The second thing you should know is: Oceanrest is haunted. I don’t mean “haunted by the ghost of the city it used to be,” either. I mean haunted. I mean it in the way people talk about deep Louisiana bayou and old derelict plantations and the dark woods of Romania and the unlit catacombs of Paris. I mean there are things here that ought not to be anywhere at all.

I don’t remember when it started. Some time after the program. A lot of people who never had a problem are leery of the program but it works. I’m almost one years sober. You resurrect from the inside out. It starts small and grows. You have to let the dream inside, you have to let the hope inside of you, like a seed. It grows into the future.