For a while, it was just bright lights. At night, I mean. Instead of dreams.

I would be standing there in a black void, nothingness around me. Usually in my underwear. There was no noise. No air in my nostrils or moisture in my mouth. Just the complete lack of anything. And then the light. So completely white that it would be misleading to say it was blinding. It just became everything. I wouldn’t move. Just hang there in suspension, eyes shut tight. The skin and vessels in my eyelids turned the world red in the white light. After a bit of time, I would start to get hot. Not inside, not like I was cooking. Just on my skin. It felt like hours passed every time. Little by little, I would get hotter and hotter. Have you ever sat out in the sun too long without moving? Like, if you’re tanning or something? And you don’t really notice it until you go to move and your skin is tight, a shell over your flesh? I began to feel that. It would get stronger until my arms began to shake with the low, dull pain.

When I woke up after these dreams, I would feel cool in my bed. Covered in sweat, which seemed to evaporate almost instantly. I hate that feeling: dry sweat over every inch of skin. It’s almost the same as the feeling of wet socks.

I was sitting in English class one day when I began to hear the noise again. Our teacher was this fat, middle-aged woman who was probably once very beautiful. She was nice and she was passionate, so I did what I could to pay attention. I think I had a B in the class, which I was happy with. Frank was in the class, too, and whenever she wanted to use an example of the relationship between King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, she would choose us. I think that was mostly because of how we were on the football field, but in all honesty, some weird stuff happens between those two guys in the stories and I wasn’t completely comfortable with it.

One day she dug up some educational play about King Arthur and his knights around the Round Table. Seriously, I hate those educational plays. They’re written in a really condescending way and I understand why, but they get a little ridiculous. There’s always one really stupid character in them and King Arthur’s lines were written so badly that I don’t even think somebody like Ian McKellan could make them enjoyable. Of course, she chose five of us to go up to the front of the classroom to read the play and of course she chose Frank to be King Arthur and me to be Lancelot. So we stood next to each other and this kid named Jimmy was on the other side of me. He’s tall and scrawny and has thick glasses and patches of facial hair that look pretty bad. But he’s nice enough.

We started reading the play out loud. Frank had the most lines, but I was probably second to him in the amount I had to read. He was going on about how brave Sir Gawain was against the Green Knight and right in the middle of his paragraph, I heard the sound that woke me up a couple weeks before. One of those short screams. It wasn’t as loud this time; if it was, I probably would have dropped to the floor or gasped or something embarrassing. It was quick and seemed to come from Frank, who was next to me. I looked at him funny and he looked back at me, still trying to read his lines. His eyes kept moving from me back to the page and then up to me again. Then Gawain started talking and Frank nudged me with his elbow.

“What?” he asked. I said the same thing back to him.

He told me to stop looking at him funny. He tried to say it under his breath, but our teacher cleared her throat and he shut up. I read one of my lines and it was supposed to start this disagreement between me and King Arthur. As soon as my last word was out, that sound came again, this time from the classroom door. I jerked my head up to look at the door; there was nothing but a few pale blue lockers out there. I listened intently before realizing that the entire classroom was silent. It was my turn to speak. Quickly, I looked back at the paper, but I was so flustered that I had no idea what part of the page we were on. Frank pointed at my line. I read it, distracted. As soon as it was over, I looked back at the door.

The sound came again. Louder, this time, and much closer. As if something was standing between me and Jimmy. Silence again. Then the teacher asked me if I was okay. I said yes and she asked why I wasn’t reading my line. Frank pointed again. I read again. And the noise happened again. I refused to acknowledge it, focusing as hard as I could on the page before me. I don’t know, it’s weird to say, but I guess that noise didn’t like being ignored because then there was another one just a few seconds later. And then a third. And fourth. Until they were overlapping one another again. I strained to keep my eyes on the page. Soon, the sound was filling the room and I could barely make out the voices of the other students as they read their lines. My hands began to shake in frustration; I just wanted to be left alone long enough to finish this stupid play that some wannabe writer hack put together with no passion and no understanding for seventeen-year-olds and no respect for the most famous story in the history of our language!

