The Great Ohio Meat Mountain

Walking into a cave is kind of like walking into a giant mouth. It doesn’t feel as much like that when there’s a building built into it, but the thought was still in my head as we pushed through the front doors of the Upper Museum at the Great Ohio Meat Mountain State Park. Unlike the Lower Museum, this was built directly into the side of the mountain. You have to take a gondola up, like the kind they have in California. Or the kind my friend Shannon said they have in California. I’d only been out west once, for a college visit. Not that we could afford for me to go there, but Mom tried to hide the fact we never have money. 

 

Passing from the man-made portion to the cave proper felt more like going down the throat of a giant, the concrete walkways its tongue and the high, vaulted, undulating ceiling the roof of its mouth. We barely passed through the doors before my younger brother Will dashed off to one of the glass cases.

 

“Check this out!” he said, gesturing excitedly to the exhibit. “It’s a full intestinal tract!” He had already run down the walkway to a wholly separate plaque before either Mom or I had caught up.

 

“That’s nice, sweety,” Mom responded, looking off past him. She was always kind of distracted these days. She could barely keep up with William’s seventh-grade enthusiasm. “Come on, Anthony.”

 

I huffed, and shoved my hands into my pockets. “Why are we here? Who the hell goes on vacation to a state park anyway?”

 

“Watch your language, young man,” Mom chided me. “Your brother likes museums. It’s his birthday, it’s not too far, and I have to be back to work Monday.”

 

“Of course you have to be at work Monday,.” I grumbled. “And I’ll be stuck taking Will to school.”

 

“Excuse me?” sShe asked, halting.

“Nothing.”

 

“So help me, I—-” She stopped mid-sentence and turned around just in time to see Will scamper off. “Will! William Harrison! God damn it…”

 

Before she could say anything else, Will dashed off once more, Mom not too far behind. I followed at a languid pace. Maybe if we kept stopping, Will would get bored enough that he’d want to go back home. I doubted it, but the thought was nice. I stole a peek at the glass case Will had been so excited about, and sure enough, there was a whole human intestinal tract, right there. It must have still been alive since it was twitching a bit, and one of its mouths looked like it was trying to say something. I could see where they pulled it from the side of the Mountain, since it was labeled. The location looked like a scab, almost, in the cave’s gently pulsing red wall. 

 

Catching up to Mom and Will turned out to be easier than I thought, since his constant energy meant he inevitably missed things, and went back to check them out. So they ended up traveling most of the distance back to me. Which made my life easier. We continued, deeper and deeper, into the caves. We passed high, irregular pillars that had been clearly painted to look like the Mountain’s walls, only they were old and off-color. Big lights were affixed to their tops, which shone through some of the flabby stalactites that hung from the ceiling in small clusters. It gave some parts of the cave a weird red glow. You could even see veins and other things inside the stalactites where the ceiling dipped down and light went through –l Like if you held a flashlight against your finger. I doubted my blood vessels moved as much though.

 

We passed glass case after glass case of things pulled from the walls, each meticulously labeled. Will was particularly entranced by what looked like a hand, if it had about half as many fingers, and an eye or two less. There were tanks of red liquid in which swam small black creatures about the size of my thumb. When I put my hand on the glass, they glued themselves to the tank wall, small teeth gnashing. Neat. 

 

“Those are Mummers!” Will said. I jumped. I didn’t know he had circled back to me. But there he was, gazing up with a wide smile. His dark brown eyes were magnified to absurd proportions by his glasses. He was so short he had to stand on tiptoe to reach the glass. For a split second, I thought about how easy it would have been to kick him like a football across the concrete walkway.

 

“What?” I said instead.

 

“Mummers!”

 

“Why’re they called that?”

 

“Cuz they eat your throat first, so you can’t scream! You go mum, get it?”

 

He pressed his face up to the glass and giggled as the mummers tried to push through to him. 

 

“You’re such a nerd, Will.”

 

Mom came back round a corner, panting.

 

“There you are, Anthony,” she said between breaths. “For a second, I thought the Mountain had eaten you!” She tried to chuckle but it just devolved into coughing fits.

“Mountains don’t eat people,” I responded bluntly.

