The Great Night by Chris Adrian

sushi, or of puzzling together over a hysterical middle-aged lady with syncope, randomly encountered in a vacation hotel. It was strange and pathetic enough to do it in his own bedroom, and seemed stranger and more
pathetic here, outside and quite close to the geographic center of the city, but it was what worked.
    He had hardly properly gotten going with it when he was suddenly aware, even though his eyes were still closed, that he was being watched. He opened his eyes and saw a little man—a very little man, not more than two and a half feet at his shoulder—standing about three yards off. The man was panting and his face was shining with sweat in the moonlight, which was falling down into the clearing from an open sky even though the park was surrounded by fog. Henry stared, cock in hand, feeling a unique combination of revulsion and surprise. It wasn’t actually so surprising that there might be homosexual midgets in the park; the lonely and the desperate came in every shape and age and size and color. But there was something stranger about this man than diminutive boogly trolldom.
    â€œThat won’t keep him away,” the little man said. “He’s not afraid of your little weenaloo.”
    Henry let go of his cock and pulled up his pants at the same time that he pushed himself back and over the rock. He fell over the back of it, got up, and started running, not at all sure about why he had to get away so quickly from this admittedly harmless-looking little man. There was an etiquette to this sort of interaction, a way to indicate that you didn’t want to be watched, let alone touched, during your public escapade, without necessarily hurting anyone’s feelings, which didn’t involve running away in such a hurry that you forgot to put your shoes back on or failed to pull up your pants and your underwear all the way, so they tripped you. He kicked them off and left them behind and ran again. It made less sense than was immediately apparent, to flee as he was doing, and he realized as he was running that what he was feeling had a lot of the character of his old reasonless fears, and then he stopped. He
had run into a stand of white trees, whose peeling bark gave them something in common with eucalyptus, but the grove reeked of cinnamon. He didn’t know the park very well, but this looked like nowhere he had ever been.
    â€œYou’re running the wrong way,” said an already familiar voice behind him. “You should be running off the hill. You should go hide in a church. He doesn’t like those. But there’s no way out anyway, except maybe by going under. My Lord has warded the hill, to keep the Beast inside, and there’s no way out, just bruises. See?”
    He pointed at his own nose, and Henry could see that it was darker than the rest of his face. The man made a beavery sort of noise with his lips. Henry stepped back. “Don’t touch me,” he said, which was the first thing that sprang into his mind.
    â€œI wasn’t going to touch you,” the man said. “I was just saying. I shouldn’t bother at all with you, except my Master bade me be a guide and a keeper to lost travelers. He is gone, but his wards and his work remain, and my love for him remains. The world is doomed tonight, but my love for him remains. I will die before the dawn, but my love for him remains. So I would keep you, if I can, from running into the Maw instead of away from the Maw, since it is better to struggle against the Beast than to lie down for him, though best of all these things is to run away. I know your odor, though. Have I ever fixed your shoes?” He turned his head from side to side, taking a deep sniff from each of Henry’s shoes, and then he smiled. His teeth were as pointy and black and wet as the spines of a sea urchin.
    â€œDon’t touch me,” Henry said. He ran again but didn’t get far. Feeling he should turn to watch and make