I lay there watching it for what seemed like minutes. I don’t think I breathed once for fear of drawing attention to myself. I didn’t know what it was, but it kept very still, which was more disturbing. Sickening shivers worked up my spine.

A spotlight suddenly flashed through my room in one swoop, illuminating everything with precise intensity. For a split second I saw the thing. Saw a hooded coat made of oily, wet fur and then a face, no eyes, but one wide, white smile. The smile parted. Black gums. An abyss.

And then…

BLAAARP!

My alarm went off.

And in an instant it was the morning. Bright sunshine filled the room, exposing its harmless nooks and crannies. There was nothing at the door and everything was as I had left it. Gentle wafts of bacon and coffee drifted in from downstairs. It was just another dream.

I shuddered at the memory. My mom eyed me suspiciously in the rearview mirror.

“That’s what you get for wearing a sweater with holes in it.”

The air conditioner that my father had on full-blast definitely didn’t help, but I rolled my eyes and leaned my head on the cool window. Cars zipped past in all directions, the fields by the highway were bright green under the sharp, clear sky and defying autumn’s cold approach. Next week would be October and it still felt as fresh as a June day. At least we had that. My dreams would be a lot more poignant had we been enraptured in the normal fall weather of dark skies, howling winds and driving rain. Normally I loved the storms and the prickly atmosphere that went with Halloween and all things creepy. But two scary and remarkably realistic dreams, plus one alarming stranger in the lobby, and this accompanying anxious feeling, all had me a bit on edge.

Feeling eyes boring a hole into the side of my head, I turned and saw Ada staring at me. In her hands was a fashion magazine, in her ears, her iPod. I noticed how perfectly manicured her nails were, the brilliance of the red polish and the preciseness of the application. I didn’t need to look at my own hands to know what they looked like.

She narrowed her azure eyes. “What is with you lately?”

“What?” I asked, a little too defensively.

“I haven’t seen you this spacey since…,” she trailed off.

I gave her a sharp look and didn’t dare look at my mom in the rearview mirror. I knew she was watching me carefully.

“I’m fine,” I said sternly.

She leaned in a bit closer and lowered her voice.

“Did you have another dream again?”

I sighed and nodded.

“Same one?”

“No, different. Still as f—,” I stopped, remembering where I was, “—messed up, though.”

“I didn’t hear you screaming your head off this time.”

That was enough for my mother to get involved. I knew she had been waiting for an opening.

“What are you talking about?” She turned in her seat to look at us and focused in on me with motherly concern. “Are you having nightmares, Perry?”

“I don’t know if I would call them nightmares,” I replied as nonchalantly as possible. The last thing I needed was for my mother to start worrying that I was going Looney Tunes. She’d always been far too eager to jump to that conclusion.

Ada snorted. “She woke me up yesterday with her screams, totally messed up my morning routine. You should be glad you were out jogging mom; she was a mess. Totes.”

I shot Ada a look, more annoyed at her use of the word “totes” than anything else.

Mom gave me a sad look. “Screaming, Perry, really?”

I rolled my eyes and focused on the scenery flying past. “It was nothing. I don’t even remember what it was about.”

That was a total lie. I remembered it more clearly with each hour. Sharp, pointless details like the snags that ran along the lace trim of my nightgown.

I could feel my mom and Ada still staring at me. They were worried. It was the last thing I needed.

You see, I hadn’t made life easy for my family. Despite a relatively normal upbringing, I was always a “problem child” in some way. When I was young, in the single digits, I had a lot of imaginary friends (and, scarily enough, enemies). Well, I actually thought they were real (my imaginary horse, Jeopardy, was the best), but it turns out I had an extremely overactive imagination and my friends weren’t real after all. My parents were freaked out about this and shuttled me off to numerous psychologist-type people to find some “cure.” To be honest, I don’t remember much about that time. Maybe it’s all been repressed, I don’t know, but whatever was done to me worked. My horse ran away, never to come back, and my parents calmed down.

That was until high school, where I was quite the unhappy camper. I was fat (or at least too overweight for high school normalcy). I had a few friends, but I still felt alone. People made fun of me. Girls were mean, and the boys...well, the bad ones were atrocious and the good ones were somehow worse. I was their pal, their confidante, but never their girlfriend. I got to listen to them wax on about how pretty and how hot certain girls were and then I got stuck with the shit end of the stick.

Things went downhill fast and my mental health took a real hit. Stupidly, I dabbled with drugs. A lot of pot, a lot of booze, some pain pills I’d sneak from my mom, sometimes acid. I tried cocaine too, in an extremely stupid and extremely vain belief that it would make me lose weight. I didn’t lose any weight - I only got fatter. And angrier. I try not to regret a lot of the things I’ve done, but I regret doing drugs. It only made my condition a lot worse, to the point where I felt like I lost all touch with reality.

Going with the territory, I also started cutting myself on my arms for attention, writing terribly tragic poems, and just reveling in all-around darkness. I know it sounds cavalier to admit that, but I accept it as a terrible phase I had to go through. I hated everyone and everything, especially my parents and, most of all, myself.

