Free Little People by Tom Holt

& Sons Family Funeral Directors est. 1958, been drinking, or just bought a new ultra-fine Rotring mapping pen? Maybe it was one of these new performance-art things, like the one where there’s this guy all covered in white paint, standing on a plinth pretending he’s a statue.
    I sighed. Darwin probably never had all this trouble; nor David Attenborough. I flicked on a couple more pages until I hit more empty white. Only it wasn’t as empty as it had looked at first sight, and this time, right there in the middle of the page, same handwriting, same ink, was –
    PLEASE
    Once the penny had dropped, it hurtled down like a bomb from a Stuka. Small, neat, florid handwriting. Small, neat, florid, elfin handwriting. The sort of handwriting you’d be likely to have if you were only six inches tall. As for the brown ink, it almost certainly wasn’t ink. Ouch , I thought.
    I lifted my head and looked round, to see if anybody was watching me; the very last thing I needed right then was some other idiot interrupting me. Then I started turning pages and examining them, one by one, starting with 1 January.
    But the days dwindled down to a precious few: November, December, and no more little brown words, not even smiley faces or Kilroy’s nose poking out over the top of the Ready Reckoner. Plenty of possible explanations for that, needless to say. The writer was interrupted, or he got bored, or his pen broke, or the cut he’d made in his arm stopped bleeding, depriving him of his ink supply. Could be anything like that – and chances were I’d never find out which.
    Like it mattered, I thought. Even if this was elf handwriting, what did it mean and what was I supposed to do about it? No use at all just saying ‘Help!’ It would be as bad as shouting ‘Look out!’ when someone was driving fast on a motorway, without making it clear what they were supposed to be looking out for. (Whereupon the driver jumps on his brakes, the car skids and slews round sideways, right into the path of an oncoming lorry carrying concrete bridge sections—)
    I resolved on one last check. It was just as well that I did, because I had missed something, tucked away in the coils of the Underground map like a goat being squeezed to death by a python. This time it was a whole sentence. It said –
    PS: ELVYND SAYS THANKS FOR THE BEER BUT HE PREFERS GUINNESS
    â€“ which surely put the whole business beyond doubt. Didn’t it?
    One of the benefits of paranoia is the tremendous boost it gives to the imagination. Quite apart from the semi-rational, almost plausible alternative explanation (Daddy George with a bottle of brown Indian ink and a magnifying glass, playing games with my head) I was able to concoct at least three others, each one scarier and more bizarre than the last, though I can’t remember offhand what they were, only that they were all further-fetched than British goods in Australia. Wonderful stuff, all of it. Catch a non-paranoid coming up with anything half so creative? I don’t think so.
    I closed the diary slowly, tucked it away in my inside pocket, dumped Moby Dick on the bench and went for a walk round the back of the football pitch. By now I was so thoroughly freaked out that I was fully expecting to see hordes of little green men with pointed ears gambolling about on the grass and pulling faces at me. Most of all, though, what I really wanted was someone I could tell about it all without the certainty of an incredulous stare followed by prolonged and uncharitable mirth. Someone like—
    â€˜Oh,’ said Cru, hopping out from behind a tree, ‘it’s you again. Are you following me around, or something?’
    â€˜What? Oh, no. Sorry.’ That was me all over. Captain Coherent to the rescue. ‘I mean, no, I’m not. I didn’t even realise you were—’
    â€˜Whatever. Goodbye.’ She said the words, but stayed exactly where she was,