERSE ON THE DOOR – as MARGE, using the old hangar through the doorhandle truck, makes it into the room. She rushes across to the tub. NANCY is staggering up in the bathwater, again with solid porcelain beneath her feet.

MARGE

The mother throws a towel around the gasping girl, helps her from the tub and begins drying her like a child. NANCY looks like she’s likes paralized with some sort of weird dread.

MARGE

NANCY

MARGE

MARGE rushes out to get the room ready. NANCY turns and looks at herself in the cabinet mirror, then opens the medicine chest and begins a quick, furtive search.

CLOSER as she takes out the box of No Doz and slips it into her robe.

NANCY emerges from the bathroom yawning. MARGE follows as the girl plods obediently to her room.

MARGE

NANCY

MARGE

NANCY

MARGE offers a smile, and a little yellow pill.

MARGE

NANCY

NANCY pops it in her mouth and swallows obediently. MARGE leans to her with a kiss.

MARGE

MARGE goes out, relieved. NANCY closes the door, leans against it and spits the pill into her hand. She tosses it straight out her window and takes a NoDoz.

A MONSTER MOVIE in BLACK AND WHITE. NO SOUND from the set.

The girl YAWNS. She shakes herself violently and sits up straighter, forcing herself to concentrate on the movie.

Then someone pitches out of the dark at her. NANCY gives a YELP – then clamps her hand over her mouth as she recognizes GLEN, balanced precariously on the rose trellis outside her window.

GLEN

She gets herself together, barely.

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY looks over her shoulder to make sure her mother hasn’t heard. GLEN’s already through her window and planted on her bed. NANCY points to a chair.

NANCY

GLEN crosses to the chair and plops down.

GLEN

There’s no maliciousness in his voice, and the familiar frankness is actually comforting to NANCY.

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

NANCY tries to smile, but can’t fake it very well. GLEN looks her over.

GLEN

She shrugs, trying to keep it casual.

NANCY

She hazards a look in the mirror, and her jaw drops.

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY pleased

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY thinks.

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN makes the Twilight Zone sound.

NANCY

GLEN

She comes very close to him.

NANCY

The way she’s looking at him gives him the creeps.

GLEN

GLEN IN DARK

NANCY

FADE UP ON NANCY, still in her pajamas, walking through the shadowy streets near her home, listening for the slightest sound. We MOVE with her. But nothing, not even the dog barking earlier, is there now. NANCY peers into the darkness of lawns and trees behind her.

NANCY stage whisper

Across the street and a distance away, GLEN steps from behind a tree.

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN throws up his hands in exasperation and walks back out of sight. NANCY turns and looks down between the houses, deep into a dark alleyway. Then she forces herself to walk into it.

MOVING WITH HER as she makes herself go deeper and deeper into shadows. Each time she pauses and waits, the MUSIC grows more threatening and expectant. The feeling is of immense tension – we’re sure the killer will come screaming out on her at any second.

But he doesn’t. In fact absolutely nothing happens, and NANCY emerges from the far end of the alley unscathed. The only thing strange is that she now finds her self looking across the mall to

The Police Station. It takes her a little by surprise, it just seems to have appeared.

MUSIC creeps into the NIGHTMARE THEME as NANCY whispers hoarsely back down the dark alley.

NANCY CONTD

We only HEAR the DISTANT VOICE, slightly ECHOED.

GLEN’S VOICE OS

NANCY

NANCY stares into the dark trying to see him, but she can’t. She turns back and makes up her mind to move without him in sight.

MUSIC MOUNTS as we MOVE WITH NANCY across the lawns to the police station, creeping to the first lighted window she sees. It’s a low, barred basement window, and NANCY reacts as soon as she looks through it.

NANCY’S POV down into ROD LANE’s cell. The boy is on his rough cot, twitching in disturbed sleep. And a long SHADOW is sliding across the wall.

A big SHAPE appears in the shadowed corridor outside the boy’s cell, and as IT walks closer NANCY can barely see it’s the shambling, grimly scarred man with the filthy red and yellow sweater and strange slouch hat pulled across his brow. The KILLER from all of their nightmares.

And this giant shadow of a man passes through the bars of the cell, like so much evil Jello. Halfway through he pauses, turning to check over his shoulder. We see the bars clearly penetrating his body, going in his head, passing out his ankles. Then he turns back to ROD and moves forward, and within another heartbeat is beside the boy.

NANCY draws back sharply, swallowing in terror. She looks behind her for help.

NANCY CONTD

No answer.

NANCY CONTD

The street is absolutely deserted. There is no motion, and no sound save one: the distant but unmistakeable sound of GLEN SNORING.

NANCY CONTD

A beat of silence after the shout’s echoes die, then the steady, boyish SNORES again. NANCY swears under her breath and jerks back around, forcing herself to look again into ROD’s cell.

IN HER POV – the killer picks up ROD’s bedsheet and tests it between his powerful hands. Without thinking, NANCY bangs against the glass.

NANCY CONTD

The KILLER wheels around, locking eyes with NANCY. The girl goes white. The man’s face is in the light, and it’s horrible – seething with hatred and a twisted, insane intelligence.

The hold of those eyes is only broken when ROD rolls up on an elbow with a deep, troubled GROAN. The instant ROD does this, the KILLER fades into the shadows in the cell. But even then his eyes hold on NANCY’s until the last second he’s visible.

ROD looks around the cell groggily, runs his fingers through his matted hair, then collapses back on his pillow. No matter how hard NANCY screams, ROD never once looks at the window. He just pulls the twisted covers about his shoulders and succumbs once more to sleep.

And now the bed sheet is no longer on the bed. The KILLER, materializing out of the shadow again, is holding it between his hands like a garrote. He looks up and leers at NANCY, then moves for ROD.

NANCY

She turns back to the cell in desperation.

IN NANCY’S POV we look into a cell that is quite deserted save for ROD. Sleeping peacefully.

NANCY pulls back from the window, stunned.

NANCY

Suddenly NANCY feels utterly exposed. She shivers, chilled and vulnerable to the bone in her thin night clothes. She can’t move. It’s as if some great nerve between her instincts and body had been severed. And she hears the SOUND behind her. A sort of filling-vibrating Scrriiitchh.

MUSIC sneaks in – the unmistakeable NIGHTMARE THEME, creeping over her. NANCY forces herself, by sheer will, to look.

The MUSIC FALLS TO A HUSH.

NANCY

DEEP RAGGED VOICE

NANCY twists around in horror at the same instant the KILLER grabs for her face with his knife-fingers! The girl intinctively pitches back, then scrambles up and runs like hell!

NANCY

MOVING WITH NANCY at full gallop, running blind. She crashes through a sawhorse into a new sidewalk, sinking into the wet cement over her ankles. The stuff sticks to her legs in long gluey globs and she can barely pull her feet loose.

The KILLER looms nearby, mocking her – his scalpel claws gleaming in the streetlight. He just misses the girl as she wrenches free and flees again, now so winded she can only stagger.

MOVING WITH THEM. Time after time NANCY just barely manages to elude the shadowy form, leaping from his reach by inches and pouring on more steam. It’s too close to even bother screaming now; and besides, that would take breath she doesn’t have. The only SOUND is of RUNNING FOOTSTEPS, RASPING BREATH and the KNIFE-FINGERS WHISTLING through the air.

