Even the sounds beyond him cease some. The corridor is quiet. Dirk doesn’t know what to do. Then he does.

It was incredible, he answers. It was as beautiful as the brochure promised.

The man smiles. He looks like he might cry or like he’s traveled so long to reach this spot in the hall and now here’s this big man with all these children telling him, Yes, you have made it, yes, it was incredible, yes. The sorrow Dirk feels for this mixed-up man is bigger than the sorrow he feels for himself. He can feel the sympathy pressing against the interior of his body-shell and he worries lest it split him apart, leaving the kids with no guide for the tour.

Thank you, the man says, thank you. Maybe I will see you back at the beginning. Maybe we can talk about what we saw together. Maybe we can talk about what the end looks like. Together.

He steps forward and sticks out his hand for Dirk to shake. Nervously Dirk takes it.

Truly though? the man says. Just like the brochure?

Yes, Dirk says.

The man steps past Dirk and the children at last. He vanishes into the darkness behind them.

I hope there are many exhibits like that one, a boy says. That one made me think.

Dirk aims the half lamppost ahead.

I have a feeling, he says, there will be more.

The Mixed-up Man, a girl says. And Dirk almost tells her his name is Dirk. Then, walking again, guiding again, splitting the darkness apart with the lamppost again, he realizes she wasn’t referring to him.

18

“Come on,” Dirk said out loud. Some of the kids on tour looked up at him.

It was a bad sign that, on this day, a day that was supposed to be so good, he was still letting the bad in.

One kid nudged another. They snickered. After all, the big tour guide was talking to himself. The rain was starting to “catch up” as Gobliners said, for when the sky was clear, the rain was simply lagging behind. But this storm felt bigger than most. People were talking about floods. And here, the tour guide in a slicker looked just as stormy as the sky.

Dirk knew it had something to do with a nightmare, specifically the one he had the night before, but bad dreams were nothing new those days. In fact, Dirk was so used to them that he didn’t know what to blame for his daily flip-book of horror visions. If pressed, Dirk, using all the power of philosophy he was capable of conjuring, would have said it was a way out that consumed him. Freedom from a box he didn’t fully understand the dimensions of.

The children were occupied (for a few minutes anyway) and nobody noticed as the big tour guide in brown zoned out on the path. He lifted a hand to his head. Thoughts materialized slowly. Pieces of the unconscious night before.