"Not all songs are forgotten. Some wait to be sung again."

The morning light outside St. Agnes was golden and strange, painting the trees with false comfort. But inside Alex's chest, something wasn't right. He couldn't shake the feeling that something had followed them back — something quiet, watching, waiting.

They walked in silence through the woods, each of them trying to process what had just happened.

Riley limped slightly. Sarah had blood under her fingernails. Alex carried the weight of a thousand screams inside him.

When they reached the van parked off the logging road, Sarah spoke for the first time since they left the church ruins.

"He's not gone."

Alex looked at her. "I know."

Riley turned. "But we bound him. We saw him get pulled into the pit."

Sarah shook her head, her voice barely a whisper.

"That was only part of him."

✦ ✦ ✦

Later that night, the dreams returned.

But not for Alex.

Sarah was the one who woke up screaming.

She thrashed in her sleeping bag at Willow's cabin, her eyes wide, sweat pouring down her face. Alex reached her first, holding her shoulders.

"Sarah! Wake up—Sarah!"

She gasped awake, tears streaking down her cheeks.

"It was my dad..." she sobbed. "I saw him again. He was in the chapel. Freddy had him... singing in the choir. I—I heard me, too. As a little girl. Singing next to him."

Alex looked at her, something cracking inside him.

"He's using memories," he realized aloud. "He's building something in the dream world with all the souls he's taken. Not just pain — harmony."

Sarah nodded, trembling.

"He's making a choir of the dead."

✦ ✦ ✦

The next day, they visited Mrs. Willow's cottage for answers. But the place was empty. No signs of struggle. Just dust, open books, and one cryptic note carved into her desk:

"Where the children once sang, the veil is thinest."

Riley swallowed hard. "That means St. Dunstan's..."

Alex nodded. "The abandoned music school. We used to pass it on the way to Crimson Creek. It's been shut down for decades."

"And it had a choir," Sarah said. "Before... the fire."

Before Freddy.

They arrived at St. Dunstan's Conservatory just after sunset.

A massive brick building with ivy-covered spires and broken windows. The wind moaned through the doors like a haunted cello. Every step inside felt like stepping into a forgotten dream.

The hallways echoed with silence.

Riley pointed out old posters on the wall:

SPRING RECITAL - MARCH 15th, 1983

Special Guest Conductor: Frederick K. Reuger

Sarah froze. "That's him. That's when he started. He wasn't just killing. He was conditioning."

They reached the auditorium.

Rows of torn red seats, a grand piano covered in dust, and above the stage — an organ of impossible size, its pipes twisted like bone.

Sarah stepped forward. "I used to dream about this place. I thought it was made up."

She wasn't alone.

Dozens of children — translucent, ghostly — sat silently in the pews.

And then the choir began.

"One... two... Freddy's coming for you..."

The ghostly voices layered, harmonized, twisting the old rhyme into a choral nightmare. Every verse was drenched in pain. It was beautiful — and horrific.

"Three... four... better lock your door..."

Alex fell to his knees.

He saw them.

Children Freddy had taken. Some smiling. Some weeping. All of them trapped in a dream they couldn't wake from.

From the wings of the stage, Freddy emerged.

No top hat this time.

A conductor's tuxedo. Gloved claw replaced by a baton made of fingerbones.

He bowed.

"Welcome to the crescendo."

The walls collapsed inward.

Reality folded.

And the three friends were pulled into the Final Dream.

The concert hall was reborn in shadow.

Stained-glass windows poured crimson light. The pipe organ played itself — shrieking in a twisted harmony. The children rose from their seats, mouths moving, eyes blank.

And Freddy raised his baton.

"Let the requiem begin."

Sarah tried to run to her father — saw his spirit in the front row, singing, barely conscious.

But chains wrapped around her ankles, yanking her backward.

"NO!"

Riley was swept into the air by invisible strings — his limbs twisted like a marionette.

Alex stood alone at the center of the stage.

Freddy pointed the baton at him.

"You want to save them? Then take their place. Sing, Alex. Sing and suffer."

Alex clenched his fists.

And began to sing.

The rhyme turned against him.

Every word he spoke drained him — his memories, his energy, his soul.

"One, two..."

He saw flashes.

His mother's death.

His first nightmare.

The day he learned to lock the door.

"Three, four..."

Sarah's laugh. Riley's jokes. The warmth of hope — being torn away.

Freddy fed off it all.

"Five, six—"

And then—something changed.

A second voice joined the song.

Sarah.

Then Riley.

Despite the pain.

Despite the fear.

They sang with him.

And the choir faltered.

Freddy turned.

"STOP. THIS. IS MY SONG!"

But the music grew.

Because it wasn't Freddy's anymore.

It was theirs.

Alex stepped forward, hands glowing.

"You don't own our dreams."

Sarah followed.

"You don't own our memories."

Riley, limping, raised his voice. "And you'll never own our voices."

They held hands.

And sang the final line together.

"Never sleep again."

The organ exploded.

The choir was silenced.

Freddy screamed — a sound like metal and fire.

The spirits of the children were released, floating upward in beams of golden light, including—

Sarah's father.

He smiled at her.

Tears streamed down her face.

"I forgive you," he mouthed.

Then he was gone.

Peacefully.

Finally.

Freddy tried to rise — melted, weakened.

"You... can't end me... I'm eternal..."

Alex stood over him.

"You were fear. But we're more than that now."

And with a single breath, Alex whispered the final line of the counter-rhyme Willow had taught him.

"Light wakes all things."

Freddy's scream was the sound of a world unmaking itself.

And then:

Silence.

When they awoke, the sun was rising.

The conservatory was still. Quiet. Clean, somehow.

Riley sat on the steps outside, arms around his knees.

Sarah stared at the rising sun, the weight of years falling from her shoulders.

Alex remained silent, walking into the morning light like someone who had earned it.

He looked back once.

Just once.

And smiled.

Not because it was over.

But because he knew what was next.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next: Chapter 15 - "The Elm Street Covenant"
(An ancient pact. A final trial. And the last echo of evil.)