NANCY tears across her front lawn and into the open front door of her home, SLAMMING it with all her might. There’s a tremendously satisfying CONCUSSION of wood against doorframe, and the LOCKS fall shut.

NANCY

But her voice is garbled as if she’s under water, and there’s no answer. The only clue to Glen being there at all is his distant SNORING. Innocent. Persistent. Deep.

NANCY stops, breath in shreds, face smeared with dirt and tears. Something is clawing the window in the dark of the kitchen. NANCY looks and catches the MAN prying at the glass with his big knife-fingers, the sharp blades SIZZLING against the edges of the glass as they crack it away from the frame. NANCY runs upstairs in blind panic.

NANCY darts into her unlit bedroom, slams the door and locks it.

Safe at last.

She listens at the door. Nothing. She crosses to her bed. Next second the KILLER dives through her window and seizes her in a shower of shattered glass!

NANCY twists and manages to grab the wrist of his knife hand with both of hers, barely keeping the blades from her throat.

The two fall backwards in a terrible, gasping struggle, crashing onto NANCY’s bed. Her grip is broken – the MAN stabs – NANCY twists away, backed into a corner of bed and walls. Defenseless, she snatches a pillow up; the KILLER lashes out – disemboweling the pilow and sending a great gush of feathers flying. NANCY dives for escape in a virtual blizzard.

The KILLER manages to snare her with his other hand, and the two crash across the bedside table to the floor, the table and all its contents cascading around them in a whiteout of feathers.

But just when the points of steel are less than an inch from her eyes, the old fashioned alarm clock thrown to the floor next to NANCY’s head goes off with a jarring RINGGGGGGG!

It’s an intact pillow, and there isn’t a feather in sight.

NANCY stares incredulously at GLEN, then around the room, untangling herself from her bedclothes. Wary and furious, her voice hoarse.

NANCY

The boy looks at his friend in groggy alarm. She’s absolutely livid, more angry than he’s ever seen her, and more strange.

GLEN

He reaches for her – she flattens against the wall, eyes hard, and terribly hurt, too.

NANCY low

She stops herself, wiping a bit of spittle off her lip, alarmed at how out of control she’s become. And suddenly she breaks, sinking into her torn bedclothes and rubbing her head.

NANCY CONTD

MARGE OS

Her mother’s door opens OS.

GLEN

NANCY composes her voice as best she can.

NANCY

MARGE’s flip-flops approach outside the door. GLEN barrels out the window – NANCY dives for the bed, jams off the light and disappears under the covers. MARGE, bleary eyed herself, opens the door and flicks on the light.

MARGE beat

NANCY weakly

MARGE beat

NANCY

MARGE closes the door. NANCY immediately sits up and looks at the window. A single bone-white feather floats down in the moonlight. Then it’s sucked outside and is gone.

GLEN’s CADILLAC CONVERTABLE careens into the parking lot and SCREECHES to a stop. GLEN and NANCY jump out and head for the station.

GLEN

NANCY’s races into the station without answering.

GLEN CONTD

NANCY goes straight to the SERGEANT’s desk.

NANCY

GARCIA winces.

SGT GARCIA

NANCY

SGT GARCIA

NANCY faking it

GARCIA glances at GLEN.

GLEN faking it

LT THOMPSON OS

NANCY jumps around at the sound of her father’s voice. LT THOMPSON emerges from his office, rumpled and yawning.

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

GLEN

He trails off, loosing it under LT THOMPSON’s glare. Besides, he doesn’t know exactly what the hell’s really going on himself. GARCIA puts his beefy hand on NANCY’s shoulder.

NANCY

SGT GARCIA

ROD stirs, the sheet falls still; ROD slips into deeper sleep, and the sheet moves again, completing the noose around his neck!

NANCY makes a move for the cell block –

NANCY

The door’s locked; she hauls on it in desperation.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY takes that one to heart. She wheels on him and pleads, her intensity sobering even to him.

NANCY

The man takes a beat, then shrugs and nods towards SGT GARCIA.

LT THOMPSON

SGT GARCIA

He mumbles backs towards his desk. MUSIC BUILDS as we HOLD ON NANCY’S FACE.

With a terrible SNAP ROD’s sheet jerks tight around his neck. The startled teenager is hauled upright – eyes popping, face purple. He claws at the sheet, but despite his strength he can’t get his fingers between the noose and his windpipe. He’s dragged backwards across the cot.

GARCIA finally has the keys. Urged on by NANCY he fumbles with the lock.

ROD’S being dragged backwards, gasping and struggling in vain against the powerful pull – right across his cell and up the wall, too. He clutches blindly at his throat at the far end of the sheet coils around the bars of the high window. Then there’s a powerful wrench of the sheet, and ROD’S neck SNAPS. The kid’s body sags lifeless.

NANCY

But it’s too late; NANCY sinks back in horror as her father and GARCIA rush into the cell.

LT THOMPSON

GLEN, pale as the sheet that’s killed ROD, climbs to the bars and unties the knot. ROD slides down over the SERGEANT’S shoulders, limp as a marrionette with its strings slashed.

SGT GARCIA

They lay ROD at NANCY’s feet; a strange Pieta. NANCY’s father looks at her in spooked suspicion.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY says nothing.

FADE UP ON a stark afternoon. On a hill of sere grass overlooking the valley, the casket of ROD LANE is lowered into its grave.

A small group of FAMILY and FRIENDS watches soberly as the MINISTER raises his hand in benediction.

MINISTER

ON THE FACES of MARGE, LT THOMPSON, TINA’S MOTHER and ROD’S PARENTS. Just for a second or two, in looks too rapid for an outsider to even notice, these adults exchange looks. Furtive, quick glances that suggest an immense something that they all share, something beyond even this second death among their children. Then they are all staring ahead again, as if the others weren’t even there.

MINISTER CONTD OS

NANCY, standing alone, not believing it for a minute.

MINISTER CONTD OS

NANCY quietly

The mourners walk away from the grave, MARGE among them. She pauses near a MAN and two WOMEN in black – TINA’S MOTHER, ROD’S PARENTS. They almost, it seems, speak. Then MARGE hurries on.

WE MOVE WITH HER as she’s joined by LT THOMPSON. Both are worn and on edge. THOMPSON absently lights another cigarette, offering one to MARGE.

LT THOMPSON

MARGE

THOMPSON lights her cigarette, attempting some sort of nonchalance.

LT THOMPSON

MARGE

THOMPSON blows a plume of smoke against the hard sky and looks away.

LT THOMPSON

He gives her a look that could cut stone. MARGE toses down her cigarete and crosses to NANCY. The girl is simply staring off over the valley.

MARGE very gently

She moves her away from the brink of the hill.

MARGE opens the door of the station wagon for NANCY. NANCY turns to them both, speaking in a still, small voice.

NANCY

She has a wild, Cassandra aspect that sends a chill right up MARGE’S spine.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY smiles a weird sort of smile.

NANCY

As NANCY has described this monster from her dream, unseen by her, the faces of MARGE LT and THOMPSON have drained completely of color.