 

“It’s a joke, Anthony,” Mom said. “Lighten up.”

 

“No, it’s a bad joke. I thought you picked up some humor from Dad,.” I snapped.

 

She inhaled sharply, preparing to scold me. I continued before she got the chance.

 

“If he was here, maybe we’d go somewhere cooler than the stupid State Park.”

 

“Well, he’s not,” Mom said. Her words had a clipped edge to them, like she was trying desperately to hold something back. “He’s not here. He’s probably out in California with some blond chick, and—--” she cut herself off.

 

“Then he’s a lot better off than we are.” I turned away from here. “Why don’t we just go home? Why do we go to these stupid places??”

 

“Anthony Harrison! What has gotten into you? You’re acting like a child.”

 

“I never wanted to come here!” My voice raised three octaves, like sixth grade all over again.

 

“This isn’t about you, Anthony. This is about doing something as a family for your brother’s God damn birthday. We never get to-” She replied, but before she could get in another word, I snapped.

 

“No, we don’t! We never get to do anything. You’re never home. You’re always busy. And now you’re trying to act like–like Dad!”

 

She didn’t say anything for a long time. I walked off without looking where I was going. I bumped into some people, but I don’t remember what they said. I passed some eyes in the cave wall that made a weird snickering sound, and flipped them off as I walked by. When I thought I was far enough away, I sat down, hard, on one of the benches. I was aware of something breathing on the glass in one of the exhibits close by, but didn’t pay any attention to it. Eventually I cooled down. After a while, a tour group passed, and I decided to hitch to the back of them. Just to do something. I couldn’t really go anywhere else.

 

“The Great Ohio Meat Mountain State Park contains one hundred thirty-three thousand, two hundred and sixty-seven human bodies,” the tour guide announced. The crowd “oohed” and “ahhed,”, snapping pictures of the walls nearby. When a flash went off on one of the cameras, the tour guide said with an icy, rehearsed sternness, “Pplease turn all flash off. We at the Great Ohio Meat Mountain State Park are not liable for any bodily harm precipitated by disturbing the Mountain.” There were no flashes after that.

 

One of the tour goers dropped a pamphlet for the State Park, and I picked it up out of idle curiosity. On the cover was a portrait of the Mountain, rendered in big, blocky shapes, rising from the ruins of Old Dayton. I had to admit, it looked pretty cool, the way the colors and shapes came together. I found a display case to lean against (it had a diorama of a creature with a single eye and trailing, boney limbs chasing down a big slug looking thing with a vaguely human face and hands that looked like it was in panic) and idly opened the brochure up.

 

The first page was a full-length warning about not feeding the Ohio Lions, and it provided a helpful picture of the creature. I had seen a stuffed one down in the Lower Museum. They were long, longer than I was tall, with muscular bodies and six or so limbs that were longer than they probably had to be. Their heads were all mouth and teeth and I oftentimes wondered how they could see. I didon’t know why they had so many warnings about them. I didon’t know anyone who had actually seen one out in the Park. 

 

There was a small blurb about the formation of the Mountain. One hundred thirty-one thousand, ninety-nine human bodies, summer 1952, etc. I guessed more had been added in the meantime. The rest of the brochure detailed the different environments found on the Mmountain. There was a thing about the Bone Orchard on the north side of the mountain. That trail had been closed down for as long as I could remember. Something about too many people trying to take the bone splinters and the trees retaliating. Another about the hairlands. I didn’t know that the hairs reacted to temperature, or the presence of animals. There was a close-up of an individual hair, with all its “specialized harpoon cells, much like a jellyfish” and primitive eyes. It reminded guests that the hairlands were carnivorous. 

 

The back of the brochure had a little detachable card so you could be added to the State Park mailing list. It didn’t say whether it was for the Mountain or Ohio in general. Neither could be too interesting though. That was about when I got bored of the brochure. So I dropped it back on the ground and walked off to see where Mom and Will had gotten to. 

 

The deeper in the mountain you got, it feltels like the closer the walls goet. The ceiling dippeds lower and lower, and the concrete walkway narrowed to the point that the three of us could hold hands and easily reach to either wall. I wasn’t’m not a claustrophobic person, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit uncomfortable. I heard noises, deep gurgles and rumbles from all around, and it served as a tacit reminder that, if there were a cave-in, I’d be completely trapped down here. I shivered. 

