At first they are occasional: brief visitations caught in the act of walking or standing or crawling upon all fours. They appear and disappear as I move, as if screened from my vantage by objects I cannot see. Later, though, as I draw closer to the heart of Erebus, they become more permanent. I can see expressions on their statue faces, read words on their lips in the anti-light. Curses, mostly, and despair. A few, perhaps, are grateful, but not many. Step by step, I see more of them, until there is a great throng of them, dozens wide, stretching away towards the rivers. It is a road, now, this imaginary line I have been following: the main highway of the kingdom of death. Highway, or causeway—and what meridian of my son’s body do we follow? A wrinkle in his brow? The curve of his smile or the rise of his stomach? Will the heart of Erebus be a chasm of torn ribs, or a forest of the sores that killed him?