Dream Demon

by Anne Billson

She dug her fingernail into the face.

As she ran it down the crack, a flake of porcelain came away, then another. Now, like peeling a hard boiled egg, she had laid bare half the cheek.

Inside, the greyish-white stuff was soft. She snatched her finger away as something pulsed and moved. A fat, glistening maggot poked blindly out, wriggled and fell onto the carpet.

Revolted, she stamped on it, smearing it into the pile.

The doll's eyes stared up at her, blank and malevolent....

Genres: Horror

188 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 2012

About the author

ANNE BILLSON is a film critic, novelist, photographer, style icon, wicked spinster, evil feminist, and international cat-sitter who has lived in London, Tokyo, Paris and Croydon, and now lives in Belgium. She likes frites, beer and chocolate.

Her books include SUCKERS (an upwardly mobile vampire novel), STIFF LIPS (a Notting Hill ghost story), THE EX (a supernatural detective story) and THE COMING THING (Rosemary's Baby meets Bridget Jones) as well as several works of non-fiction, including BILLSON FILM DATABASE, BREAST MAN: A CONVERSATION WITH RUSS MEYER, and monographs on the films THE THING and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

Her latest book is CATS ON FILM, the definitive work of feline film scholarship.

She sometimes writes about film for the Guardian, and is currently working on a screenplay and a sequel to her vampire novel, SUCKERS. She has three blogs: multiglom.com (the Billson Blog), catsonfilm.net (a blog about cats in the cinema), and lempiredeslumieres.com (photographs of Belgian beer, bars and sunsets).

Reviews

[Snakes · Rating 2 out of 5]

My first Billson novel which ended up being a bit of a mess. I wish I had noticed this was a novelization of a not too successful movie from the nineties. Since Billson was simply trying to transfer this movie into prose it completely lost her style, which is quite good on the whole. Moreover, this movie was sort of a rip off of A Nightmare on Elm Street, or perhaps A Nightmare on Elm Street was a rip off of this movie. Either way it didn’t translate to book form and ended up just being not all that good. I’ll have to read one of her originals next, thus far those have been fantastic.

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dreams becoming reality, reality becoming dreams all mixed up into one entertaining rollercoaster ride. Throw in a scary doll and you have an interesting story.