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A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers
It's a step into the future. Dreams can be recorded and played back as a form of entertainment on the DreamBox. To create one thrilling DreamBox program, dreams have been teased out of the preserved brains of Freddy Krueger's past victims. This program is being tested on a group of teenagers who not only experience the dreams of Freddy's former victims, but also begin having their own dangerous nightmares. One of the kids has made a pirate copy of the program and is creating free access to it via the Internet. That would mean the evil influence of Freddy Krueger would go global.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 11, 2006
2 people are currently reading
440 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Thomas
245 books280 followersJeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed setting Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices from Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, Red Cells, and The New God. Thomas’s other short story collections include The Unnamed Country, Gods of a Nameless Country, The Endless Fall, Haunted Worlds, Worship the Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Unholy Dimensions, AAAIIIEEE!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Carrion Men, Voices from Hades, The Return of Enoch Coffin, and Entering Gosston. His other novels include The American, Boneland, Subject 11, Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, The Exploded Soul, The Nought, Thought Forms, Beyond the Door, Lost in Darkness, and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.
His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.
Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.
His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.
Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 6, 2017
This may have been my favorite of the Elm Street novels. In this one, a new technology is developed that can record dreams, and even let people experience each other's dreams. Add Freddy to the mix, and it already sounds like a bad idea, right?
The plot was better than any of the movies (with the possible exception of the first) and the characters were pretty well developed for the most part. The ending was also at least slightly more satisfying than most of the Elm St. endings.
Very well written, this comes across as much better than the typical licensed novel where someone is just out for a buck. If you're a Freddy fan, you should pick this one up.
The plot was better than any of the movies (with the possible exception of the first) and the characters were pretty well developed for the most part. The ending was also at least slightly more satisfying than most of the Elm St. endings.
Very well written, this comes across as much better than the typical licensed novel where someone is just out for a buck. If you're a Freddy fan, you should pick this one up.
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January 18, 2026Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Dealers
There’s a device called TranceBox designed by Saxon Systems. It makes it possible for the user to experience the recorded dreams and memories of another human or animal (sound, sight, taste, and touch). Devon experiences a vivid dream of being in a Roman arena (full of skeletons) with crows circling over heard, a playground area -with two small girls- and the attack of a lion -before the dream cuts off-. Devon and his brother Alex-working for Macrocosm Research was Alex's "day" job. He moonlighted for a smaller company—Mnemonic Designs that created software for Saxon Systems. And Saxon Systems was the corporation made rich, in just two years, by the introduction of their TranceBox- discuss and debate if viewing nightmares like that one could give someone a heart attack. They even talk about a kid that tried to use six TransBoxes at once and it lead to his death.
Alex said the nightmare came from a high school kid (a history buff) that was into RPG. Devon says while he took on some of the characteristics of the kid- like knowing Lain and the name of the sword- he still felt like himself. Alex explains that the sense of your own self is thoroughly replaced. But in these impressions, from dead people's brains, the results are more transparent. You see the interference, the imperfections in the visuals and whatnot. Not only that, you don't experience the full sense of the dead subject's identity. The dream or memory simply seems to be a template you place over your own identity. But he’ll patch up the fragmented dreams to cohesive wholes.
We learn that all the nightmares come from murder victims. The history buff was stabbed to death. Alex theorizes that he was asleep and dreaming when the murder crept up on him and knifed him, He thinks it was a serial killer. They were all teenagers. All from Springwood. The murders took place in the mid 80s. every one of these brains we were given to work with had developed an odd tumor or growth. Alex and Devon part as Devon has a date with Grace. Grace has a recurring nightmare that pulls her to the basement. There a woman that might have been a doppelganger of herself. Later when she meets with Devon, her friend Amun, and Devon’s friend Milton we learn that this is Grace’s mom who died from a fall down the basement steps holding a box of Christmas decorations. It’s because of this when Grace sees that Devon has the TranceBox she expresses unintrest-tho she can’t tell him about the nightmares-.
Later when they’re alone, Alex finds another chunk of dream that he wants to show his girlfriend Trisha. Trisha worries that if Macrocosm finds out. It's unethical use of their research. And if we sell the program to Saxon Systems, and it does get mass produced, it's very possible someone at Macrocosm will eventually read about it or try the program himself, recognize the source of the material, and come after Alex and Mnemonic—with a titanic lawsuit. In the dream, Trisha is alone in a convience store. There’s no cashier. She’s forgotten what she went in there for. In real life, Alex notices Trisha rubbing her head at the exact spot of the victims tumors. Then she becomes disoriented and can’t make sense of any of the labels. She picks up a bag of “candies” only they turn out to be grubs.