LT THOMPSON low, even, to MARGE

MARGE

She takes the girl by the arm and guides her into the car, locking the door from outside. NANCY never taking her eyes from her father’s as the car bears her away.

FADE UP ON UCLA’s WESTWOOD CAMPUS and PAN TO SIGN:

A NURSE applies sencors to the head, breast, arms, and fingers of NANCY THOMPSON. The girl is lying on a simple broad cot, in her pajamas. The room is subdued in color and holds only this single bed. A large mirror set into one wall hides an observation room beyond.

NANCY

DR KING

NANCY manages a smile, but she’s haggard and visibly thinner. MARGE, background, looks downright distraught.

DR KING CONTD

MARGE

NANCY

The doctor and girl share a nervous laugh; MARGE doesn’t even smile.

DR KING

MARGE

NANCY

DR KING

NANCY

MARGE

DR KING

MARGE

The girls gauges her mother, the doctor, the situation very carefully. Then lowers her eyes.

NANCY

Greatly relieved, MARGE gives NANCY a goodnight kiss, then follows the doctor through a doorway near the mirror. As soon as her mother is out of sight, NANCY’S eyes drift to the mirror itself. In its reflection she sees herself looking back, alone on the bed.

MARGE and DR KING overlook NANCY’s sleeping chamber through the one-way mirror. And KING monitors the girl even more closely with a bank of instruments – a mass of glowing dials, graphs and meters. His manner with MARGE is slightly more sober.

DR KING

MARGE

DR KING

MARGE

KING adjusts a dial, watching the EKG like a hawk.

DR KING

MARGE twitches. Then there’s a slight alteration in the sound of the EKG. KING nods in satisfaction.

DR KING CONTD

MARGE immensely relieved

MUSIC RISES SOLEMNLY, MAJESTICALLY into a haunting transition as we

DISSOLVE TO

MARGE lights a cigarette, angry at her helplessness.

MARGE

DR KING

He gives a “Ah don’ know” shrug. MARGE looks out into the sleeping room. NANCY is a motionless bundle in the middle of the bed.

MARGE

DR KING quietly

We can see NANCY drift from the initial stage, over the brink into deep sleep. Her hair falls into her eyes; her face relaxes; her shoulders curl round her like comforters. THE MUSIC DEEPENS, and begins to hint at the tones of the NIGHTMARE THEME.

DR KING and MARGE watch the instruments’ every move.

One of the machines begins a slight CHIRPING. KING scans it, liking what he sees.

DR KING

He leans forward in his chair, like a pilot starting an instrument approach. MARGE THOMPSON licks her dry lips, fighting a turn of nausea.

MARGE

DR KING

He prods a dial with his pencil and scribbles the time on a note pad.

DR KING CONTD

MARGE watches the TV MONITOR. It’s in extra-close on NANCY’s eyes – and they’re darting beneath the lids, reacting to events lost behind a skein of flesh and neurons.

KING points to a moving graph. A needle’s begun waving lazily between plus and minus three. The DOCTOR nods, assured.

DR KING CONTD

He stops. Outside, visible through the glass, NANCY twists around. Eyes still closed, she’s nevertheless holding her head in the attitude of prey listening to the first faint sound of the predator’s approach.

MARGE looks from her daughter to the DOCTOR, color draining from her face.

MARGE

The needle of the graph gives a jagged pitch up, plunges, then surges well above the eight mark. A strange MUSIC CUE – disonant and threatening, creeps in – the NIGHTMARE THEME slurred into awful minors and weird disonance. KING stares at the gauge in disbelief, rapping his finger on its glass.

DR KING

The needle swings even higher, benind.

DR KING CONTD

He’s cut off by the high-pitched KEENING of the girl, the SOUND cutting through the double thickness of the glass like a lasar. A warning BEEPER has begun, the instruments light up like a Christmas tree – and outside in the sleeping room, NANCY is contorting as if shot through with a thousand volts. KING knocks over his chair in his sprint for the door.

The DOCTOR and MARGE come in on the run – NANCY’s flailing and screaming as if the devil himself were after her. KING grabs her to shake her awake;

The NURSE and MARGE both descend on her –

and again in her SLEEPING POV we see the MAN stagger for her.

MARGE screams at the top of her lungs.

MARGE

Some deep bolt of psychic power smacks through the girl, and her eyes flap open – they’re glazed with terror and fury, but open. NANCY’s awake.

She stares around like a cornered animal in the middle of the bed, her purple face gasping out gut-wrenching SOBS. The NURSE and MARGE dare to go back in and hold the sweat-drenched girl as DR KING comes for her with the needle.

DR KING

With incredible swiftness, NANCY backhands the hypodermic into a far wall, shattering it into a million pieces.

NANCY

Her eyes are windows straight into white fire as she locks into KING’S face. He dabs his split lip, swallowing painfully.

DR KING

He holds out his hand. NANCY at last takes it, and sags back into her pillow, exhausted. Then KING comes up with blood on his hand.

He stares at it, dumbfounded, then at the girl. Across her left forearm, a deep gash is bleeding freely, as if made by a very sharp instrument.

MARGE

DR KING to the NURSE

The NURSE scrambles away as the DOCTOR claps his hand over the wounds. He looks into NANCY’s face. What he sees frightens him even more: NANCY’S haunted, ghost-like eyes turn from him to her mother, and a terrible, chilling smile opens across NANCY’s white lips.

NANCY

She pulls her free arm from beneath the sheets and reveals a strange hat, filthy and worn – the KILLER’S hat. The sight of it frightens MARGE more than anything that’s come before.

MARGE deathly pale

NANCY fixes her with Xray eyes.

NANCY

MARGE stares at the hat as if it held her whole future, and her future was a horror.

FADE UP ON NANCY’S HOUSE, early morning.

MARGE is on the telephone, the dirty hat in her hand. Nearby is a nearly empty bottle of gin.

MARGE

She hangs up and stuffs the hat and bottle into a drawer, screening the action with her body. NANCY enters.

By now the girl has an extraordinary look. Her hair is ashen, her skin transluscent, and eyes dark-ringed. Her right forearm is heavily bandaged over the slashes. In short, instead of the girl next door, we now could be looking at the lunatic from the next cell. MARGE, though she does her best to hide it, is downright frightened of her.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY pours herself a cup of black coffee.

NANCY

MARGE

NANCY

MARGE

NANCY comes closer, her eyes shining with a new sureness.

NANCY

MARGE

MARGE grabs away the bottle protectively – but it’s the hat NANCY goes for. She waves it triumphantly – demonically.

NANCY

MARGE horrified

MARGE lunges for it – NANCY leaps out of reach –

NANCY

MARGE swallows, then persists in the lie.

MARGE

NANCY shoots a hard humorless laugh, holding up her slashed arm.

NANCY

MARGE slaps her hard.

MARGE losing it

The room falls silent, both women staring at the other.

MARGE CONTD

MARGE snatches the hat away. NANCY is furious, betrayed.

NANCY

MARGE pulls away.

MARGE

NANCY wheels and smashes MARGE’S bottle of gin in the sink.

