And where does the story end? In a lot of ways, I feel that thematically it closes at almost the exact place American Werewolf in London begins: the pub.

Drinks on me, boys.

BY THE SILVER WATER OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN

Much as “Throttle” was written to honor Richard Matheson, “Silver Water” first appeared in Shadow Show, a collection assembled by editors Sam Weller and Mort Castle to celebrate Ray Bradbury. Theoretically it was inspired by “The Foghorn,” one of the better-known bits of Bradburiana. But (don’t tell Mort or Sam) the story is really my mom’s fault. Bradbury didn’t figure into it, not at first.

I was raised in Maine, but my earliest memories are of the United Kingdom, in the months after my little brother, Owen, was born. My parents were shaggy hippies, and after Ford pardoned Nixon, they wanted to get the fuck out of the States, were sick of the place. I think my dad was also attracted by the idea of being an expatriate writer, like Hemingway or Dos Passos. So they shuffled us all off to a damp, dark little house outside London.

I was a wee guy then and thrilled by the possibility of a dinosaur lurking in the depths of Loch Ness. I wouldn’t shut up about it. Finally my mother loaded my brother, my sister, and myself onto a train, and we went to Scotland. My dad stayed in London to collaborate with Peter Straub on drinking a case of beer.

Only there were torrential the-end-is-nigh rains, and the roads to the ancient loch washed out. We got halfway there and had to turn back. And that is my first childhood memory—the rain sluicing across the windshield, a flood rushing crosswise across the blacktop, orange cones blocking our path. And later I remember the shiver of awe that rolled over me when I spotted the blackened Gothic spoke of the Walter Scott Monument, stabbing at the low, swollen clouds.

Decades later—on the road with Jon Weir for that same Horns book tour—I glimpsed the Scott Monument and it all came rushing back to me, the whole futile quest to reach Loch Ness. How odd that even as a six-year-old, I was fixated on monsters.

I mused on my memories of that attempted family trip to Loch Ness for days and by the end of the tour had come up with a story I was never going to write, about some kids finding Nessie’s washed-up corpse. I didn’t dare try it—I could do the kids, and I could do the beast, but I wasn’t sure I could write convincingly about Scotland.