A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dreamspawn
| Industry | Publishing |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | United Kingdom |
| Products | Books, novels |
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dreamspawn is a 2005 horror novel from the United Kingdom, authored by Christa Faust and released by Black Flame. Serving as a tie-in to the Nightmare on Elm Street movie series, it represents the second installment in a set of five novels issued by Black Flame. The narrative follows a group of high school girls who invoke and attempt to dominate the supernatural murderer Freddy Krueger.
Plot
Rose Gibson, at seven years old, resides in Bakersfield, California with her neglectful, drug-dependent mother Laurie and her abusive father Ed Parker, who once forced her to witness the killing of her dog. Freddy Krueger—a serial child murderer who was burned alive by vengeful parents and now haunts the Dream World—kills Rose’s parents but fails to take her life.
Fast forward eleven years, Jane DeHaan relocates to Southern California. An insecure goth teenager suffering bullying at Hemingway High, Jane forms a friendship with Lola Cole, a punk enthusiast of horror. Together, they play a prank on Amber Dunn, a troubled cheerleader, by admitting her to rehab. Amber later joins Jane and Lola after revealing she became infertile due to a failed abortion; the three create a clique known as the "Petticoat Mafia." Jane also begins dating Brandon Ortiz, an artist and wrestler.
Rose, now a misanthrope who self-harms and has been obsessed with Freddy since childhood, transfers to Hemingway High and integrates into the Petticoat Mafia. After falsely claiming she was gang-raped by members of the wrestling team at a party, Rose persuades the girls to perform a ritual summoning Freddy in an abandoned factory where he once worked. She manipulates Freddy by withholding his signature bladed glove. Freddy then kills all but Brandon from the wrestling team. It is subsequently revealed that Rose fabricated the assault story to manipulate the group into resurrecting Freddy as part of a murder–suicide scheme involving knockout gas at Hemingway High.
Once the entire school is unconscious due to the gas, Freddy traps everyone in a shared dream where he kills dozens, including Amber and Lola—who becomes ensnared in a nightmare reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead and suffers brain consumption. Freddy taunts Rose’s belief that she can control him before murdering Brandon and attacking Jane. In response, Rose tears out Freddy’s heart and burns it alongside his glove and herself in a furnace, effectively destroying him.
Following these events, Jane is placed in indefinite psychiatric care after the Petticoat Mafia is held responsible for the 461 fatalities at Hemingway High.
Publication
To celebrate the novel’s launch, author Christa Faust held a signing event at Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank, California, on June 12, 2005.
In 2006, Black Flame reissued Dreamspawn as part of Ripped From a Dream: A Nightmare on Elm Street Omnibus, which also included Suffer the Children and Protégé, respectively the preceding and following novels in the series.
Reception
Reviewing both Dreamspawn and Suffer the Children, Don D'Ammassa for Chronicle praised them as suspenseful works that successfully captured the tone of their original source material. In contrast, Reece Goodall from The Boar criticized Dreamspawn, likening it to "a poor high school drama" with fragmented storytelling.