He and the light are only a foot from the thing against the wall.

Are you all right? Dirk asks. His voice is strong. Thunderous almost. And things scurry ahead at the sound of it.

The thing does not move. It does not turn. It does not respond.

What is it? a girl asks.

Dirk steps toward the hooded thing.

We are going to step past you now, Dirk says. We are going to step past you and continue down the hall.

The tension is unbelievable. The light is shaky because Dirk is shaky. There are more sounds now…soft howls…metal on metal…dull thudding…and something wet sliding overhead.

Dirk looks up quick and sees a leg slide out of range. It looked like a woman’s leg. A person to be sure.

This is a chicken, Dirk says to the children, pointing at the huddled thing. He’s too scared to continue.

The children view it like they do the flamingos. Like they do the pigs.

Cool, a boy says.

Dirk steps past the thing and turns to look at it in the light. There seems to be no face beneath the hood. Just solid yellow skin stretched tight across a melon. Then the melon turns and Dirk sees a chicken’s beak wedged into a face as puttylike as the Goblin Police.

Come on, kids, Dirk says.

They pass the huddled thing and continue down the hall. Dirk hears a swiping sound, something moving quickly behind them. A child screams then its scream is cut off.

Then…clucking.

Clucking.

Clucking.

Dirk knows the child was taken by the huddled thing.

He quickens the pace but it’s hard. His body feels heavy. His body feels bloated. His body feels like a Goblin sky, fat with so much rain it must dump itself on an entire city at once.

He feels a hump growing in his back. He reaches for it and can feel it, yes, a hump growing in his back.

Howling ahead. Steel on steel. Grating. Clucking. The scuffle of the children’s shoes on the ground, the scuffle of wet things overhead.

And now a hump growing out of his back.

How long before he can’t see over his own shoulder?

16

Dirk Rogers woke every day an optimist and fell asleep despaired.

He would leave his place with vigor and return to flop upon a chair at his kitchen table, only enough energy left within him to stare at the tabletop.

But today…today was supposed to be different. Today he was quitting. Tonight he was hitting the town with Patrick.

Today the routine that haunted him had to end.

So why wasn’t it ending?

Dirk, never given to fully articulating his feelings, guessed that maybe it wasn’t so easy a thing to change.

“Dirk!” someone hollered. “What are you doing?”

Dirk looked down and saw he was washing his hands in the drinking fountain. At first he laughed, but really this scared him. Did he think he was still in the bathroom?