Thomas Ligotti - The Small People

8/18/2019 Thomas Ligotti - The Small People

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The Small People

Coming of age in this world has always been a strange process. I'm sure you understand,

Doctor. There are so many adjustments that need to be made before we are presentable

in company. e don't understand all the wor!ings, all the stages of de"elopment in the

process of becoming who we are and what we are. It can be so difficult. #thers e$pected

me to be complete at a certain age, ready to jump up and ta!e my place when called to

do so. %Time to wa!e up,% they said.%Time to do this or time to do that,% they said. %It's

show time,% they said. &nd I had better be willing and able when the time came.

Please e$cuse my outburst, Doctor. I'm doing my best. I !now my lines. I'"e told

this story before, as you !now. &nd I do want to be good this time. y parents were

always scolding me to be good about one thing or another. %(ou came from a goodfamily,% they fre)uently said to me, as if saying I was biologically their own could ma!e

it so. *ow, I cannot claim that their criticism of certain attitudes I held was unmerited.

y mother and father resorted to using the words shameful little bigot )uite a bit. %+ow

could we ha"e raised such a shameful little bigot% she would say to him or he would

say to her. %+e doesn't get it from my side of the family,% one of them would shout. &nd

then the other, right on cue, would respond, %ell, he doesn't get it from mine either.%

There it was again. the genetic issue, which might ha"e upset me had I been older and

wise to the fact that my status in the family was but a legal fiction. In light of later

e"ents, of course, biology was the least of our differences. This is a "ery delicate topic for

me, as you !now.

o"ing on, my parents would then fight, if only for the sa!e of appearances,

spea!ing the same lines they'd spo!en before. -ac! and forth, bac! and forth they'd go

at each other. Then finally they'd come bac! around to their little boy, who was such a

shameful little bigot. #b"iously, it wasn't in their interest to ac!nowledge the truth. that

foremost I was afraid, not bigoted. Calling me bigoted was simply a tactic for confusing

the issue. &ny hatred I displayed was epiphenomenal to my fear. "ery child has his

fears, and the worst of mine was a fear of them. *ot my mother and father. ell, I wasafraid of them, too. that's not unusual. -ut as a child I didn't hate them. I hated those

others. the small people.

///

1



#ne time my parents and I were on "acation. y father was at the wheel. +e was

smiling slightly and staring with concentration. That was how he always loo!ed, e"en

when he wasn't dri"ing. always smiling slightly and always staring with concentration.

*e$t to him my mother sat )uietly. The sun was shining on her smooth face. She had

such a smooth face, Doctor, and big eyes. I was sitting in the middle of the bac! seat,minding my own business and ta!ing in the wide spaces of the scenery, not focusing on

anything in particular. Then I saw the sign just off the right side of the road. It had one

of those simple faces on it, and written below were the words0 S&11 C#2*T3(. y

whole body tightened, as it always did when I saw one of those road signs. The arrow at

the bottom of the sign pointed straight up, so that dri"ers would !now they were in

range of small country.

I slid o"er to the right side of the car and began to sur"ey the landscape. & short

distance from the road we were on was another road, a smaller road. It meanderedthrough an open plain slightly below us. I shifted my eyes toward the front seat and saw

my father loo!ing in the rear"iew mirror at me. -ut I didn't care. This was the closest I

had e"er been to small country, and I wanted to see all I could, which for a long while

wasn't anything e$cept that empty plain with that small road passing through it. Such is

the per"ersity born of fear. &t the same time that I wanted to see something, I was

terrified of what I might see. I felt as if I were ha"ing one of those dreams where you're

alone but still feel the presence of something unimaginably awful that might appear all

of a sudden. It was at the height of this nightmarish sensation that I saw the little car

turning a bend in the small road. &bout the same time, our road. the big road. startedcur"ing toward the other. The closer the little car came to us, the more I felt the urge to

di"e to the floor of our car. -ut then I would ha"e missed seeing them.

Their car, the little car, loo!ed li!e a toy. It wasn't e$actly its si4e that demoted it

from a properly motori4ed con"eyance to a plaything, because the pretend car wasn't so

near our real car that I could compare the two. It was the flagrant actuality that

e"erything about it was toy5li!e, as if it were made of molded plastic and rolling along on

teetering wheels. &nd it bore none of the details on it of a real car, at least that I could

tell. Structurally, it had a simple s)uare body painted bright red. That had to be thecolor, of course, just so that it would stand out in the scene, and I could be all the more

afraid than if its color had been white or yellow or some shade of blue. -ut I stopped

attending to the car once I saw what was inside.

2ntil then, I scarcely had a glimpse of any small people. y strange fear of them

originated mostly from the simple face on the road signs that alerted people, real people,

of their impending entry into small country. The mere idea of the smalls was enough to

2



ma!e me an$ious about something I couldn't name. &nd after loo!ing into that red

plastic toy, I was sorry I hadn't thrown myself down onto the floor of our car, e"en

!nowing that my parents would ha"e called me a shameful little bigot for the rest of the

"acation.

&fter our cars passed each other, my father loo!ed in the rear"iew mirror and saidto me, %So, did you see them% I didn't say anything. I was defiantly silent.

%(our father as!ed you a )uestion,% said my mother. %(ou should answer him.%

-ut I maintained my silence. &nd if I had spo!en, I wouldn't ha"e said anything about

what I saw in that car. I wasn't e"en afraid at that point. I was bitter and resentful that

my father could ha"e as!ed me in such a bland tone of "oice if I saw them. I wanted to

scream at both my parents, scream murderously and also with some pu44lement, a plea

for understanding. +ow could people, big people, ha"e such a complacent attitude

toward the smalls +ow could they gi"e certain presents to children for their birthday orany time presents were in order when those presents might loo! li!e that little car and

the small people inside it They were tra"esties of real people, that's all they were. two

older small people, li!e a father and mother, in the front seats, and two young small

people, whose gender I couldn't tell at a distance, sitting rigidly in the bac!. +ow could

there e"en e$ist certain toys, for instance an imitation ba!ing o"en. a play "ersion of the

real thing, yet one that )uite probably replicated the actual ba!ing o"ens used by the

small people "en if the resemblance wasn't one5to5one between the two miniature

o"ens, the thought could still enter a child's head, %This o"en must be something li!e

those the small people ha"e in their !itchens.% ho could be so stupid or malicious

that they could ignore the possibility of such a thing. that an object some children might

ha"e in front of them, or e"en in their little hands, could ha"e a counterpart in small

country It was too monstrous to contemplate that at a certain age children can and do

become cogni4ant of the li!eness of their toys to entities in the small country world,

including the small people who li"e there, if they are e"en ali"e. hy didn't they react, as

I had, with fear and hatred once they came of a certain age

*aturally, I !new that for practical reasons the world of the smalls and the real

world were securely set apart, just as borders between places of di"ergent laws andcustoms were partitioned and e"en guarded with powerful weapons against each other.