In the freezer, Trisha discovers a hand. And another hand, a leg and various other naked and frost-crusted parts of a human body, presumably the body of the missing cashier. She tries to run out the door but bumps into a man. His head is bald and badly burned. His ears are pointed. Her wore a battered brown fedora and a red and green stripped sweater, brown pants and work boots. Around his neck were authentic children’s skulls. One of his hands had a glove and knife blades for hands. The other hand held the head of the cashier. Trisha starts to hurl things at him and then… the dream ends.
Trisha tells Alex that maybe people won’t consider this fun and games. Alex says tho he LOVED the dream and it was a rush. The guy in his dream didn’t have four arms or a skull necklace. He tells Trisha because she’s half-Indian she must have incorporated the goddess Kali into the man. They both theorize this “boogeyman” was a distortion of the man that killed the cashier. Elizabeth Trice gives the assignment to jot down what they can remember of their dreams. Grace has the dream again about her mother, but instead writes down dreaming of a handsome guy with blue eyes.
who stood outside the door of my house, reaching his arms out to me, wanting to tell me something secret and important. Devon nods off and dream the dream he dreamt the night before. Without the TranceBox he dreamed of the lion again. He was in the hallway of the school at night waiting for Grace. He never actually saw the lion, though. He heard its claws on the floor, and heard it growling, but the most he ever saw was its shadow on the wall, coming very slowly around the corners after him taking its time. And its shadow was always flickering in this orange light, like there was this fire casting the light—a fire following the lion. Unless the lion was on fire himself. He then asks her out for Friday night.
Patrick views another fragment of a dream and he says he saw the same burned man. Just like the lion in the arena with the red and green stripes and the claws. They wonder why these different individuals would be dreaming of the same person. The only things they had in common were the tumors and that they were murdered. Alex asks his boss (Fahd) if they can have the backgrounds of the brains but he says no the FEDS won’t allow it. Julie (another employee) says she’s dug around on the Web and either there was nothing or its all been wiped. Farhad says he wants Alex to scan their own brains once a week to keep track of any irregularities.
Alex suggests they all link up to the dream Patrick had and compare notes. All but Patrick agrees (Mr. G, Julie, Farhad, Alex). Alex finds himself at zoo with sadistic displays done to the animals. Four knife blades emerge from an elephants belly. Then two arms. Heaped intestines spill out and so does the body of a man. Alex tries to run but the gates are locked. The man says he’s grateful to Alex for reconstructing him. He’s remembered him out of the Hell he’s in. He’s been waiting in limbo with no one to play with. Alex asked if he’ll hurt him and he tries to stab him through the chest but his blades only feel like rubber. The man tells him he needs more reconstructing and to run along for now.
Alex gets Devon’s friends (Autumn, Kent, Milton, Grace, and Ama) together and gives them each a disc to test for Mnemonic Designs. They’ll try it out for a week or two then get together and give Alex their feedback. They each get to keep the copy of the program. Grace even agrees to do it. Autum tries the program. She finds herself in the waiting room on an empty hospital. He finds a young man in bed unresponsive and then notices he has a bomb strapped to his chest and realizes no one could remove it and everyone’s evacuated. She tries to get out of there, but the door is locked. Autumn is trying to decide if the tv remote controls the bomb when she sees a scared man on the other side of the door. The man says his name is Freddy Kreugar and tho people have tried wipe out his existance, they can’t erase him from people’s minds.
Freddy tries to persuade Autumn to let him in. She tells him to tell her how to deactivate the bomb first. They go back and forth with threats and then the chapter ends (as Autumn set it to when it’s done). Patrick doesn’t come to work because its been said its been having headaches and nose bleds, so Alex and Julie go to check on him. Uncle Ralph says he’s been swearing and saying he’s going to kill someone. When they go to Patrick’s room they see blood everywhere and four parallel wounds carved in his chest. He still has the TransBox attached. Alex recognizes the marks as the same the man made from the zoo dream to the elephant.
