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Charlotte was hunkered in the back of a closet.
They’d had this recurring dream for a while — someone had broken into their home, and they could do nothing but hide and hope the intruder never found them. Every time, they’d wake up before the intruder reached the closest.
They’d been hiding in the closet for some time now. Certain that the intruder would be getting close now, Charlotte slowly shuffled along the balls of their feet to the back of the closet, hunching down as low as they could to disappear behind the storage boxes and the coats dangling from hangers. They breathed shallowly, nerves tingling, listening for the soft tread of the intruder’s boots on the carpet lining the hallway outside of the closet.
The intruder didn’t speak — he never did. (Somehow, Charlotte always knew it was a man, even though they never saw him in the flesh.) Indeed, he was usually completely silent, but now the usual pattern of the dream changed: there was a scraping noise against the wall outside the closet, like an animal with long talons digging its claws into the drywall, questing to dig Charlotte out of their proverbial hole.
Charlotte gasped and pressed a hand over their mouth. The scraping stopped. They swallowed. The footsteps receded a few feet. Was he about to start searching for them somewhere else?
Another scuffle of receding footsteps. Charlotte lowered their hand from their mouth. They leaned forward an inch, trying to listen for where the intruder had gone.
The doorknob shook and rattled. Charlotte flailed away from the door and slammed into the back of the closet, their wheeling arms making the hangers clang together, sending several coats flying.
Charlotte clamped their hands back over their mouth, curling in on themself, practically lying now at the bottom of the closet amongst the debris of hangers and musty brown coats.
The doorknob rattled again, and they whimpered. What could he want with them? He could steal anything he wanted — Charlotte would make no attempt to stop him. None of their possessions were worth more than their life. If he wanted some kind of information, they’d hand that over too — make it up, even, if they had to.
The rattling stopped, and the door was flung open hard, banging against the wall behind the closet. Charlotte lifted their head above the crumpled outline of the coats and glanced up to see a man standing in the doorframe, silhouetted by the dim light coming from the hall beyond. From where Charlotte sat in the corner, the features of his face were difficult to distinguish, but theyould see that he was a lean man who wore a tilted fedora. His posture was uneven, and as their eyes traveled the lines of his body, they saw the implement that weighed down his right hand – a strange, claw-like contraption.
“Well, well, what’ve we got here?” The man tilted his head to the side and took a step closer, kicking the storage boxes out of the way.
Charlotte was frozen in place, a rabbit lying down in the jaws of a waiting predator.
But when he raised his clawed hand, that suddenly seemed to give Charlotte’s body permission to move. In one motion, they snatched up one of the wire coat hangers in their hands, the cold metal digging into their hot, sweat-slicked palms. Rising up on their knees, they swiped the pointed end of the hanger at the man’s abdomen. It uselessly sliced at the air, not even making contact with the fabric of the man’s sweater.
He snorted derisively.
“Fucking pathetic.”
He smacked the hanger out of the way with his gloved hand, producing the sound of metal slashing against metal.
Charlotte winced, shuffled back, retreating to the back of the closet, now unprotected even by the flimsy barrier of cardboard boxes.
“Now, let’s take a closer look at you,” the man said, a sneer in his voice.
He leaned down and, with ease, grabbed Charlotte by the shirt collar with his ungloved hand, hauling them to their feet and up into the air.
Charlotte’s vocal cords were paralyzed, too frightened to even whimper or plead.
“What’s wrong? Don’t have anything to say for yourself?” The man raised his gloved hand and touched their bottom lip with the tip of a blade. The touch made their lower lip tense.
They inhaled, and their vocal cords finally loosened. “P-please – “
“Oh, so it can talk!” He laughed, harsh and grating.
“Look, whatever you want, you can have it.” Charlotte grasped at the hand holding them up. “I don’t care. You can steal anything. I won’t call the cops, I won’t tell anyone about this.”
The man snorted. “You think that’s why I’m here? To rob you? And here I was thinking you had some brains in that head of yours. Turns out, you’re just a dumb bitch.”
“Then why – “
The man stepped back and swiftly yanked them out of the closet and into the hallway. He pulled Charlotte closer to his face, so close that their noses nearly touched. Charlotte exhaled raggedly, and when they breathed in, they took in the scent of him — ash and oil and leather and smoke, and something else burning beneath it all.
“You know why I’m here. Take a real close look at me. Even you aren’t too stupid to get it once you do.”
Now that he had relocated them to the lighted hallway, Charlotte could see his face more clearly. All of the visible skin, from his forehead to his neck – as well as the hand that still held Charlotte up – was covered in a raised texture of shiny, red scars. They blinked and squinted, focusing on the features beyond the burnt flesh. Their gaze tracked over his cold, blue eyes, the prominent, harp nose, the narrow face, and the thin, smirking mouth.
Then, it slipped into place. They’d lingered on those features for hours, studying microfiche and blurry, black-and-white scanned documents that lurked in the depths of archived internet forums that no longer existed.
“Freddy? But – “
It makes sense, their mind finished for them. They’d spent the past few months poring over any information they could find about this dead serial killer in an effort to write some investigative articles on the town’s past, so why wouldn’t they dream about him at some point? The only surprising thing was that it had taken this long to have a dream about him.