 

I must have walked for at least half an hour without hide nor hair of Will or Mom. I nearly called out to them, but there were still people besides us in the museum. I didn’t want to look like a scared child. As I kept walking, I started to get annoyed. I couldn’t just leave without them;, Mom had the keys to the van. Just as I was about to head back, I stumbled across Mom sitting, red- faced and sweating, on a bench.

 

“Anthony! Oh thank goodness. I can’t find your brother. I’m starting to get worried.”

 

“Why? This isn’t the first time you’ve left him alone.”

 

She shot me a look filled with daggers. “Not right now, Anthony. I’m really. Really. Not in the mood for it.”

 

In a surprisingly mature move for my younger self, I dropped it. “Fine,” I said instead. “I’ll go find him.”

 

She reached out and grabbed my arm. “Wait,” she said. There was fear in her eyes. “Stay with me. Just… let’s look together, ok?”

 

I stared at her. “What, afraid you’ll lose me too?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Oh. I sighed.

 

We walked the way we had come until we found a fork in the cave’s tunnels, then took a left turn down a path we hadn’t gone down. Every person we passed, Mom would take out her wallet and show them a photo of Will several years outdated.

 

“He’s older now, um, and has, glasses. But he has the same hair! Have- have you seen him?” she asked each time. Most of the time, the people would say no. Every three or four would say yes, and point us in a seemingly random direction. We passed dozens of exhibits and plaques, and Mom actually tried to look for Will’s fingerprints on a couple of them. She swore that Will had been through an area lined with displays of bones and teeth and tongues, swore on her heart. She was growing less and less coherent as we went on. She would stop and start sentences without any sort of pattern or regularity. Everything was just fragments. Sometimes it wasn’t even whole words, just collections of loose syllables. In truth, it was frightening to see my mother in a state of such panic. I decided to keep a little bit of distance between us. She didn’t seem to notice. 

 

She didn’t notice when we found him at first either.

 

I spotted his glasses before anything else on the concrete walkway, chipped and scuffed. I opened my mouth to point them out, but was cut off by my mother screaming, “William!” Above the glasses, the oozing red wall met the barrier of the walkway, encroaching the walkway. The concrete was buckled and cracked, like the wall had surged forward and smashed it before mostly retreating. But not entirely, and not alone. From the wall we caught a glimpse of a hand as it sank into the flesh.

 

“William!” Mom screamed again. She rushed forward, and clawed at where his hand used to be. Blood covered her shirt and sprayed onto the concrete as she ripped and tore her way into the wall. It healed faster than her nails could damage it. I stood, shocked, with my mouth hanging open. My mom screamed his name, over and over, as fingerlike tendrils crawled up her hands. SheThey tore off as she grabbed chunks of flesh and gristle and threw them aside as she tried yanked them off and threw them aside, but they always came back in greater numbers. William was no longer visible. Finally the crunch of his glasses beneath her shoe shocked me out of my stupor. 

 

I rushed forward, the world a blur of reds and pinks, and wrapped my arms around her blood-soaked midsection. I braced myself against the barrier and pulled with all the strength I could summon. It wasn’t enough. My arms slipped on the slick fabric and I fell backwards onto the floor. I stared up at my mother, yelling and clawing still even as the mountain pulled her in, until not even a scrap of fabric remained. Before long, all that was left to show that she had even been there was a discoloration, like a particularly nasty scab. And even that was beginning to disappear from the wall.

 

I sat on the floor amidst the squirming viscera and blood, my chest heaving. It took all my energy to stand, knees shaking. I leaned against the concourse barrier, and through my stupor, saw someone in an olive green polo with the Park Service logo on it from the corner of my eye. It took a couple tries to stumble over to them. The world tipped and spun around me. It felt like years passed before I got to the Park employee, who looked me up and down, bored. I could barely see their face. The world blended into a scarlet, bloody mess.

 

“M-my, my family.”,” I stuttered. I’d never had a stutter before. “They’re gone. They’re gone.”

 

“Pardon?” tThe employee said after a pause.