NANCY

MARGE CONTD

But NANCY runs past her mother for the front door.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY turns in the doorway.

NANCY

On the door SLAM, we

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

GLEN jams more Big Mack into his face. By now our ZOOM reveals he’s attacking a huge bag of Big Macks, and furtively eyeing NANCY. The girl’s hair is startlingly white in the sunlight. She’s reading a book, hardly paying attention.

GLEN CONTD

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

He stops, seeing the look on NANCY’s face. Our ZOOM is much closer now, a wide medium, and still coming in on the kids.

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN shrugs

NANCY

She leans over the railing, poking her face back into her book. GLEN tips its cover and reads its title. OUR ZOOM IS STILL MOVING CLOSER, a MEDIUM CLOSE UP NOW.

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN shocked

OUR ZOOM LOCKS IN ON A TIGHT TWO ON THEIR FACES, NANCY’s grimly determined.

NANCY

She walks away, OUT OF FRAME, leaving GLEN watching after her in astonishment.

GLEN

FOREGROUND is a utility truck in which a half dozen Hispanic WORKERS are loading tools, extension cords and hardware. They look like they’ve put in one hell of a hard day’s work.

MARGE appears and hands a check to the FOREMAN of the crew, a white guy in clean coveralls and a gold chain. He scrutinizes it.

FOREMAN

MARGE forks over a wad of cash, hands trembling in her half-drunk, helpless rage.

MARGE

The FOREMAN counts the money swiftly.

FOREMAN

He shoves the money in his pocket and climbs in his truck. MARGE EXITS FRAME for her house.

PAN WITH THE TRUCK as it pulls away, THEN PICK UP NANCY, walking across the street from the corner. Alone. Dispirited. She lifts her eyes to her home and stops in her tracks.

NANCY

CLOSER, AT A WINDOW. NANCY gives a set of bars a powerful shake. They don’t budge. Then girl looks up and sees even the window to her second floor bedroom is barred. And the rose trellis has been ripped down and heaped at the foundation in a tangle of wood, thorns and broken flowers.

NANCY OS

NANCY

The girl crosses and reaches gently for the bottle. MARGE snatches it away.

MARGE

She rocks the bottle in her arms.

NANCY

MARGE

NANCY sits on the bed, a surprising compassion entering her voice.

NANCY

MARGE

NANCY

MARGE gives a laugh – a rasping chachination from deep in her chest.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY

MARGE blinks at her a moment, then cracks a terrible, crooked grin.

MARGE

MARGE drags NANCY headlong down the cellar stairs and across the room with a crazy fury, twisting her down near the foundation. And she thrusts her face so close to her daughter’s that NANCY reels from the alcohol.

MARGE

MARGE draws herself up with a shake.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY

MARGE smiles grimly.

MARGE

At the mention of “boiler room”, NANCY gives a shake. MARGE misses this, too busy taking a pull on the bottle that’s never left her hand.

MARGE CONTD

She reels slowly, looking at NANCY is defiance.

NANCY hushed

MARGE cradles the bottle.

MARGE

NANCY dreading it

MARGE reaches over and taps a dusty two-gallon jug of gasoline near the lawn mower.

MARGE

She mimes striking a match –

MARGE CONTD

Her arms shoot up and her eyes go wide with the light of that fire. There’s awe in her voice. Then she drops her arms.

MARGE CONTD

She stops with a sudden quake and drinks for a long moment. But the intake doesn’t hide the image. Her face bathed in tears, she looks at her daughter and shakes her head.

MARGE CONTD

She sweeps her hand across the air in a terrific slash, then stops, her hand shaking, her voice hoarse and terrified. She looks at her daughter, begging.

MARGE CONTD

For someone who started this film at a very young seventeen, NANCY’s now the battle-tempered veteran as she takes her mother in her arms and rocks her.

NANCY

MARGE sags back.

MARGE

The woman twists around and opens the door on an old furnace – a furnace unused since the newer gas one nearby was put in. She fishes inside the cavity – as then we hear a touch of the familiar ‘SCRRIITCH’. Next moment she pulls out an object wrapped in rags, opens it and displays the long, rusted blades and their glove-like apparatus.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY stares at the damn things, chilled.

NANCY

MARGE CONTD

MARGE shoves the knives into their hiding place, closes the little iron door.

MARGE CONTD

She lurches up and staggers upstairs.

NANCY shivers and looks down at her arm. The cut beneath her bandage has begun to bleed again. And from inside the furnace, as if from deep below, the PULSING of the boundless nightmare-boiler room can be faintly heard.

WIDE ON THE STREET AND BOTH HOUSES, GLEN’s on the right, NANCY’s on the left. A TELEPHONE RINGS. ZOOM IN ON GLEN’S UPSTAIRS BEDROOM WINDOW.

GLEN

NANCY telephone

GLEN

NANCY looks out the window and touches her hair.

NANCY CONTD

In the lighted window across the way, she can SEE GLEN move into sight. In his shot, we can SEE NANCY step into her window behind the bars.

NANCY CONTD

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN is appalled.

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN pales.

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN

NANCY simplicity itself

GLEN

NANCY

GLEN weakly

NANCY

She hangs up. GLEN’s eyes bug out.

GLEN

HIGH, WIDE SHOT. The moon is above the horizon. A cool wind slides a bank of white fog inland. The valley and its lights stretch forever, an endless net of illumination and darkness. A coyote HOWLS on the dark hill.

A palm frond scuttles across the center of the parking lot. LT THOMPSON arrives in an unmarked car.

COP passing

LT THOMPSON

The COP laughs and goes his way. THOMPSON’s smile evaporates.

THOMPSON enters and checks the log. Nearby, SGT GARCIA pours coffee.

SERGEANT GARCIA

LT THOMPSON

SERGEANT GARCIA too casually

THOMPSON looks at the Desk sergeant a moment, then tosses down the log.

LT THOMPSON

The neighborhood is utterly still, most of the homes already dark. But not NANCY’s. Or GLEN’s.

ZOOM TO GLEN’S LIGHTED LIVING ROOM WINDOW.

GLEN’s father watches eleven o’clocks news, a dreary FILM CLIP (STOCK) of war and refugees in a far-away land.

MR LANTZ takes a pull on his Bud.

MR LANTZ

MRS LANTZ walks through the room, drying her hands on a dishtowel.

MRS LANTZ

She heads upstairs. MR LANTZ pops the automatic tuner. CARSON blinks ON.

CARSON TV

ED MCMAHON and the AUDIENCE laugh in delight.

MRS LANTZ comes along the upstairs hall and knocks gently at a closed door.

MRS LANTZ

She puts her ear to the door and listens.

MRS LANTZ CONTD

No answer.

GLEN lies sprawled across the bed, long legs flung over the end, head not visible.

His mother enters. She looks at the boy, turns off the TV.

Looks at him again. From this angle she can see his head, earphones crammed over it rasping their tinny noise. But no movement from the kid at all. MRS LANTZ crosses and pokes him in the ribs. GLEN lurches up, arms windmilling.

GLEN

He refocuses his eyes, takes off his earphones.

MRS LANTZ

GLEN swings his legs over the edge of the bed and shakes his head to clear the cobwebs.

