He gripped the ledge and pulled himself over. This was a wide one, wide enough for a man to roll out his sleeping back and rest upon for a while.

The sunlight cast golden light onto the surface of the mountain wall behind him. Blinking, he turned around and saw—

—oh, sweet Jesus, ohGod—

—the skeletal remains of Mr. Hands embedded in the mountain.

His chest hitched and his vision blurred but he refused to weep.

“You were real,” he said, the last word shining, full of glory, and in his mind Randy Patterson, now almost forty-two years old, wiped away all the stares and questions and “Are-you-sure’s” that had blended together into a lifelong mantra of doubt.

“I’m not crazy,” he whispered toward the fossil hands. “I’m not crazy.”

And then he saw her.

There were other human skeletons and parts of skeletons embedded into the mountain, but he saw the one that was looking down at him, that seemed to be trying to free itself from the fossilized remains of Mr. Hands so it could come down and embrace him, and he knew without question or doubt that it was Lucy.

He had no strength left to climb or he would have tried to get to her, to touch her; instead he pressed himself against the mountain’s wall and looked up toward her remains, his left hand reaching up as far as it could so she’d know he wanted to touch her, and called out: “I never thanked you, Lucy! I just…I just needed to do this, to know that it was all real—that you were real and I...” He released a long breath and cast a glance downward to the world he would return to in a little while, where, finally, he could shake away the ruins of the past and start his life.

He saw something lying at his feet, and carefully reached down for the hand-carved astronaut that the odd little man at the carnival had given him so many, many years ago.

Something had been carved into the back of the astronaut’s space suit: Sarah says hi.

Randy looked back up at the magically fossilized remains of Lucy Thompson. “I’m fine now, really, and…and I just…I just wanted to thank you,” he whispered.

And was freed.

Later, he began the climb back down.

It seemed a lot easier, somehow.

He suspected a lot of things would from now on.

Epilogue: The Hangman

3:20 a.m.

Grant McCullers finished drying off the last of the glasses, slid them into the overhead racks, dried his hands on the towel he’d thrown over his shoulder, and offered his hand to the guy at the bar. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Randy.”

“Likewise,” said Randy Patterson, shaking Grant’s hand.

“Welcome home,” said the Reverend, also shaking Randy’s hand.

“Thank you.”

“Hope you’re planning on staying with us for a while,” said Jackson as he shook Randy’s hand.

Randy shrugged. “I…I don’t know. I don’t really have any family or friends here anymore. I’m not even sure why I came back here, to tell you the truth.”