Memories of A Nightmare

This story is based in a real incident. Names and places were changed to protect the innocents.

Memories of A Nightmare
By J.V. Rosario

Chapter 1 - Halloween Night

Time past and we felt as if Lacombe had left us stranded, she

was supposed to take us trick-or-treating that Halloween night.
The nine of us were dressed in our respected Halloween
costumes. We were into the macabre in those days, other than
my sister who dressed as Dorothy, all of us were sprayed with
fake blood and fake sharp objects piercing our frail bodies. My
best friend Nelson wore the white mask of the movie Screen
guy. While I was a bad imitation of Freddy Kruger, I hated the
plastic mask so I put paint over my face in trying to look like
the Nightmare in Elms Street character. My other friends were
as grisly as we were, now that I think about it, we were bad
imitations of the horror flicks of the time.

We were pissed at Lacombe, she was the oldest sister of the

corner lot family, and of all of us she was the only one that
could drive. Us, guys, depended on a seventeen-year-old fat
girl that thought that she was hot. But, when you are thirteen -
- almost fourteen -- to get out of your house you attach yourself
to the devil.

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“She’s here,” my sister shouted at the bunch waiting in the

garage.

“Shit . . . about time,” Nelson said.

Lacombe drove a bright blue, with white stripe lines, El Camino

-- a half car, half a truck thing, which she inherited from her
bold head Dad. She and her two sisters made us a group of
twelve teenagers, trick or treating around town on an El
Camino truck. The nine of us got on a tie squeeze on the truck
bed and inside the cockpit, and headed to do the Halloween
thing in the many subdivisions that our hometown produced.

We went where everyone went at first. A parade of goblins,

witches, mummies and vampires line up with use in front of
every house door that will give us candy. The competition was
fearless; the cute young kids with their Disney’s costumes were
preferred by the candy givers. Nelson egged three houses,
because their owners refused to give us candy, they said that
we were too old to be trick or treating that night. So, after
ransacking all the small subdivisions near downtown, we
decided to move into the large subdivisions placed on the town
outscores. We were going to target more than a hundred
homes, where many of our classmates lived at the time.

“Let’s go to Hunters’ Creek,” Lacombe shouted over the loud

music playing in the radio.

“Yeah,” a unison voice of affirmation answered her.

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Lacombe made a U-turn in the middle of downtown Main

Street; it felt as if we were going to be rejected out the truck
bed.

“Gee, shit,” Tito, the son of the only dentist in town, shouted as
he pulls out a brown bag from his long black trench coat. A
small Bacardi bottle came out of the bag. “Nelson,” Tito made a
gesture offering a swig to my best friend.

“Where did you get that shit?” Nelson asked.

“My Step Dad’s, the old fart thinks that we don’t know where
he kept it,” said Tito.

The bottle went around the truck bed, everyone took a drink,
and even Lacombe and her sisters drank from the container.
This was my first time, the liquid burned my throat as it went
down it, and I was as having a severe heart burn in my
esophagus.

The road to mega-subdivision was as dark as my

grandmother’s closet. Pitch black was an understatement!
During the day the road was beautiful, two lines of mango trees
in each side of the path covered the asphalted road, when in
bloom the mango flowers that felt on the ground made the
place looked as if has a pink carpet. However, when at night, it
was as dark and gloomy as an outlandish trip to Transylvania.

As boys, Nelson and my buddies tried to show some gallantry

in front the girls that accompanied us that night, the girls that
came with us that night were all related to my buddies, the
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sisters to be specific. I had something for Nelson’s sister,

Wendy. She was her fraternal twin, but she was as different
from him as I was to my younger sister. The road we were
traveling has some eminence and it was not a pretty one, it was
the corner choice for people that wanted to take their lives.
And some months ago, it was the scene of a mafia style, double
murder. Someone set a car on fire with two bodies inside the
trunk. All that history and the fact that it was Halloween made
the girls to embrace of with their heat.

Nelson was the best in everything, the star quarterback of the

Junior Varsity team, and the top scorer of the Middle School
basketball team. All the best looking girls were after him, but
he has his eyes on Anna Parish, the girl that was sitting next to
him that night. They were French kissing in front of all of us,
while Wendy and I were afraid of what he will say if we make a
move.

