cover image The Waiting Room

The Waiting Room

F. G. Cottam. Hodder & Stoughton (Trafalgar Sq., dist.), $12.95 trade paper (294p) ISBN 978-1-44470-423-5

Though plagued by a few narrative absurdities, Cottam's modern tale of an ex-rocker's manse and family being tormented by the ghosts of WWI is a vivid and chilling horror story. Martin Stride has happily retired from the limelight of rock stardom to a rural English estate. His children once wiled away the hours in a decrepit old railway waiting room on the edge of the property, but something has driven them away. Suspicious of the energies emanating from that "place of contagion [and] despair," Martin enlists the help of TV's most prominent spiritual medium (and secret skeptic), Julian Creed, who agrees to spend what becomes a terrifying night in the waiting room. Having serviced soldiers during the Great War, and later, inmates of an insane asylum, the building bears a powerful psychic residue, and Creed's assistant, Elena, fears that whoever%E2%80%94or whatever%E2%80%94is haunting the area intends to resuscitate hordes of dead soldiers, "%E2%80%98And they'll be very strong%E2%80%A6 And their numbers will be of a magnitude we can barely imagine.'" In order to put the dead finally to rest, Creed must reassess his disbelief and confront the past before it overwhelms all of them. (June)