My jaw was clenched, my fingers tight on the page. I was trying to focus my eyes, to get through the awful thing. Frank put a hand on my arm and asked me what was wrong as Galahad spoke of some BS noble quest or the Holy Grail or something ridiculous. I was so far gone, I didn’t remember that Frank was standing next to me. I gripped his arm with one hand and pulled a pencil from my pocket with the other. I held the sharpened end of the pencil against the flesh of his upper arm. I was fuming. Ready to hurt him. The end of the lead was pressing far enough into his skin to leave an indentation. He pulled away. The class was silent. Even the teacher. Without thinking, I snapped the pencil in two. I apologized to him under my breath and walked out of the room and into the hall. The noise grew louder there, echoing along the corridor and bouncing off the locker doors, becoming underlined by some vague metallic twang.

I put my hands over my ears, but the noise grew no softer. There was no muffling. With my head bent forward, I stomped to the nearest bathroom and went to the first sink. I splashed cold water on my face. I pounded the mirror with my fists. I screamed, asking it, whatever it was, what it wanted.

And the sound stopped. The hair on my arms and neck stood up, some energy lifting away from me. I felt briefly watched by angry, impatient eyes, as if something might leap from one of the stalls behind me in a rage. Nothing came.

I looked back in the mirror, something I do less than most guys my age. I was surprised at what I saw; it had been a while since I got a really good look at myself. My hair was lighter than usual. Almost white. There were gray bags under my eyes. I didn’t feel exceptionally tired, but I looked it.

There was a white spot on my jaw, just to the left of my chin, like the strand of a spider web. I grabbed it. Pulled. It peeled off in a small patch, leaving the skin around it frayed. My fingers rubbed against the spot and skin began to flake off. It was, I realized, the result of something much like a sunburn.

The bathroom door came open. I turned to see Frank standing in the doorway. He didn’t say anything at first. Then he told me I looked like crap, even though he didn’t say crap. I didn’t cry or anything, I wasn’t really that kind of person back then, but my face lost all control and kind of slouched toward the floor. I must have looked miserable. He took a few steps toward me and asked me a second time what was wrong. I told him I was just tired and he told me I was lying. If I was, I didn’t mean to be.

Later that night, I was eating dinner with the family. It was a pretty typical night, because Tabitha was just going on and on about her day while Mom and Dad tried really hard not to talk to each other. I don’t know what they were fighting about that night; it was always something, though. Tabitha would say something ridiculous or cute and they would both start laughing and then they would both notice that the other one was laughing, so they’d shut up.

Tabitha was sleeping in my mom’s room a lot by then. She didn’t really say why, but I think all the anger between our parents made her sad and she wanted to be with Mom all the time. It drove Dad nuts, though. He wasn’t in such a bad position, really. My mom was the one who moved all her stuff into the guest room. It was a nice enough room, very spacious with wooden floors and big windows. When the wind blew it was pretty drafty in there, but other than that it wasn’t bad. The master bedroom was on the first floor, though, and I think that made Dad feel lonely at night. He was far away from all of us.

We were in the middle of eating when things seemed to go quiet. Not just a silence at the table, either. All that background noise you don’t realize you’re used to sputtered and died. All four of us just looked around at each other. I asked Dad what it was. He told me the furnace. It was old, he said, he was always half-expecting it to start giving us problems. Still, he should give it a look.

He scooted back from the table and walked to the laundry room out front. The steps to the basement are out that way. Mom told us to keep on eating, so I looked at Tabitha and she looked back at me and we went back to our food. I noticed that the air felt chilly already. It was fall then, and the nights were cold. Too cold for bonfires, even. The weather guys on TV were saying it might even snow before Halloween. I can only remember one other time that happened. Tabitha was a ghost that year and you could barely see her when she ran down our sidewalk to go trick-or-treating. The ground was covered in snow and her white sheets disappeared into them. By the end of the night, the snow covering was all tainted by candy wrappers and fake blood.

I was Chewbacca that year, so I was warm the whole night.

Dad called up to me from downstairs. I looked at Mom sideways, almost like I was asking permission. She ignored me. I got to my feet and went through the doorway and into the laundry room. Dad was standing at the bottom of the basement stairs with a yellow flashlight in his hand. He shined it directly into my eyes and I put an arm over my face to shield them.