 

“The, the, the Mountain, it.,” Hholy shit, holy shit. “It ate them. The Mountain ate them.”

 

The employee’s washed-out face turned from bored to annoyed. They sighed. “Kid, I don’t have time for this.”

 

“It, it ate them! It ate my mom and my brother!” I pointed down the hallway, where I thought I had come from. “The Mountain ate my family!”

 

The employee grunted. “Piss off, kid.”

 

“But, it, it ate them!” I didn’t know what else to say. It sounded ridiculous. 

 

“Listen, bud. I don’t have time for this. If you don’t go away I’m going to call security.”

 

I looked around for the exit signs. My head felt like it was moving at a different speed from my brain. My body followed the signs at a shaky run until I found the front desk, where the rest of me caught up. I shoved past the people in line and nearly flew over the counter.

 

“The Mountain ate my family!” I shouted at the girl behind the counter. My voice sounded muffled. Underwater. Someone had to believe me. Someone had to do something about it.

 

The girl sighed and gave me a tired look. “I’m sure they did, hun. Please move out of the way. There are’s people in line.”

 

“I’m serious! The fucking Mountain ate my fucking family!”

 

“And I’m serious too. People get lost on the Mountain all the time. The website clearly states we are not responsible for the consequences of your actions. Please, move so we can help the people who are waiting their turn.”

 

I slammed my fists on the counter, Will’s glasses cutting into my palm. I didn’t even know I had picked them up.

 

“Fuck you!” I screamed. The world once again blended into a pulpy mess.

 

“Sir, if you don’t leave, I’m going to call security.”

 

She must have, because the next thing I knew, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a deep, kind voice was leading me out the exit by the shoulder and into the gondola. “This way, son. C’mon. You know your address, son?” The ride was over before it even began. Then I was on a bus back home. I took the bus as far as it would take me, and hitchhiked or walked the rest of the way. When I finally got home, I collapsed on the couch and sobbed in a way I hadn’t since I was a newborn. I clutched Will’s broken glasses to my chest, and I would have heard the floorboards creaking from the sobs that wracked my body, if the sobs themselves hadn’t been so loud. 

 

There were nights I fell asleep thinking, I didn’t love them enough. And the worst part was, it had been’s true. I had barely givenave them the time of day, all in the name of, what, rebelliousness? What good wasis rebelliousness without reasons? I had brushed them off and bullied them and blamed them for Dad leaving. Maybe because he was always home, and Mom was always the one working extra shifts. Dad was suave, extroverted, eloquent. He was cool. Or, he acted it. He bought us gifts, took us to theme parks and expensive restaurants. Then one day, he and mom got into a big argument. HThen he left. I nNever heard or saw from him again. No goodbye, no “I love you,”, just gone. 

 

And I blamed mom for it. She did all she could for us, and I blamed her for his leaving. He was the one I should be mad at. I tried to muster the anger but I just… couldn’t. I was so tired. I can’t imagine what it looked like to people at school. One day, I was the loud brat, the one starting fights, picking on anyone who vaguely reminded me of Will. Gone for a week and a half. Then suddenly back, small, deflated. Not talking to anyone. It must have been jarring. 

 

It didn’t last long, though. I never finished high school. I’d never had the greatest attendance record, but those last couple weeks were a swift fall to complete truancy. I hid whenever people came to look for me. Scared a couple of State workers checking on the house to make sure it hadn’t just been abandoned. Jobs were about as stable. Somehow I managed to keep the house, despite the bulk of paychecks going to cheap alcohol. Then one day my stomach felt a little too bad for a little too long, and I had a panic attack over the thought of liver cancer, and decided to quit altogether. Life for those years was something of a blur, like for a good long time I had been watching a timelapse of things happening to me. I watched myself float from job to job, friend to friend, lover to lover. I couldn’t tell you half their names or point out half their faces.

 

Every day I thought I saw Will. Some kid at the grocery store, a teenager I passed on the street, a guy somewhere. Logically I knew none could be him. But I kept thinking, maybe it had never happened. Maybe Will and Mom just went somewhere, and that really was Will, all grown up. Or still a child. I wasn’t sure which was worse. 