-ut it wasn't the same between the smalls and e"eryone else. This was something I felt

deep inside me, though I ris!ed being stigmati4ed as a shameful little bigot not only by

my parents but also by most anyone where"er I went.

6or the rest of our "acation that year, I was miserably an$ious as well as miserably

hateful. 6rom the moment my father as!ed me if I saw what was in that little toy car, my

3



hatred for the small people that grew out of my fear of them reached its 4enith and held

there. #f course, I had seen them, idiot father of mine. hy did he ridicule me, ta!ing

their side &t one point, all of the occupants of the little car suddenly swi"eled their

heads toward us, then abruptly swi"eled them bac! to their pre"iously fi$ed positions.

To my mind, they did this as if to say, %e !now you are loo!ing at us. *ow we areloo!ing at you. *ow you !now that we !new you were loo!ing at us. &nd henceforth

there will be no escaping this mutual !nowledge.% Those damn swivel-heads, I

thought, e"en though I could only imagine what went on in their heads, because in fact

they appeared to ha"e nothing going on inside them. They were just hollow, empty

things.

*ot long after this encounter, my father pointed out the window. -y the side of the

road was another sign with one of those simple faces on it. -elow that face were the

words0 1&7I*8 S&11 C#2*T3(.%&ll clear,% my father said with a "e$ing condescension in his "oice and a slight

smile on his face.

%#h, lea"e the boy alone,% my mother said, but only as a sort of warning that my

father was ta!ing things too far. 3ight then, I could ha"e thrown a fit the li!es of which

my parents had ne"er seen or suspected of me. *or was it wholly improbable that I

might ha"e leapt into the front seat and steered our car into the roadside ditch, which

was of some depth. I might ha"e !illed us all, or perhaps only my father and mother. -ut

then, in a flash of mentation, it occurred to me that with the demise of my parents I

would li!ely fall under the care of another couple whose attitude toward my fear andhatred of the small people probably would not ha"e differed from theirs. Certainly my

disposition was not in line with that of the larger share of humanity. In good faith, I

ha"e to admit as much, Doctor. I !now you must be aware of the torment an indi"idual

suffers when he begins to wonder if he is the one on the wrong side of reality. Perhaps it

was a defensi"e tactic of my mind, then, that though I was still afflicted by fright and

hatred when it came to the small people, I also felt for the first time a curiosity about

them. Surely that signaled a healthier perspecti"e, and I welcomed it.

y newfound curiosity wa$ed and waned for about a year or so. It either intensifiedor abated depending on how often I awo!e sweating with sic! horror after dreaming

about the small people. I finally acted on my curiosity only after I had a dream in which

real people, including myself, were somehow changed either into small people or half-

small people. The latter particularly disturbed me. Yes, I thought, now is the time. &nd

so I began my )uest to get to the bottom of the mystery that, at least for me, surrounded

the small people.

4



The library seemed the natural starting point to research my subject. In no time at

all, it seemed, I could find out all I needed to !now about the small people. &nd possibly

what I learned would terminate, or at least temper, my fear of them, and e"en alle"iate,

or dissol"e entirely, my hatred of their !ind. -ut I was only a child with a rudimentary

conception of how things truly were in this world at its deepest le"el. I found out soonenough, though, that I had misled myself.

I was ahead of my class in school and !new my way around a library better than

most children my age. Thus, you can imagine my de"astation when I failed to unearth

any substanti"e information about the small people. +ow could there be such a gap in

what would seem a "ital realm of study. what conspiracy of silence, what code of secrecy

was in effect that I could find hardly a mention of these creatures, not e"en in the form

of records or statistics relating to them (et ultimately I was forced to conclude that

nothing was being hidden from me or the rest of the world on the subject I attempted toin"estigate. &t least, it wasn't being hidden deliberately, consciously. That would ha"e

been an impossible tas!. Some blabbermouth is always around who is unable to !eep

what he !nows to himself. chatterbo$es without whom the details of humanity's most

lurid episodes would be lost. let alone something as conspicuous as the small people.

*o, Doctor, only one thing could !eep them out of the limelight. pure neglect, a

protecti"e disinterest, as the old philosophers of the human psyche might ha"e seen it0

the mind's loo!ing away when unsettling facts come into "iew, facts that one would

rather not focus on for long. here the small people were concerned, there was nearly a

blac!out of intelligence.I'm not saying that no one has e"er ruminated on the phenomenon of the small

people. *o doubt e"eryone has pondered their e$istence at some time or another. -ut

such considerations ha"e ne"er been sustained long enough to create a body of in)uiry

and !nowledge. -efore pen could be put to paper or an e$pedition launched, some

negating incuriosity set in that dissipated any spur to action, or any action that resulted

in authoritati"e boo!s and peer5re"iewed essays in speciali4ed journals. all that might

comprise a modest shelf e"en in the middling libraries of our world. If you should say

that e"en highly arcane matters, not to mention anything right before our eyes, ha"ee"aded the closest research, I would ha"e to respond, perhaps a bit "igorously. false.

9uestion0 +ow could we !now we were !eeping certain truths from oursel"es regarding

how things truly are in this world at its deepest le"el &nswer0 -ecause we ha"e done it

before. Do I really need to gi"e particulars &nd many continue the charade long after

some "oice indicates beyond credible doubt what is true and what is not. The time has

not come yet, I thought. &nd perhaps it ne"er would.

