He catches sight of shiny eyes, eyes like polished buttons.

And fingers, too. And teeth. Both like knives. Long knives. Hunting knives.

It casts fear in Davey’s heart. Turns to run, to find a weapon – but these boots aren’t meant for running. The toe of one boot catches the bulging heel of the other and Davey Morgan pitches forward.

The ripple of fabric is right on him. So is the clatter of knife-teeth and blade-claws. He hits the ground. Shoulder taking the brunt. Pain. Like a baseball through a window: ksshhh. The monster is upon him. Covering him. All light is extinguished. A horrible thought crosses Davey’s mind: I’m too old for this now. I’m too old and too slow and I’ve let fear creep in like black mold and now it’s all over.

He hears a shotgun boom. Men yelling, though they sound so distant…

He can’t breathe. The creature sounds like fabric but feels like liquid. Davey tries to swing a fist, but it’s like thrashing around underwater – a slow-motion freakout.

He sees those eyes. Just the eyes. Gleaming buttons. Coins in black water.

Then knives plunge out of the liquid and into his chest.

Then into his head.

But the pain is strange – hardly a pain at all, not in the physical sense. It’s like a spear punching a hole through his thoughts, through his mind. What he feels instead is something far deeper and ultimately worse than physical pain:

Grief and guilt holding hands, la la la. In his mind, memories burst bright like fireworks: pop pop pop. His first day as a shaper on the bench at the Sandhog office, feeling the pinprick stick of shame as he secretly hopes some poor Hog breaks his foot so that Davey has a shot down below; him losing his virginity with a Bronx whore on a dirty afghan on a mattress that smells like beer and cigarettes; the day his daughter Cassie was born and he was down here working; the day his wife died from an aneurysm and once more he was down here in the dark while she flopped around on the kitchen floor like a fish trying to find water. Image after image, memory after memory, too-bright and too-loud fireworks launching into the sky of his mind before fading anew. All of it feels bad, sour, like a kind of mind poison – every memory robed in rotten ribbon, a mummy’s gauze, dusty and cursed.

Then one image stays fixed in his mind: blueprints and blasting plans for Water Tunnel #3, a yellow notebook with scribbles sitting under his left hand, a cold Coors Light in his right, the can sweating–

Cassie walks into the room. He says, “Hey, lollipop–”

He hears a sound. A familiar voice. A familiar roar.

And then it’s all over.

The goblins hang on him like boat anchors. He doesn’t have time to care. Mookie runs. The Blue gives him speed. Puts power in his legs. The Pig churns ahead of him around the bend of the tunnel. Gobbos bite. Claw. He feels blood wet his shirt.