GLEN

MRS LANTZ

GLEN

The mother gives up.

MRS LANTZ

GLEN

MRS LANTZ

His MOTHER sighs and goes out, closing the door behind her. GLEN flips the TV back on and glances at the clock.

CAMERA MOVES PAST GLEN to his window, then ZOOMS through to:

CONTINUE ZOOMING into the LIGHTED window of NANCY’s barred second floor bedroom and

CLOSE ON MARGE, weaving on the edge of NANCY’s bed, stroking the girl’s hair. NANCY’s still something of a wreck, but less than MARGE.

MARGE

She gathers up NANCY’s coffee cups and empty NoDoz boxes, leans down and kisses her.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY nods her head, half stubborn, half sadly. She can barely keep her eyes open now.

NANCY

She scrunches into her pillow. MARGE smiles haggardly and shuts off the light, taking the coffee pot with her as she leaves.

NANCY CONTD

MARGE smiles, relieved. The girl pulls the blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes flutter closed, her breathing becomes regular and deep. Once again she’s the litle girl MARGE fantasizes she is.

The mother tiptoes out of the room, closing the door behind her. HOLD ON NANCY’s sleeping face as the DOOR CLOSES. Her eyes remain closed another beat, then open wide.

She quietly jumps out of bed and shakes herself savagely to scatter the sleep settling so quickly.

Still in the dark, she fishes a full electric coffepot from under her bed and pours herself a fresh fix into a mug she digs from beneath her pillow. The face illuminated by the neon light on the pot is set in absolute determination.

NANCY drains the cup, then crosses to her closet, retrieves a pitcher of ice water from behind a heap of clothes and splashes her eyes and the back of her neck. That done she eases open her window and presses her face to the bars, sucking in cool night air until every shred of sleep is gone from her brain.

Then she starts pulling on clothes.

The sky has gathered in greater darkness. LOW, DISTANT THUNDER rolls around the horizon like a great drum.

MRS LANTZ

As the man turns our SHOT WIDENS TO REVEAL MRS LANTZ.

MR LANTZ

The woman spoons more sweetness into her mouth and rubs her forehead.

MRS LANTZ

The woman rises and pulls him gently towards the living room. As he goes inside he takes one last look.

MR LANTZ CONTD

Once the two are inside, the door is locked.

CLOSE ON NANCY’s face. VERY CLOSE. Her eyes stare ahead, red-rimmed, anxious. She picks absently at the thick bandage covering her forearm. The long cuts from Fred Krueger’s fingers are bleeding again, but she doesn’t even care anymore. Too late to sweat the small stuff. She crosses the room.

On the bedside table with the nearly empty Pyrex coffee maker, the empty cup and the empty box of No-Doz, is her old fashioned alarm clock, and a phone.

NANCY pours herself the last of the coffee and drinks it to the dregs, then looks to the clock.

INSERT CLOCK – ten minutes to midnight.

NANCY’S eyes go to the door.

WIDER. Fully clothed and in a jacket now, she creeps to the door and cracks it, just to make sure. Then freezes.

IN NANCY’S POV through the door we see MARGE, rummaging around in the linen closet not fifteen feet away. There’s no way NANCY can get past her. The woman pulls out a full bottle of gin in satisfaction and begins fumbling with its cap.

NANCY eases the door closed again and sinks to the key hole, watching through it with a sinking heart.

NANCY very quiet, very intense

GLEN, coat now on, goes to his window, checking.

GLEN’S POV – NANCY’S porch is deserted; front door closed, lights out. No sign of NANCY.

GLEN shrugs, takes off his jacket and plops back onto his bed.

GLEN

He puts the earphones back on.

Absolutely frustrated, NANCY turns from the keyhole to the window. She opens the blind and eases back the curtain.

IN NANCY’S POV THROUGH THE BARS we ZOOM directly across to GLEN’s window.

GLEN lies on his bed, fully clothed, earphones over his ears, CARSON droning from the TV. And the boy’s eyes begin to droop.

NANCY picks up her phone, bites her lip, then begins dialing.

TIGHT ON PHONE as it begins RINGING loudly.

WIDER SHOT, revealing GLEN asleep BACKGROUND, the MUSIC still LOUD in his earphones.

RINGING here, too, just as MR LANTZ is turning out the lights for bed. He stops in the dark, scowling.

MR LANTZ

He refuses to turn the light back on. His wife picks her way to the telephone.

MRS LANTZ

The father crosses to the telephone, suspicious.

MR LANTZ whispering

MRS LANTZ into phone

She listens, covers up again.

MRS LANTZ CONTD

MR LANTZ grabs the telephone from his wife and barks into it.

MR LANTZ

He SLAMS down the telephone with a grunt of satisfaction to his wife.

MR LANTZ CONTD

Then as a refinement he takes the phone off the hook and lays it on the table.

NANCY dials again. This time she gets a BUSY SIGNAL. She slams the phone down in frustration and looks out the window.

NANCY

She goes and sits on the bed, propping her chin on her fists.

NANCY snatches it up.

NANCY

TIGHT ON HER, ZOOMING EVEN CLOSER ON HER EAR AND THE EARPIECE as we HEAR the awful SCRITCHING SCRAPE of STEEL FINGERKNIVES.

NANCY slaps the phone down as if it were diseased – then, in pure rage, rips the thing’s cord from the wall.

Spent instantly, she puts the receiver back on the cradle and lays it on her bed, chiding herself.

NANCY

She wraps the phone cord around the useless machine and puts it on her bed, then sneaks back to the door. This time she gives an expression of relief, and opens the door. MARGE is gone.

Then the TELEPHONE RINGS again.

CAMERA MOVES IN ON NANCY as she turns slowly.

BACK ON NANCY. She starts to shake. She goes to the telephone as we WIDEN, unwraps it as it RINGS even louder. She’s shaking so hard by now she can barely manage to lift the receiver. MOVE IN CLOSE ON HER, so close we can HEAR her teeth chattering as she brings the phone to her ear.

NANCY CONTD

The unmistakeable VOICE of FRED KRUEGER comes over the phone, garbled by time and unknown dimensions, but clear enough.

KRUEGER FILTER

CLOSE ON THE MOUTHPIECE. It’s changed from a normal telephone mouthpiece to an actual mouth – Fred Krueger’s mouth – and his long, slick tongue flicks out and darts into the startled girl’s mouth!

WIDER – as NANCY explodes from her micro-dream – absolutely mad. She jerks the telephone away from her and smashes it against her wall, then attacks it with her feet and hands, smashing it to smithereens.

She pinches herself hard – until tears come and her flesh is nearly bleeding.

NANCY

She stops, realizing what Krueger meant.

NANCY CONTD

NANCY barrels down the stairs and across the darkened living room to the front door.

It takes her a moment of tugging and fumbling to realize the deadbolt is locked from inside. And there’s no key in it now.

She races to a porch window and throws it open, shaking and banging on the bars like a mad woman. But there’s no getting through. She staggers back, stymied and furious. Then somebody moves behind her in the dark.

VOICE OS

NANCY jumps around in shock. Her mother has posted herself on the couch with her bottle.

