Xavior

The external surveillance hadn’t picked up anything or anyone, but I’d seen the flash magic of the stop-goo triggered. I got out of the car and sprinted to the front door. What I saw was a new one for me.

The small being jabbered while it held the bag of stolen goods in one hand and a knobby stick in the other. They were barely taller than a ten-year-old, their skin was a pale green, and they had a long, black, pencil-thin mustache that was six inches long on both sides of their upper lip. When I came closer to them, I recognized the language as a dialect of Korean and that it said something repeatedly about a ritual and someone’s grandmother.

“Detective Lyndon? Mr. Kim?” I called out over the chatty figure in the stop-goo. “Is everyone alright?”

“We’re fine, Brantley,” Greg said in a shaky voice. “We’re behind the counter.”

I walked around the corner to see both Greg and Mr. Kim were hugging each other, practically shaking. “You don’t look fine. I’m calling for an E-Med unit.”

“Brantley.”

“Lyndon. You both look like you’re a few shivers away from shock. Maybe the E-Med have something they can use to counter whatever this little person did.”

“Little person? You mean the SG got them?”

“Yeah. I’m looking at them right now. Seems to speak a dialect of Korean I haven’t heard since I was traveling.”

Mr. Kim tried to pull himself together and sighed. “Grandmother.”

“Mr. Kim, do you know what they’re saying?”

“More or less. Grandmother had a little ritual she would do once a month and said it was for good luck. She said it was for her little helper, that they brought good luck. We all kind of thought she was losing it in her old age. I guess she wasn’t. That’s a Dokkaebi”

The small person became quiet. They glanced at me and then the counter. Their mouth turned into a frown. They looked rather pissed about their predicament. I would be too if I were stopped from doing what was in my nature to do, especially if I were tied to a particular family. It reminded me of Gregor’s predicament for a moment. I shook my head and asked Mr. Kim a question.

“What’s a Dokkaebi?” I asked.

“A kind of goblin. There are all kinds, but some cause mischief if you don’t do the ritual to keep them happy. As long as you keep them happy, they bring blessings and good fortune, so the stories go.”

“Can your grandmother do the ritual again?”

“No, unfortunately, she’s not with us any longer,” Mr. Kim sounded like his teeth were clacking together as he tried to speak. “And I don’t know the ritual myself. My mother might, but that’s if her mother told her.”

When the E-Med bus showed up, they checked out Mr. Kim, along with Greg, and managed to get their sympathetic systems back under control. The stop-goo wasn’t going to hold for much longer.

We called in a witch with a translator spell, and Mr. Kim called a local family friend who had a great deal of experience dealing with spirits and beings. After about an hour, Mr. Kim learned what the ritual was that the Dokkaebi, named Hyun-Shik, wanted. Since the Dokkaebi’s activity was localized to the stores and family members, along with the fact that Mr. Kim didn’t want to move forward with formal charges, we agreed to release Hyun-Shik into Mr. Kim’s care and a welfare follow-up later with the family to see if they needed anything else.

It had been a long night already, and Gregor still looked a little unsteady even though he wasn’t shaking any longer. I helped him into our car and got us back to the station. When we arrived, he went to the locker room, and I went to start the paperwork. About thirty minutes into filing forms and putting in a request to have a family welfare check, Gregor appeared in clean clothes, with wet hair. I noted it because he usually took the time to dry it.

“Feel better?” I looked up from my tablet to watch as he sank into the chair next to the desk.

“Yes. Shit, that was scary, and I saw them afterward, and I have no idea why I was so freaking scared. It makes no sense.” He ran his hand through his hair, and I had a weird notion of wanting to do the same thing myself. I cleared my throat instead.

“Likely some ability that causes fear or short term fright. No one ever had lasting effects from an incident. Now that we know and know it’s a being associated with the family, hopefully, they can get help to work with them. Goblins are pesky, though they can be helpful too. It depends on the goblin.”

“You have goblins like that back home?” Gregor gave me a curious look.

“No, most of the ones where my parents live are assholes. Though, they do tend to keep the rats and pigeons under control. The Dokkeabi isn’t really the same thing. European goblins are like parrots, they mimic words sometimes, but they can’t carry on conversations. They were practically having a whole conversation by themselves when I walked into the shop.”

I shuffled a few more things around on the datapad and started another form. “If you give me about twenty more minutes to finish my report, I can drive you home.”

“Nah, I can have a car service take me. I live about thirty minutes away. If you can finish things up, I can get myself home.” Greg stood up and ran his hand through his hair again. I ventured a small whiff and then regretted it as the smell of his soap and the undertones of longing were mixed up with it. I had no idea what the longing meant, especially since Greg said he had a boyfriend. It never smelled like a lie to me, but I was curious why anyone with a partner would smell like that.

“You sure? It wouldn’t be a problem,” I offered.

“Brantley, thanks for doing the paperwork, but I can get myself home.”

I nodded, and he nodded back, then tapped the desk. “Make sure you lock up when you leave.”

The desk had a thumb sensor that would lock the drawers, with any case evidence in them, and encrypt the case files associated with the desk.  “Sure thing. Night, Lyndon.” I said to Gregor’s back as he started walking toward the door. He waved behind him.

“Night, Brantley.”

When I finally got home, all I could think of were Greg’s dark brown eyes full of fear and how he and Mr. Kim were huddled on the floor as if something was prepared to eat them. I hadn’t seen fear like that in a human's eyes in a long time. It brought back my early traveling days that I didn’t want to remember. Sometimes fear was an effective tool for survival. When I was young, I’d scared my fair share of beings because I was scared of them and what they could do to me. It was ignorant, but I learned, thankfully.

A shiver crawled down my spine as I pushed the thoughts away. I suddenly missed the hot tub back at my estate. I sighed to myself and settled for the scalding shower my current residence provided.