Alex tapes the disc and Farah says that was for the best so it wouldn’t get into the governments hands. He’s also a little relieved that Patrick won’t be making any money off the disc (device?) Ralph tells Alex about the “Springwood Slasher” and another murder on Elm Street -a copy cat killer-. He asks the detective and he says they don’t talk about it, but he does say the “Springwood Slasher” is dead. Milton tells Liz-who he’s having an affair with- about the dream in the convenience store. But there’s something at the bottom of his journal entry that he didn’t write that alludes someone knows about him and Liz. HE suspects Autumn and tells Liz he’ll try to see what he can find out when they all meet up at lunch.
Grace in now having other terrifying dreams other than the one with her mother. without even being hooked up to the TranceBox, she had had a nightmare about one of its sequences, imagining herself in an autumnal forest, while black-clad figures with swords—ninjas right out of a martial arts movie-flitted from tree to tree, drawing nearer and nearer but never coming directly into view. Grace nods off while on the toilet and dreams that she’s looking in the mirror and it looks like her head has been split in half. One of the stall doors opens and she sees an eye peeking out but when she goes to confront the voyeur there’s no one there.
When she comes out of the bathroom, the hallway is empty and it’s dark outside. She’s then attacked by flaming crows. Ama finds her in the stall on the toilet. Autumn downloads the prototype Alex gave them unto her own website for illegal downloads. When they meet up at lunch, they now know the guy’s name in all the dreams is Freddy Krueger but why all these people have dreamed of him they have no answer for. Alcoholism starts to call to Kent, so he escapes into the TranceBox. He finds himself looking at a castle where in a forest are people skewered to stakes in the ground. Then a man in all black appears (burned with a bald head). Freddy ends up killing Kent and Grace and Devon find him hanging as if he’s on a stake and sliding down it. He’s bleeding from a hole in his chest and still wearing the pads on his forehead.
It's Autumn whose able to hack into the Springwood Police’s private site and find files on the “Springwood Slasher”. There’s a photo of a right handed leather glove with metal long curved knife blades. By reading the files they learn that by the 80s Freddy Krugar had become an urban legend. So they had a distinct idea what he should look and act like. He’d been a murder of young children and committed the first of his murders in ’67 and continued to ’74. Kruegar was released from police custody on a legal technicality but some of the parents of Krueger’s victims trapped him in a boiler room and burned him to death with Molotov cocktails.
Freddy comes through Autum’s site and encourages her to upload the nightmare program. He promises her immortality and power. Autumn just says she’ll get back to him and shuts down her computers. After being with Grace, Milton finds another one of his stories has been altered. Then Liz is killed in the same gruesome way as the store. Smoke then forms into Freddy and Milton is chased through a boiler room (inside Freddy’s brain). He sees Autumn on the other side at her computer and tries to shatter the glass but Freddy catches him and kills him. Autumn debates calling Grace and Devon but then decides maybe she *should* be immortal. She might even be able to trick Freddy.
Mr. G goes under for one of the dream programs and a lump on the back of head grows and grows until it bursts killing him and forming a mutant (brain) spider. Farhad also goes under and in the ninja program accidently stabs Julie who dies shortly after Alex finds her bleeding to death. The police find Alex smashing all the equipment, handcuff him, and take him to jail. Alex calls Trisha from jail and instructs her to destroy everything related to the nightmares at Mnemonic. Where Trisha and Alex work three other employees are using the software and are now unconscious.
Devon and Trisha decide to go in together. Shane flat-lines in the hospital. Dave is beheaded by Freddy in the convience store (and his parts displayed in the freezer). Finnley bravely fights Freddy off and it found in the real world with slashes and cuts not known how the ending turned out (also in the convenience store). They go through a glass window into a portal. We find out earlier in the book that Neil killed a girl named Cassandrea that rejected him by using the Spingwood Slasher’s method and he was never found out. Grace finds out the reason she’s been having the reoccurring dreams are because her mother is trying to tell her (her) father pushed her down the steps. She then finds herself in a boiler room facing Freddy who stabs her mother.
Neil comes on to Ama and when she pushes him off her, falls unconscious when cracking his skull on the tub. He appears in the boiler room with Grace, but is taken down by Grace’s mom and Freddy. Ama and Grace (in real life) find him in the basement at the bottom of the stairs dead. Devon goes to Autumn’s to make sure she destroys her desk, but finds her uploading it to her sight. He’s successful in smashing her computer with a bat (angering Freddy), but Autumn’s still trapped in a dream. So, he goes in after her. Kreuger then stakes Autumn much the same way he did Kent in the field.