5



In point of fact, though, I must admit to ha"ing heard "ague mutterings about the

small people when I was at the library that day. 6or instance, I came across a history

boo!. that is, a boo! concerned with our history. and in its inde$ there was a reference

to a footnote in which the author alluded to the small people. In that footnote were

written the words0 %#f course they ha"e no recorded history of their own.% *aturally,

this scrupulous scholar adduced his source for this assertion in the usual style, and it

made me so happy to read the arid citation %See Paulson,% or maybe it was

%+ayworth,% possibly %+eywood.% home"er I was told to see, I sought out. -ut

nothing was contained there. nothing to corroborate that the small people had no

recorded history of their own. hy would a scholar of any standing slip up that way,

leading the reader to a source that did not support what he had written ista!es do

happen, no doubt about that. -ut how could it be that they happened whene"er

someone wrote something about the small people, as I disco"ered they always did &llday long, one boo! led me to another and each left me empty5handed. as I being

di"erted here and there by falsehoods, or were bits of truth being parceled out in such a

way that no complete picture formed of the small people, or none that could be placed

beside the one we had of oursel"es in the great photo5album of human!ind. a portrait

that itself began to seem incomplete to a child who belie"ed until then that we !new

e"erything that had anything to do with our world The big world, that is.

During the hours I spent that day in the library, I went from basement to belfry,

only to find myself cornered by the walls of one dead end after another. ith studious

intent I wal!ed into a repository of learning with the light of a beautiful morning shiningupon me and my self5appointed mission. -ut great clouds rolled in, thunder shoo! the

walls, rain tapped louder and louder against the windows and lightning flashed outside

them. -y degrees, the neat hallways of the library I had entered turned to dan! and

dripping stonewor! corridors of a 8othic castle through which I wandered in search of a

way out. I trembled as if trapped in one of those dreams of mine where I feel surrounded

by unseen horrors. &t last, all I wanted was to wa!e up. -ut I couldn't awa!e, not until I

had some answers. &bandoning the library in disgust, I returned home and moped

about for wee!s in a stupor of desperation and ner"ous suspicion.

///

*ot long after that inauspicious day of wasted labor, something happened that

helped me come bac! to myself, such as I was, while also ad"ancing my obsession with

the swi"el5heads. 2ntil then, I was no e$pert at ma!ing friends. +ow une$pected it was,

6



then, that I should ma!e a friend when I needed one most. I was so surprised because

nothing in my life had e"er wor!ed out that way. 6or once, I actually gained an

ad"antage o"er my circumstances.

It was after school, after the time between lea"ing home to go to school in the

morning and lea"ing school in the afternoon to go bac! home, where I waited for it to betime for dinner, time for doing homewor!, and then other times until it was time to go

to bed before it was time to wa!e up again and face another round of times to do things.

In any case, on the day in )uestion I made friends with this other boy. The reason for

this fortuitous bond was that he spo!e the following words0 %Damn those small

people.% I as!ed him why he said that. I also as!ed if he was afraid of the small people

as I was afraid of them. +e said he wasn't afraid of the small people, but I didn't belie"e

him because of the way he said this. +is eyes loo!ed away from me, and he started to

fidget. +is "oice became "ery )uiet, too, until he stopped tal!ing altogether and juststared at the ground. Then he loo!ed up at me, sha!ing off the fear that possessed him,

and said in a boisterous "oice, %I'm not afraid of those dummy5things. I just hate

them.%

I smiled and said, %I call them swi"el5heads. &nd I hate them, too.%

Immediately we became friends and began spending time together e"ery day after

school, that is, until it was time for us to go home for dinner and then go through all the

other times there were. e played games the way young people do, or are supposed to

do at that stage of de"elopment. e wrestled )uite a bit, but there wasn't anything mean

or cra4y about it. e also tal!ed a lot about the small people. #ne theme of con"ersationto which we often returned in"ol"ed catching one of the smalls and what we'd do when

we did.

%I'd twist its arms until they were bac!wards.% To me, that seemed li!e something

you could actually do to the small people, e"en if my only basis for this con"iction was a

brief sighting of them while on "acation a few years before. %Then it would ha"e to do

e"erything turned around, li!e eating with its bac! to the dinner table, if they e"en eat. It

would ha"e to reach for its food without being able to see it,% my friend speculated,

warming to his "ision. I pictured the scene for a moment.%(eah,% I said.

e laughed )uite a bit about small people whose arms and also legs we had twisted

bac!wards, as well as other things we would do if we caught one of them. "entually, we

became so e$hausted from laughing that we were out of breath and had to sit )uietly for

a while. That was when my friend smiled at me in a certain way. *ot smiling slightly li!e

my father did, but smiling as if he was thin!ing something "ery particular, loo!ing at me

7



with a )uestioning e$pression on his face. &nd right then I had the feeling I could read

his mind and he could read mine. 6rom that moment, we became more serious in our

tal!s about the swi"el5headed dummy5things. y friend also shared with me a secret.

hat he told me was that his father. maybe his mother, too. also hated the small people.

%y grandfather hated them e"en more. +e thought all sorts of things about them and what he called their powers.% The n my friend confided that his father always !new the

location of small country, and their family mo"ed e"ery so often to a"oid it. %e're going

to be mo"ing again pretty soon. Dad says that the smalls are too close already%:and

they're getting closer e"ery day. +e e"en let me !now where new small country is going

up, so I won't get too near it.%

*ot long after that day, I as!ed my parents if I could sleep o"er at my friend's

house. +e did the same, as!ing his parents if he could sleep o"er at my house. #ur ruse

wor!ed, and on the night we were supposed to sleep o"er at each other's houses weinstead met at a pre5arranged location. the la"atory hut in the old par! on the edge of

town. hen I entered the small wooden building, my friend was already studying a

wrin!led piece of noteboo! paper on which he had drawn a map. %+ere's where the

small country is going to be,% he said, pointing to a place a few miles outside the town's

limits. %It's secluded right now, my dad said.% &ccordi ng to my friend, howe"er, it

wouldn't be long before the signs were put up and e"eryone would !now it was there.

%*ot that they could do anything about it,% my friend said.

%(eah,% I replied, !nowing that whoe"er complained would be called a sham eful

bigot or some roughly e)ui"alent term of reproach. &s my friend and I sat cross5leggedon the floor of the la"atory hut, it became increasingly apparent that neither of us was

entirely dedicated to our plan of stealing our way into the presently secluded region of

small country and capturing one of its residents. &nd the longer we waited, the more our

project deteriorated into something ill5concei"ed and probably unfeasible. 2ltimately,

though, our doubts were o"ercome by our hatred.

%The small people,% my friend said. That was all. just three words spo!en in a

tense, )uiet "oice. (et those words ga"e "ent to a rage at something that had sei4ed his

life. I loo!ed at him and saw all second thoughts written on his face transform into aspirit of determination. *o doubt he saw my own features o"erta!en by the same spirit.

