It does always looks smaller when you go back, thought Nancy Thompson, as she looked upon the dilapidated house on 1428 Elm Street. Her childhood home. Or, more accurately, the place that became her home at the age of thirteen. What an unlucky number. It was not as if the years that followed were any luckier.

She remembers the angry phone conversations…when her father Donald discovered that they were moving into that house. He threatened to stop alimony payments. Nancy's mother, Marge, did not care. Her father just died, and she had just come into an inheritance. It paid for the house. Nancy remembers her mother saying, as she smoked on yet another cigarette: Your father will just have to deal with it. Nancy's father sure tried to deal with it. On moving day, Donald went so far as to putting the boxes back in the loading truck. She remembers how they argued bitterly on the front lawn. It was the first day that Nancy laid eyes on Glen, her neighbor across the street. Nancy felt embarrassed as it was—an awkward young girl with braces and frizzy hair. Now her parents were fighting for the entire neighborhood to see.

Years later, Nancy would discover the reason why her father was so angry. It was his house—Freddy Krueger. That is, before the town mob burned him to death. Before anybody knew of Freddy Krueger's crimes, it was just another family residence. Krueger had lived there with his wife and daughter…a seemingly normal family. More like the perfect cover. His wife's sudden disappearance drew skepticism from the authorities, and propelled the investigation into his child-killing crimes. Nancy never learned what happened to Freddy's daughter. She must have been sent to relatives. Anybody would have been better than Krueger.

On the night when she confronted Freddy for the final time, Marge said in her drunken state: "I think we brought him back, Nancy, by moving into this damn house." Nancy made the sheets tighter on her mother's bed. Her mother reeked of vodka. Nancy hoped that her mother would not dream. As she locked her mother's door, Nancy recalled the first night that they spent in the house. Nancy remembers lying in her bed, and seeing a ghoulish figure walk from one side of her room to the other. It was drifting in and out of sight…as if it was trying to materialize. Nancy remembers the flashes of the figure's face…it was Freddy Krueger…only she would not know his existence until later. She had only had the dream that one night, and forgot all about it. When Glen was killed, Nancy started remembering that encounter. Was her mother right? Did they bring Freddy back by moving into that house? Did they give him the strength to return in the dream world?

He was stronger that anyone she ever encountered. Nancy was furious when she looked upon the bed that her mother's charred body disappeared into. She stood there and waited until Freddy began rising from the bed like a ghost. Nancy did what Glen said—and turned her back on Freddy—to rob him of his power. When Freddy disintegrated, Nancy entered into a blissful state where her mother was still alive, and her friends were waiting for her. It was a trick, though. Nancy did not know that she was still dreaming. She was imprisoned in that shiny, beautiful car that Glen was driving. As it sped down the street, Nancy could hear her mother's painful screams. She turned to look at her friends in the car, and they were in their murdered states: Rod was blue with strangulation marks; Tina was wrapped in a bloody body bag; Glen was stirring the car with his entrails sticking out, and his entire body covered with blood. Nancy was so panicked that she grabbed the wheel, and crashed the car into the nearest tree. That was when she woke up in the sanitarium. Apparently, Nancy was brought there when she passed out from smoke inhalation and continued to be in hysterics.

And so began the bitter relationship between Nancy and her father. He lied about everything. He said that Marge had accidentally burned herself to death with a lighted cigarette. He claimed that Nancy went insane when she learned about her boyfriend's death. The broken windows were Nancy's way of getting out of the house to see Glen's dead body. Everything had a simple, logical explanation. Despite hating her father, Nancy felt that he did some things right: (1.) the sanitarium was outside of Springwood in Columbus, (2.) she was prescribed Hypnocil, a dream suppressant. It did not make the Freddy Krueger problem go away, but at least it gave Nancy some time to regroup. She did not major in clinical psychology and sleep disorders on a whim, after all. As for her father, Nancy knew that he knew the truth. Shortly after her mother's death, Donald divorced from his second wife. He began drinking more than usual. The straightforward man that Nancy once knew was now in shambles. Their communication was limited to tuition talk and other expenses. Donald did not ask questions about Nancy's studies, for he knew what she was preparing for. Or at least that was what Nancy suspected.

As she looks at the boarded windows and dead grass, Nancy wished that the house would just be torn down. There was a family--the Walshes--that moved in after hers. They moved out a year ago after losing their son Jesse in a bus accident. The bus swerved to avoid some schoolchildren, and flipped on its side. Jesse had suffered severe injuries, among them a concussion. He spent days in the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, before dying in his sleep. Other teenagers that were injured in the bus accident suffered the same fate, including Jesse's girlfriend Lisa. It was just an accident, right? That is what Nancy tried to tell herself at first, until learning about the other deaths that occurred shortly before. A coach was slashed to death. Same thing with a high school student that was Jesse's friend. A party filled with kids that died in freakish ways. Nancy sympathized with Jesse. She knew that he died at Freddy's hands. That was why she left behind her journal. Just in case she did not survive, at least the next person would know what to do. Nancy hoped that Jesse had some battling tools.

Nancy starts at Westin Hills tomorrow. This little trip was a reminder of what she has to do. Eventually, her glove will come off and the Hypnocil will be flushed down the sink. The dawn of the dream warriors. Huh, dream warriors, thought Nancy, that sounds like a band name. When she turned on her car, Nancy looked at Glen's house. A new family lived there. His parents' fate was a mystery. I'm doing this for you, Glen. I haven't forgotten what he did to you. To all of us. I'm doing this for you too, Rod and Tina. For you too, mother. I'm so sorry that I didn't do more to protect you. As she drove off into that autumn evening, Nancy did not know that something stirred within 1428 Elm Street. The evil inside the house sensed a long-lost foe.