Incarnate

Ramsey Campbell

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A new edition of this classic exploration of malevolent dreams and monstrous forces, from the master of horror. "The dreams are getting stronger," Guilda Kent said. "My dreams and everyone else's. We've allowed them to grow stronger by trying to explain them away, don't you understand? Dreaming isn't a state of mind, but we scientists have lulled people into thinking it is. It isn't a state of mind, it's a state of being. The dream place, the collective unconscious… I call it the dream thing. It's alive, I'm sure it is. It wants to feed on what we call reality, feed on it so it can take its place. We've given it that strength, we even helped it gain a hold. That time at Oxford let it break through…" Five people take part in a study of precognitive dreaming, but the future they all dream of is a nightmare. Eleven years later, the dream creature they released creeps into all their lives in shapes they don't realise are dreams. If it brings the five together again, far worse will be loosed on the world. Can Molly Wolfe, one of the dreamers, track down everyone involved in time to stop it, or is her search doomed to help it achieve its inhuman aim? Is she too unaware of the way the dream creature has insinuated itself into her life?