Incredible, a boy says.

There is an unfathomable wrenching sound as the steel of the lamppost bends and Dirk’s fingers sink into it. He huffs as he works and the children have forgotten about their tour. For now.

Dirk twists the post and the sound so eclipses that of the fog breathing that he is granted an accidental reprieve from having to think of it. He thinks of the sliding steel doors of the House and he thinks of them bowing in on themselves, folding up and over again until the whole of the four doors are folded into steel squares so small he could drop them through the holes in the grate of the gutters and never have to open or close them again. He thinks of the bars on Trudy’s cage and he thinks of them wrapping around one another, in and out of one another, twisting like the trees of the North Woods until the mass created is dense enough to fill the great golden trash can of the Hardy Carroll Goblin Zoo.

Dirk stops. The post is bent at close to a ninety-degree angle. He leans on it and rests.

What’s wrong? a boy asks.

Dirk lifts his head and turns to the children.

I don’t know how to free them without hurting them, he says.

He squeezes the post tighter but does not know it.

Maybe they don’t think the same way you do, a girl says.

Dirk feels a nervous swelling in his chest. The words he has spoken and the words spoken to him by the children feel fleeting, like fluttering wings. Will he remember them? After? Already the words exchanged are vague. They drift toward the fog and there they will come to rest somewhere Dirk will never locate again.

He grips the post and bends it back up to its original position. Then he tears it down and the metal splits and he is thrown back a step onto the bench with the top half of the post in his hand.

That was unreal, a boy says. It seems to be the first words spoken by one of the kids in a long time.

Dirk steps down from the bench, lamppost in hand. The sphere of light changes with his location, showing a new part of the road they have all met. Dirk’s boots make a grinding sound as they hit the pavement. He thinks of Christmas, the dirt road, but he doesn’t think this is it. He walks a few feet up to the sign. He holds the light up to it.

to think is to mutilate

Dirk turns back to the children. He steps through the crowd they make, toward the other side of the road. The fog splits with the light and soon Dirk sees the entrance to what looks like a cave.

There is a door. A mineshaft maybe. Something like that.

Stone walls.

The children are gathered at Dirk’s knees as he steps to the door and traces the entire frame slowly with his fingertips.