I didn’t have much money, and I wasn’t a particularly eager church-goer, so I hadn’t planned on participating. But when dirty water is actually dripping on your church’s altar, the social pressure gets pretty strong, if you know what I mean. So I bought a raffle ticket. When Pastor Ezra called my name for the camera, I couldn’t have been more surprised. I’d never won anything before.

I had to figure out what to do with the thing, so I went online, and that was the advice I found: great pictures bring out what the eye wouldn’t normally notice.

In the time since, I’ve wondered what would’ve happened if I’d just stayed home that night, if Shingles, Fives, and Tens had gone on without me. You had to be there to win, so I wouldn’t have brought that camera home. Without the camera, I wouldn’t have started looking for what’s hidden in everyday things. So maybe I wouldn’t have started seeing monsters. Not right then, anyway.

But I was there to hear my name called, there to walk up and be handed that shiny new box, there to head back to my chair, blushing and smiling like a dork.

Can you blame me for being excited? I was twenty-three and stuck in a small town, employed but poor, unwed and pretty much undateable, not highly educated, and at least a little lonely a lot of the time. Winning an $800 camera was the best thing that had happened to me in quite a while.

I know that sounds pathetic. I guess I was sort of pathetic, back then.

In retrospect, I wouldn’t mind having stayed that way a while longer.

“Betty! How you doing, sweetie?”

Fixing a smile on my face, I closed my porch door and waved at Suzanne Dreisbach, my next-door neighbor. It looked like she was just getting home from the store. She always shopped on Saturday afternoon. You could set your clock by Suzanne.

She waved back and gave me a bright smile, shifting the paper bag she was carrying from one ample hip to the other. Suzanne was a wonderful neighbor — the kind who’ll pull your trashcan out and back for you three weeks in a row, and not even mention it.

That said, I really hated being called “Betty.”

“I’m fine, Suzanne. How’re you today?”

“Can’t complain, can’t complain.”

Actually, Suzanne could complain like a champ. She was a big gossip and always seemed to know something new about everybody in town — with a focus on the titillating stuff. Listening to her “news” was one of my guilty pleasures. But I just wasn’t up for it at the moment. It was chilly, and the desire to take pictures was gnawing at me.

“Good, good. Hey, sorry, gotta get going.” I raised my camera. “I don’t want to lose the good light.”