 

I don’t remember when I started feeling like a person again, but it was around the time I met one Mr. Conrad Song. We both worked at a local grocery store, and hit it off almost immediately. As I had grown, I grew quieter and quieter. Conrad was the opposite. He wasn’t tall, but he had a strong frame and athletic build. He was friendly with everyone he met. And he was strikingly handsome. How he took an interest in me I wasn’t’m not sure, but in a few years’ time, we were married. His grandparents came over from South Korea for our wedding, much to both of our surprise, all things considered. 

 

Three years later, we adopted Stephanie. She had been orphaned in an earthquake in Haiti. She was just a frail thing then, not even a year old. But she grew. Oh, she grew. Before we knew it, she was off to her first day of first grade. Conrad had to ride with her on the bus, she was so scared. It must have been jarring at the school, all of these kids getting off, and then a full grown man with a mohawk and thick horn rimmed glasses. We took turns for about a week riding with her to school, and in that time, she made friends on her bus. So it worked. 

 

For her sixth birthday, only one month after that first day on the bus, our house was overrun with children. Doing the math, Conrad was pretty sure she had just invited every kid in her class. We thought there wouldn’t be enough cake to go around, but with how they descended on it like a freshly killed carcass… well, we don’t actually know how much each kid had. But they seemed to have fun. The next day, Conrad and I discussed taking her somewhere special.

 

Stephanie came in halfway through the discussion and was immediately hooked on the idea of the Great Ohio Meat Mountain. So much for a surprise. Conrad gave me a concerned glance. He knew what had happened at the Park. But I merely smiled and nodded. I would be fine. We packed our bags and that weekend left in the young hours of the morning, headinged east for Dayton, Ohio. Stephanie slept in the car to make up for being so full of energy the night before. 

 

“You ok, love?” Conrad asked. We were about halfway through the drive. 

 

“Yeah, I’m just… yeah.”

 

“We can turn around. It’s not too late. We can find someplace else to go.”

 

“No…” I paused, then shook my head. “No. This is for Stephanie. I’ll be fine.”

 

We didn’t say anything for a time, instead letting the Beach Boys run over and through us from the radio. Will really liked the Beach Boys. Conrad did too. The two would have gotten along well.

 

“It won’t happen again,” Conrad said. “Ok? We’ll keep an eye on her.”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“You’re really brave for going back, dear. I know how hard it can be.” He scratched his nose and sighed. “Even this long after. You remember how I was visiting Eomma’s old place, yeah? We didn’t even go inside. Hell, we didn’t even go on the street. I just saw the facade and…” He trailed off, and shrugged.

 

“I wish I had met your Eomma.”

 

He chuckled. “Yeah… me too…”

 

“But… Yeah. I’m… I know it won’t happen again. Lightning striking twice and whatnot. It’s a state park, they’ve had to have added like, more safety precautions, yeah?”

 

“Exactly. Most accidents are a result of someone being stupid anyways, I- Oh my god. Oh my god Anthony, I’m so sorry… That’s not what I meant, I-”

 

“No. I know. I know. I just… Iit’s so hard to not…” I tried to hold the tears back.

 

“It’s not your fault, it wasn’t your mother’s fault. It was an accident. Could’ve happened to anyone.”

 

“But it happened to us. I didn’t go look for him, Conrad. The last thing I said to him was that he was- that he was a fucking nerd. He died thinking I hated him.”

 

“You were children, brothers, of course you say mean things to each other. Listen, we don’t… Wwe don’t have to go to the Mountain. There’s plenty of other places in Dayton.”

 

“Stephanie was so excited though…”

 

 “I know. I know. But love, she’s a child. Whatever we do, she’ll be excited. We can always come back. The Mountain is always going to be there. It’s the Great Ohio Meat Mountain, not the Wimpy Ohio Meat Mountain.”

 

I chuckled and sniffled a bit at that.

 

“So I’m asking what you,” he continued, “Anthony Harrison-Song, what you want. Not what Stephanie wants.”

 

I had to think about it. But then again, I already knew my decision.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I still wanna go. I’ll be ok. Just… Yeah.”

 

“And if you at any point are not ok?” Conrad asked.

 

“I’ll tell you.”

 

“And what will I do?”

 

“Whatever you can to help.”

 

“That’s right. Because I love you.”

