I turn in every direction. All in see are trees. Trees, trees, trees. “Xavier, I think we’re lost,” I say, shakily. 

Even the way we came was gone. 

I turn to him. 

He’s standing a few feet away from me staring at the sky. 

“Xavier!” 

“Sorry,” he apologizes, turning to me. 

“What were you looking at anyway?” I ask, looking at a cloud his head was turned to. 

He points to the cloud above us, “that looks like an arrow pointing east,” he exclaims. 

“Ok…and?” I answer, dumbfounded. 

“Never mind,” he blushes. 

I catch a glimpse of movement from some bushes to my right.  I can see the shadow of something huge. I grab Xavier’s arm. 

“Wha..” he quips, but, I cover his mouth. He starts to struggle but stops when I point to the bushes. 

The bushes are now shaking savagely. 

“RUN!!” I yell. 

“Which way?” Xavier shrieks. 

“I don’t know, East!” I cry. 

Some sort of large creature bursts out of the bushes. 

I don’t get a good look because Xavier and I are running full speed away from it. I’m surprised to see a clearing ahead of us. I burst through the trees and gasp as I see my house. I hear Xavier gasp as well when he sees our house. I turn to him, “we came from south before we got lost and then we ran east and….how is this possible?” 

Xavier starts to walk towards the house. “Maybe it’s not our house,” he suggests. 

“Nope, that’s our house alright, see,” I point to a hole in the side of the house. “The hole you made when we were 10.”

As I make my way closer to the house I hear Xavier snicker behind me, “Oh yeah I forgot about that.” 

My hand crawls to the back pocket for the house keys. Once I find the key I place it into the key hole. I look at Xavier and turn the key.

 Click.

I push the door open. I walk in and slip the keys into my pocket. I turn to Xavier who’s just standing outside staring in. 

Suddenly, he raises his arm and points at my legs. 

I hesitate and then look down. I gasp; my legs have a long and deep scratch going from one leg to the other. 

I look up at Xavier and see the same exact scratch on his legs. 

“will you close the door? You’re going to let the mosquitos in,” a voice says. 

I turn just my head to see my dad. 

Xavier slowly walks in and closes the door. 

I watch my dad’s reaction when he sees the scratch. 

He doesn’t react at all. 

“Dad? Don’t you see it?” I ask, my voice cracking. 

“See what?” He gives me a concerned look. 

“The long scr..” I look down and see my legs are perfectly fine. My eyes shift to Xavier’s legs. 

Xavier is examining his legs too. “But we both had a long scr…” he catches my eyes and shuts up because of the look I give him. 

Dad squints at us. “Okay.” 

Once he’s gone I drag Xavier to our room. 

“what was that look for? Why did you stop me from telling dad?” He asks. 

“we don’t want mom and dad to think we are hallucinating again,” I explain. 

When we were 10, Xavier and I started to hallucinate. It really worried mom and dad. We would imagine seeing creatures and injuries on each other that weren’t there. We would draw and explain what the injuries and creatures looked like. But the weird thing was that both Xavier and I saw the same things. We went to the doctor and he said it was normal for twins to see the same things. Whenever we told him what the creatures and injuries looked like he would look more terrified. The scariest of all was that the doctor wanted to talk to our parents alone. When they went in we put our ears to the door and listened. 

He told them that we might not have been hallucinating the creatures. That many people that see these creatures believe that they are from another dimension. And the injuries could be injuries that we will get in the future. Our parents dragged us out of there right away because they thought the doctor was crazy. But Xavier and I believed every word he said.  The hallucinations caused us to wreck things. Like that hole in the side of the house, Xavier punched the wall because he thought he saw a spider there. That was 5 years ago. 

Now we are 15 and have had no hallucinations since, until now.