“He slips back a little into the shadows until he comes up against the wall of his house, and he—unfolds!
“I see the light glinting down one edge of him, see it suddenly split into two edges at the bottom, sort of hinged at the top. And the split widens until he stands in the dark there like a big pair of dividers. And then one half swings up until it forms a straight line, perpendicular—and now he’s ten feet tall. Then the same again, only this time the division takes place in the middle. Like…like a joiner’s wooden three-foot ruler, with hinges so he can open it up, you know?”
I nodded, fascinated despite myself. “And that’s how they’re built, eh? I mean, well, hinged?”
“Hell, no!” he snorted. “You can fold your arms on your elbows, can’t you? Or your legs on your knees? You can bend from the waist and touch your toes? Well I sure can! Their joints may be a little different from ours, that’s all—maybe like the joints of certain insects. Or maybe not. I mean, their science is different from ours, too. Perhaps they fold and unfold themselves the same way they do it to other things—except it doesn’t do them any harm. I dunno…”
“What?” I asked, puzzled. “What other things do they fold?”
“I’ll get to that later,” he told me darkly, shivering. “Where was I?”
“There he was,” I answered, “all fifteen foot of him, standing in the shadows. And then—?”
“A car comes along the street, sudden like!” Bill grabbed my arm.
“Wow!” I jumped. “He’s in trouble, right?”
Barmy Bill shook his head. “No way. The car’s lights are on full, but that doesn’t trouble the thin man. He’s not stupid. The car goes by, lighting up the walls with its beam, and where the thin man stood in shadows against the wall of his thin house—”
“Yes?”
“A drainpipe, all black and shiny!”
I sat back. “Pretty smart.”
“You better believe they’re smart. Then, when it’s dark again, out he steps. And that’s something to see! Those giant strides—but quick, almost a flicker. Blink your eyes and he’s moved—and between each movement his legs coming together as he pauses, and nothing to see but a pole. Up to the lamppost he goes, seems almost to melt into it, hides behind it. And plink!—out goes the light. After that…in ten minutes he had the whole street black as night in a coalmine. And yours truly lying there in somebody’s garden, scared and shivering and dying to throw up.”
“And that was it?”
Barmy Bill gulped, tossed back his gin and poured himself another. His eyes were huge now, his skin white where it showed through his whiskers. “God, no—that wasn’t it—there was more! See, I figured later that I must have got myself drunk deliberately that time—so’s to go up there and spy on ’em. Oh, I know that sounds crazy now, but you know what it’s like when you’re mindless drunk. Jesus, these days I can’t get drunk! But these were early days I’m telling you about.”
“So what happened next?”
“Next—he’s coming back down the street! I can hear him: click, pause, click, pause…click, pause, stilting it along the pavement—and I can see him in my mind’s eye, doing his impression of a lamppost with every pause. And suddenly I get this feeling, and I sneak a look round. I mean, the frontage of this garden I’m in is so tiny, and the house behind me is—”
I saw it coming. “Jesus!”
“A thin house,” he confirmed it, “right!”
“So now you were in trouble.”
He shrugged, licked his lips, trembled a little. “I was lucky, I suppose. I squeezed myself into the hedge, lay still as death. And click, pause…click, pause, getting closer all the time. And then—behind me, for I’d turned my face away—the slow creaking as the door of the thin house swung open! And the second thin person coming out and, I imagine, unfolding him or herself, and the two of ’em standing there for a moment, and me near dead of fright.”
“And?”
“Click-click, pause; click-click, pause; click-click—and away they go. God only knows where they went, or what they did, but me?—I gave ’em ten minutes start and then got up, and ran, and stumbled, and forced my rubbery legs to carry me right out of there. And I haven’t been back. Why, this is the closest I’ve been to Barchington since that night, and too close by far!”
I waited for a moment but he seemed done. Finally I nodded. ‘Well, that’s a good story, Bill, and—”
“I’m not finished!” he snapped. “And it’s not just a story…”
“There’s more?”
“Evidence,” he whispered. “The evidence of your own clever-bugger eyes!”
I waited.
“Go to the window,” said Bill, “and peep out through the curtains. Go on, do it.”
I did.
“See anything funny?”
I shook my head.
“Blind as a bat!” he snorted. “Look at the street lights—or the absence of lights. I showed you once tonight. They’ve nicked all the bulbs.”
“Kids,” I shrugged. “Hooligans. Vandals.”
“Huh!” Bill sneered. “Hooligans, here? Unheard of. Vandals? You’re joking! What’s to vandalize? And when did you last see kids playing in these streets, eh?”
He was right. “But a few missing light bulbs aren’t hard evidence,” I said.
“All right!” he pushed his face close and wrinkled his nose at me. “Hard evidence, then.” And he began to tell me the final part of his story…
Three
Cars!” Barmy Bill snapped, in that abrupt way of his. “They can’t bear them. Can’t say I blame ’em much, not on that one. I hate the noisy, dirty, clattering things myself. But tell me: have you noticed anything a bit queer—about cars, I mean—in these parts?”
I considered for a moment, replied: “Not a hell of a lot of them.”
“Right!” He was pleased. “On the rest of the Hill, nose to tail. Every street overflowing. ’Specially at night when people are in the pubs or watching the telly. But here? Round Barchington and the Larches and a couple of other streets in this neighbourhood? Not a one to be seen!”
“Not true,” I said. “There are two cars in this very street right now. Look out the window and you should be able to see them.”
“Bollocks!” said Bill.
“Pardon?”
“Bollocks!” he repeated. “Them’s not cars! Rusting old bangers. Spokewheels and all. Twenty, thirty years they’ve been trundling about. The thin people are used to them. It’s the big shiny new ones they don’t like. And so, if you park your car up here overnight—trouble!”
“Trouble?” But here I was deliberately playing dumb. Here I knew what he meant well enough. I’d seen it for myself: the occasional shiny car, left overnight, standing there the next morning with its tyres slashed, windows smashed, lamps kicked in.
He could see it in my face. “You know what I mean, all right. Listen, couple of years ago there was a Flash Harry type from the city used to come up here. There was a barmaid he fancied in The Railway—and she was taking all he could give her. Anyway, he was flash, you know? One of the gang lads and a rising star. And a flash car to go with it. Bullet-proof windows, hooded lamps, reinforced panels—the lot. Like a bloody tank, it was. But—” Bill sighed.
“He used to park it up here, right?”
He nodded. “Thing was, you couldn’t threaten him, you know what I mean? Some people you can threaten, some you shouldn’t threaten, and some you mustn’t. He was one you mustn’t. Trouble is, so are the thin people.”