 

“I love you too.”

 

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We passed cows and horses, corn, cities so small I didon’t think they had high schools. Culver’s. Corn. The scenery was about as interesting as it could be in Ohio. The Mountain rose first a pale red spot on the horizon, the only variation in miles, dead ahead. It rose and rose the closer we got. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, we were searching for a parking space. It was rather busy and a true struggle to find anywhere, but we managed. Stephanie was fully awake now.

 

The Lower Museum was our first stop. It was built to resemble a log cabin, but huge and with massive windows. Conrad had to physically restrain Stephanie from running immediately to the gift shop, and then we walked through the displays and models and dioramas. It was fairly small, only a couple rooms. But it wasn’t what we were here for. We got in line at the cable car station and waited. Conrad was talking to some dude wearing a Star Wars t-shirt, and I was tasked with entertaining Steph. It didn’t prove too hard. She was an imaginative little girl. She chatted on and on about some story she had made up. I couldn’t quite follow it, but I listened and nodded along as best I could. It was something about… the Moon Kingdom, and riding dragons into space against… wolves? No, the wolves were extinct. It was fish people now. Something like that.

 

As we got closer to the front of the line, she talked less and less, until she started staring at the machine, unblinking. The doors stood open and the park employee waved us over, but Stephanie stood rooted in place.

 

“Come on, love, it’ll be ok. It’s just like the school bus, right?” I said, holding Stephanie’s small hand in mine. 

 

“It’s loud,” she replied simply.

 

“It’ll be quiet inside.”

 

“I don’t like the big wheel.” She was on the verge of tears. “It eats the rope. What if it eats us?”

 

“It won’t eat you,” Conrad said. “Here. Take my hand too, okay? And if it tries to eat you, Dad and I will punch it, ok? Just like Spider-Man!”

 

“You’re not Spider-Man,” she said. “You’re Batman.”

 

“Then I’ll punch it like Batman.”

 

“Ok.”

 

It was enough to convince her, albeit teary-eyed-ly. The three of us walked into the cable car, Stephanie in the middle. We sat on the seat facing the rear of the gondola. I could hear her breathing heavily as the car shook and swayed and ultimately rose into the air. We passed from under the cover of the Lower Museum’s cable station and rose over the ruins of Old Dayton, Ohio. Many of the buildings on the edge of the Park were still mostly intact and untouched by the Mountain. There was a definite end to the city and beginning to the Mountain, the color shifting rapidly from dull gray to bright reds and pinks. Bits of steel and concrete sat lopsided in the roots, like dark ships in a vibrant sea. Then the Mountain rose in earnest. The horizon stretched further and further into the distance, and soon Stephanie let go of our hands and walked to the side of the cable car. Conrad stretched out on the couch, hands behind his head. I leaned my own against his shoulder, and we watched Stephanie as she glued her face to the window. 

 

“Wooooww,” Stephanie breathed. Her lips were stuck to the glass.

 

“Don’t put your mouth on there, sweetie,” Conrad said gently.

 

“Ok, Appa! Hey, do you think I can see our house from here?” She squinted off into the distance. Judging by the sun climbing the horizon, she was looking eastward. We lived in Indiana. 

 

“Maybe!” humored Conrad. We were just glad she was enjoying herself now. Stephanie ran to the other side of the gondola, pressed her face to the glass, and repeated, running back and forth, back and forth. The couple sitting in the seat across from us looked annoyed, but the happy tinkle of the beads in her hair was too full of life for any possibility of stopping it. We had to pry her from the machine once we arrived at the Upper Museum.

 

We passed through the same doors I had fifteen years prior, into a lobby that had been completely remodeled. Screens were on the wall with chattering animated Ohio Lions with comically short arms. The Great Ohio Meat Mountain grew and receded over and over in illustrated panes. There was a three-dimensional render of the internal vascular structure of the mountain. A kid was swiping back and forth on the touch screen, fascinated. I wondered idly how a touch screen even worked. I wasn’t a tech person.

 

“Hey hun? How do touchscreens work?”

 

“Hm? Oh, uh, well, your finger applies pressure to a conductive membrane, and it closes a circuit, and uh, the device figures out where on the screen that is. Why?”