Grace and Ama find Devon in the dream trance and take him to get his memories wiped. Now with Devon being all she has left, Grace goes into one of the chapters but it changes from “Arena” to “” Boiler Room”. Alex uses Macrocosm technology to erase *(Trisha, Grace, and Ama's memories of Freddy. Devon, using a bomb he found in Dream World, blows Freddy up and leaves him to the mercy of the vengeful souls of his recent victims.) Alex erases his and Devon’s memories. Alex and Devon study the brains of their friends and colleges at the end of the book trying to find their friends killer and hoping to drag him out of the shadows into the light.
My Thoughts:
It just amazes me again how… I remember a while back I wondered if the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and Freddy Kreuger were based on someone in real life. I did some looking and the only book I could find about Freddy Kreuger was called “Miles To Go Before I Sleep” (which was really good). Fast forward some years and all these books come up. This book had an interesting concept. I vaguely remember my best friend and I once seeing something -or were we talking about- a dream pillow that could record dreams. So, I found this box intriguing. Now, I’m not sure why someone would want to re-live another person’s nightmares. I don’t want to re-live my own. And then coming in contact with Freddy through this box and these scenarios. HARD PASS! But I think the other things you can experience had potential (the sexual activity, the extreme sports, delivering a baby for future doctors in training). And I wonder if this device *could* possibly be a thing one day (without it giving the damaging and deadly) side effect of brain tumors.
But toward the end of the book, the writing got a little bit *lazy*. Instead of adding new dream scenarios, it recycled (the hospital, the field, and the convience store). Most of the time even the same sentences were repeated. So, you felt like didn’t I read this and wonder if the book had taken you backwards somehow to earlier sections. So, toward the middle and end there’s going to be some repetition. But that’s the only area of it that I had criticism for. Otherwise, I thought the plot delivered well with fitting into the movies.
Rating: 7
There’s a device called TranceBox designed by Saxon Systems. It makes it possible for the user to experience the recorded dreams and memories of another human or animal (sound, sight, taste, and touch). Devon experiences a vivid dream of being in a Roman arena (full of skeletons) with crows circling over heard, a playground area -with two small girls- and the attack of a lion -before the dream cuts off-. Devon and his brother Alex-working for Macrocosm Research was Alex's "day" job. He moonlighted for a smaller company—Mnemonic Designs that created software for Saxon Systems. And Saxon Systems was the corporation made rich, in just two years, by the introduction of their TranceBox- discuss and debate if viewing nightmares like that one could give someone a heart attack. They even talk about a kid that tried to use six TransBoxes at once and it lead to his death.
Alex said the nightmare came from a high school kid (a history buff) that was into RPG. Devon says while he took on some of the characteristics of the kid- like knowing Lain and the name of the sword- he still felt like himself. Alex explains that the sense of your own self is thoroughly replaced. But in these impressions, from dead people's brains, the results are more transparent. You see the interference, the imperfections in the visuals and whatnot. Not only that, you don't experience the full sense of the dead subject's identity. The dream or memory simply seems to be a template you place over your own identity. But he’ll patch up the fragmented dreams to cohesive wholes.
We learn that all the nightmares come from murder victims. The history buff was stabbed to death. Alex theorizes that he was asleep and dreaming when the murder crept up on him and knifed him, He thinks it was a serial killer. They were all teenagers. All from Springwood. The murders took place in the mid 80s. every one of these brains we were given to work with had developed an odd tumor or growth. Alex and Devon part as Devon has a date with Grace. Grace has a recurring nightmare that pulls her to the basement. There a woman that might have been a doppelganger of herself. Later when she meets with Devon, her friend Amun, and Devon’s friend Milton we learn that this is Grace’s mom who died from a fall down the basement steps holding a box of Christmas decorations. It’s because of this when Grace sees that Devon has the TranceBox she expresses unintrest-tho she can’t tell him about the nightmares-.