NANCY furious

MARGE

The word is final. NANCY runs past the woman to the back door, to one window after the other, shaking bars and slamming locks and SCREAMING in teenage fury. But it’s no good. The house is her prison.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY clenches her fists and screams at the top of her lungs, a heart-wrenching, eardrum-breaking cry of love in despair –

NANCY

CLOSE ON GLEN’S FROM DIRECTLY ABOVE. The MUSIC is tinny from the earphones, the TV SOUND DISTANT AND ECHOED. The boy is breathing deeply now, slowly and gently. Then, unmistakeably, he begins to SNORE. Very faintly, far in the background, we can hear NANCY.

NANCY OS

CAMERA PULLS BACK AND STRAIGHT UP as the SNORES merge with a weird, unsettling MUSIC CUE. The boy lies sprawled, still clothed, in the middle of his bed. Save for the bedside lamp, the room is dark.

There’s a heartbeat’s pause. Then with tremendous force, two powerful arms shoot up beneath the red and yellow bedspread and grab GLEN around the waist!

Next moment the young man’s body is dragged straight down into the bed, as if some huge beast had grabbed him and heaved him down! His feet and his arms shoot up – there’s another hauling yank – and the boy disappears except for his hands and fingers – down into the pit in the middle of the bed! His hands are last to go, clawing for a hold. But soon they vanish as well, dragging blankets and bedsheets, wires and stereo across the caved-in bed and into the abyss.

There’s HIDEOUS SCREECHING of MUSIC jamming in with GLEN’s ECHOING SCREAMS – then an unholy, sudden silence.

Next moment what’s left of GLEN is vomited up from the pit of the nightmare bed...a horrible mess of blood and bone and hair and wires...streaming out and over the bed. Then the pit in the bed is gone as if it were never there.

Drawn by the terribly screams and struggle, GLEN’s mother bursts into the room. The women stares for one moment of horrified disbelief, then reels back and lets out the most god-awful SCREAM imaginable. The cry splits the night.

The SOUND of the SCREAM CROSS-FADES WITH the WAIL of the AMBULANCE as it screeches to a halt at the curb, followed by two BLACK AND WHITES and an UNMARKED CAR. Uniformed POLICEMEN spill out FOREGROUND.

LT THOMPSON and PARKER exit the unmarked car. By habit or by premonition THOMPSON glances at the house that was his home. His eye is caught by a movement; his daughter is at her upstairs window, white-haired, hollow-eyed, looking down on him through her bars. She gives a little wave.

Unnerved, THOMPSON waves back, then walks rapidly for GLEN’s home. MR LANTZ, pale as a ghost himself, waits on the porch; we can hear the mother’s WAILING inside.

CLOSE ON NANCY’S BIG OLD WINDUP ALARM CLOCK. Its big and little hands sweep together at midnight.

There’s a BABBLE of POLICE RADIOS, SIRENS WINDING DOWN, RUNNING FOOT-STEPS, SHOUTS, NEIGHBORHOOD KIDS and DOGS BARKING as CAMERA LIFTS TO NANCY’S FACE. Set. Unafraid. Ruthless.

The girl pulls the window shade on it all, then looks at her bed.

NANCY

PARKER

THOMPSON turns away from the dripping.

LT THOMPSON low

PARKER

THOMPSON nods, crosses and picks up the telephone. SCREEN SPLITS; we see both.

LT THOMPSON CONTD

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY guessing

THOMPSON debates, then admits it.

LT THOMPSON

A tear coarses down NANCY’s cheek, but her voice remains firm.

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

The detective flinches at the name.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY presses, very firm, very rational.

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

PARKER

THOMPSON waves curtly, still speaking to NANCY.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

NANCY hangs up. LT THOMPSON starts upstairs. But then he stops, and as an afterthought he could never really explain, turns to PARKER.

LT THOMPSON CONTD

PARKER

THOMPSON shakes his head, embarassed.

LT THOMPSON

As PARKER exits, ANGLE CUTS TO NANCY’S KITCHEN as the girl hangs up and sinks back agiainst the wall, trapped by her own resolution. She looks at her watch.

LT THOMPSON steps into GLEN’s room, anxious to be done with it. He hits a wall of stench and horror even before he takes it in with his eyes, and as soon as he sees the bed he claps his hand over his mouth, pivots and walks right back into the hallway.

He sags against the wall, unable to look at the COPS who hover there.

COP faint

LT THOMPSON

COP

NANCY pulls tools and hardware out with grim resolution. Hammer, nails, spools of wire, an old square of heavy fishneting, some old shot gun shells, a file – referring only once to the booklet in her hand.

Barely able to control her shaking hands, NANCY starts stringing off the spool of wire across the living room, crying and swearing at the same time.

DISSOLVE TO HER HANDS wrapping bare lamp wire around two thumbtacks stuck into the insides of the pinchers of a common wooden clothespin. The wire goes OFF SCREEN.

ON NANCY carefully filing a hole in a LIGHTBULB.

OH HER pouring powder and shot from shotgun shells into the opening in the bulb until it’s full, then sealing it with tape.

DISSOLVE TO HER screwing the bulb back into the floor lamp, and placing the thing near the foot of the stairs.

SC 174 (DELETE)

– NANCY completes installing a sturdy sliding bolt to the outside of her own bedroom door.

– NANCY screws a hinge into the wall directly above her door. Attached to the hinge is the shank of something – some kind of tool. We can’t see what it is because CAMERA never quite frames the whole thing.

– NANCY tiptoes to her mother’s door and peeks in.

MARGE lies propped in her bed looking back at NANCY. Her drunkeness has been altered by the SIRENS and BABBLE outside into a sort of comatose clarity.

MARGE

NANCY

MARGE

MARGE slides over on her side. NANCY smooths her hair, covers her as she would a child, then exits the room.

DELETE SC 177

The girl enters, turns out her bedside light, slips out of her dress and puts on her nightgown. Then she kneels by her bed.

NANCY quietly

She gets into bed and pulls the blankets to her chin.

CLOSE ON NANCY’s face. She stares straight up at the ceiling for a long moment, then closes her eyes.

LT THOMPSON trudges down the stais and confronts GLEN’S FATHER.

LT THOMPSON

The father stares away, his voice low and dull.

MR LANTZ

THOMPSON looks at the man, baffled.

LT THOMPSON

MR LANTZ

LT THOMPSON

The father gives him the strangest look.

MR LANTZ

LT THOMPSON

MR LANTZ

He blinks.

MR LANTZ CONTD

LT THOMPSON much lower and hard

MR LANTZ

A voice calls down from upstairs.

COP OS

THOMPSON gives MR LANTZ one final look, then heads upstairs.

NOTE: These rewrites of scenes 180 and 180 A replace NANCY walking through the ‘dream streets’ at night, and NANCY approaching the huge deserted building at night, prior to her entering the Boiler Room the final time.

LOW ANGLE UP STAIRS as NANCY appears at head. As she comes downstairs, CAMERA MOVES WITH HER through the hallway to the cellar door. She opens the door.

NANCY appears at top of these stairs, hesitates, then comes down.

