Ten minutes and a bathroom break later, they were at the other door in the large room, with Freivald leading the way. Two padlocks held the door fast.
Before he opened the door, Freivald turned and said, “Here are a few simple rules. Do not touch the bones. Do not cross the white lines. Do not tell anyone about the bones. Can I count on your discretion?”
Everyone nodded.
“I need to hear from you that you will do as I’ve told,” he said, suddenly sounding like a militant version of a flight attendant needing a verbal confirmation that everyone in the exit row would help other passengers rather than fleeing for their lives.
Everyone responded correctly, and he turned and unlocked both locks, using two keys from an immense key ring he had attached to his belt. The door slid open to the right.
As Ethan went through, he noted that they were in another cavernous space, although it was only illuminated by a light all the way across the room, which didn’t help much. If it hadn’t been for the light in the other room, he wouldn’t even be able to see his feet, much less giant bones.
Freivald shut the door, then used the same two padlocks to lock the door from the inside. Next he pulled a remote control from his pocket. He pointed it toward the ceiling and pressed a button. Fluorescent lighting popped on, illuminating the entire room with an almost painful brilliance.
Ethan had been prepared to be stunned by the bones, but instead, he was shown an empty room, the white floor devoid of even a speck of dirt.
“What’s this?” he asked. He glanced at Shanny. Maybe his jokes about entering the lair of a killer weren’t nearly as specious as he’d thought.
“Security,” Freivald muttered, striding across the space until he found a place to stop. “You will stand here.”
Ethan exchanged glances with Matt. Neither of them was happy with being ordered around, but they obeyed. Once everyone was standing next to Freivald, he depressed another button, and a section of the floor began to slide away.
Ethan saw the heads first. Each was nearly three times the size of a regular human, yet perfectly proportioned. As the floor continued to open, it revealed their chests, then their arms and pelvises, then the legs, finally opening all the way and revealing two giants, one slightly taller than the other.
Shanny stood with a hand to her mouth.
Matt scratched his head and grinned.
Ethan didn’t know what to think.
“May I introduce the Kramdens,” Freivald said, a smile of pride resting on his face.
“Let me guess,” Matt said. “Ralph and Alice?”
Freivald nodded.
“Loved that show when I was a kid,” Matt said.
“Pow, zoom, to the moon, Alice,” Freivald muttered.
“I don’t get the cultural reference,” Ethan said.
“The Honeymooners. It was a TV show with Jackie Gleason,” Matt offered.
Ethan smiled and shrugged. He’d never heard of it.
“Anyway, these were found in the Grand Canyon. Ralph is eighteen feet long, and Alice is fifteen feet long. Ralph is a little more than three times the height of an average man.”
The proportion was staggering. A white line ran around the perimeter of the rectangular section of floor that had slid away. Ethan walked the length of the giants until he reached their feet. Then he laid down on the cool, white-painted concrete and turned to look. His head was barely to mid-thigh. When he sat up, he turned to Shanny and tried to express his feelings, but nothing came out.
Freivald nodded. “What you’re experiencing is called giant awe. It’s been written about extensively and is the almost overwhelming feeling of wonder and inferiority one experiences in the face of a human-shaped creature of such large proportions. It’s why they remain in hiding. If they were out in public, they’d immediately be revered as demigods at least.”
Ethan stood and made his way back to Shanny. He grabbed her hand and held it. After a moment, he managed to say, “These things are really real.”
All she could do was nod. She took a drink of water, never taking her eyes off the pair of giants.
“Let me know when you are ready, and I’ll show you the other bone.”
The other bone was supposed to be merely a thigh bone but was the same size as Ralph Kramden. Ethan couldn’t imagine it. He was barely able to wrap his brain around the idea that the two giants in front of them were real.
Finally, real and true evidence.
“Are you ready?” he asked Shanny.
“How can anyone be ready for this?” she answered.
“Are these complete skeletons?” Matt asked.
“Mostly,” Freivald said. “We had a paleontologist in from Hill City, South Dakota, to help us attach some of the bones and replace the missing pieces. An ulna here, a few rib bones there.”
“An amazing job. You can’t even tell.”
“They’re used to creating museum-level exhibits. They’re experts.”
“Wait,” Ethan said. “You had a paleontologist here to see the giants?”
Freivald nodded.
“Aren’t you afraid they’d tell… I mean…” Ethan couldn’t finish.
“So many people still think dinosaurs are an old wives’ tale. In the American South, they still teach creationism in schools. They’re almost as disbelieved as giants are, but the difference is that paleontologists have long believed in giants. Many of the first giant bones were unearthed by paleontologists. They’ve known they existed for a long time, it’s just considered bad form in their business to talk about it. They have enough trouble with credibility. Now, are you ready?”
They all nodded. “As we’ll ever be, I guess.”
“Good, ’cause I love this part.”
Freivald pushed another button, and the floor on the other side of the two giant skeletons slid aside, revealing a single bone that ran the length of both skeletons. But as large as it was, Ethan didn’t feel the sense of wonder he’d anticipated. It was only a bone. There was no context.
Shanny and Matt appeared to be having the same issue. The reveal was one huge anticlimactic flop.
“I know what you’re thinking. So what? It’s just a bone, Freivald. It could be a dinosaur bone or a giant bone, Freivald. Who cares?” He depressed another button. “Now try this.”
The floor began to light up… correction, projectors in the ceiling began to turn on. At first, Ethan couldn’t make it out, but soon he understood. The projectors were illuminating a proportional skeleton on the concrete representing the rest of what the skeleton would be if Freivald had the entire thing.
Ethan took it in, beginning with the feet, which were twenty feet south of the other skeletons’. Then he followed the projected skeleton until the skull rested near the far wall. Seventy-five feet tall. A being. A living, breathing, human-shaped thing, seventy-five feet tall. He felt a gasp escape him.
He heard a thud and glanced over to where Matt had fainted.
Shanny was down on a knee, tears streaming down her face.
It was just too much. They’d talked about it for so long that the idea of giants, the original giants, had almost become passé… until he’d come face-to-face with something that had lived around the time of the Old Testament. “There were giants on earth in those days.… These were the gibborim of old, the men of renown.” For all Ethan knew, this could be Goliath himself.
It was just too much. He had to turn away. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“It’s hard not to look,” Freivald said, as if he could read their minds. “It’s all part of the giant awe. Here, let me help.”
He depressed the button and the projectors shut off one by one, leaving the bone as just a bone. Except that Ethan could still see the ghostly image of the skeletal outline in his mind.
“There have been so many giant bones found that the idea that they are still hidden is hysterical. To think that the world counts on anonymous internet sites like Snopes to tell them what’s true and not true. They believe people they don’t know better than their eyes.
“My favorite is the Aramco discovery in Saudi Arabia. You’ve probably seen pictures of it. A man is standing near the skull of a seventy-five-foot giant. The man has a shovel in hand, digging. Off to the bottom of the picture is scaffolding to allow people to walk across the giant without touching the bones. Another man looks on. It’s a tremendous picture. You should go to Snopes and see it and then take a few moments to review the hilarity of their response. They go into extreme detail about how it was altered and what sites the picture had been on, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But here’s the rub. The bone you see here is the femur of that very same giant, a giant that Snopes would have you believe doesn’t exist.”
Freivald pressed the button and both sections of floor began to close. “Come on,” he said. “We need to get you cleaned up and maybe get you something stiff to drink. You can see them again later, once you’ve had the time to process everything.”
Ethan nodded.
“But first, help me get this guy up.”
Matt lay on the floor, out cold, and oblivious.