“Of course,” said Maria. “Duh.”

The elves paid them no notice. They were too busy running from something. Seconds later, one of the groundskeepers appeared. He was carrying a heavy rake, but was still making good progress. He caught up with the elves just as they reached the other side of the road, and began beating them to splinters.

“The sign said,” he screamed, “ ‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS.’ What part of keeping off the grass did you—Bang!—not—Smash!— understand—Thud!?”

When the elves were no more, the groundskeeper looked up to see five people watching him. He tipped his hat at them.

“Evening,” he said.

“Evening,” replied Professor Hilbert.

The groundskeeper indicated with a thumb the stack of firewood and splinters that had once been elves.

“Elves,” he said. “They trampled on the grass.”

“So we gathered.”

“And the flower beds,” added the groundskeeper. His tone suggested that, while some might feel reducing elves to kindling for trespassing on the grass was a bit of an overreaction, no sane person could take issue with pummeling them for stepping on the flower beds.

He wiped his sweating brow.

“I quite enjoyed that,” he said. “I think I’ll go and look for some more of them.”

And off he went, whistling what sounded like “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho.”

It struck Professor Hilbert that, if the groundskeeper was anything to go by, the citizens of Biddlecombe were taking the evening’s events in their stride. This view was confirmed when they came across the Biddlecombe Ladies’ Football Team standing by half a dozen large and very bruised Christmas-tree fairies who had been tied to tree trunks with stout rope in order to prevent them from doing any further harm.

Professor Hilbert stopped the car.

“What are you doing?” said Professor Stefan.

“Look!” said Professor Hilbert, pointing to the west.

There was a faint shimmer to the air. Beyond it Maria could see more trees and, some way in the distance, the spire of the church in the nearest village, Rathford, but it was as though a mist had descended upon the landscape, blurring the image. It struck Maria that they shouldn’t even have been able to see Rathford. It was nighttime, and yet the spire of the Church of St. Roger the Inflammable was plainly visible, although there was a touch of shiny gray to it, like an old photographic negative.

Professor Hilbert stepped from the car and walked toward the location of the shimmering. The others followed, even Brian, although he was not so much curious as frightened to be left alone. As they drew closer, they saw that the ground came to a kind of end at the fence surrounding August Derleth Park. Beyond the boundary it was less actual firm ground than the memory of it, and its level didn’t quite match the grass on their side of the fence. Worse, the other ground was transparent, and beneath it Maria could see a terrible blackness spotted with the odd lonely star. It felt to her as though Biddlecombe had somehow been set adrift in the Multiverse while still bringing with it the memory of the planet of which it had once been a part. The dividing line was the shimmering, like the heat haze that rises from the ground on sunny summer days, except this one brought with it no warmth.