“Come give me a hand,” he said. I closed my eyes tight and lowered my arm. My vision adjusted to the dark basement, which was basically a damp crawlspace with more headroom. The spaced, wooden stairs creaked with moisture every time I took a step. I could taste the humidity in my mouth. The floor down there is this uneven, gray cement, the walls made of large bricks the same color. With only a dying, low light bulb hanging from the ceiling, the whole room looks black. Even though I could only see one half of his face, my dad looked totally pissed when I got down there. Sorry, but it’s true. His face was right next to the furnace, the flashlight shining up against the far side of his head. The only eye I could see was covered in shadow, his face a skull.

I asked what he wanted me to do. He said there was nothing to do. Which I was confused about.

“I didn’t pay the bill,” he told me. “I didn’t have the money. It was a choice between paying that or the electric bill. Since we have an electric stove now, I couldn’t pay for heating.”

He didn’t want me to tell Mom. She knew we were having money problems, but she didn’t know how bad they were. Standing down there in the dark, he seemed so helpless. Half of a man. As if the whole world was about to swallow him. I told him she was going to find out one way or another. What if she decided to buy a new furnace only to discover this one was perfectly fine? He nodded.

I regret it now. He told her the truth. It was one of the worst fights I ever heard between the two of them. I sat up on the edge of my bed with my door open, my arms propped up on my knees. There was nothing in my vision except the frame of my bedroom door and the hallway beyond it. Screams came up from downstairs. High-pitched and frenetic screeches followed by lower, defensive mumbles.

There was talk about divorce. About regretting marriage. About being incompetent and useless. She called him a loser; he called her the word I can’t stand to say that starts with a “B.” Mom was so mad that she started crying. At least, that’s what it sounded like. Her voice started shaking. Dad got really aggressive with his words then.

They didn’t mean it to hurt me, you know? It wasn’t about me or Tabitha. But we probably put more stress on them than they were ready for. My mom was young when she got pregnant with me. Right out of high school. She had straight A’s before that. Played volleyball and was a cheerleader, which didn’t have such a negative connotation back then. And everything I was going through lately probably didn’t help. They didn’t love each other. I knew that. But I didn’t make things any easier on them.

It made me wonder about things between me and Deborah. I’m in high school, so I’m always worried that she’s going to break up with me at any moment. She doesn’t seem to be that kind of girl, but I’ve gone out with girls before who didn’t seem to be that type and I was wrong about them. Do you think my dad felt that way about Mom? Way back in the day, he probably felt the same way about Mom that I do about Deborah. And now he regrets ever meeting her.

It was the first time I thought I loved Deborah, even if I already told her I did. That’s perverse, in a way, but it’s true. Because I didn’t care if I ever regretted it.

A voice snapped me out of whatever trance their arguing had me in. It was bubbly. High and happy. Tabitha. I could hear her through the open door. Without thinking, I got to my feet and walked down the hallway in my socks, which kept me silent as I moved. The argument downstairs was currently in a lull. There were soft voices, but they were still voices steeped with hate. Tabitha’s bedroom door, which was right before the staircase, was closed. But I could hear her talking inside. I heard her ask, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?” That made me curious, so I pressed my ear against the door. That’s what they always do in movies when they can’t hear anything, which I realized doesn’t help at all in real life.

“You talk so loud,” she said. And for whatever reason, that made me think of the noise I heard in school. The one that woke me up in bed. I pushed the door open. Tabitha turned her head quickly to look at me. She smiled at me. In her arms, held before her, was an old, stained Pooh Bear doll. Grandma Maisie made it for Mom on her first day of kindergarten. Now it was Tabitha’s, but the red shirt was long gone and one button eye was cracked. Tabitha has been sleeping with that stuffed animal since she was in a crib. I never heard her speak to it before. And it broke my heart, because she was doing anything she could to distract herself from the argument downstairs.

She told me she made a new friend. I played along and sat down with her on the floor next to her bed. Her powder blue sheet was half off the mattress and it brushed against my arm when I sat down. It felt like the slightest breath.

