Dirk is silent. So are the children.

The man’s face breaks into a smile again. He shows relief and slaps a hand on his knee.

You’re toying with me! Good one. Now tell me…please…what was it like? I won’t tell a soul.

There are so many sounds beyond him. Dirk hears something slither across the ceiling again. He looks up and sees a woman’s back slip out of sight. He feels bloated. Too big. Like he’s pressing against his skin, from the inside out. He looks down at his own feet and sees that, yes, his belly and chest have grown. Something has gotten into him for sure.

Tell me, the man says. I’m just starting out. You’re on your way back.

There is a little gasp among the children.

We’re not on our way back, Dirk tells the man. We’re on our way there.

What do you mean to do, fooling with me? the man says. You are on your way back!

Dirk looks back down the hall from which they came.

What was it like? the man says. What did it look like?

Dirk says, There is nothing but fog back there.

The man cocks a thumb back where he came from. Yeah? Well, there is nothing but mist back there!

Dirk doesn’t believe him. But the man believes himself. The man runs his fingers through his thinning brown hair. He looks beyond the children, then back down the hall. Dirk thinks he understands what is going on now.

I think you are mixed up, Dirk says. I think you are going the wrong way.

The children nod and nudge one another.

The man says, But I’ve been—

But Dirk interrupts him. You’ve already seen the prize.

And Dirk suddenly knows this is true.

The man pouts. He shakes his head no. Dirk wonders if he’s searching his mind for what the end might have been like.

Is that right? the man asks.

I think so, Dirk tells him.

A terrible crunching sound erupts from well beyond the man. Some of the children recoil and some of them simply lift up onto their tiptoes to see what it might be. Dirk is frightened for many reasons. The sound is a familiar one, metal on muscle, metal on tissue, metal on bone. The image of a man squashed comes to mind. Squashed inside himself. Visions of pigs and cows split from head to tail come to mind, too. But what scares him most is this man. Dirk wants to ask him what he saw. But he knows that what he saw has done something to him.

As if cued, the man starts back into the darkness ahead of them. The darkness he came from. He vanishes. Dirk and the children stand still and watch. They hear shuffling, shifting, something crawling quick up the left side wall.

Then the man emerges from the darkness again.

Oh my! he says. How was it?