Later when they’re alone, Alex finds another chunk of dream that he wants to show his girlfriend Trisha. Trisha worries that if Macrocosm finds out. It's unethical use of their research. And if we sell the program to Saxon Systems, and it does get mass produced, it's very possible someone at Macrocosm will eventually read about it or try the program himself, recognize the source of the material, and come after Alex and Mnemonic—with a titanic lawsuit. In the dream, Trisha is alone in a convience store. There’s no cashier. She’s forgotten what she went in there for. In real life, Alex notices Trisha rubbing her head at the exact spot of the victims tumors. Then she becomes disoriented and can’t make sense of any of the labels. She picks up a bag of “candies” only they turn out to be grubs.
In the freezer, Trisha discovers a hand. And another hand, a leg and various other naked and frost-crusted parts of a human body, presumably the body of the missing cashier. She tries to run out the door but bumps into a man. His head is bald and badly burned. His ears are pointed. Her wore a battered brown fedora and a red and green stripped sweater, brown pants and work boots. Around his neck were authentic children’s skulls. One of his hands had a glove and knife blades for hands. The other hand held the head of the cashier. Trisha starts to hurl things at him and then… the dream ends.
Trisha tells Alex that maybe people won’t consider this fun and games. Alex says tho he LOVED the dream and it was a rush. The guy in his dream didn’t have four arms or a skull necklace. He tells Trisha because she’s half-Indian she must have incorporated the goddess Kali into the man. They both theorize this “boogeyman” was a distortion of the man that killed the cashier. Elizabeth Trice gives the assignment to jot down what they can remember of their dreams. Grace has the dream again about her mother, but instead writes down dreaming of a handsome guy with blue eyes.
who stood outside the door of my house, reaching his arms out to me, wanting to tell me something secret and important. Devon nods off and dream the dream he dreamt the night before. Without the TranceBox he dreamed of the lion again. He was in the hallway of the school at night waiting for Grace. He never actually saw the lion, though. He heard its claws on the floor, and heard it growling, but the most he ever saw was its shadow on the wall, coming very slowly around the corners after him taking its time. And its shadow was always flickering in this orange light, like there was this fire casting the light—a fire following the lion. Unless the lion was on fire himself. He then asks her out for Friday night.
Patrick views another fragment of a dream and he says he saw the same burned man. Just like the lion in the arena with the red and green stripes and the claws. They wonder why these different individuals would be dreaming of the same person. The only things they had in common were the tumors and that they were murdered. Alex asks his boss (Fahd) if they can have the backgrounds of the brains but he says no the FEDS won’t allow it. Julie (another employee) says she’s dug around on the Web and either there was nothing or its all been wiped. Farhad says he wants Alex to scan their own brains once a week to keep track of any irregularities.
Alex suggests they all link up to the dream Patrick had and compare notes. All but Patrick agrees (Mr. G, Julie, Farhad, Alex). Alex finds himself at zoo with sadistic displays done to the animals. Four knife blades emerge from an elephants belly. Then two arms. Heaped intestines spill out and so does the body of a man. Alex tries to run but the gates are locked. The man says he’s grateful to Alex for reconstructing him. He’s remembered him out of the Hell he’s in. He’s been waiting in limbo with no one to play with. Alex asked if he’ll hurt him and he tries to stab him through the chest but his blades only feel like rubber. The man tells him he needs more reconstructing and to run along for now.
Alex gets Devon’s friends (Autumn, Kent, Milton, Grace, and Ama) together and gives them each a disc to test for Mnemonic Designs. They’ll try it out for a week or two then get together and give Alex their feedback. They each get to keep the copy of the program. Grace even agrees to do it. Autum tries the program. She finds herself in the waiting room on an empty hospital. He finds a young man in bed unresponsive and then notices he has a bomb strapped to his chest and realizes no one could remove it and everyone’s evacuated. She tries to get out of there, but the door is locked. Autumn is trying to decide if the tv remote controls the bomb when she sees a scared man on the other side of the door. The man says his name is Freddy Kreugar and tho people have tried wipe out his existance, they can’t erase him from people’s minds.
Freddy tries to persuade Autumn to let him in. She tells him to tell her how to deactivate the bomb first. They go back and forth with threats and then the chapter ends (as Autumn set it to when it’s done). Patrick doesn’t come to work because its been said its been having headaches and nose bleds, so Alex and Julie go to check on him. Uncle Ralph says he’s been swearing and saying he’s going to kill someone. When they go to Patrick’s room they see blood everywhere and four parallel wounds carved in his chest. He still has the TransBox attached. Alex recognizes the marks as the same the man made from the zoo dream to the elephant.
