We’ve all heard it. We’ve all said it. It goes something like this: Hey, do you remember a book where this guy…? Ooo, when I was a kid I saw this movie where… I wish I could remember the title…or the author…or the actors, but… and so on.
Sometimes you find yourself grasping for a story you’ve read (or seen) and, for the life of you, you just can’t remember what it was. Trying to figure it out can worry you like a loose tooth. These days, of course, the world wide web is a great help. Heck, the internet might just be the precursor of Borges’ Library of Babel. Often it seems as if everything ever set down in ink is just a mouse-click away. Please draw your own conclusions about how much of what you can find of the net is suicide-inducing gibberish, however.
I’ve tracked down many half-remembered TV shows, movies, short stories and novels by typing in a few key words into the almighty Google. But there is one that has eluded me thus far. It was a film, and I watched it with my cousin (although he himself claims to not remember it). It was about a man trying to find a stone––an ordinary stone amongst all the countless stones on earth. I specifically remember the image of him rooting around on a rocky beach, and was struck––even as a child––with the futility of his task. I can’t remember why he needed to find this particular stone. I think it had something to do with him dying if he didn’t––or maybe he was in danger of losing his soul. Maybe it involved a deal with the Devil––maybe my own subconsious added that in. I doubt it was a great film, but it has haunted my imagination nonetheless.
On several occasions, I’ve gotten into conversations with other people who are also looking for their own lost story. They all begin the topic with a variation of the question above. Hey do you remember (blank)? For one of them, the story in question was about a man driven mad by the sounds of an underground civilization grinding away beneath the streets. For another, it concerned a government policy where prisoners were used as chattel for organ harvesting. Another was about a man having sex with his parasitic VCR.
Every so often I’ll find I’ve spent half a day in Wikipedia freefall looking to see if someone has posted something, anything, about my dimly remembered film. And I’ve always come up dry. I suppose that’s the nature of The Well of Lost Stories. Maybe someone who reads this will have an answer. Maybe not. But until then, I will be like the protagonist of that lost story––sifting among the stones till I find mine.
NIGHTLIFE: (PocketStar/Simon and Schuster released 21st October 2013)
For centuries an ancient evil has slept beneath the streets of New Harbor. This Halloween, it wakes up.
An action-packed debut horror novel from talented new writer Matthew Quinn Martin, Nightlife pits a feisty bartender and a mysterious loner against bloodthirsty terrors as alluring as they are deadly.
Nightclub bartender and serial heartbreaker Beth Becker might be a cynic. But when her best friend goes missing Halloween night, Beth knows it’s up to her to find out what happened.
Her quest will take her on an odyssey through the crumbling city of New Harbor, Connecticut. Along the way she meets a homeless prophet warning of something he calls the “Night Angel”—a bloodthirsty creature that feeds on the forgotten. And she will form an unlikely bond with a hunted stranger who knows all too well what stalks the streets at night.
The strange man tells Beth the hideous truth about the nightmare creatures that have haunted mankind’s imagination for eons—creatures the world calls vampires. Together they are the only hope for New Harbor, but to defeat what lurks in the shadows they’ll have to conquer something far stronger than fear—their own desires.
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