WIDER as NANCY approaches center of room, stops in CU, then turns eyes. We HEAR the distant SOUND of the boiler room now, faint but unmistakeable. NANCY MOVES, and CAMERA PANS HER to the cellar’s side WALL, where another, new doorway is REVEALED. NANCY opens this door and looks down. FIRELIGHT is on NANCY’S face now, and the SOUND of the Boiler Room is very clear. NANCY goes through the door.

NANCY decends like Orpheus into hell, but without weapon save her wits.

She decends a steel stair to the lowest level, then hears the SOUND of the knives from down another shaft. She sees there’s an even deeper place down there. She starts down.

Again, and then again, NANCY decends, each ladder narrower or more twisting, each level deeper, wetter, darker, more airless. Soon she’s gasping for air, but still she pushes herself on. She doesn’t stop until she breaks out at last at the very bottom of the place, a wet, firelit sump deep in the bowels of the place.

CAMERA NOW PANS AROUND WITH HER, and for the first time we SEE the vast maul of the empty boiler behind her.

She stares at it. It’s seething with some dark WIND that soughs and whines like a huge dying dog.

NANCY crosses to it, touching the pile of old, coal-dusted dirt at its base. It looks almost like an old grave.

She turns suddenly, listening. Then, hearing nothing, she looks down.

NANCY’S POV as she picks up GLEN’s earphones.

WIDER as she suddenly drops them, staring at her fingers. They’re dripping blood.

There’s another BEEP.

the COUNT-DOWN a blur of black digits counting down to zero. They’ve just crossed the ten minute warning.

She speaks into the night.

NANCY quietly

No sooner are these words off her lips than the huge bulk of FRED KRUEGER lurches up behind her! The man is even more hideous hatless, his bald head and tormented face veiled in skeins of ruined flesh, his ragged teeth barred, the great spider of razor-blades flashing from his fingertips.

He leaps, but the girl leaps just as fast, a fierce jump, that sends her out over black space and down into a huge, dark sump of blackness.

CLOSE ANGLE ON NANCY as she curves like a swan though her apogee, and begins falling, diving, planing through black air, the wind ripping at her hair and eyes. Suddenly the complex, glittering skein of light that is the San Fernando Valley seen from the air slides INTO FRAME, and we see she’s falling from high, high over the earth.

NANCY falls, falls in slow motion against the spinning lights, free as a sky diver freefalling – a giddy, acrophobic plunge.

NANCY crashes suddenly out of the night and into a hedge just outside her own front door, rolling out at its bottom scratched and bloodied. If she were in any normal reality she’d be a mass of broken bones – but somehow she’s able to claw her way up and look at her watch once more.

INSERT. Just a few seconds from zero.

She staggers for her house’s front door – but a moment later KRUEGER crashes down atop her! NANCY struggles to her knees just as the man lunges with that godawful handful of blades. But instead of running, she ducks inside the deadly grab and seizes him in a desperate bearhug!

The surprise move sends him pitching backwards, her still on him –and they fall into the jumble of torn-down trellis of roses beneath her window. Almost at that very second we HEAR the jarring, deafening RINGING of NANCY’s alarm clock!

NANCY sprawls out of her bed onto the floor, twisting from the jabs of the already vanished thorns, briars and brush. Gasping, she takes a second to get her bearings

ANGLE ON THE BED as she recovers quick as she can, snatching up the net, ready for an assault from any direction.

But the room is empty.

Hardly able to catch her breath, her hair tangled, her nightgown torn, she drops the net. She sits on the bed, turns on the bedside lamp and re-examines her room. No one there but herself.

It’s a terrible blow, despite the fact that she’s safe. Her face is covered with tears, she’s shaking and breathless. She rattles her head in confusion and despair, realizing her own madness.

NANCY

At that very instant FRED KRUEGER leaps up from the far side of the bed with an EXPLOSIVE SHOUT of rage!

He lunges across the table for her, missing by inches as NANCY pitches backwards and scrambles for the window. But she’s stopped by the bars.

KRUEGER, incredibly fast, regains his feet and leaps again – the girl wheels and shatters the coffeepot over his head. As he crashes backwards NANCY flings open the door of her room and dives through – only to rebound off someone on the other side –

MARGE, knocked flying by NANCY’S charge, hits the floor hard, knocking the wind out of herself. NANCY sees what she’s done, jumps over the body and slams the door and throws the new bolt home. Next instant she gingerly ties a string to the door’s knob, a string that trails down from the ceiling, attached to something up there that’s still just barely out of sight.

Next instant she’s dragging her MOTHER towards the woman’s bedroom as fast as she can.

KRUEGER is already splintering the doorway behind her as NANCY dips and makes it into MARGE’s room, SLAMMING the DOOR behind her and locking it in a flash.

The MANIAC breaks the bolt and rips open the door.

But the in the very act of doing this he of course unknowingly pulls the string attached to the outside doorknob with terrific force.

CLOSE ANGLE ON THE CEILING. The string jerks against a single-edged razor, which in turn cuts a tight wind of cord holding a heavy wedge of steel to the ceiling.

WIDER as the thing falls free, pivoting at the hinge at the far end of its handle, and drives straight into KRUEGER’S groin with a terrific blow. As he catapaults backwards with an incredulous shriek, the twenty pound sledge hammer swings back and reveals to camera just what it is!

ANGLE DOWN ON KRUEGER, clawwing his way up despite his agony, lurching and cursing forward like an enraged bull.

WIDER ANGLE IN THE HALLWAY as KRUEGER roars out – only to immediately strike the length of WIRE strung across the hallway, catching it just above the thigh. He cartwheels head-over-heels and lands flat on his back!

Instantly the DOOR to NANCY’s MOTHER’s bedroom flies open and NANCY brings a brass lamp down over KRUEGER’s head with all her might! It sounds like a line-drive caroming off a metal flagpole.

NANCY SLAMS the DOOR as KRUEGER struggles up, clutching his head.

Enraged, the huge man CRASHES against the door with terrific force, and rears back and starts smashing against the door like the utter homicidal lunatic that he is.

HIGH ANGLE at the second floor level. NANCY jerks open the window to her MOTHER’s bedroom and jams her face to the bars. The AMBULANCE is pulling away with a tremendous WAIL of its SIREN as NANCY SCREAMS down, trying to make herself heard.

NANCY

PARKER yelling up at her

ANGLE at the window. Close on NANCY’s face, incredulous at his response.

NANCY

PARKER does a little take. That almost sounded sane.

PARKER OS

Then from OUT OF FRAME Marge leaps between the two.

MARGE

She blocks the charge perfectly – blocking the knives. Both she and NANCY are slammed backwards against the bars behind. Drunk though she is, is hanging onto KRUEGER’S weapon hand, keeping the knives inside herself, away from her daughter!

MARGE

But NANCY turns to the window instead, screaming for her father.

NANCY

PARKER, just about to turn back to the business at GLEN’s house, sees NANCY and SOMEONE else fall just inside the window. Something begins to dawn on the man. Just a little.

PARKER

He turns and jogs towards GLEN’s house.

ANGLE ON KRUEGER, hauling MARGE up in rage, knocking her senseless across her bed and climbing after her with his knives raised. NANCY wheels behind him and whams him in the kidneys with her fists, spilling him back off the bed, then running past him for the door. She makes it to safety, then turning back. She flips the monster the bird, her eyes wild with pain and fury.

