use of the castle’s special qualities. The book won
the Carnegie Medal for children’s literature. Other
fantasies for young readers include Smoky House
(1940), which involves fairies, and Linnets and Va-
lerians (1964), an underrated story in which a
group of children discover yet another gateway to
other realities, one through which some quite
nasty entities are planning to infest our world.
Goudge often used images from fantasy or legends
in her nonfantastic work as well.
Grant, Charles L.(1942– )
The explosion of modern horror novels that fol-
lowed the success of Stephen KINGprovided a mar-
ket for a large number of writers of varying
qualities, most of whom wrote straightforward su-
pernatural thrillers that varied in plot and some-
times style, but only within a fairly narrowly
defined range. A handful of others chose to de-
velop a distinctive prose style, such as Thomas LIG-
OTTI, and others specialized in a particular kind of
story, such as, for example, John SAUL’s many tales
of vengeful child ghosts. One small group opted for
extremely explicit horror, aiming to shock and
even revolt as well as thrill the reader, and writers
such as John SKIPPand Craig Spector became well-
known proponents of what was termed “splatter-
punk,” deriving its name from splatter films. On
the opposite end of the spectrum was Charles L.
Grant, whose name became associated with quiet
horror because he rarely resorted to the extremely
visceral style of the splatterpunks, instead concen-
trating on subtle development of atmosphere and
the power of suggestion.
Grant began publishing science fiction and oc-
casional horror stories in 1968 and during the early
1970s produced some very memorable short pieces,
including “Come Dance with Me on My Pony’s
Grave” (1973), but his first few novels were sci-
ence fiction. It was not until 1977 that his first
horror novel, The Curse(1977), finally appeared.
He also included some minor fantastic content in
The Eve of the Hound(1977) and Voices out of Time
(1977), two of four Gothic suspense novels he pub-
lished using the pen name Deborah Lewis. That
same year also brought The Hour of the Oxrun
Dead,the first of more than a dozen novels and
short stories Grant set in Oxrun Station, a fictional
New England town that seems to function as a
magnet for evil. The widow of a police officer
whose body was badly mutilated during a fatal at-
tack draws the ire of a group of satanists. Grant’s
characteristic care not to “rub the reader’s nose” in
the details of the horrible events taking place
would quickly become his trademark.
There is another religious cult in Oxrun Sta-
tion in The Sound of Midnight(1978) worshipping a
twisted and malevolent god of their own and sacri-
ficing innocent lives to propitiate their deity. The
best of the early Oxrun Station novels is The Last
Call of Mourning (1979). The protagonist is a
young woman who finds her father’s dead body but
a short time later discovers that he is apparently
alive and well. There have been other disappear-
ances and reappearances in town in recent days,
and her investigation leads her to a man who
seems to have the power to raise the dead as his
servants.
Grant, who was also writing mildly fantastic
romance novels as Felicia Andrews by now, next
appeared under his own name with The Grave
(1981), which features another subtle horror prey-
ing on the inhabitants of Oxrun Station. That
same year saw the appearance of his first two col-
lections of short fiction, A Glow of Candles and
Other Storiesand Tales from the Nightside,both of
which drew primarily on his supernatural tales.
From this point onward Grant’s only significant
science fiction was a series of young adult novels
under the name Steven Charles.
With The Nestling(1982) Grant proved that
he could write longer and potentially more gener-
ally popular horror novels. In this case the tensions
between Native Americans and the surrounding
communities provides a realistic backdrop to the
story of a mysterious flying creature that preys on
humans. A third collection followed, Nightmare
Seasons (1982), which won the World Fantasy
Award, as well as a new Oxrun Station novel, The
Bloodwind(1982), in which a supernatural beast is
linked to the rising of the wind. The Soft Whisper of
the Dead(1982) was the first of three historical
horror novels, also set in Oxrun Station, this one
featuring a vampire. The other two in the se-
quence are The Dark Cry of the Moon(1986), a140 Grant, Charles L.