Her blood went cold. She hadn’t seen. She was four. But there was a fire that night—not the one that killed Freddy, but the one at the old Thompson house. And a little girl with pigtails had watched from her window as a man in a striped sweater led a boy into a van.

Jenna’s phone lay on the nightstand. The screen flickered, then displayed a single line of text:

She had. Every Friday the 13th marathon. Freddy Krueger. The burned face. The glove. The dream murders. But this wasn’t a movie. This was her childhood street—Elm Street—where she’d moved away from at ten. And she’d been having the same dream for six nights: a boiler room, a red and green sweater, and a voice asking her to count .

“How many what?” she whispered.

Then the scratching started. Slow. Rhythmic. Like a single claw dragging across the inside of her door.

Then her phone buzzed again.

Jenna woke with a jolt, the name Freddy stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Her clock read 3:33 AM. The air in her dorm room was wrong—too cold, smelling of smoke and old leaves. Her roommate, Chloe, was gone. The bed was made, untouched.