Alex tapes the disc and Farah says that was for the best so it wouldn’t get into the governments hands. He’s also a little relieved that Patrick won’t be making any money off the disc (device?) Ralph tells Alex about the “Springwood Slasher” and another murder on Elm Street -a copy cat killer-. He asks the detective and he says they don’t talk about it, but he does say the “Springwood Slasher” is dead. Milton tells Liz-who he’s having an affair with- about the dream in the convenience store. But there’s something at the bottom of his journal entry that he didn’t write that alludes someone knows about him and Liz. HE suspects Autumn and tells Liz he’ll try to see what he can find out when they all meet up at lunch.
Grace in now having other terrifying dreams other than the one with her mother. without even being hooked up to the TranceBox, she had had a nightmare about one of its sequences, imagining herself in an autumnal forest, while black-clad figures with swords—ninjas right out of a martial arts movie-flitted from tree to tree, drawing nearer and nearer but never coming directly into view. Grace nods off while on the toilet and dreams that she’s looking in the mirror and it looks like her head has been split in half. One of the stall doors opens and she sees an eye peeking out but when she goes to confront the voyeur there’s no one there.
When she comes out of the bathroom, the hallway is empty and it’s dark outside. She’s then attacked by flaming crows. Ama finds her in the stall on the toilet. Autumn downloads the prototype Alex gave them unto her own website for illegal downloads. When they meet up at lunch, they now know the guy’s name in all the dreams is Freddy Krueger but why all these people have dreamed of him they have no answer for. Alcoholism starts to call to Kent, so he escapes into the TranceBox. He finds himself looking at a castle where in a forest are people skewered to stakes in the ground. Then a man in all black appears (burned with a bald head). Freddy ends up killing Kent and Grace and Devon find him hanging as if he’s on a stake and sliding down it. He’s bleeding from a hole in his chest and still wearing the pads on his forehead.
It's Autumn whose able to hack into the Springwood Police’s private site and find files on the “Springwood Slasher”. There’s a photo of a right handed leather glove with metal long curved knife blades. By reading the files they learn that by the 80s Freddy Krugar had become an urban legend. So they had a distinct idea what he should look and act like. He’d been a murder of young children and committed the first of his murders in ’67 and continued to ’74. Kruegar was released from police custody on a legal technicality but some of the parents of Krueger’s victims trapped him in a boiler room and burned him to death with Molotov cocktails.
Freddy comes through Autum’s site and encourages her to upload the nightmare program. He promises her immortality and power. Autumn just says she’ll get back to him and shuts down her computers. After being with Grace, Milton finds another one of his stories has been altered. Then Liz is killed in the same gruesome way as the store. Smoke then forms into Freddy and Milton is chased through a boiler room (inside Freddy’s brain). He sees Autumn on the other side at her computer and tries to shatter the glass but Freddy catches him and kills him. Autumn debates calling Grace and Devon but then decides maybe she *should* be immortal. She might even be able to trick Freddy.
Mr. G goes under for one of the dream programs and a lump on the back of head grows and grows until it bursts killing him and forming a mutant (brain) spider. Farhad also goes under and in the ninja program accidently stabs Julie who dies shortly after Alex finds her bleeding to death. The police find Alex smashing all the equipment, handcuff him, and take him to jail. Alex calls Trisha from jail and instructs her to destroy everything related to the nightmares at Mnemonic. Where Trisha and Alex work three other employees are using the software and are now unconscious.
Devon and Trisha decide to go in together. Shane flat-lines in the hospital. Dave is beheaded by Freddy in the convience store (and his parts displayed in the freezer). Finnley bravely fights Freddy off and it found in the real world with slashes and cuts not known how the ending turned out (also in the convenience store). They go through a glass window into a portal. We find out earlier in the book that Neil killed a girl named Cassandrea that rejected him by using the Spingwood Slasher’s method and he was never found out. Grace finds out the reason she’s been having the reoccurring dreams are because her mother is trying to tell her (her) father pushed her down the steps. She then finds herself in a boiler room facing Freddy who stabs her mother.