“Ah, finally, the penny drops.” And with that, he let go of Charlotte, and they fell to the floor. Hard. Charlotte yelped and scooted away from him, placing their back against the wall.
Now was the best time to try and run away, but they had a feeling he’d like that, so Charlotte stayed put.
Freddy placed his hands on his hips and grinned, scarred skin pulling tight with the expression.
“Now, ain’t that a pretty sight? You at my feet. I could think of a few ways this could go — “
Charlotte’s stomach dropped at the clear threat. If they wanted to get out of this, they needed to keep him talking. If he was talking, he wasn’t killing.
“So, what is it you exactly wanted to talk to me about? It-it isn’t common for the subject of research to approach a journalist in this sort of way,” they said, laughing nervously.
“I don’t exactly do things by the book. But you already knew that, didn’tcha?” His lips slipped down over his sharp, crooked teeth, and he leaned down to look Charlotte in the eye.
“This little chat is about two things.” He held up two bladed fingers. The metal clinked together. “First, I truly want to thank you for diggin’ up my little ‘crimes.’ Here I was thinking everyone had forgotten about poor old Freddy.”
He placed his other hand on his chest and momentarily looked somber.
“But — “ he lowered his hand and placed his gloved hand on his knee. Freddy narrowed his eyes at Charlotte. “What I can’t have is you nosing around into the rest of my past. That might give a little too much information to people who might want to keep me from having my fun.”
Charlotte drew their knees up to their chest. They looked at him from the corner of their eye. “What would you do to me if I keep looking into your background and childhood?”
Something dark flashed through Freddy’s eyes at that question.
“I’d do whatever the fuck I wanted to you.”
In less than a second, he was gone and Charlotte wasn’t being sitting on the carpeted hallway. They were back on their feet, but they didn’t stand on solid ground. Instead, the ground felt uneven and … sticky.
They looked up and down, expecting to see another section of the house, but saw nothing surrounding them. “Nothing” was the only way Charlotte could describe the darkness surrounding them.
Even in a cave, there were variations in the darkness, a blotch of blackness that was a shade darker than another blotch. Caves also had fluctuations in temperature and humidity, but the only thing Charlotte could sense was the ground and its texture. Charlotte tried to take a step, but found that they were stuck fast. They lowered their foot, and it sank further into the goop. Oh God.
What had they learned about quicksand? Was that what was this was? Struggling would probably make things worse. Better to … to what?
They wildly looked around themself again, but there was still nothing surrounding them besides an endless void. They couldn’t grab onto anything to pull themself out.
The wet muck was now coating the bottom of their pants, seeping through, and coating their skin.
“People in your profession are sometimes called muckrakers, so I thought you might feel at home in this environment.”
Freddy’s voice came from somewhere behind them.
Charlotte startled, and the heat of his body followed the sound of his voice a moment later. The cold, slick texture of the goo was gone, and now they stood on a firm surface. Taking the risk of glancing down, Charlotte saw that they now stood on the grating of a catwalk. Below, there was a maze of concrete and pipes, half obscured by clouds of steam.
“I really can do anything I want to ya,” he said. Charlotte’s throat tightened, and they shuddered. The tip of his nose grazed against the side of their neck. The points of his claws dragged across their waist, and he pressed even closer. “Anything.”
Charlotte closed their eyes. Shivered again. “It doesn’t matter if I listen to what you say. This is just some fucked up dream.”
A soft, mocking laugh next to their ear. “C’mon. Stop tryin’ to fool yourself. You know this isn’t just some fucked up dream your brain cooked up, although I’m certain you’re capable of that all on your own — “
Charlotte stiffened.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. I know everything you think about. All the filthy shit you hide deep down inside.”
The base of their spine tingled, but they didn’t know if it was from nerves or something else.
“I know exactly what you were thinking when you saw that jailhouse photo of me. I had a couple of little groupies write to me for a few weeks, but something tells me their perverted fantasies had nothing on what you would’ve written to me if you were around back then.”
Charlotte curled their hands into fists. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not like — “
He pressed up against them again, his groin brushing against their ass.
“I know a lot more than you think I do. Another thing I know is that you and I could have some real fun together … “
His warm breath tickled the shell of their ear, and they felt the wet swipe of his tongue against their cheek.
Charlotte froze again. They should have jerked away. But they didn’t. They should —
Dimly, halfway beyond their awareness, there was a high-pitched beeping noise.
“Always cockblocked by that damn alarm clock,” Freddy said, but his voice was already receding, muffled as if underwater.
He passed his claws over Charlotte’s hips, and Charlotte barely felt the sensation. They could feel themself floating toward the surface of the waking world, but before they did, they heard his voice murmur, “You’d better play it smart and think about what I told you. If you make the right choice, I can see a real bright future for you n’ me, Charlotte … “
Charlotte jolted awake. They felt strange and heavy, and when they lifted their sleep shirt, they saw four red, raised welts along the skin of their hip.
A threat.
A reminder.
A promise.