///

e entered the secluded small country by way of a little road that was in the

process of construction. Some small children were loitering in the area. Construction

8



sites are always a temptation for children, though these small children weren't beha"ing

in the usually rambunctious manner one might e$pect if they had been real children.

They didn't see us, or so we assumed. -ut it wasn't long before they started to wal! away

from the hidden spot where my friend and I were obser"ing them. It was probably time

for them to be somewhere, I thought. time to do whate"er the smalls did at that hour,for by then it was almost full e"ening. They mo"ed with rigid, mechanical motions, and

we shadowed them easily. e could ha"e caught up to them and grabbed one, pulled it

bac! o"er into big country. normal country, I mean, the real world where real people

li"e. -ut I don't thin! I could ha"e brought myself to do that, as much as my friend and I

had tal!ed about it. I loo!ed at him, and he shoo! his head, so I !new he felt the same.

&t that point, I'm not sure that either of us !new what we wanted to do. &gain, our plans

were coming apart.

e !ept following the smalls, though. I noticed that e"en if they weren't mo"ing "ery fast, they did seem to be mo"ing as fast as they could, as if they were hurrying to get

somewhere. Their arms and legs shifted around in the manner of prosthetic limbs,

ma!ing them loo! almost crippled, though not crippled so that you felt sorry for them, I

should say, but maimed in a way that made you want to !eep your distance, as if they

could infect you with some dreadful condition. "entually, we saw lights ahead. ith an

artificial radiance, they flooded the dar!ness on the other side of a hill that the small

children were approaching. &nd when they got to the top of the hill, they paused for a

moment, their silhouettes outlined against the s!y by the lights shining on them from

below. 6or a moment, it was a rather pictures)ue tableau. -ut soon the small childrendid something with their heads, raising them up with a slow mechanical motion by

elongating their nec!s, li!e a telescope sliding open a little. Then they swi"eled those

heads around without mo"ing their bodies. turning them just enough so that it seemed

they were loo!ing at me and my friend. -oth of us dropped to the ground as if we had

been shot. In the dar!ness, I heard my friend whisper, %Those rotten, horrible smalls.

(ou can ne"er !now what they're going to do. I hate them so much.%

%(eah,% I murmured in soft response.

hen we loo!ed up from the ground, the small children were gone, no doubtha"ing mo"ed down the other side of the hill. It couldn't ha"e been a "ery steep incline

there, or so I calculated. #therwise, the smalls. with their aw!ward, practically disabled

bodies. wouldn't ha"e been able to negotiate the descent. -ut when my friend and I ran

up to the hilltop, mo"ing in a crouched position, we saw that it was almost a straight

drop o"er the edge. &nd the small children were now wal!ing li!e bro!en robots down

below us. Their destination loo!ed li!e a little toy town that was e"idently under

9



construction. %See,% my friend said. %y dad !new it. Pretty soon all of th is land

around here will be small country.%

They were mo"ing around li!e mad in a !ind of pit. Stretching out for about a mile

was a half5built town that was almost a double of the town where my friend and I li"ed.

The smalls were hopping around in a fren4y to finish it, as if they were on a tightschedule. %aybe they ha"e to complete the place before a certain time,% my friend

conjectured. %hy else would they be wor!ing at night% Or maybe that's just the way

they are, I thought. &ll !inds of small building machinery were positioned along the

town's main street, though none of it was in motion. Small people who loo!ed as if they

were directing operations stood with their stubby arms outstretched, pointing in all

directions or inspecting unrolled building plans held tightly by their tiny digits.

"eryone seemed busy with some project. putting up storefronts that had little detail or

identifying features, wor!ing on s!eletal framewor!s that maybe were going to behouses, or carrying around what appeared to be prefabricated parts that would

ultimately be integrated into the toy town. #n se"eral street corners small people were

yelling through static!y bull horns. -ut they didn't seem to be addressing anyone in

particular, and what they were shouting wasn't distinguishable as anything but

gibberish. &s a matter of fact. just pure, natural fact. when I considered the scene before

me from its smallest to its most prominent features, the whole enterprise of the small

people's town5building seemed to be nothing but an act. They weren't building anything

with point and purpose at its core, anything that was more than a spectral illusion. they

were putting on a show. hether or not this was intentional on their part intrigued mefor some reason.

#nce I had thrown off the strangeness of the spectacle, I could see how ric!ety, how

shoddy e"erything was. &ll the buildings were croo!ed or une"enly si4ed with respect to

the town as a whole. The windows were more trape4oidal than s)uare or rectangular,

and the shutters attached to some windows hung loosely, flapping against the walls

behind them. & light bree4e could ha"e caused the town to collapse and blow away,

which may ha"e accounted for the disappearance and emergence of so much small

country within real landscapes. I !new that all towns, and e"en cities, in the big world would e"entually go to ruin in time, howe"er sturdy they might appear for howe"er long

a period. Thousands of years of towns and cities in the past had pro"en that. &nd

thousands or millions of years awaited the dissolution of the world as it now stood. -ut

this town was not made to last. It was as if the small people !new there was no point in

bothering with permanence. &s I said, that e$plained a lot to me about small country.

how it was always mo"ing from one location to another, as my friend's father was aware

10



so that he could mo"e his family away from where"er it rose up after a period of

seclusion. -ut there was also something more. They sought no permanent standing in

the world. 6or them, e$istence was all chaos, nonsense, and emptiness. I !new the same

had been written about our world, the supposedly real world. -ut that was opinion,

speculation. &nd only "ery few had claimed as much. (et the small people as a lotseemed to embrace these objectionable )ualities as truths. *ow it became more

e$plicable to me that they should be passed o"er in the archi"es of human thought.

Theirs was not a lone "oice spea!ing out of time. Theirs was a society subsisting, e"en

thri"ing, on the brin! of none$istence. an enigma that repulsed wholesome deliberation

by real people. &nd their habitats were all but ruins upon inauguration.