I asked Tabitha why she was talking to Pooh Bear. She looked at me with her giant blue eyes as if the answer was perfectly obvious. Because he had never spoken to her before, of course. How I could I be so stupid, right? I had to hold back a laugh when she said it.

Mom called Tabitha’s name from downstairs. Tabitha asked me if I wanted to hold the stuffed bear. I took him from her and she ran out the door. I looked around her room, at the pink pajama bottoms strewn about between hand-me-down Star Wars action figures. She has three Han Solos. I only know that because I keep the fourth one hidden. I wasn’t ready to get rid of it. It was just the plain one, with the white shirt and brown pants. Dad got it for me when I was in elementary school. On my birthday, my parents had to sit me down and explain that I wouldn’t be getting very much. They seemed sad about it. All I got was a pizza from the bowling alley and a DVD. It was okay, though, because they let me have Frank over to eat and watch the movie. I was disappointed, but forgot all about it before I fell asleep that night. When I woke up the next day, that Han Solo figure was sitting on my nightstand in its plastic. I knew it was Dad right away. That’s the reason I can’t give it up, you know?

The fabric of the stuffed bear felt grainy and rough. But it was warm. The air in the house was cold enough to give me chills. I pulled the bear in closer to my chest. I began to squeeze it tighter. I don’t know why it happened, and I don’t know why I’m telling you this now, but I did actually start to cry. Long tears ran down my face in a silent sob and I pulled the bear even closer to me, until I was sure the old seams would split. I looked up at the ceiling, at the blank whiteness.

A light in the hallway caught my eye. As white as the ceiling. Whiter, even. Brighter. It filled the hallway so completely that even the pictures on the opposite wall were gone from me. It was the light from my dreams. I put the bear down and walked out into the hallway. This time, I was awake and the light was real. There, filling my world. All coming from my bedroom. I moved slowly, feeling one wall with my hand as I moved toward the open door. It was warm, ethereal, a cushion against my skin. A shadow cut across the light. Tall and dark. It moved from my right to the left and into my room. The door slammed shut. The light went away. The air was cold again immediately, my skin pulling back against my bones. I remember noticing that I was perfectly still. I thought I’d be shaking. But I wasn’t.

Mom’s voice scared me so bad I jumped. She was standing on the top step behind me. “Sammy?” I didn’t move, just stared at my bedroom door. She asked me what was wrong. At first I thought that the sight of me standing there, not moving, in the hallway told her something wasn’t right. But that wasn’t it.

I looked down and realized that I peed my pants.

It was embarrassing, to say the least. I toweled up the floor and showered and changed and tried to sneak off to bed. But she was waiting for me with her own bedroom door open. After I threw my dirty clothes in the washer and ran back upstairs, she stopped me. I poked my head in her room. She was reading a book in bed, her glasses on and her brown hair pushed back. Which actually meant she was pretending to read a book. She asked me if I was sick. I said I didn’t think so. She asked me if I wanted to see a doctor. I said I didn’t think so. She said sorry for fighting with Dad so loud. I said okay.

She said goodnight and told me she loved me. I said goodnight and went to bed. Because honestly, parents say that all the time, but they never really show you that they mean it, do they? My parents always show up to my football games and they make us all eat dinner together every night, but that didn’t count for too much. Maybe if I had a dead dad like Frank, those things would mean something. But Frank’s mom would have listened to him about the dream in the first place. She would probably sit up with him at night if he asked her, if he was feeling too scared to sleep. She wouldn’t make him feel like an interruption to everything else she has to get done. She wouldn’t make him feel crazy.

I went to turn off my light before I went to bed. My fingers were actually hovering over the light switch, but then I saw it again in my mind: that shadow running across the hallway. I looked around my room. The closed closet door. The windows looking out into the black night. My eyes fixed on the moon. My hands clenched and I let out a yell. My fist flew against the window, which shuttered in its pane. It made me feel better. I punched again and again, listening to the glass shake and hoping that it would break. Hoping it would shatter out into the night. I caught my own reflection. Hated it enough to drive my knuckles into it. Hated it enough to make my fingers crack and bleed.

I jumped into bed without turning off the light and pulled the covers over my eyes. I didn’t dream that night.

Next Chapter: Chapter 8