And as the Bacardi bottle moved in its second round around

the El Camino truck bed, without knowing it we trek into the
strangest night of our life. However, we were care free; we
were young daring and audacious to everything.

Lacombe drove her El Camino through the mango trees’ road.

The long patch of tree leaves was almost invisible to the eye.
The darkness masked the woods in both sides of the narrow
road. Lacombe drove as fast as she could through long way.
But out nowhere she broke the silent, the fat girl shouted from
the truck cockpit, “Hey, guys, look what I can do . . .” She slowed
down the truck and then turned off its headlights.
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Memories of A Nightmare

“What -ta-f . . . you’re doing?” a voice came from the back; I still
don’t know who this person was. However, the rest of the gang
cheered the prank.

Lacombe turned the lights on, and said, “Wow, that was dark, I
couldn’t see my hands!” Then, she did it again; she turned off
El Camino headlights. Screens came out of the back of the
truck, the same voice that I still don’t recognize, said, “F . . . king
fat bitch! Don’t do that . . . “

Lacombe turned back on the lights; she hurt the boy’s voice
and responded, “What did the idiot say?”

“What’s that . . .” my sister said, she was sitting in front with the
sisters, so she got a good look too whatever it was there.

“What did you say?” Karen, Lacombe sister, asked.

“There . . .”

“Where,” they all said at once.

“There . . .”

Lacombe stopped the truck in the middle of the patch; we, in

the back, weren’t aware of what was going on. “Why she’s
stopping?” Nelson said to me. I was sitting next to the driver
window.

“What’s going on?” I asked Lacombe.

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“There is something on the trees . . . there” she said as she

pointed outside the car with her left hand.

There it was a grayish color animal of a kind, with wings and

flecks all over its body, with big red eyes and two large fangs
coming out of its mouth. Its tale moved from side to side, like a
lizard’s tale, as its wings were similar to a bat’s.

“That looks like a gargoyle,” my sister murmured to herself.

The animal jumped in a big leap from one tree to another, as if

it wanted to move away from us. “Let’s fallow it,” Lacombe
screeched very excited about the discovery they have made.
She flicked the vehicle’s headlights to its high beans and began
to fallow the thing.

Nelson and I stood up in the back of the truck so did the others,
we could see the animal leaping from one tree to another, all
that while Lacombe slowly fallows it.

Then someone shouted, “come and get us, bitch . . .” And as if it

knew what was said, the animal turned to look at us, and with
one leap it landed on the front part of the El Camino, it was
bigger than a regular man, with a thick fiber muscle frame for a
body. The thing moved forward with the quickness of a
wrestler, grabbing Nelson’s head with one hand. Its claws
squeezed Nelson’s head so hard that it broke between his
fingers, beheading him in an instant; his brains were spread all
over our faces and clothes.

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We stood still facing the animal in dismay as it killed my best

friend with one hand. It looked at us and then smiled as if it
was joking with us and with what was left of Nelson’s head.
Then it leaped away from the El Camino, and as this occurred,
we all screened in a unison expression of horror.

We didn’t see it again; Lacombe drove us back, as fast she

could, to her house, while we carried backs what was left from
Nelson. He was the only casualty of that horrible incident. He
didn’t deserve to be killed that way; he became the blemish toy
of the strange creature that visited us that night.

When we tried to explain what, happened to us that evening,

no one believed us. We found ourselves under an
investigation, but Nelson’s body saved us from being thrown in
jail for the rest of our young life. The autopsy proofed that
there not force on earth that can damage a young man like that.
But that didn’t matter, many of our friends stopped talking to
us, we were guilty in their eyes. Tito became the first casualty;
the peer pressure destroyed him, his family moved to Orlando,
Florida. Some said that his parents couldn’t take the talking
behind their back, and the finger pointing.

Lacombe’s father died of Cancer a year after, so the oldest

daughter sold their corner lot and moved to the capital.
Wendy wasn’t the same after what happened, she began to
have doubted our story, her father brainwashed her. Nelson’s
death destroyed them, one day they were there and the next
day they weren’t. As little by little, the others did.