*o one in the big world, or "ery few, mentioned that the fully e$tinct lea"ings of

towns li!e this remained after the smalls relocated, because once a place had become

small country it was left alone, as if it was not fit to be reclaimed by real humans, as if the earth in these places had been polluted by an alien occupancy, and only pestilence

abided there. (ou !now this as well as I do, Doctor. -ut nobody writes about this fact,

and its corollary that one day there will be no room left for a real world to be built. the

unreal was mo"ing in. I belie"e I reali4ed this truth at a deep le"el within me during the

one bra"e day I spent at a middling library. &nd now I was sha!en by it to my marrow.

aybe there are grubby pamphlets passed around among people li!e my friend's

father, crumpled pages whose possession would cause someone to be branded as a

shameful little bigot, you might say. an outcast. So anything that appears in print or

otherwise about the small people is labeled as pernicious ra"ings and propaganda. Thereare means for hushing up what people would prefer not to del"e into. -ut I'"e already

gone into that.

8a4ing at the new small town going up, such as it was, was to witness the intrusion

of an unnatural colony of beings into the anatomy of our world. not a different race or

group, but something that did not belong, neither here nor anywhere concei"able by

human senses or cognition. It was something un!nown that had ta!en form, or was in

the process of ta!ing form, coming of age in a world it was displacing. That night with

my friend brought so many things home to me. & new phase in my sentiment toward thesmalls had begun fermenting within my being. %*one of it is real,% my friend said. %I

don't !now what it is.% & creeping sense of something hitherto concealed o"ercame me,

as I'm sure it did him. 6ear had now gotten the better of both hatred and curiosity.

-eside me, my friend whispered0 %1et's get out of here.% In sync, we jumped to our feet.

hen we turned about, though, I almost lost consciousness. 6or behind us was a

regiment of small people standing in a semi5circle. +ow long had they been there To

11



me, that was more frightening than disco"ering their presence. being watched without

!nowing it by a group of smalls.

They didn't spea! a word. neither to us nor among one another. *othing shoc!ed

me about that, but it did add to the disorienting unreality of the situation. 6or a time,

they stayed in place. Parado$ically, they appeared gigantic, that is, gigantic for toys,gi"en their toy5li!e aspect. 6or instance, their clothes seemed to be painted on them, not

worn by them. &nd their faces were so smooth, gleaming in the moonlight without any

of the characteristic )ualities of flesh. Despite their masculine semblance, their faces

were beardless. They were also unwrin!led, unworn by time and somehow immortal.

This was how they had always been, created somehow but not de"eloped in stages from

birth to their present age. There had been no process of coming of age for them, I

thought later. no birth or death or all the things in between that trouble our own

e$istence, or at least troubled us when we attended to them. There was only goingthrough the motions, a pretense of life. In a way, they were a mirror of us. of what we

wanted for oursel"es. They mar!ed time and nothing else. Time to do this. Time to do

that. Time to ma!e another town. Time to relocate, ha"ing poisoned a new landscape

with small country.

During the standoff between the smalls and my friend and me, an uncanny stillness

pre"ailed. -ut then their heads swi"eled simultaneously. ach turned toward another.

They didn't seem to be e$changing glances, though, or e"en loo!ing directly into one

another's glassy, empty eyes. not as my friend and I loo!ed to each other with the same

thought in our minds. e couldn't run around them, because they surrounded us. &nd we didn't want to jump down the steep incline at our bac!s and land in the small town.

So we began to mo"e slowly through their ran!s, not !nowing what to e$pect. hile we

had come there to harm them, our taste for that was now lost. It seemed to us, as we

later tal!ed of it, that we could not understand them at all or what male"olence they

might harbor toward us.

7ery slowly, then, we sidled our way among them, and they didn't attempt to bloc!

our path. +owe"er, they did do something, or seemed to do something. This was to

lightly press their bodies against ours as we passed. That turned out to be worse thanany brute physical encounter we could ha"e had with them. their touch. 6or they were

not stiff and rigid as we e$pected, not the hard, plastic toys we might ha"e neatly torn

apart, bloodlessly dislodging their seemingly prosthetic limbs. Instead, we found that

they were soft, "ery soft. Their shapes felt as if they were gi"ing way as they lightly

pressed themsel"es against us. -ut they were also swi"el5headed dummy5things.

frea!ish unrealities li!e their town and maybe e"erything ha"ing to do with small

12



country. Did they e"en e$ist as our minds conjured e$istence, both our own and that of

all else within our perception hat were these things that seemed to be all appearance

and no substance 6ortunately, such )uestions did not paraly4e us.

#nce my friend and I were on the other side of the smalls, we ran without pause to

where we commenced our terribly misconcei"ed incursion into small country. The restof the night we spent shi"ering with cold and fear in the la"atory hut at the old par! on

the edge of town. The only time we spo!e was in the morning. ;ust before we parted for

our respecti"e homes, my friend loo!ed at me with an abysmal e$pression on his face

and said, %y dad will !ill me if he e"er finds out what we did.%

%(eah,% I said, drawing out at length that single, stupid syllable, e$haling it in a

dead "oice.

///

*ot long after our misad"enture, my friend mo"ed away with his family. &nd before

the end of that school year, those signs went up with the simple faces on them. They first

appeared at the edge of town and then proceeded for some miles along the open road

beyond. I made a point of going around and finding all the signs I could, noting which

direction their arrows pointed to indicate small country. I saw that people still went to

the old par!. They must ha"e been aware that small country wasn't far away, but that

made no difference to them, not as it did to me.

& few wee!s before it was time for the new school year to begin, I recei"ed a letterfrom my friend. It was hand deli"ered to me by my mother, who first too! a moment to

interrogate me about any pac!s of cigarettes I might ha"e hidden in the basement,

which was where I happened to be at the time, lying on an old sofa we had down there.

&fter that night in small country, my friend and I tried smo!ing cigarettes for a while. I

thin! we both wanted to do something we'd ne"er done before, something to ma!e us

feel we had changed and were no longer those !ids who tal!ed so much about the

smalls. I !ept the last pac! of cigarettes we shared, and my mom found them. I hadn't

e"en smo!ed since my friend mo"ed away.I was elated when I got his letter, which was only a single page. -ut I read that page

countless times, sa"oring its words and e"en reciting them in my friend's "oice. There

was nothing more in the letter than my friend's banal depiction of the new place he was

li"ing and the school he would be attending. That was enough to relie"e the sense of

demorali4ation I felt since he had gone. I wrote bac! to him, of course, and that initiated

an e$change of letters between us, and e"en some phone calls. I told him that I still had

13



the last pac! of cigarettes we shared, e"en though my mother had ta!en them. hat I

ne"er as!ed him was whether he had made any new friends.

