After the Thin Man

This is what happens when I go to Wikipedia and hit random until I get a workable prompt. A story with the title of a film from the mid 30's that closes with a quote from a Victorian poem ("Goblin Market" if you must know).

I am a rationalist, a scientist, and an intellectual. My bookshelf is full of Hawking and Sagan, and biographies of Leibniz and Tesla. I don't believe in the supernatural or the inexplicable, but after the Thin Man...
I have a nasty habit of spending money on nice coats even as I patch and re-patch the same old pairs of jeans. Maybe that's why every time I go downtown at least one ragged individual, down on their luck and needing “Just seventy-five cents, man, for the bus?” approaches me. The Thin Man was different.
He didn't hold himself like the rest of the destitute and abandoned. He stood straight in the bitter wind and always walked with purpose. He held court in Loring Park, standing at the edge of the fountain that looks like a giant dandelion and called out to the passers by.
Usually his calls were familiar ones, could we spare a dollar, maybe some change; frequently though, maybe one time out of five, he would ask a question instead. Sometimes it was sweet, sometimes embarrassing, but always it was both perceptive and personal, and always it contained some core of wisdom if you were able to spot it.
How he knew the things that he did I am still not sure, I certainly never saw him lurking or eavesdropping, though I saw him once striding down Nicollet Mall after midnight, after a show that I was working on. His long coat was open then, as it never was during the day, and his long black hair that I always before thought to be dank and matted flowed behind him, shadow made tangible yet remaining weightless.
It was then that I started to capitalize the title that I had given him in my mind and in my speech. Even still it didn't do justice to how incredibly gaunt he was. Under his coat he wore only a white wife beater, oblivious to the bitter cold, and even that hung loose on him. His arms and legs were long, and the way he moved made it look as though he had more than the usual compliment of joints, but where his wrists protruded from his too-short sleeves I could clearly see at a glance the two bones of his arms, and the point at which they joined. His hands were unusually large and typically clad in fingerless gloves the same brown as his coat but on that night he had forgone even that concession to the elements and when he raised one in recognition of me I swear I could see moonlight streaming through it.
That was also the first time that he gave me any special attention, but it was not the last. In the days succeeding our chance encounter each time I passed him he had an insight for me, or a few kind words, or perhaps a piercing question. Some days I would walk home instead of catching the bus and spend the entire hour or so of travel with my hands thrust deep in my pockets and my brain working over time generating explanations of his behavior and abilities.
The second to last time he told me “I'll see you tomorrow then.” and my walk home was exultant, I had finally caught him in a mistake. After all he told me that on a Thursday and I had no business downtown on Friday's.
I thought nothing of his odd slip the next day, not even when I decided to take a walk in the late afternoon and I was too busy enjoying a late Winter thaw to realize that my feet were taking me inexorably down Hennepin. I didn't put two and two together until I heard him hail me from his customary perch.
“Right on time. Come, come I have something to show you.” it was the first time I had ever seen him furtive, it made an impression.
I drew closer, mostly out of curiosity, eminently aware that the sun was setting. “What is it?”
He leaned in conspiratorially before responding, “Something you need to see, follow me.” as he spoke he extended one hand and, before I had divined his purpose, placed one finger over each of my eyes. Through his fingertips I swear I saw Summer come to Loring Park.
As quickly as the vision had come it was gone, he withdrew his hand and flashed me a somewhat hesitant smile before turning on his heel and marching into the park, coattails lashing behind him. I took a moment to recover my wits before following him. The wind was still warm but blowing more insistently than it had before and I pulled my own coat close.
In more or less the middle of the park there are several small bridges over what are, in the summer, sluggish creeks. As a consequence of the days snow melt they were fast moving in the center, though still cutting fresh meanders through the ice on either bank. The creeks define an island of sorts on which stands a memorial garden laid out like a labyrinth in the uni-path, medieval form. It was to this that I followed the Thin Man.
At the mouth of the labyrinth he reached into his coat and drew forth a branch of Holly that bore a cluster of berries and, shockingly, a blossom at its tip. He expertly plucked two of the berries and handed one to me before laying the branch across the entrance to the sleeping garden. “Hold it in your mouth but do not bite down or swallow it.” he said before lapping the second berry from his hand with a tongue as long and lean as the rest of him, but a red even more vibrant than that of the holly berry in contrast to his glacial skin.
I did as I was told, though thinking back I have no idea what compelled me to do so. I knew after all, even then, that the berries of the holly tree were somewhat poisonous; I do remember that at the time it seemed the most logical course of action imaginable. For that matter, so did following him over the makeshift lintel despite his vanishing on the other side.
What seemed to happen next I have trouble remembering, and even more trouble relating. Perhaps I went temporarily mad, or perhaps he had coated the berry in some potent hallucinogen, but looking back I get the impression of a roaring fire and my ears ring with a multitude of pipes issuing forth tones that I had never heard before and haven't since.
Committing the experience now, for the first time, to paper it does seem that these recollections trigger others, which in turn trigger more, and the sun has risen out my office window since last I struck a key.
There were a multitude of dancing forms about the fire. Pan was there and Nuada the elf-maiden; a dozen Puca drank a strange, pale drought from mugs that never emptied and cavorted, playing games insensible to the human mind, and chimeric men set a long table of raw oak with myriad fruits of wondrous aspect and unsurpassed pungency. The last thing I remember, before I found myself tripping over a loose stone and swallowing the berry held still in my mouth was a man with flaming hair staring at me over a massive tankard of boiled leather, shifting his gaze to the Thin Man, and the rage in his eyes that caused me to start.
After the stumble I found that I was momentarily alone in the garden, heart racing, in the full dark of night (though I have no notion, in my memories, of the passing of time amongst the Sidhe). I stood for a time, breathing heavily, before a sudden noise, as of a hundred far off horns, caused me to turn. The Thin Man stood behind me, a wild look in his eyes, a look of raw terror. He spat out his berry “We must go, quickly.”
Such was the urgency in his voice, and my own confusion, that I raised no objection. I followed him at a dead run out of the garden, down the Mall, and towards the river. He ran without form, head down and limbs flying every which way but nonetheless it was all I could do to keep pace with him despite being nearly as tall as he and much more densely muscled.
The horns echoed again as we crossed sixth street, still running hard, and there was some wild, primal note in it that drove me faster despite the aching in my chest and lungs. The Thin Man answered it with the wordless whimper of a kicked dog, or wounded prey and he slowed. I beat him over the train tracks along Fifth and for a third time the horns resounded; this time they were answered with a scream.
I turned to see the Thin Man, standing frozen, in the middle of the street mouth a-gape. Bearing down on him from his right was a great multitude of horsemen dressed in leather and furs and bearing bows or spears. At their head was the man with the flaming hair, and in his hand he held aloft a sword of crimson steal, and from his forehead protruded two great and many pronged antlers. In a heart beat he had cloven the Thin Man in two without slowing and the body was engulfed in huntsmen before it could fall to the ground.
I stood, panting and watching the host barrel down on me, sure that I would be next, but as the riders drew near the disincorporated, faded, and the ringing of horses hooves and braying of horns grew faint as well. In moments I was alone on the mall and it was only then that I noticed that from where I stood and stretching as far as I could see there burned no electric light.
I walked home in a daze, but that was three weeks ago and I've just been to see a fourth doctor. So far none have been able to explain my sudden weight loss or why my skin, which had been wont to hold a tan of sorts throughout the Winter is growing pale and translucent.

I can no longer bear to live under a roof, I need the light of the stars on my face. You who have found this please take heed, you 'must not look on Goblin Men...must not eat their fruits' and always carry a piece of cold iron.