The Nonesuch and Others Read Free Page B

And Jesus, they’d folded him, too! Right down into an eighteen-inch cube. Ribs and bones and skin and muscles—the lot. Nothing broken, you understand, just folded. No blood or guts or anything nasty—nastier by far because there was nothing.
    And they’d dumped him in a garbage-skip at the end of the street. The couple of local youths who found him weren’t even sure what they’d found, until they spotted his face on one side of the cube. But I won’t go into that…
     

     
    Well, I moved out of there just as soon as I could—do you blame me?—since when I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. Fact is, I haven’t thought of much else.
    And I suppose old Bill was right. At least I hope so. Things he’d told me earlier, when I was only half listening. About them being the last of their sort, and Barrows Hill being the place they’ve chosen to sort of fade away in, like a thin person’s ‘elephant’s graveyard,’ you know?
    Anyway, there are no thin people here, and no thin houses. Vandals aplenty, and so many cars you can’t count, but nothing out of the ordinary.
    Lampposts, yes, and posts to hold up the telephone wires, of course. Lots of them. But they don’t bother me anymore.
    See, I know exactly how many lampposts there are. And I know exactly where they are, every last one of them. And God help the man who ever plants a new one without telling me first!

 
    Dear Diary—
     
    Yes, it’s me again…I bet you thought I’d died, right? But no, I just went away for a while; or rather I got away. It was a bad case of GAFIA: Getting Away From It All. Mainly from London, from Barrows Hill and the Thin People.
    I thought I had forgotten about the Thin People; I tried to forget about them, putting them down to my temporary addiction, my “penchant” for alcohol. Incidentally, that was why I started corresponding with you, Diary…I thought, maybe if I told it all to you, maybe if I described how well I was getting on, how I was winning over my, er, “urge”—in fact my compulsion—to imbibe almost every-damn-thing from beer to mouthwash to ciggy-lighter fuel, that would be much better than bearing my booze-sodden soul to some tooth-tapping trick-cyclist, some shrunken shrink, some fingernail-munching counsellor, some pallid pack of lying Alcoholics Anonymous groupies, and like that.
    In fact—on looking back—it was just such cynicism that kept me from these barely possible remedies; that and the fact that I considered myself “strong,” hated to admit my addiction to anyone other than myself…and to you, of course.
    And the thing is I honestly can’t remember whether or not I was in trouble with my drinking before Barrows Hill and the Thin People, or if it came on later. If it was before, then I might be able to say that everything that happened was simply an attack of the dreaded dt’s; might even dismiss the episode entirely. But on the other hand I can’t seem to recall a previous problem. Or maybe that’s just how it catches up with you, by stealth. But if it was after Barrows Hill—
    —Well, that’s what worries me.
    Okay, Diary, I accept that I was a drinker—in fact some kind of drinking fool—but not until after she’d dumped me.
    She, yes…
    A little less than three and a half years ago, Diary, you were made up of page after page about her. Until she left and I ripped them out, burned them to ashes, and buried the ashes in the old lady’s garden downstairs, like some kind of grave. And if I hadn’t got out of Barrows Hill…well, who knows? Maybe I’d still be grieving and putting down flowers on that grave even now. But I did get out, because of the Thin People. And because of what happened to Barmy Bill.
    The Thin People, who came out of their thin houses at night to do their thing—“tea-leafing,” thieving, as old Barmy Bill of Barrows Hill, the old codger who told me about them, called it. And where’s Barmy Bill now, eh? Either he had the weirdest, most