Nightmare As A Child - Plot

Plot

Schoolteacher Helen Foley (Janice Rule) finds a strange and very serious little girl named Markie (Terry Burnham) on the stairs outside her apartment. Despite her stoic appearance, she is humming the tune to a nursery rhyme. The little girl seems to know her and tries to jog her memory about a man she saw earlier that day.

The man arrives at Helen's door as Markie runs out the back way. The man is Peter Selden (Shepperd Strudwick), who claims that he worked for Helen's mother when Helen was a child and was the first to find her murdered mother's body. Helen had witnessed the crime but blocked it out. When she mentions Markie, Selden tells her that her nickname was Markie as a child and shows her an old photo of herself. The girl in the photo is identical to the Markie she met.

When Selden leaves, Markie reappears. She tells Helen that she is Helen herself, and that she is there to force her to remember her mother's murder. Helen falls asleep and sees the events of the murder in a dream. Selden returns and confesses to the murder. He says he knew that Helen would someday start to remember and that he would also have to do away with Helen, which he hadn't been able to do that night because people had started arriving as they heard screams. Helen manages to run into the hallway and push Selden down the stairs to his death. After talking to the police and returning to her apartment, Helen hears a young girl's voice humming the same tune as Markie. To her relief, the girl is just an ordinary girl she doesn't recognize. She tells the little girl she has a beautiful smile...and advises her never to lose it.