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.

He woke up itchy and hot on the floor of the flophouse, insects fleeing his body.  He raked his fingers against his ribs to kill off the slower vermin; panted for air.  The room’s other occupants shifted on lice-ridden burlap and ignored him.  The nightmare burned the last of its hellfire fuse through him and left him cold and pointless.  His cot, so much as it was his, was damp with his sweat.