Питер Ловси - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

“Daniel! There you are. You scared me.” Krikon turns to her, softly, softly, fingers to his lips. There may well be a ghoul in the male provider’s closet; he senses a fullness, a waiting, beyond the shut door. But the companion grips Krikon’s bicep in her slender hand. “Come on, Daniel. Lunch. Then you can look for zombies after. I’ll help you.”

Krikon responds with amused contempt. “Ghouls, woman,” he says. “There are no zombies; they aren’t real.”

The companion laughs. Her laughter is bright and clear and Krikon feels a fluttering in his stomach, quite against his will. This companion is his to protect; she is a female, and he is Krikon. It is not for her to mock him with her laughter and with her limpid thick-fringed eyes, but he betrays himself. He feels his lips curve into an unwilling smile. She is beautiful; that is the problem. When he fell, chasing a ghoul across the back patio, and tore the flesh of his knee, she knelt and held him until he was able to regain control of himself. She wisely ignored his angry tears. She cleaned the wound and bandaged it and then, quite unexpectedly, she knelt again and pressed her lips to the clean bandage. And Krikon knew then that he was real, but that Daniel was also real, and that if Krikon’s job was to protect and defend, it was Daniel’s role to grow to manhood as quickly as possible, in order to claim the companion as his own.

“Come on,” she says again. “We’ve got tekka maki and edamame and yogurt.” Krikon does not consume flesh, but he knows when the companion says “tekka” she means “kappa,” or cucumber. It is difficult for her to keep some things straight. Surprisingly, this does not annoy Krikon but further endears the companion to him. Krikon follows her to the kitchen and takes his place at the counter, only frowning at her suggestion that he might wash his hands.

Behind the closet door, the ghoul feels his shoulders drop, and he takes a deep breath, finally. He hears them in the kitchen, the girl and the boy she is paid to watch when the parents are away, which is usually. He can hardly bear the tension in his cramped thighs, but he has not moved since he heard the garage door open and he took refuge. He is not even sure he breathed. He thought that there might be someone moving around in the room beyond the closed closet door, but he wasn’t sure, and then there was the girl’s voice, bright and clear, and her laughter, and the child’s sullen reply. Now they are in the kitchen. He can smell himself and there is something both repulsive and exciting about the odor of his body. He smells like an animal. The idea excites him. He thinks of her saying, “You scared me,” and his face splits into a thin, feral grin.

“Want some more iced tea, Daniel?” the companion asks. Krikon shakes his head. He wonders if the hours-old scratch on his elbow is fresh enough to require bandaging and a kiss on the clean bandage. Probably not. Besides, although he scratched himself on a metal screw trying to open his bedroom window, the companion might use the scratch as evidence in her endless campaign to have his dagger taken away. So far the providers have stood with him, the male provider seeming to take a grim satisfaction in Krikon’s insistence on a weapon, the female taking little notice either way. Krikon prefers it this way. He is busy with the work of ghoul hunting, and the companion provides for all of his needs. His dagger is as yet only a steak knife from the kitchen, but the blade is sharp and shining. He keeps it carefully sheathed at his waist in a pleather holster designed for a toy pistol.

“Do me a favor and put your dishes in the sink,” the companion says, getting up. “I’m going to put a load in the washer and then if you don’t need me, I’m going to read for a few minutes.” Her hand rests lightly on the counter-top and Krikon notes with appreciation how clean and pink her nail beds are, each a perfect oval with a crescent of white at its base. He notes the silkiness of her fine hair. It is the exact color of brownie batter, that rich and glossy. The companion tousles Krikon’s hair as she moves by him and he grunts as if in protest, but the flutter of his stomach tells Krikon he is pleased.

The ghoul is in the bathroom now. His pockets are full; he has a rope of pearls and two pairs of diamond earrings, and other pieces of jewelry he cannot name, but that he knows are made of gold. He has a TAG Heuer watch on his wrist that he was not wearing earlier when he slit the screen and entered the house through the shadowed sunroom. He has not found money, not bills, but he has plundered a jar of silver dollars he found in the child’s room, stuffing the pockets of his jeans and his jacket with all they will hold. This may have been a mistake, he thinks, because the coins may jangle against one another at a time when he needs silence. But that means only that he will have to watch and wait and bide his time, like an animal. Like a sleek, powerful predator, a lion or a wolf. The thought pleases him and he grins again. He hears the girl start the laundry. He hears the boy stack his dish and glass in the sink. If the boy goes to his room, he may notice the coins are missing and that some are spilled across his desk. Then the ghoul will have to move swiftly. If that happens, he will have to decide whether to leave the house very quickly, or to immobilize the threat. He likes the sound of that phrase, “immobilize the threat.” He is not an animal anymore. He is a soldier. A special-ops commando or something like that. But the boy does not go to his room. He returns to the parents’ room. The ghoul smiles. He moves to the open door of the bathroom and watches as the girl leaves the laundry room with a brightly colored magazine in one hand and an iced tea in the other. “I’ll be in the sunroom,” she calls, but the ghoul already knows that, and the child does not answer.

The male provider’s closet is clear, but there is a smell Krikon cannot identify. It is unpleasant; not leather and cologne and wool and manliness, but a sharp animal odor like dirty underpants and vinegary socks. Krikon completes his search quickly and moves to the bathroom. Clear. The nasty odor is here too, but it is faint and mostly masked by the vanilla fragrance emitted by a little charger in the light socket.

She does not even notice the cut screen and the open window. She is a fool. Or she knows he is there, and wants him to do what he is about to do. That’s not impossible; she’s a slutty-looking thing in tight jeans and too much eye makeup. She sets her iced tea on the glass coffee table and he thinks with satisfaction that when he is finished, he will drink it all. He will crunch the ice between his teeth and let the cold tea calm him. His blood is pounding in his wrists and temples and groin. His heart beats so hard that he believes he hears it. She has her back to him but as she settles onto the couch she must finally notice the window because her shoulders stiffen and she cries out. He is on her, his hand wrapped in her hair and over her mouth, his other hand everywhere, feeling everything, and he is a soldier and an animal, a predator, a ghoul. He is powerful. He will take what he wants. He will give her what she deserves.

Krikon hears her cry. Krikon feels fear, but he feels it as if from far away. Krikon knows that he must move slowly and deliberately. If she has found a ghoul, he must annihilate it before it harms her, without giving it warning enough to get away. But it is also possible she has cried out for no reason. Once, she screamed because a beetle crawled onto her leg while they were sitting on a blanket in a public park. Another time she screamed when he fell off the sliding board. He did not cry then, but she did. Krikon touches the knife at his waist. Then he touches his cross, then his lips. He moves toward the sunroom, and he can hear it now, the ghoul. It is saying bad words very softly, over and over. Some of the words Krikon knows, and some he does not, but he knows they are all bad. There is a terrible smell from the sunroom; it is the smell that was in the male provider’s closet and in the bathroom, but a thousand times stronger. Krikon’s nose burns. His heart races but his hands are steady. His eyes are slitted so that the ghoul will not see him.