I shook my head. Only thirty years old but you’d think I was in my late forties. Christ, fifties even! Standing there naked, I realized I looked as much like a monster as any I’d fought. I laughed a breathy, gasping-for-air laugh. Yeah, fucking hysterical.

I turned toward my trash-covered desk, head pounding. My guts were twisting so I pulled open the bottom drawer where a bottle of Jim Beam greeted me. It went down hard and connected with the craving in my bloodstream, making me queasy. The sick retreated before I returned the bottle to the drawer. Hair of the dog wins another in a long series of battles.

Kicking a trail through ankle-deep trash, I made my way to the bathroom, figuring I could catch a quick shower and shave and get down to the station within a half hour.

Just then I heard a sound from the other side of the shower curtain. Someone (or something) had shifted. I reached for my gun, but all I got was a handful of armpit. I had no weapon and I was naked, so I began to ease out of the room.

The curtain flew open and I screamed. A huge, dark figure stood in my tub.

“Ahhhhh!”

“Hey Cal, when did you wake up?”

It was Mo’Lock; sometime partner, reluctant friend, full-time ghoul. A ghoul of the lurking variety. My heart was pounding so hard I thought for sure I would die right then and there.

Yeah, I see all sorts of shit. Ghouls are actually one of the more common monsters around. They can be found all over the world, mostly in urban areas. They are the purest form of the undead, and actually the most harmless. Way back in the Middle Ages, ghouls were known for eating flesh and lurking in graveyards, but they came into their own around the turn of the century when they realized they didn’t need flesh or blood to survive.

While the world was living through an industrial revolution, ghouls began a revolution of self-discovery. They were dead, cursed to live forever in a twisted form of their former human self, but they didn’t need anything to survive. They made peace with the human race and began a hundred-year process of acclimating themselves into human society.

These days you can find ghouls everywhere. They tend to favor service industry jobs because they like the hours. Next time you pass a road crew, take a second look. I guarantee there’s a ghoul among them. The same goes for postal workers and a wide range of people you probably never look at twice. Most people would be surprised how often they’re in contact with the dead. All in all, ghouls are pretty low maintenance—that makes them all right in my book.

I met Mo’Lock on one of my earliest cases and he’s been glued to me since. He has an annoying habit of creeping around, but I can’t get too mad. That would be like blaming a cat for being hairy.