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Of all of the people involved in the strange incident, I was the

only one that stayed in town. I became a school teacher, got
married and have two kids. I later bought the corner lot,
where the Lacombe family once lived. As for what happened
twenty years ago, every day in and out, I see someone behind
me pointing at me. However, things are a lot better than what
they were in the beginning. Sometime, I drive my car through
the mango trees’ road and nothing has happened through it
since that Halloween Night.

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Chapter 2 - After Nelson’s Death

Nelson, my best friend, got killed by something unknown to us.

As we drove back to our subdivision we were horrified by the
headless body that lay on the truck bed right there by our feet.
We cried out all the way back home, no of us wanted to look or
dared to touch his inanimate corpse.

Tilley’s feet were under his legs and she tried her hardest not
to feel it. “Please,” cried out. “Let’s dumping it over, I don’t
want to touch him.”

“NO,” I shouted at her and the others. “Don’t you touch him.”

“Why not, you dump-ass . . .” Barry shouted back at me.

“Fuckin’ asshole,” I shouted back at the guy. “He is my friend

and don’t you there put a finger on him.

“Was your friend and my too,” Tito said, “He was, past, Isaac,
past, he is not longer there, he is dead.”

“Shut up!” My sister and I shouted at the same time.

“None of you are going to put a hand on him,” Walt shouted at

the people arguing for Nelson’s body. He was the biggest boy in
my grade, and when he had something to say everyone
listened.

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Memories of A Nightmare

Lacombe put us in less than ten minutes in from of her house;

she came out of the truck flying and screaming for her dad,
telling our story in a one quick sentence.

As we dismounted the truck and everyone began to notice that

we were all covered in blood, Nelson’s blood. At first we didn’t
know it this was real. It was Halloween and we were so deep in
the macabre that we couldn’t see the difference. But this time it
was not fake Nelson’s blood and brains splattered over all of
us.

Tito had a big chunk of his brains on his t-shirt that he cut to
make a Halloween costume. The whole head was missing, the
gargoyle grad Nelson’s head with one hand and ripped it away
front the body. Lacombe’s father called the police after he saw
the body. He looked at all of us as if he wanted to figure out
who the body belongs too. Some of the girls were splattered on
the face with the red fluid, there tears washed out their face
missing the blood with the Halloween face make-up.

And that was the beginning of all our troubles. Nelson’s old
man was the first one to question the death of his child; he
didn’t believe our story. But who could blame him; our story
was so far out there that at times I could not believe it
myself. Life got a grid on us from that moment on. Nelson was
his only child, and if you could see the painful face that man
mad when he saw his boy’s body lying on the truck bed, you
will feel his pain in your own heart . . .

Mr. Lacombe was a man of few words he didn’t ask any

questions to us or to this daughters and nor he tried to listen to
any of our volunteering stories. He called all our parents first.
Then the police and he got the job to tell Nelson’s parents what
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had happened. The man didn’t take his son’s death well; he
began to scream and will roll over the paved road. It was a
pitiful side to see: this man pain was disheartens, as he
screams he looks at us me mere responsible for Nelson’s death.

“Whyyyyyyyyy . . . why, why?” Mr. Otis screamed out to his

maker. Mr. and Mrs. Lacombe tried to help him to stand up
from the paved street but nothing helped to alleviate the man’s
pain.

The nine of us were taken to the police headquarters, and we

were moved to different rooms onside the two story building.
At first I guessed that we told our story to everyone that asked
us about what happened on the mango trees road. But as we
told our story it sounded more and more incredible. Who was
going to believe is that a gargoyle attached us and then killed
Nelson.

We were interview for four hours in a room with mirrors

around the small room. But, it got more and more confusing for
the investigators and as they interrogated their frustration
level rose. The strange case had them struggling with what
they assumed and with the fact on the ground. None of us told
anything different, our stories were the same and the
evidences they found on the crime scene took us out of the
equation.

After month and month the investigation from the police,

nothing happened to us. It was as if we were in the middle of a
Circus with the media following us. Someone leaked our story
to the newspapers and we were persecuted by the scumbags
for months.