I still have scars on my arms from the cuts. They are faded—almost gone—but they are there, as are the scars on my heart. My story isn’t that unique from many other people’s but sometimes I wonder if I would still feel so lost and angry if I hadn’t had to go through all of that.

I looked at Ada. She’s only fifteen and she’s got it all. Sure, she’s a grump most of the time, but she’s immensely popular, has the most covetable wardrobe ever and she’s got a mild level of fame going on. I was the one hoping (secretly, inside) that somehow I would be plucked from the masses and made an example of. Look at Perry now. She was a hopeless, chunky mess, and now she’s on top of the world.

But it hasn’t happened for me, and as I lose my faith and optimism as I get older, I don’t think it ever will. But Ada, she’s already there and though I’m in front of her, I’m still in her shadow. My sister is a reminder of how unfair life is. No wonder our relationship is complicated.

I looked at my mom and gave her my most sincere smile.

“I’m fine mom, really. Just tired lately. That’s about it.”

She shook her head and turned back, but I could see a weight lifted from her forehead. “It’s all that coffee you drink, Perry. Not good for you!”

Actually, I wanted to tell her researchers recently found a wealth of evidence that suggests coffee actually prevents a multitude of diseases. But I suppressed my need to inform and just sat back in my air-conditioned nightmare as we piloted toward the coast.

***

Arriving at my uncle’s place is such a hectic occasion. Being a bachelor, Al never really had a notion of preparing the house or acting like a host, so our gatherings were usually a bit unconventional.

My cousins Tony and Matt were sitting lazily on the couch playing video games while Al fired up the BBQ in the backyard. The kitchen was an absolute mess.

My uncle and his sons didn’t live on any ordinary property. No, they inhabited a magnificent plot of oceanside land south of the tourist hamlet of Cannon Beach. It used to be a dairy farm that belonged to Al’s ex-wife, but she left it (and her kids) to him when she ran off with a pilot to Brazil or someplace. The cows are long since gone, and the land presently consisted of barren fields of tall, ruthless grass and a huge barn that used to enthrall me when I was kid (I love cows) but now just gave me the creeps.

Not as much, though, as the structure on the opposite side of the hundred-acre property—the lighthouse. The back yard was essentially a long sweeping lawn with pockets of ruddy sand dunes and rocks running into the wild ocean. To the left of the beach and up a small cliff (and out of view of the house) sat the dilapidated lighthouse. I wasn’t exactly sure whose responsibility it was before, but it was now part of Uncle Albert’s sprawling mass. From what I did know, it had been out of commission for maybe fifty years and Al had no interest in taking care of it. It sat there forgotten and lightless, a darkhouse overlooking the sea.

I had actually never been inside the lighthouse. My curiosity and morbid fascination had been no match for the strict warnings of my family, but I know Tony and Matt had broken in a few times with their friends.

I had a sudden inclination to see if Matt and Tony would be up for exploring it later. I felt drawn to it more than usual, as if visiting the lighthouse would put my present “situation” into perspective.

That would have to wait. As usual, my mother, Ada and I went to work helping Uncle Al and the boys put together a somewhat functional BBQ, cleaning up the kitchen and setting the outdoor table for the feast.

It really was unusually gorgeous out. I was actually a bit disappointed, if you can believe it. The sunshine was remarkable, but the lack of wind meant the wild ocean, which I usually felt cleansed my mind of all its crap, was tame and subdued, the waves lapping gently at the distant shore. And my favorite phenomenon—the mist—was nowhere to be found.

Their place was situated right before the Pacific Coast Highway climbed up to loftier heights and it was at this junction that the Pacific Ocean hurled giant platforms of mist and fog toward the coast, trapping them on either side of the property. To watch these fog beasts roll in was one of the things I liked best about visiting my cousins. There was something so other-worldly about these masses of fog and the way they slowly inched towards the land, coming forward with each rhythmic crash of the rolling waves to hover just above the surface like a continent-wide mothership.

When the barbecuing was done, the boys came out to join us. What is there to say about Matt and Tony? First of all, they aren’t identical twins, but you would hardly know that from the way they acted. They were inseparable, joined at the hip, which I once overhead my mom telling dad “was a little strange at their age.”

True, they were nineteen and well past the “cutesy twin stage,” but they had always been a bit younger than their years. Not only in appearance, as both of them were roughly the same height and had the same roly-poly build with round eyes and a flat nose, but mentally as well. That said, I was hard pressed to find any nineteen-year-old boys who didn’t behave like they were twelve.

They approached me with beers in their hands and sloppy smiles on their faces. Underage drinking was never an issue in their household, though at times it probably should have been. The boys had always been a problem, but it was only over the past couple of years that they started getting into real trouble. Tony had a DUI last year and his driver’s license was consequently taken away. Matt was arrested for breaking into a community pool earlier this year (Tony was there too, but he ran off before the cops got him) and both had been busted for marijuana possession numerous times. I wasn’t sure how Al was coping with all of this, but judging from the recent acceleration of grey hair on his head, it was probably taking its toll.