I asked some family friends if I could go on vacation with them.  We went down to Florida and there was this huge festival going on next to the marina.  We went across the channel to this shack that was several stories high.  There was nothing in it but windows to look out of at the festival.  We all sat and watched.  Then my friend Jenna was there and she ran up to the next floor.  She found a window to look out of and there was a balcony too, but there was no railing.  It was really dangerous.  She went out there with our beach towels and thought it would be cool to throw them and watch them float to the ground.  I ran to take pictures.  There were other families in the shack.  A bunch of girls were trying to take pictures of the view and I was too and I was in their way.

There was an oversized red plastic canoe and a girl that I met when I lived in Rome; Katie said that we should go for a ride.  We got in the canoe and began to float down the channel.  We were having fun, and I was taking pictures of us.  Occasionally the canoe became a much nicer catamaran.  Then Katie decided that we should go the end of the channel out to the ocean.  I didn’t like this idea.  (In the dream we were much younger than we are now.)  When we got to the end, land came out of the water where it had dried up so that boats couldn’t get in and out during certain seasons.  We became beached and had to turn around.  Katie ended up in the water.  She told me I had to get the boat to go against the current.  Then I realized there were no paddles.  We had been flowing with the current all along.  There was a broom in the boat.  I guess I must have used that.  When we got back to the shack the family wasn’t there.  I ended up losing Katie too.  I was looking for everyone.  I went up to the top floor and into a room with a bed and a TV in it.  On the bed sat two young boys and a friend from high school, Ashly.  I started to walk away, and then I realized who it was and I walked back.  I said hi to her.  When the dad that we came with found me he was upset that we had gone in the canoe so far away and tried to go out to the ocean.  I wanted to blame Katie.  After that, I met up with Ashly and we got into a red car and drove away.

I went to visit my old junior high.  I parked the car and went walking around.  Then I was at someone’s family gathering and everyone was making different pasta dishes.  I made one too.  There was a calzone that someone made.

We went in the basement and someone had died and her remains were left in a cage.  My brother and I took her red hat and went to a graveyard, which was located inside the junior high.  We walked around and he took a balloon and tied some string to it.  He tied it to someone’s grave.  Then he took the hat and put the balloon in the hat and threw it out past the graveyard.  We watched the spirit flow out of the balloon and up in the air.  He had freed the woman’s soul whose body was caged in the basement.  I wrote a note explaining why the balloon and the hat were there and how he had freed the woman’s soul.  Then we tip-toed through the graveyard and quietly found a place to hide up against a sliding door behind an upholstered rocking chair.

By then I was no longer with my brother; the person next to me became an old friend from grade school, Lydia.  In my dreams, Lydia and Clarissa are often a strange equivalent.  They slip in and out of each other.  A woman approached the back door and saw our shadows hiding behind the chair.  She was after us.  I got up and ran for the car.

We were suddenly in the front yard of my parent’s house.  I took my car and drove down the back driveway.  The woman had taken the road and met us where the back driveway met the road.  I drove into the grass and over the bank and onto the road.  The woman turned her car around with remarkable agility.  We headed down to the intersection and I turned right onto the road near my house.  We were going out into the countryside.  She followed us close behind.  My car was not going as fast as it usually does.  It was not driving smoothly.  She came up behind us and passed us.  She was ahead of us on a motorcycle and trying to predict our move before we did it.  She turned onto a road thinking that we would misjudge and follow her.  We continued on.  After several twists and turns onto dirt roads we came to a hill.  At that time we were on peddle bikes instead of in the car.  My bike didn’t want to go up the hill.  She was closing in on me, but then she lost control and went zooming down the hill and around the corner.

Lydia became Clarissa.  I told her to lower her gears.  We both did and it allowed us to make it up the hill.  We sped down the hill and found a driveway that was nearly hidden. 
It lead down to a small house that was entirely covered by trees and almost completely dark.

“In here!” I said.  “She won’t find us as long as we get in here before she comes over the hill to see us!”  I went in first.  Then Clarissa went to put her bike in first and she paused and looked up at the hill.

“Clarissa, what are you doing?!” I asked.  “Can she see you?”

“Yeah,” she answered.  Then she dove in.  There was no way out.  Or was there?  We were in a dungeon-like place.  A man was working with a fire.  He was blowing glass.  He looked at us and didn’t seem to care that we were there.  We walked down a ways with our bikes.  I found a stairway.  It was a miniature stairway.  We went up it.  There was a door to the outside, but it was very small.  It seemed like it was there for gnomes.  Then I spotted another flight of stairs to a door that was bigger.  We went up to the door.  We could hear the woman underneath us.  She was in the main area where we had first come in.  We hunched down next to the door.  The space was not meant for humans as large as us….And then I woke up….