Mr. Hands gently took her into his grip and lifted her from the ground. He was in tremendous pain but they weren’t dead yet.

Before closing her eyes for the last time, Lucy saw a winter carnival on the ground beneath her, and there she saw Heather Wilson, Daniel McKellan, Rosie and Thad Simpkins, Billy Lawrence, Crystal and Emily Ransom, and the dozens upon dozens of other children whose sad and pained faces had decorated the Walls of Madness, only now they were smiling, laughing, playing happily, and among them was a little girl holding a small wooden doll as if it was the greatest treasure in the world. “It’s Misserhands!” shouted the child, dancing in kairos. “He’s good luck! Misserhands won’t ever let anything happen to me!”

Kylie Ann Patterson clapped her hands and giggled, asking Sarah if she could hold Misserhands.

A toy rocking horse was there, its snout unstained.

Blood no longer bound Big Bird’s wings.

* * *

Randy stopped running at six-fifteen when he came upon a large rock. He climbed to the top of it (it seemed like a good place to be) and dug into the backpack for some water and some bread and cheese. He cried for a while, then he cried some more, and then, for a while, there were no more tears.

He wasn’t as scared, though, and that was good.

He pulled the watch from his pocket. At six-thirty he radioed for emergency assistance just like he promised, then called 911 and told them he was lost in the woods. They told him to stay where he was and not to hang up and they would find him.

Then he waited.

Later, when the sun was bright and the sky was clear, he took out the binoculars and stood up, looking around at the trees and hills in the distance—

—until he saw something glint.

Something that looked almost gold.

He steadied his hands until he again found the mountain in the distance.

Even with the snow, it looked gold in the sunlight.

He saw Mr. Hands, climbing up the side. He looked like he was hurt. There was some kind of big basket on his back.

Randy fiddled with the focus until the image was clearer.

Then wished he hadn’t.

Lucy, her blouse covered in blood, her head hanging limply to one side, had been stuffed into the basket on Mr. Hands’ back.

Randy dropped the binoculars and threw up, then started crying again.

When he was able to move again several minutes later, he grabbed the binoculars and tried to find them again.

He saw only the mountain of gold and nothing more.

He was still looking for them three hours later when the first of the rescuers found him, but they were gone forever, somewhere up on the mountain of gold...

* * *

...the same mountain of gold that he returned to many years later, that he’d been fighting for the last seven hours, and whose summit was now in sight.