But get this . . . Sinclair’s mom came to see the shrink on her own. She confessed that they had made up the out-of-town alibi to protect him, but that she was sure he had no involvement and wanted to spare him the “emotional trauma” of further questioning.
The shrink, however, was not convinced. She gave him this test called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and the dude is an off-the-charts psychopath. He’s listed as showing “manipulative behavior, little or no empathy, lack of remorse or guilt, compulsive lying, grandiose self-worth,” the list goes on and on.
The shrink began to suspect that he killed all three of the kids. But until he said something to prove it, she couldn’t go to the police. She got him signed up for this experimental procedure to treat his insomnia and plans on “pressing him further” after he gets cured.
I saved screenshots in case you want them.
Don’t know why you’re checking on these people, but I sincerely hope you never meet this guy in real life.
A shiver travels down my spine as I look at the immobile form of the boy on my monitor. I hope that Fergus understood what I told him before he went back under. Otherwise he and the others could suffer the same fate as the kids from Sinclair’s past.
I pray with all my heart he heard my last words: One of you is a psychopath.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MY BIGGEST THANK-YOU GOES TO MY EDITORS AT HarperTeen: Chris Hernandez and Tara Weikum. You saw the story when it was just an idea and grilled me (necessarily) about the details until it was actually worth writing. After that, you shepherded my wild imaginings into something that actually made sense. You both know how to push my buttons in the very best of ways.
Much thanks to the lovely Stacy Glick for ensuring that Dreamfall followed its predecessors into the hallowed halls of HarperTeen.
Thank you to Jenna Stempel for giving my book its spine-chilling cover, and to Alexandra Rakaczki and Janet Robbins Rosenberg for transforming my grammar from spine-chilling to presentable.
Thank you to my assistant, Kayla, for being my second brain, and for always being willing to do tasks that aren’t in your job description. Like pushing me in a wheelchair past the Mona Lisa.
Merci to Lenore Appelhans and Claudia Depkin for beta-reading the manuscript and giving much-appreciated reassurance and feedback. Lenore said it bugged the hell out of her not to know if Jaime was a boy or a girl, which reassured me I was doing the right thing. Thank you to the Bear for indulging me repeatedly with the craziest of brainstorming sessions.
Thank you to my friends for your encouragement and cheerleading during the planning and writing of Dreamfall, including Lawrence Daly, Lori Ann Stephens, Diana Canfield, Alex Goddard, Mags Harnett, Cassi Bryn-Michalik, Marie Cambolieu, Carina Rozenfeld, Christi Daugherty, Jack Jewers, Elizabeth Fordham, and Celeste Rhoads.
Some friends were generous enough to open up their private lives for the benefit of my little horror story. Thanks to Penny Russel Janiak for explaining her experience with hypnagogic hallucinations. Also much gratitude to my author friend Bethany Hagen, who not only talked with me in-depth about narcolepsy, but let me use her scariest hallucination in the book. (The clown that kneels on Fergus’s chest and rips off his face.) I hope it makes the dream worthwhile to know it’s now out there, lurking between the pages and scaring readers. Thank you to my friend who underwent electroconvulsive therapy and talked to me in detail about the process and related memory issues.
Thank you, Barbara, for being there for me after Mom died. And for what came after.
Thanks to Dr. Lewis Foss for reading an early version of the book and verifying that my general medical terms and descriptions were accurate enough to be credible. And to the sleep research specialist who prefers to remain anonymous (can you blame him?) for giving me a thumbs-up on the feasibility of Pasithea Facility’s practices and correcting me on the details of my teens’ sleep disorders.
A shout-out to H. P. Lovecraft for inspiring the ambiance of Fergus’s cave dream. I always feel slimy after reading his stories and tried to reproduce the sensation with the phlegm lake.
I owe the flayed-man dream to my sixteen-year-old self, who lay petrified in her bed in the antebellum house hearing the squishy footsteps of the flayed man and thinking, “If only I could write this down, it would be as scary as Stephen King.” Oh, and thank you to Stephen King for giving me my lifelong fear of clowns.
Thank you to Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles for fitting me with special glasses that allow me to see past the normal world to the creepiness lurking behind. Thank you to Charles Williams for freaking me out with All Hallows’ Eve. Thank you to HBO for screening Alien when I was fourteen and babysitting for the Freemans and was so scared I couldn’t get off the couch and had to call my mom. Thank you to Vincent Price for giving me nightmares for weeks after watching House of Wax. Thank you to the Twilight Zone. Thank you to Mountain Brook Elementary School for screening The Blob late at night so that I had to walk back home in the dark with my sister imagining a huge red snotball oozing after us. Thank you to my pastor for screening A Thief in the Night in the church basement in the 1970s and demonstrating that if you scare a teenager badly enough . . . they still won’t believe what you tell them.
Thank you to my kids for being so scared of weeping angels that I had to put them in Cata’s dream. I also appreciate your suggestions for the nightmares based on your own dreams. Unfortunately, they were too scary to use.
And above all, thank you to my readers for your never-ending enthusiasm for my stories. You inspire me and encourage me to persevere, even when every word seems a struggle. I handed out virtual tissues for the Die For Me series and virtual crossbows for After the End. Now you all deserve a night-light.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Julie Trannoy
AMY PLUM is the international bestselling author of the Die for Me series and the After the End series. She spent her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, her twenties in Chicago and Paris, and several more years in London, New York, and the Loire Valley. Now she lives in Paris and swears she’ll never move again. You can visit Amy online at www.amyplumbooks.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
BOOKS BY AMY PLUM
The After the End series
After the End
Until the Beginning
The Die for Me series
Die for Me
Until I Die
If I Should Die
Novellas
Die for Her
Die Once More
Inside the World of Die for Me
Dreamfall
Neverwake
CREDITS
Cover photographs © 2017 by Dana Neely / Getty Images (hospital bed) and ollo / Getty Images (forest)
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
COPYRIGHT
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
DREAMFALL. Copyright © 2017 by Amy Plum. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016961159
ISBN 9
78-0-06-242987-2
EPub Edition © April 2017 ISBN 9780062429896
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17 18 19 20 21 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Amy Plum, Dreamfall
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