NANCY

The bait works – KRUEGER leaves MARGE and howls after NANCY.

As NANCY clears the hall and makes the stairs, KRUEGER lurches through the shattered doorway after her.

The girl careens down the stairs, across the room and to the front door, banging against it with terrified fury.

NANCY screaming

Behind her the huge MAN is thumping down the stairs, KNOCKING THINGS OVER, SCRAPING his LONG STEEL FINGERNAILS along the wall with a horrible sound!

NANCY flings a heavy ash tray through the porch window and screams through the bars.

NANCY CONTD

KRUEGER, bloody and spewwing threats, staggers for her – NANCY dives behind the couch.

CLOSE ON KRUEGER’S FEET as they hit another wire.

CLOSE ON the Lifesaver jerking out – the clothespin snapping together, completing the circuit with a CRACKLING SPARK.

WIDER ON THE EXPLOSION that rips out of the floor lamp next to KRUEGER and knocks him sprawling across the room.

NANCY peeks out from behind the couch. The man lies in a smoking heap. NANCY runs to the windows and screams out again.

NANCY CONTD

KRUEGER roars up behind her – she throws herself sideways – he crashes into the window frame, smashing glass and wood to bits.

NANCY turns SCREAMING and runs deeper into the house.

She careens down the stairs, throwing on the lights, the man thundering after her.

ANGLE AT THE FAR END OF THE CELLAR. NANCY brakes at the wall. Nowhere left to hide.

THE SCRAPPING of the blades against brick turns her to see the huge killer holding his knife-laden fingers up for her.

KRUEGER

He staggers backwards with a ROAR of fury, NANCY screaming after him with a box of kitchen matches. Before the man can realize what she’s up to, she ignites the whole box and throws it in KRUEGER’s face.

There’s a blinding WHOOSH – and KRUEGER goes up in a terrific BALL OF FIRE. Faster than a flash the girl runs past the howling maniac and makes for the stairs, KRUEGER after her in full pyrrhic rage.

NANCY holds the heavy door until the precisely right moment. Just as the burning, blind monster tops the stairs, NANCY brings the heavy oak door round with all her might and catches him in a great RINGING CONCUSSION. It sends him windmilling backwards and down the stairs in an ass-over-teakettle sprawl of sparks and flames.

NANCY slams the door and throws the deadbolt home.

No sooner does she accomplish this than the man is SLAMMING again and again against the door from the cellar.

The terrible SCREAMS and CURSES PEAK, THEN GROW WEAKER AND MORE GARBLED. Then there’s just silence.

NANCY staggers, half blind, from the kitchen.

As the room begins seething SMOKE from every pore, we

The CORONER steps out of the bathroom peeling bloody rubber gloves. Pale and sweating.

CORONER

The man shoves out his hand to LT THOMPSON. THOMPSON stares at it without touching it. A long, thin steel blade, razor sharp, attached to some sort of ring and armature – broken off...

The CORONER gives a sweaty, grim smile.

CORONER CONTD

LT THOMPSON has just knocked PARKER sprawling in his race to the stairs.

PARKER

CRASH as NANCY breaks another window and presses against the bars. The house shudders and glows orange behind her. She sees her father bursting out the front door of Glen’s house!

NANCY

LT THOMPSON

NANCY

THOMPSON stares at his wild little girl in astonishment, then runs in after her. The others follow, coughing and choking.

THOMPSON collides with NANCY as she brakes, frozen. THE SMOKE IS BELCHING OUT OF THE CELLAR, but whoever was locked in there certainly isn’t now. The door is flat on the kitchen floor.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY wheels without answering. A series of tiny, isolated fires burn across the living room and up the stairs. Firesteps.

NANCY CONTD

She darts across the living room, following the flaming footprints of FRED KRUEGER up the stairs before THOMPSON can stop her.

LT THOMPSON

NANCY STOPS IN THE SPLINTERED DOORWAY – a ragged gold-red light splashing her horrified face.

By the time LT THOMPSON races into the room NANCY’S seized a heavy blanket has thrown over both of them, fighting the flames. The father joins his daughter without a second thought, heaving another blanket over the bed and smothering the last of the flames.

NANCY

NANCY

PARKER barges in. The room is filled with smoke, the bed is stripped, but other than that, the place seems normal.

PARKER

LT THOMPSON just walks by him. PARKER chases after.

PARKER CONTD OS

WIDER, ON NANCY alone in the room. She turns and looks at the bed. MUSIC slips in and builds. The bed has changed color. It’s now an ash-darkened red and yellow.

Then FRED KRUEGER’s entire shape sweeps up into the yellow and red mass – and the garish head, smoking and seething, pops through.

NEW ANGLE – KRUEGER, a burned, sizzling black hump of a killer, clumps onto the floor between NANCY and the door.

NANCY falls absoltely still, and her face goes through a strange, almost sublime transformation.

NANCY quietly

She turns and faces him.

FREDDIE

NANCY shakes her head.

NANCY

KRUEGER smiles bitterly. Coming closer.

FREDDY

There’s a SLICKERING RATTLE at his side, and he raises the only thing on him not charred – the gleaming steel talons.

NANCY

KRUEGER grins insanely, confused and amused at the same time.

FREDDIE

NANCY even, firm

And then she turns her back on him. KRUEGER bunches his fingers, producing a single ragged bundle of razor talons and raises his hand over the back of her head and neck.

NANCY closes her eyes and steps to the door.

CLOSE ON HER HAND, touching the door knob.

CLOSE ON KRUEGER’S KNIFE-FINGERS poised.

MUSIC BUILDS then SHRIEKS as KRUEGER stabs down, right through NANCY – as if she were an optical illusion – loosing his balance and falling down, down, down... And he’s gone.

CLOSE ON NANCY’S FRONT DOOR AS NANCY jerks it open and blinks in the bright, diffused light. The MUSIC FADES on a transitional note, into light.

We hear BIRDS.

CHILDREN playing.

Early morning SOUNDS.

NANCY to herself

MARGE sticks her head out, squinting, and nods. Sober.

MARGE

NANCY turns and looks her mother over.

NANCY

MARGE

She touches NANCY.

MARGE CONTD

NANCY smiles.

NANCY

The girl gives a wave and goes off. MARGE calls after.

MARGE

NANCY turns and waves.

NANCY

GLEN calling

MARGE laughs

TINA slaps five with NANCY.

TINA

ANGLE INSIDE THE CONVERTIBLE. GLEN slips into the seat next to NANCY. Someone else is driving, it seems. NANCY looks up to the DRIVER. The big MAN turns and grins at NANCY, a terrible, scarred, hideous leer of a grin – FRED KRUEGER’S grin!

ANGLE BACK OUTSIDE THE CONVERTIBLE as its top clamps over the kids within – a bright red and yellow top that closes as fast and hard as a beartrap! NANCY’S frightened face flies to the window, pressing against the thick glass as the car roars away from the curb and into the thick fog.

GIRLS

MUSIC CROSSFADES WITH THIS SONG, expanding the simple tune to symphonic, boundless dimensions as the little girls fade into thin air, and we