Humans have
short memories, each generation forgetting the horrors of the one before it.
Over time they learned to compensate with stories and songs, writing and
presenting, recording their past, reaching as far back as possible to define
the things that sit just beyond the edges of human existence. The things we
fear are older than our oldest memories, and the land we share with those things is older than us
all.
There was
nothing hip, cool, or new about the town of Spoonerville. It was a little
logging town bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north, east, and
most of the south by National park land which included a massive dormant volcano. The rest of the south was a native
reservation so small most folks never would have known it was there.
But folks
knew about the native reservation, and the national forests, and the ocean, and the volcano.
Spoonerville was the very real town where a very fake paranormal romance took
place in a very popular book series, read by a very large number of girls and
surprisingly large number of women.
The book
talked about the area but the author had never been there. She discovered the
town by throwing requirements into Google and uncovering the disturbingly boring
town. She imagined werewolves and vampires living secret lives among the humans
and falling in love with disturbingly ordinary girls who turned out to be disturbingly
spectacular at everything they did, from moping to being vampires.
The author
never knew what she had uncovered, the balance she had upset. She had no real
respect for the underlying legends she filled her narratives with and never
gave the attention the town got a second thought.
Thousands of
people flocked to Spoonerville every year, expecting to see Oceanside, the
nearby city where the movies were filmed. Most were upset that while the books
did not over exaggerate the town the story was set in, it did not under exaggerate the town either. There were no almost famous hole in the wall restaurants, or trendy coffee shops, or cool teen hangouts. Spoonerville is, was, and always had been a logging town and nothing more.
And so the diehard fans came to get their selfies taken in front of the
Spoonerville sign and many even ventured out to the beaches the characters
visited in the novels, only to discover that Quora beach was not the kind of
place anyone who wished to live, would ever willingly surf.
Rodney
Edgars’ family had ancient roots in Spoonerville. Roots his mother and father
never wanted him to know about. Which is why they had never visited, never called,
and never talked about the town. If it weren’t for the car accident that killed
Rodney’s parents the summer before his junior year of high school, he probably
would never have known Spoonerville ever actually existed.
But once the
state shipped him off to live with his grandmother, Spoonerville became a very
real place. The quirky towns folk became real, the annoying tourists became
real, the native tribe became real, the beach with the angry ocean became real,
the songs the ocean sang when the tide wasn’t raging became real, the laughter
from something just behind the furthest trees became real, and deep in the
woods, somewhere under the ancient volcano, the timeless hunger became real.
And Rodney
Edgars learned that when terrors older than human memory are real, they see
humans serving only one purpose, and it isn’t romantic.
Beginning
September 20th, take a tour of a little town where traditions are
upheld, nature is respected, and everything closes at dusk for a damn good
reason.
Welcome to
Spoonerville.
