Dirk tries to move fast but he feels fat. He feels like he is carrying the weight of at least two children now. He accidentally brushes against the wall. His arm explodes into pain and he starts bleeding immediately. He thinks the walls might be lined with burrs, something serrated. He continues by holding the lamppost in the hand of the injured arm and tries to tighten his shirt around the wound with the other.

Avoid the walls! he says. Then he realizes how fitting a phrase that is for the time.

The children take his advice and now the pack walks more in the center of the hall. Dirk is surprised that there is enough room for them to do this. The air is getting thick. Sludgy. The tunnel is hot. It’s heavy on the lungs. It is heavy on the body.

Dirk hears a child wheeze. He turns to him.

Are you all right? he asks, his own face swollen to twice its original size. His voice sounds too fatty to be his own.

The boy nods yes, and his nose falls to the gravel floor. From the hole in his face, a new one, an ape’s, grows in.

Dirk stares at the boy a long time. Then he looks to the rest of the children. He believes there are only two-thirds of them remaining. He doesn’t know what took the others, how each in turn has vanished.

He continues.

Astonishing sounds erupt ahead. Crunching. Slithering. Swallowing. The darkness ahead takes on a darker pallor and Dirk considers stopping. It looks like something might be blocking the way. He can’t tell. He lumbers forward. The darkness approaches as Dirk approaches it. It is stationary. He wonders, Is this the end? The range of light shows him that it is not.

Rather, the walls have changed.

The stone has given way to steel.

Dirk reaches cautiously and touches the new wall. The light of the lamppost head shows him that it is smooth. It is old, but it is smooth.

I think we’re near the end, a boy says.

Why do you say that? Dirk asks.

I’ve taken the tour before.

Dirk crouches to the height of the boy, but a second tongue in the boy’s mouth causes Dirk to rise again and step away from him.

What’s it like? Dirk asks.

What’s what like?

The end.

A little girl laughs and says, Now you sound like the Mixed-up Man.

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