The Signal

True, I had seen gnomes before, but they had all been hallucinations. Not real. This one, however, refused to leave. Insisted on being very real, indeed. And not only that, he insisted that I follow him. Curiosity got the better of me, so I did.
::
“You don’t really exist, do you?”

“Well,” he said, pulling at his long beard with a gnarled little hand, his booted little feet barely reaching the edge of the seat and showing dark leather soles scratched and patterned by years and miles, “that depends on who’s looking.”

He didn’t exist, of course. There was no way.

Still, as if to humor the hallucination, I asked, “Can I touch you?”

He hesitated, but after a heartbeat or two answered as if he had not, “Of course.”

So, surprised and fascinated that my hallucination insisted on being real, I stood up and walked across to where he sat in my reading chair. The one in the corner. What was it we called the gnomes back home? Tomte. Yes, that’s it. Tomte. And so real.

I’ve had them before, these hallucinations, but never this strong and not for a while. And now to make him vanish.

I took him in as I approached. His gray beard slithered down his chest like an icy spring river, all the way to his knees where it came to a curly rest. He was probably all of three feet. And look at those little hands, back in his lap now, keeping each other company. They struck me as miniature carpenter hands, tawny, knotted. Too vivid to be true. I almost giggled at how real. A little nervously.

Well, I should have been terrified, and would have been, had I been new to this, but I had seen them before. And I knew that this one would, just like the others, vanish before I could reach him. Just like the one on the boulder, back in Sweden. The first one. All those years ago.

Atop the large boulder near the marsh.