All around them are the glass coffins of the heroes.

The glass coffins all stacked up to heaven.

Each of them now empty.

The covers of their caskets the perfect mirror.

All that sounds is the footsteps of The Sons Of Men.

The footsteps of The Sons Of Men, receding forever.

Next time: Into The Maze!

*

You told me it was me what gave you all those little cuts and what bruised your thighs, I says to Kathy, you told me it was me. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, she says to me. By the shore at Carrickfergus, that’s when I says to her. By the shore at Carrickfergus was where I found out. The news that broke my heart but made me whole again. How can I explain it? How can I explain what it did to me?

The tide is coming in and washing all the stones on the beach. The moon is rising up out of the sea. We’re stood at the very edge of the world, I says to her. No, we’re not, she says. Scotland is just over there. Don’t ruin it, I says to her. Don’t spoil it for me. And then I says to her, how did you get pregnant by our Tommy? She looks at me with a confused expression. What are you talking about? she says to me. And for a second it’s like Christ Jayzus Himself is holding his breath. For a second it’s like maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I am the father. Maybe dreams come true. Maybe there’s a simple way out of this. Maybe we can just walk away, the two of us. Maybe we’re in that song after all, that song by the shore at Carrickfergus.

And she says to me: who the fuck is Tommy? And I says to her, Tommy, you know, the one what got you pregnant, my best pal, Tommy, I saw you both together. You really don’t know? she says to me, and she shakes her head. His name’s not Tommy, she says. His name is fucking Thomas James Kentigern, I says to her, and it’s written in gold letters on his coffin. That’s a s how you know him, she says to me. But he was working for the other side all along, she says. And with a different name.

*

Wait. I want to tell you the story of my spirit animal, son, which is a Harry the Hedgehog. It came back to me in a vision of my father, as to when a time he had found a Harry the Hedgehog walking in our driveway and he had come running in and with his eyes all gleaming he says to me, come, quick, it’s a Harry the Hedgehog, and years later, when I had forgotten all about it, my father, long after he had died, came to me in the spirit world, as a dream, and he tells me the information that he and my ma had never really understood each other, and I felt heartbroken and sad, and I says to my father, my father from beyond the grave, now, did we truly understand each other, Father? And he says to me, don’t you remember Harry the Hedgehog, and he points up, to the Milky Way, as a direction.