 

“Just wondering.”

 

We passed through the room and into the Mountain proper. Like the lobby, the caves were almost unrecognizable. The concrete looked old and patched over, the tunnels turned in ways I couldn’t quite follow. More of the exhibits seems less than dead. It felt bigger. In a way, the unfamiliarity helped; it didn’t feel like the same place I had been. It held the same name, the same location, but it wasn’t the same. It was a new place, a new adventure. We walked leisurely around the unfamiliar halls. Stephanie was enraptured by the things she saw around her. Her curiosity was different from Will’s, though. Will had a constant, manic energy. Stephanie, typically much more talkative, had a quiet intensity. Like she saw everything and more. She was going to grow up to be a very intelligent woman. 

 

We stopped a couple times by newly-installed vending machines. Stephanie really wanted Skittles, and since this was her birthday present, we decided, why not. She happily munched on her small rainbow sugar pills. She liked to arrange them by color in her palms. Then she popped them in her mouth and they were gone. Conrad and I, the old men we were, sat and rested on the bench while Stephanie ran around some more. After probably fifteen minutes, we willed our elderly bones off the wood and continued on our way. I hung back a bit, and took out the battered Sony camcorder from the small backpack. The video wasn’t as good as our friend Thomas’s pro-grade, but it did the job. The job being, of course, preserving memories. I pointed it at my husband and daughter, two words I never thought I’d be able to say. They walked hand in hand down the corridor. I wished to remember this until I died.

 

In a way. I guess the wish came true.

 

The wall reached out and grabbed Stephanie. There wasn’t time for her to scream. But there was for Conrad. His hand was caught in the red muck. He clawed at the tongues that lapped at him from the wall’s appendage. He held on for dear life to Stephanie’s hand, even as they were both dragged towards the wall by its huge tendons. I could not see Stephanie. I dropped the camera and charged forward. Not again. Dear God, not again.

 

My prayers fell on deaf ears. No matter how I yanked and pulled at Conrad, Stephanie did not come out of the wall. Conrad was shoulder-deep in the red mess. He looked at me with wild eyes, and I imagine my face too was a mask of fear. I wrapped my arms around his body tighter, but the Mountain did not relent. I slipped and fell back. With a battle cry I charged forward and tore at the wall like a rabid animal. I felt my nails cut into the Mountain, felt the viscera yield beneath my hands as I chucked it aside. I screamed my voice raw, first screaming Conrad and Stephanie’s names, then incoherent syllables. I would have no one else taken away from me. And I was making progress! With every handful of sickeningly soft gore I threw away, I drew deeper and deeper into the gore. My world faded into a bloody, gristly soup. I could not feel my hands or feet. I pulled and pulled and went deeper and deeper. The light shone through the wall, revealing pumping vesicles and veins and vessels darkly swimming in the muck. 

 

I pulled forward. A deep crimson darkness closed around me. I could not feel my legs. I could not feel my arms. I could not feel my chest. I could not feel. 

 

But I could. I felt it all around me. The darkness closed, and I felt all of them. One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred and six. And among them, I felt Conrad. And Stephanie. Mom. William. I felt them close by, and reached out. Not with my hand. I had no hands anymore. I reached out, and felt them. They were all around me. All of them, here. Around and through me. One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred fourteen. Me, and Con. And… and… Wi… And w… Me and… them. We were all here.

 

But there were others. They were not here. I felt them. We all felt them. They were outside. They moved so fast out there. I wanted them. We wanted them. Come with us, we said, but we had no mouths to speak. They could not hear us. We reached out, and held their hands. One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred seventeen. They were afraid. We comforted them. We welcomed them. We had been afraid once too, we said with no mouths. They groped, but then they had no hands too. We felt them, and they too spoke with us, without mouths: come with us! Come with us! One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred twenty-nine. So many of us, all together in this place. 

 

I felt calm. How else could I feel? There was nothing more that I wanted than to feel and stay with all of them. To reach out and call the others in. To comfort and hold them and make them us. 

 

Come with us. It is safe.

 

One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred thirty-six.

 

Hold our hand. We want.

 

One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred forty-four.

 

Join. Feel.

 

One hundred thirty-four thousand, one hundred fifty-two.