In mid5winter, I opened the latest missi"e from my friend after a hiatus during

which he had answered none of my letters. hat I read in it re"i"ed a !aleidoscope of

memories and emotions, none of them welcome to my still delicate state of mind. Thenews my friend related was that his father had disappeared about a month before. #ne

day, he didn't return from wor!, and his family had heard nothing from him since. y

friend didn't write a word about any particular suspicions he had, and that I also

nurtured. +e did say that the police had come to his house. &s a rule, his mother

wouldn't ha"e allowed them into their home to po!e around. +is father had ne"er

trusted the police or any other persons of officialdom, and neither did his mother. -ut in

this circumstance, that rule went out the window.

The police didn't find anything that interested them in the house, but when they loo!ed around the garage they turned up a loc! bo$ hidden underneath a wor!shop

table. y friend's mother ga"e them permission to open it, and inside they disco"ered,

as my friend )uoted them, %stac!s of literature.% Then he wrote, %-oth my mom and I

were fairly certain that what they called literature wasn't pornography or anything of the

!ind. It was stuff about them.% That was the first reference to the small people I could

recollect appearing in our correspondence with each other. *aturally, this was a subject

that we didn't want to linger o"er. y friend continued regarding what was hidden in his

dad's loc! bo$ that the police pried open0 %Some of it was in en"elopes with postmar!s

from all o"er the world.% The police rummaged through the material until my friend'smother told them there wasn't anything in there that would help them find her husband.

%The cops didn't say a word after that,% my friend wrote. %I thought they might. It

seemed to me they should ha"e, the way they were loo!ing at each other. -ut they just

piled the en"elopes and stuff bac! in the bo$ and sho"ed the bo$ bac! underneath my

dad's wor!shop table. Then they left, and we ha"en't heard from them since, the

bastards.%

6or a few days, I didn't !now what to write in response to my friend's letter. I

considered phoning him, but I didn't thin! that was a prudent action to ta!e. 6inally, Icomposed a short letter of "ague condolences and hopes that his dad had business he

thought it best not to share with him and his mother. y letter was a mass of

circumlocutions that I was sure my friend would understand. To my grief, I ne"er

recei"ed a response to that letter, and it was almost spring before I could admit to

myself that I would ne"er hear from him again.

14



I said that my friend a"oided mentioning the smalls in our letters. +owe"er, as I

later pored o"er our correspondence I saw that he had written something to me that I

bloc!ed from recall. The erasure of his words from my memory was understandable, for

what he wrote was simply too strange to reflect upon for "ery long. If you'll remember,

Doctor, I posed the following )uestion0 %+ow could we !now we were !eeping certaintruths from oursel"es regarding how things are in this world at its deepest le"el% &nd

the answer I ga"e to my own )uestion was this0 %-ecause we had done it before.% ell,

that's e$actly what I had done when I read what my friend wrote to me in one of his

letters. +ere is my recitation of it from memory0 %y dad got drun! last night and told

me things I had ne"er heard from him before. I didn't understand most of it. hat I do

remember was his repeating what he called a spectral link between the smalls and some

people in the real world. Then he went on about people who loo!ed and acted li!e

humans but were not human. aybe he said they were not completely human. +e didha"e a term for them. It was half-small people.%

(ou might be able to comprehend, Doctor, how dis)uieted I was to see written in

my friend's hand certain words that, at least in concept, had occurred to me only in a

dream. I hated to thin! that there was a spectral link between myself and the smalls,

and though I ha"e spo!en of peculiar truths regarding how things really are in this world

at its deepest le"el, truths that we !eep oursel"es from !nowing, I concluded with star!

lucidity that there was absolutely no spectral lin! between myself and the smalls. not as

I understood my friend's father to ha"e used these words. If anything, it was e$actly the

opposite. The small people were drastically alien to me. I was derided by my parents as ashameful little bigot because of my fear of them and my hatred of them, feelings that I

had not !nown to e$ist in anyone else besides my friend, and "icariously through him

his father. and his mother, too, it seemed, who I belie"e had also gone the way of the rest

of my friend's family. -ut where they had gone I couldn't bring myself to ponder.

hile continuing to be afraid of the smalls and to hate them, I now transferred

these emotions with a rabid "ehemence toward the half5smalls, who my friend added

sometimes de"ol"ed. or whate"er the proper term might be. in both appearance and

nature into small people through and through. 6ollowing this transformation, whichthey might not e"en !now was possible or consider desirable. there was nothing for

them to do e$cept mo"e into small country and li"e among their !ind, that is, if they

didn't regard this prospect as so repellent that they too! other measures rather than lose

the sense of who they were, or thought they were, and what they were, or thought they

were. ith its small people, this world just seemed a preposterous mess to me, and now

it was re"ealed to be e"en worse than I !new. hy couldn't things be different hat

15



would it ta!e for our li"es to ma!e some !ind of sense aybe that's just not possible, I

thought. aybe any world would be just as preposterous. (et the e$istence of the half5

smalls ne"ertheless still inspired in me a crawling fear, a new unseen horror, as I'"e

mentioned ha"ing this sensation in dreams, along with a hatred of them for ha"ing what

I thought was a weakness connecting them in some spectral manner with the smallpeople. &t least the latter were something of a phenomenally !nown )uantity to my

mind, howe"er little I understood about them. -ut the halfers were something else.

interlopers in a world where they didn't belong, the source of all )uestions about who or

what human beings might be as a life form. 6or as tiresome as it has become, the

)uestion of what it means to be human continues to fer"ently preoccupy us. because

without that definition we cannot positi"ely !now if our laborious self5perpetuation is

worth the candle we !eep lit in the blac!ness of the uni"erse. e cannot decide whether

we should continue or terminate the human race, if there is anything that might becalled the human race, since we are as fragmented in the aggregate as we are as

indi"iduals. things of parts and not the integrated organisms we represent to oursel"es.

&ll the same, as na<="e and arrogant as this may sound, I felt that my sensibility

enabled my insight into this immemorial affair. I thought of this sensibility as a type of

instinct that actually forced me to see things as they were and not as I was supposed to

see them so that I could get by in life.