Neil comes on to Ama and when she pushes him off her, falls unconscious when cracking his skull on the tub. He appears in the boiler room with Grace, but is taken down by Grace’s mom and Freddy. Ama and Grace (in real life) find him in the basement at the bottom of the stairs dead. Devon goes to Autumn’s to make sure she destroys her desk, but finds her uploading it to her sight. He’s successful in smashing her computer with a bat (angering Freddy), but Autumn’s still trapped in a dream. So, he goes in after her. Kreuger then stakes Autumn much the same way he did Kent in the field.
Grace and Ama find Devon in the dream trance and take him to get his memories wiped. Now with Devon being all she has left, Grace goes into one of the chapters but it changes from “Arena” to “” Boiler Room”. Alex uses Macrocosm technology to erase *(Trisha, Grace, and Ama's memories of Freddy. Devon, using a bomb he found in Dream World, blows Freddy up and leaves him to the mercy of the vengeful souls of his recent victims.) Alex erases his and Devon’s memories. Alex and Devon study the brains of their friends and colleges at the end of the book trying to find their friends killer and hoping to drag him out of the shadows into the light.
My Thoughts:
It just amazes me again how… I remember a while back I wondered if the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and Freddy Kreuger were based on someone in real life. I did some looking and the only book I could find about Freddy Kreuger was called “Miles To Go Before I Sleep” (which was really good). Fast forward some years and all these books come up. This book had an interesting concept. I vaguely remember my best friend and I once seeing something -or were we talking about- a dream pillow that could record dreams. So, I found this box intriguing. Now, I’m not sure why someone would want to re-live another person’s nightmares. I don’t want to re-live my own. And then coming in contact with Freddy through this box and these scenarios. HARD PASS! But I think the other things you can experience had potential (the sexual activity, the extreme sports, delivering a baby for future doctors in training). And I wonder if this device *could* possibly be a thing one day (without it giving the damaging and deadly) side effect of brain tumors.
But toward the end of the book, the writing got a little bit *lazy*. Instead of adding new dream scenarios, it recycled (the hospital, the field, and the convience store). Most of the time even the same sentences were repeated. So, you felt like didn’t I read this and wonder if the book had taken you backwards somehow to earlier sections. So, toward the middle and end there’s going to be some repetition. But that’s the only area of it that I had criticism for. Otherwise, I thought the plot delivered well with fitting into the movies.
Rating: 7
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 3, 2023
Literally every man in this is a weirdo to the point that Freddy genuinely seems like an okay guy. Like he’s a murderer but at least he didn’t flirt with his daughters friend or constantly sexually harass his coworkers and say it was normal ❤️
July 30, 2022
This may have been my favorite of the Elm Street novels. In this one, a new technology is developed that can record dreams, and even let people experience each other's dreams. Add Freddy to the mix, and it already sounds like a bad idea, right?
The plot was better than any of the movies (with the possible exception of the first) and the characters were pretty well developed for the most part. The ending was also at least slightly more satisfying than most of the Elm St. endings. (view spoiler)
Very well written, this comes across as much better than the typical licensed novel where someone is just out for a buck. If you're a Freddy fan, you should pick this one up. (less)
The plot was better than any of the movies (with the possible exception of the first) and the characters were pretty well developed for the most part. The ending was also at least slightly more satisfying than most of the Elm St. endings. (view spoiler)
Very well written, this comes across as much better than the typical licensed novel where someone is just out for a buck. If you're a Freddy fan, you should pick this one up. (less)
February 18, 2021
It is a very good horror story.
June 16, 2023
Freddy Kruger was somehow the least trashy character in this book, and he's a literal pedophile.
December 30, 2023
Hellraiser: Hellworld meets Nightmare on Elm Street
April 23, 2017
I have to say that this final book in the 5 part Black Flame series was a great way to bring closure to this 2005 to 2006 series.
The whole Dream Box set up was great in bringing Freddy back into the picture. The characters were good and this novel would have made a great Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
As with all the other books in the series, you do not have to read the other 4 to read this novel.
It took a little bit for me to acquire all five of these paperback books because they are out of print and currently none of them are available in an e-reader format. Now that I've read all five, I'd have to say 1 and 5 were the best of the series.
The whole Dream Box set up was great in bringing Freddy back into the picture. The characters were good and this novel would have made a great Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
As with all the other books in the series, you do not have to read the other 4 to read this novel.
It took a little bit for me to acquire all five of these paperback books because they are out of print and currently none of them are available in an e-reader format. Now that I've read all five, I'd have to say 1 and 5 were the best of the series.
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