Dream Demon

The Midnight Library #11

by Nick Shadow

Alfie doesn't want to sleep at Granny Dorry's house, especially not in the bedroom of his dead uncle. But when he has nightmares that are a little too real, Alfie doesn't want to sleep at all.

Genres: Horror

208 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2007

Reviews

[echo · Rating 5 out of 5]

kept me up at night when i was like 12 (in a good way)

[Nightshade · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read quite a few of the books in this series before. Each one is divided into three mini stories. The thing about these books is that the main character always dies at the end of each story. This means that I now find myself trying to guess how it’s going to happen.
Dream Demon: The first story in this book was of a boy called Alfie who had to stay at his Gran’s for the weekend and sleep in his dead uncle’s bed. He starts having nightmares and then the ghost in his nightmares comes to life and kills him, in the same way his uncle died. At first I was misled by the industrial site with a warning sign about unsafe masonry and thought that was where Alfie would die.
The Race: In the second story a girl is racing the 400m and is told to imagine a runner that is always ahead of her and to try to catch up with her. Annabel wins each race in the stadium when she tries this. However her imaginary girl turns into the ghost of a girl that died running the 400m years ago. Annabel beats the ghost, freeing her, and is doomed to take her place, rerunning her final race until someone else can beat her.
Carnival Dance: In the final story of this book a group of kids are making a float for a carnival, based on the Gods of the Mayan culture (yay, the Mayans!). One of the kids buys a mask of the death God, Ah Puch, on ebay. It is immediately obvious that the mask somehow contains Ah Puch’s spirit. In the end what did surprise me was that it was the boy who bought the mask that was the one turning into Ah Pugh, rather than the boy playing the role of Ah Pugh. It was nice to have a little twist to the usual predictable ending to these stories. Of course Ah Pugh did end up suffocating everyone.
This was a good collection of little horror stories, although not the best in the Midnight Library series.

[Amelia May · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories by Allan Frewin Jones.