6rom this point on, as I wal!ed the streets of the town where I li"ed, I could see

only how contrary e"erything was to the picture of it I was psychologically strong5armed

into ha"ing. *ow the place where I grew up was no more than another preposterousmess. The town's motto on the sign as you entered ain Street was0 %& 8ood Place to

1i"e% . not e$actly a boastful statement. In actuality, though, it was pretty crummy. *ot

crummy in itself, I should say, because I had ne"er li"ed in any other towns. They might

be as crummy as my nati"e town. The whole planet might be crummy for all I !new

then. hen I loo!ed closely at the city hall, for instance, I could see it was wobbly.

aybe at one time I would ha"e thought nothing of wal!ing through the wide front

doors of the place. *ow that my eyes could see that they tilted )uite "isibly, I wouldn't

ha"e entered its space on a dare. #r ta!e the post office. If my mother had ordered me inher most calmly intimidating "oice to go buy her some stamps, I wouldn't do it. *ot one

foot would I set inside, because its bric!s were set together all wrong. #ne of them could

slide a little, I gauged, and the walls might come crashing down in a flash and bury me

ali"e as I was standing in line to buy some rotten stamps which had images on them that

were so faded and coc!5eyed I couldn't tell anymore what they were supposed to

represent. #nce they were printed with images of monuments in one place or another

16



where my family went on "acation, as I remembered in my mind's eye, but from then on

they appeared all bent up and sagging. &nd they were all supposed to be so grand.

Ta!en in total, the whole world was supposed to be so grand. -ut it wasn't, not from my

perspecti"e, which was no longer so muddled I couldn't see things for what they were

and not how I was supposed to see them. In my "iew, all the earth and anything thatstood upon it was just li!e the town where I li"ed. not a good place but a crummy place.

"en new places that people were always rushing around to build were crummy from

the start. wobbly and tilted, bent and sagging. &ll the energy and hustling that went into

building a car wash or a row of stores that seemed to shoot up o"ernight li!e

mushrooms. it was just so useless. &nd the most piddling e"ents were ele"ated as a

matter of course beyond their significance, as testified by the ubi)uitous 8rand

#penings where"er you loo!ed. It was all supposed to amount to something, whate"er it

was. "erything had to be imbued with conse)uence. -ut nothing amounted toanything. It was all just trying to be what it wasn't. real, that is, authentic in e"ery sense

of the word, and not fatally bogus.

I could see the same thing in people that I did in the flimsy material world, this

jun!yard of cast5off ectoplasm. They didn't meet e$pectations either, though, as I said,

no one yet has been able to say definitely who or what we are. &nd I don't thin! anyone

will e"er be able to do so. I don't thin! they want to. hat I do thin! they want is to say

that humans, real humans, are this and that and the other thing. that there are millions

of )ualities humans ha"e that nothing else has, and they say all this to !eep us confused,

to !eep themsel"es confused, about what humans really are, e$cept that they're notsmall people. -ut now I was fi$ated on the half5smalls. *ow my sensibility, my special

instinct, had become sufficiently honed to discern who was what. *ot that I e$pected

any consolation from such !nowledge. it was simply something to do while I decided

what to do with myself.

&t first, as I wal!ed around town during the summer after I stopped recei"ing

letters from my friend, I wasn't sure e$actly how my sensibility was functioning. I would

get a feeling, li!e a tingling inside me, when I saw certain people strolling down the

sidewal! or sitting at picnic tables outside the fro4en custard stand that did land5office business throughout the summer months. I'm sure you get the picture, Doc. It was show

time and nothing but. *o doubt some clic!ety5clac! "ersion of it was being enacted by

the smalls, as I was now with some confidence able to imagine after beholding one of

their own towns in its construction stage, a poor e$cuse for e"en the crummiest human

town, if one wants to get into degrees of crumminess, that is.

17



&ll things considered, my wits were in relati"ely fair wor!ing order, and my

sensibility was becoming more and more sharply attuned. #ccasionally, the tingling

sensation I felt in the pro$imity of certain persons caught me off guard and pierced my

spine with an$iety, but for the most part I was in control. ithin the span of about a

wee!, I not only felt something about those people but also began to see little thingsabout them, things you wouldn't notice without an e$acting ga4e. &fter my confrontation

with the small people and detecting the smoothness of their faces, which were bereft of

the character bestowed by time, unwrin!led and unworn, I saw a family resemblance in

the same people who set off that tingling inside me. I wished my friend could ha"e been

there, because I was sure he would ha"e seen the same thing about them. that they were

halfers.

Some days I'd wal! from one end of town to the other, and I'd pic! out the real

people from the half5small people. &s I passed by each person I would chec! off theiridentities in my mind. halfer, real, halfer, real, and so on. r. So5and5so. halfer. The old

woman who wal!s her dog in the par! e"ery day. real. Schoolteachers. halfers e"ery one.

Cops, too, all halfers, which made me thin! of my friend's family and the in"estigating

officers who found the literature under his father's wor!shop table. The girl who sat ne$t

to me in math class. real. I was glad about that. The middle5aged lady in the window at

the beauty shop. e"eryone thought she had a facelift done, but she was a halfer. ith

children it was more of a challenge sorting out the real ones from the halfers. ost of

them I let pass as real. There was one group of !ids, though, all spindly specimens with

empty stares. They had to be half5smalls. &ll told, I judged about half the people in town as real and half as halfers. I had

gotten to be )uite proficient at spotting our citi4ens as one or the other. too good, in the

end. I really should ha"e shut off my thoughts sometimes, but I couldn't do that.

///

It was Saturday, and my dad was off wor! for the wee!end. y family always

barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs on those days and ate them together around aplastic table in the bac!yard. e don't tend to see our parents the way we do others.

e're too close to them. "en if they ma!e you miserable and call you a shameful little

bigot, they're still your parents. special circumstances notwithstanding. -ut after all the

time I spent around town separating the real people from the half5smalls, I scrutini4ed

e"eryone the same. ore to the point, I felt that tingling inside me. -eing with both my

mother and father for an e$tended period of time on a Saturday afternoon, and sitting

18



with them around a plastic table in the bac!yard, I was tingling li!e mad. y father was

smiling slightly and staring with concentration as he always did. -ut I ne"er noticed that

he was really staring at nothing in particular. that he was more or less gaw!ing with

bottomless eyes. &nd though the sun was shining on my mother's smooth face, her big

eyes weren't s)uinting. 6urthermore, they didn't loo! right or left, up or down. They were just big eyes li!e a big doll would ha"e. The longer I sat with my parents eating

hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato salad with no egg whites, because from the first time I

ate potato salad with egg whites I refused to eat it again that way, the more I tingled

inside. y parents did what they had to do in order to be real parents to me. -ut we

weren't biologically related, as I'm sure it says in your file on me. I was adopted as an

infant, and now I !new that I was only a prop, something to aid them in not being found

out for what they were.

