Dirk reaches another break in the steel. He and the children gulp another breath before continuing. More bodies cross the ceiling. One even comes at them on the stone floor. No arms. No head. All legs. The children step aside.

Cackles ahead. Crunching. Fire crackling, too. A third break in the steel walls comes sooner than the second did. Again Dirk and the children take a breath of the outside.

The fourth one comes so soon that only half the kids breathe it in. And Dirk now understands that some of the noises are coming from the outside. He stumbles ahead. His torso feels huge, his feet are like flat paddles, the hump on his back is making it impossible to see the children. But he knows. He knows that only ten or so were there at the last break in the steel. He knows he’s lost ten or more along the way.

The fifth break comes even sooner. Then the sixth. The seventh. The eighth. There are so many symmetrical breaks in the walls now that most of the air in the corridor is from the outside and it can hardly be called a corridor anymore. But the breaks are not big enough for Dirk or the children to step through. The ninth, the tenth, the eleventh. Through the breaks Dirk sees there is a green Goblin mist…like the man said…but it is nothing like the fog. In the mist…in the darkness just past the mist…Dirk sees people. Shapes. Faces. People watching him and the children. Some snicker. Some gasp.

Dirk starts to understand what is happening. By the fourteenth space in the steel he knows it for sure.

He stops and holds the light close to what used to be a stone wall and is now only three-inch wedges of steel spaced three inches or so apart, reaching the ceiling and the floor.

We’re in a cage, Dirk says.

What a twist! one of children says.

And we’re being looked at, Dirk says.

He counts some fifty faces in the green mist beyond the bars. Some of the children step to the bars and grip them like little prisoners.

This is not the end, Dirk says. There’s more. Follow me.

He begins to walk but the children are slow to follow. Dirk turns and sees that some of the people from the outside are at the edge of the cage, bent at the waist and whispering to the children. The children whisper back.

Don’t speak to them! Dirk yells.

A woman from the outside turns to Dirk and frowns and her face slides down her head like jelly.

The children seem to be astonished by what they hear.

Don’t listen to them, Dirk says.

He feels something wet touch his arm. He turns quick. A man has been licking Dirk’s arm.

Come on! Dirk calls to the children.

A hand comes through the bars, reaching for Dirk. Dirk grabs it and bends the fingers back. They squish like dead fruit, like the soft pumpkin flesh of the Goblin Police.