forced to relocate to America, where he attracts
attention by playing endless practical jokes on his
host family. Green Boy(2002) invokes the spirit of
Gaia, or the soul of the Earth, to transport two
teenagers into a highly polluted future where they
are given the task of rehabilitating the ecosystem.
Although her later novels are comparatively minor,
the Dark Is Rising sequence remains popular and
will likely do so for many years to come.
Costello, Matthew J.(1948– )
Although Matthew Costello has written some sci-
ence fiction and one minor fantasy novel, Wizard of
Tizare(1990), he is known primarily for his horror
fiction, which began with Sleep Tight(1987), an in-
teresting but occasionally unfocused story in which
a gateway between our world and another reality is
opened, allowing a sinister force to menace the un-
suspecting. His second horror novel, Beneath Still
Waters(1989), was far better, a ghost story variation
with an unusually effective setting, an entire town
that was sacrificed to facilitate construction of a
dam and reservoir and that now lies quiet, but not
uninhabited, at the bottom of a lake. Years later the
dam begins to show unexpected signs of deteriora-
tion, and the angry spirits trapped below employ a
variety of methods to wreak vengeance on the liv-
ing. Costello’s bizarre imagery is particularly effec-
tive in the underwater sequences.
Midsummer(1990) is science fiction as well as
horror. An expedition to Antarctica ends disas-
trously with a series of apparently psychotic mur-
ders. The sole survivor is evacuated and kept
under close surveillance, and eventually we dis-
cover that the explorers stumbled across a previ-
ously unknown parasitic life form that possesses
humans and drives them to commit violent acts.
Wurm(1991) and its sequel, Garden(1993), use a
very similar device, but this time the creatures live
in the depths of the ocean. During the 1990s
Costello diverted much of his effort to writing
game scripts such as The Seventh Guest,comic
book scripts, and other media-related materials.
His next novel, Darkborn(1992), is a fairly pedes-
trian effort in which a group of friends conjure up
a demon and then discover they are unable to get
rid of it.
Costello’s two most recent books mark a re-
turn to his original form. The Unidentified(2002) is
an effectively suspenseful story of an enigmatic
structure that is actually a portal to another reality
whose monstrous inhabitants have designs on our
world. Even better is Missing Monday(2004), an
unusual novel of possession whose protagonist
awakens one day to discover that a complete day
of her life is missing. Two of his short stories are
also noteworthy, “Abuse” (1993) and “Unexpected
Attraction” (1997). Costello clearly has the tools
to become a sustained, significant writer of horror
fiction. Whether he will use those tools consis-
tently remains to be seen.“Couching at the Door”D. K. Broster
(1933)
Dorothy Kathleen Broster was a prolific though
minor writer, and only a small portion of her out-
put was horror fiction. Of that, only this single
short piece has remained popular over the years.
Suspense stories rely on their ability to make the
reader care about what happens to their protago-
nists, and generally this is accomplished by making
the character someone we like and can identify
with. Horror fiction frequently makes use of an al-
ternate approach, developing protagonists in the
opposite direction, making them unpleasant at best
and actively evil at worst. Since it is often obvious
at the outset that a character is doomed, readers
can enjoy the preliminary steps building to the in-
evitable and perhaps ghastly demise of a character
they have come to loathe.
That is certainly the case with Broster’s clas-
sic, which opens with the introduction of Augus-
tine Marchant, a pretentious poet who has
inherited substantial wealth and who plays his cho-
sen part to perfection, although he is contemptu-
ous of his acquaintances and pursues secret vices
while vacationing where he is less well known.
Marchant is disturbed one day when he notices a
bit of what he at first believes to be dust in his pri-
vate rooms but that later moves toward him pur-
posefully as though it might be an insect or small
animal. A rapid succession of incidents follows
during which Marchant becomes convinced that
the apparition is real, that it is a kind of familiar, a68 Costello, Matthew J.