-efore they told me, I already !new somehow that I was adopted. &nd I was ne"erhappy about that. -ut on that Saturday as I sat eating dinner with my parents around a

plastic table, I praised whate"er there was to praise that I was adopted, or else I would

ha"e been a halfer, too, if in fact that's the way it wor!s. *e"ertheless, I was pleased not

to be their real offspring. I couldn't be sure, of course, if reals could gi"e birth to halfers

or the other way around, since I didn't !now how the spectral lin! between the small

people and the real people wor!ed. y friend was ta!en from me before I could learn

more about that, and maybe about other things. I hated that. I hated it with all my

being. &nd what happened, as I mentioned, was that all my hate for the small people

transferred to the half5smalls. *ow I wondered if the reason for that transference wasn'tdue to my subliminal recognition of ha"ing parents who belonged to that weird species.

3etrospecti"ely, it made all the sense in this cloc!wor! world that my father and

mother were halfers. the way they reproached me so often about being a shameful little

bigot when in truth I was not a bigot but a real person who was afraid of the small

people and couldn't accept the arrangement the big world had with them. aybe real

parents would ha"e understood that, I don't !now. I wanted to thin! so. I wanted to

thin! that there was something sensible, or at least something of marginal "alue about

the tic!5toc! world I had been born into. -ut the two halfers sitting with me at thatplastic table only berated me as a shameful little bigot, certainly because they wanted to

stifle my sensiti"ity to how things were in the world at its deepest le"el and to muddle

my brain as I came of age, going through all the adjustments in the process so that I

could be presented in company. that is, so that I would be a sightless moron li!e

e"eryone else, e"eryone e$cept people li!e the only friend I e"er had in my life. In a

19



split5second, as I sat munching my hamburger or hot dog and watching my mother and

father that day, I was hopelessly possessed by hatred for them.

That night I lay awa!e in my bed for a long time, earnestly trying to arri"e at some

way to li"e with the household status )uo, just as real humans had arranged at some

time in the past to li"e with the small people, though no boo! I could find wouldpinpoint when that was or how it was done. -ut there was no way I could do that. no

way at all.

It must ha"e been around the middle of the night. I didn't plan a specific time. when

I entered my mother and father's bedroom. They were lying on their bac!s in bed, the

moonlight glowing on my father's slightly smiling face and concentrating stare as well as

on my mother's smooth face and big eyes, which were open. -oth their eyes were open. I

don't !now why. aybe they didn't sleep. It wasn't as if I was the sort of person to pee!

into his parents' bedroom to see what they were doing.%Dad, om,% I said, just to get their attention. They didn't e"en sit up in bed,

though. aybe they were sleeping, in their own way. %1isten,% I continued. %I want to

tell you something. hat I want to tell you is%:% Then, with all the lung power I could

summon, I screamed0 %I'm a shameful little bigot. I hate the small people. I hate them

for all I'm worth. -ut more than I hate the small people, I hate you.%

Then I jumped on the bed and was all o"er them with the !ni"es I'd gotten from the

!itchen. ush, push, push. !hop, chop, chop. They didn't ma!e a sound the whole time. I

can tell you one thing. halfers aren't soft li!e the smalls. I really had to wor! on those

things that called themsel"es my parents.

///

I wasn't e$actly ama4ed that I ne"er saw the inside of a courtroom, !nowing as I did

what I !new. I didn't !now, howe"er, what would ensue in the aftermath of my deed.

that I would be loc!ed up in this place. hate"er it is, it isn't a prison, not with the

superlati"e educational facilities you'"e pro"ided, allowing my mind and sensibility to

flourish. If our positions were re"ersed, that would be my scheme. culti"ate me li!e aplant, breed me into something that could e$press its "iew of the world at its deepest

le"el. (ou were ready for me from the "ery first, so I ha"e to assume I'm not the only one

to do what I did, and for the reason I did it. That's right, isn't it, Doctor -ut I'"e been

here so long. +ow many more doctors must I see who want to hear my story &re you in

training or something I'm as sane as your shoes, we both !now that, e"en though I

should ha"e gone mad long ago from my dreams alone. hy can't we ma!e a deal, come

20



to an arrangement I'm practically an old man. y coming of age came and went. I'd !ill

myself if I thought you'd let me. That's not what you want, though, is it Could you

please gi"e me an answer just once

"erything is such a mystery with you people. halfers I used to thin!, but I don't

!now anymore. I lost my instinct for that the moment I stepped into this place. Did youdo that &nd what about the tingling That hasn't happened in who !nows how long. It

would be nice to see a cloc! or a calendar e"ery so often. Don't you care about time,

whate"er you are +ow about space, e$istence, all the commotion of reality I'"e !nown

it was all just a preposterous mess for ages now. I also learned that I should be on the

outside, and the rest of this ludicrous world, or most of it, should be in here for study

and rehabilitation, adjustment and readjustment, if that's the point. hat are you trying

to accomplish hate"er it is, you seem to be doing a terrible job of it. Is e"erything still

as crummy as I remember it (our world, whiche"er one it may ha"e been, was anoffense to my eyes. &nd it didn't ha"e to be that way. -ut maybe that's the way you

wanted it. a nightmare from morning stool to bedtime stories.

#h, here they come. the big boys. (ou can tell them to ta!e their hands off me. -ig

boys with big hands. -ut are they really big, or only half big I belie"e an autopsy could

establish the facts, if you'd allow me the pleasure. y parents were half5smalls. The

alignment of their bones was human enough, but their organs seemed all of a piece. It

could ha"e been they were starting to con"ert, I don't !now. So what's inside of the small

people, Doctor y guess is that they're composed of some doughy substance inside and

out. a flabby clay that can be molded into any form, ha"ing no identity of its own. Is thisreally our world, the real world, or is it theirs Did the right hand of e"olution !now

what the left hand was doing &nd what about the spectral lin! I ha"e my theories. I'"e

had lots of time to thin! about that, for what it's worth. thin!ing. 8i"e me a hint,

something to mull o"er. I just need a spec! of hope to !eep me from going to pieces. a

little truth to hang onto. &nswer me, Doctor, before I'm dragged off. ho are you hat

are you &nswer me. 6or the lo"e of all that is real. ho am I hat am I

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Documents

Thomas Ligotti - The Small People