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Memories of A Nightmare

Tito and his family were the first in leaving town; someone said
that he lost his marvels, or that the poor boy had a nervous
breakdown. His parents told my mother that Tito couldn’t
sleep anymore that he was afraid that the creature will
comeback for him. He slept under the bed or inside his closet
and at time in his bathroom tub.

On the other hand Tilly spent months crying for Nelson, she
then stopped coming to school. My sister alleged that she saw
her at Church during Sunday mass, that there were band-aids
around her wrists. People in town whispered that she tried to
kill herself.

Lacombe’s father died three months later some people at the

funeral told my parents that all the pressure of the
investigation put too much stress on the man. The family
moved to the Capitol soon after his burial was over.

One by one my friends faded away from town, I was the only
one that staid.

This is a true story, names and places were changed to protect

the innocence.

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Memories of A Nightmare

Chapter 3 - The Chair

My brother and I slept in the same room for about two years
while my oldest brother, Michael, was getting ready to move
out of the house. John couldn’t wait for Michael to move out;
he had the best room of the house. Its two front windows gave
the room an excellent view the Millard St, and Nelsen’s house.
Michael and John spent hours in the surveillance of Mary Otis,
Nelson’s older sister. They could watch her from the Michael’s
room moving in her front lawn as she sunbathed in her blue
jean short and her biking top.

Yes, it was the best room in the house and Mary Otis knew it
well. The girl exposed herself to my brothers in many
occasions. And to be honest, my first wet dream came to pass
dreaming about her boobies one night. I woke up in the middle
of the night with a white milky guck inside my pajamas
buttons. I was only twelve then and my thoughts were already
put in motion by her.

I needed to change my boxers, but I didn’t want to do it in front

of my stupid brother. That would give him an excuse to make
fun of me the entire summer. So I took a pair boxers from my
dresser and sneaked out of the room to the hall bathroom right
in front of our bedroom door.

As I sneaked out of my room I looked to the living room, where

my father’s favorite chair sat facing the TV. Then I saw it,
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Memories of A Nightmare

something was sitting on his chair. But I was half-awake-half-

asleep then and for some reason I dismissed the thing that I sat
on father’s recliner. I went inside the bathroom ignoring what
was going on in the living room.

I bring up the toilet seat and leaked inside the bow as I

dropped my undies to the floor, the realizing of the urine its
one of man most relaxing moment of the day. When finished I
put the gooey underwear inside the hamper, and pulled the
new once up. Inside the bathroom I kept the light off, I didn’t
want to call the attention of my mother or my father to that
matter. They were the kind of parents that would never
understand the needs of a teenager.

I opened the bathroom door and walked to the hall. For some
reason I looked again to my father’s chairs in the living room.
And he was there again, as if waited for me to come out of the
bathroom. The transparency apparition was smoking a cigar,
with his legs crossing; making circular figurines with the
smoke that came of his month.

My reaction surprised me then, I was not afraid but curious, so

I stood there for an about thirty seconds, watching him. At this
point he was not looking directly at me; the smoke was more
entertaining for him than me. He then turned toward me and
looked at me straight to my eyes. I was about twenty feet away
from whatever he was and even though it was dark I could see
that he was smiling at me.

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I felt save, so I moved inside my bedroom and got in bed. I

never saw it again, life continued as nothing happened then for
me. But one night of party and Ouija searching, brought to my
attention the story that my sister told the group. She said to
the group that she saw a ghost sitting on my father’s favorite
chair two year before the gathering, around the same time I
saw then.

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Memories of A Nightmare

Chapter 4 - The Visit

Some few months after Nelson’s death life began to look

normal to me. I went back to my juniors high and even though I
didn’t like the looks and the behind your back remarks that I
could hear from people around, I was able to survive. I was
able to live almost normal existence during those first days of
going back to school after the incident.

On the other hand: Walt, Tilly, Tito, my sister, the Lacombe

girls and the others were struggling with the bull shit that you
have to take from judgmental people that don’t know the true
of the matter. It got to a point that in less than three month
they didn’t come to school anymore with me. I became a loner,
I managed to become someone that people couldn’t see when I
went through the school hallways. If it wasn’t for baseball my
sanity would go down the drain, like many things on my life at
that point.

People asked questions to get through the first part of

you. What’s your name? Where do you live? How old are you?
All that shit. Then the heavy one comes; where you there when
Nelson Otis was killed? That was my baseball coach; good man,
a little rough around the edges, but good. I think he was the
first person that accepted me for who I was, outside my
immediate family and the friends involved in the incident.

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Coach Wed never shaved or used fancy clothes, he looked as if

he just woke up from I nap all the time. Now, that I think about
him, I think that the man was away high on something, maybe
alcohol or pain pills. Other than that he functions very well. He
was a titan on the baseball field. I saw him hit a ball over the
320 fence that it appears that it didn’t want to fall. He had
power to hit the ball and to throw feather than anyone else I
knew at the time. In a sense he became my segregate father in
those day, I don’t think he never realized how much he meant
to me then. .

Practice with him were grueling, if you played for Coach Wed
you ended up running and throwing the entire afternoon, so by
the time I got home my body was so tired that after my shower
I ate and went to bed. It was like that for the next three weeks,
which it kept me from thinking about the other stuff that was
affecting my life. I think that my coach save my life and my
sanity.

I became a pitcher for him, my long arms and skinny body was
made for the job, he said to me. At moments I was throwing 75
miles an hour. And with a couple of thing that coach thought
me, I was able to curve the ball. My hitting was poor so I
became the classic pitchers, no-hitting strength but a lot of
power on the pitching arm.

The baseball field we practiced extended the green to the side

hills that surrounded Clayton Junior High. Coach Wed kept the
fields in great shape, it was his religion. He coached soccer and
baseball, while his best buddy, Coach Smithy, took care of the
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Memories of A Nightmare

other sports the school was allowed competing against other

schools.

The job that this man did on the fields can be compared to a
master artist painting on a canvas. You could see his proud face
after his work was done on then at the end of the day. For some
reason I used to show up to watch him ride his lawnmower; I
usually ended up on it. I guess it was a better than going
home Where my father drinks himself to sleep and my mother
worry about how she was going to stop him from drinking.

I created a new set of friends in the baseball team, Doug for

example. He knew little about what happened to Nelson and he
was the best player of the team, and probably the best hitter.
Doug moved into town two weeks after the incident so he
didn’t know any of the people involved in it. The knowledge he
had came from second hand information that he could not put
together so he didn’t care.

One evening Doug was at the bat and I was in the zone,
previous batters were struck out and he began to challenge me
from the home plate.

“Another victim….” I shouted at him.

“Bring it on, Kid,” the boy with the bat shouted back.

“You can’t handle me, boy.” I looked for the right signal from
the catcher, my intention were to put some fire on the ball. My

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moves were classic pitcher wine, so I pulled back, raised my

right leg and then fire the ball to the plate.

Douglass connected with it, and the baseball crossed the space
between home-plate and the pitcher mount coming in less than
a second and landing on my forehead. Then after that
everything appears to be an episode of the Twilight
Zone. Moments later, I found myself on third base, watching
my body falling on the pitcher mount. I felt as if I was floating
in the air, moving as if there was not gravity holding me to the
earth, as if the laws of physic did not apply anymore.

Then out of the blue a voice coming from behind me called my

name. “Isaac,” the voice said.

I turned around to find out who was calling me, and I saw him,
dressed in his Halloween costume.

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Memories of A Nightmare

Chapter 5 - The Visit Part II

A sound buzzed inside my ear, as if someone was sucking from

straw inside soda cup but 5000 times louder. Out from the
distance a voice was calling me. I thought I could identified the
voice but I couldn’t believe my senses at that point my body
was falling in the pitching mount while another part of me was
standing on 3rd base. I was flouting in the air, my body did not
feel the ground or to that effect I could not feel my body at all.

“Joshua,” the voice said, calling my name.

I turned toward the voice and I saw him, he stood right there
by the 3rd base coach, but the man couldn’t see him or me.

There was a smile between Nelson’s dimples, there he was

flouting in the air as I was. A glow came from his face or maybe
his entire body, as if a light inside him was on. My eyes couldn’t
believe what was happening; in my book Nelson was dead and
he didn’t fly in the air. Something was going on and I could not
make sense of what was happening to me. My body felt on the
pitching mount and my teammates were running to see what
had occurred to me.

“Am I dead?” I asked Nelson.

“You ain’t,” Nelson answered with hi a smile on his face.

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“But, how do you explain . . .”

“That doesn’t matter now, time is too short.” Nelson didn’t let
me finish. “Come with me, I want to show you something,” he
gripped my arm and pulled me out into a tunnel of light that
appeared behind me. In a moment we were on a street, in a city
that couldn’t recognize.

“Are we in heaven?” That was my next question. But Nelson

didn’t answer me.

The street was very clean, not even the smallest piece of paper
littered the ground, there were trees planted on the sidewalks,
with benches and flower pots on tables in front of the business
glass windows. The street lights were on, but there was still
light outside, as if the sun was going down slowly in the
horizon, slower than normal.

People dresses in pastel color clothes: light greens, sky blue,

orange and yellows. A woman, with bleach blond hair, stood on
a subway ventilator on the ground, and as her skirts was blow
up by the wind produced by the subway train passing through;
she tries to push it down with a sensual expression on dark red
lips and her face.

Reclined against a gas station pump a young man, smoke a

cigarette; he was wearing a dark red leather jacket. He was the
personification of coolness. “Hi, Nelson,” the young man said as
we passed near him. “Hi Jimmy,” Nelson responded with a
glowing smile.
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“Who’s that?” I asked Nelson.

“Oh, that’s Jimmy Dean, he was an actor in the 1950s.”

Inside a restaurant, black man played a small white piano, he

was singing a song to a man dress in a white jacket and a black
bowtie, while the lady sitting across the table sang the same
song the black man sang, “ . . . as time goes by.”

On the bar two men sat on the barstools, the younger of both
had pitch black hair, and made a funny gesture with his upper
lips, while the older man had a funny thin mustache. This
fellow was thick, his hand were huge, as if he did some kind of
mechanical work with them. They both were smoking, one
smile more that the other one, and both ordered coffee.

“I think I know the young due.” I said to Nelson.

“Sure you do.” He replied. “That’s Elvis.”

“Elvis?” I shouted. ”The Elvis?” I kept on looking inside the

strange small restaurant as we moved forward.

“Yeah,” Nelson answered as if he was expecting me to believe

that Elvis was alive. He smiled again and continued with the
tour of the strange street. The people walked through the city
street with confidence I could observe that there were smiles
on their faces. At that point I understood that I was no longer
on the earth, at least the earth that I knew.

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“Where are we, Nelson?” I asked.

“In another place and time,” that was his answer.

Answer that I couldn’t understand but I failed to fallow with

another question. And he didn’t volunteer more information;
he just smiled like the others around us at this point.

Coming to us I saw a tall black man with a gouty on his face, he

was wearing a Lakers fatigue. He looked at Nelson and
acknowledged him. Nelson just said, “Hi, Will!”

“It’s that Will Cham…” But I could not finish my question.

Nelson answered, “The one and only, the only player that
scored 100 points in one game.

“Am I dead?”

“No!”

“So, why I am here?”

“I wanted to tell you something my friend.”

“What?”

Nelson looked me in the eyes, and then began to say, ”You were
always my best friend, so I am taking this chance to tell you
that your life is going to be hard for now on. People don’t
believe you. . .”But something pulled me out of the street and
Nelson’s present. I flew through the sky to land some moments
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later on the pitcher‘s mount where my body was surrounded

by my teammates.

My brother helped me to stand up; he tried to see if I was

okay. However, my body felt fine at that point, even my
forehead felt great, there wasn’t a bump on it after the 90 miles
an hour baseball hit me on my face. I wobbled as I tried to
walk, some of my brother’s friends laughed at me. I went
outside the park and sat on my brother’s truck. Never told
anyone about what happened to me that day. And that I began
to talk to Nelson regularly for the next five years.

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