“I’m here,” said a voice less a whisper than the rustle of a leaf on one of the trees outside. “What is it?”
“Darling Cilny, my only and best sister,” said the girl who had watched at the window, “there’s a man walking along the road. He’s lame in the left leg, and dressed in black. I may be mistaken, but I think I know him.”
The pale moon shadow laughed gently, a leaf laughing. “When did you ever meet such a man, Ciddey?”
“Not meet. Never met. Never to meet, I hope and I pray. But I’ve heard talk of such a man. Old tales.”
“What a mystery. Won’t you tell me?”
“If it’s he—his name is Parl Dro. But he has another name. A trade name. Ghost-Killer.”
The pale moon shadow, who was also a girl, long-haired and slender like the first, but—unlike the first—oddly transparent, drew back a little way, and her translucent hand drifted to her translucent mouth.
“We don’t want such a person here,” she whispered in her leaf voice.
“No. We don’t. So, hide, Cilny. Hide.”
Parl Dro had been looking at the house steadily, with two raven-black eyes, as he came down the road. Mostly because such a dwelling betokened the proximity of the village he was aiming to reach before full night set in. Not that he was unused to sleeping on bare ground. He was as accustomed to that as he was to the relentless grinding ache of the lame leg. He had known that hurt, in any case, some years, and had carefully taught himself that familiarity, even with pain, bred contempt. There had also been trouble not far behind him, which he did not want to dwell on, because probably there would be more trouble not far ahead.
It had periodically happened that, arriving in some rural, out-of-the-way place, Parl Dro, limping long-leggedly in his swathing of black, had been mistaken for Death. Card-casting and similar divination generally foretold his arrival in the shape of the ominous King of Swords. But then, his calling being what it was, that was not so inappropriate.
He had been subconsciously aware for half an hour or so of scrutiny from the house, and had not bothered with it. It was not unlikely that a stranger would be stared at out in the wilds. Then, when he had followed the curve of the road and come level with the antique ironwork gate, something prompted him to stop. It might have been that uncanny seventh sense of his that had made him what he was. Or it might have been only that more usual and more common sixth sense, the inner antenna that responded to quite human auras of trouble or mystique. He could not, at this stage, be sure. The house itself, leaning and overgrown in the gathering of night, was so suggestive of the bizarre, he was inclined to dismiss his sudden awareness as imagination only. But Dro was not one to brush aside any occurrence too lightly, even his own rare fancies.
Presently, he pushed open the iron gate and went into the paved yard.
Over a well craned a dead fig tree. The other trees, jealous of its nearness to the water source, had sucked the life out of it. Truly, a malevolent notion. The house door, deep in a stone porch, was of wood, old and very warped. He went to the door and struck it a couple of times.
As he waited, the bright stars intensified against the night, and the ghostly moon, in the way of ghosts, solidified and assumed reality.
A beetle ran up the ivy plant along the wall.
Nobody had answered the knock, though somebody was here for sure. The whole house seemed to be listening now, holding its breath. Peering over at him. Possibly the occupant of the house, alone after sunset, was quite properly chary of opening the door to unknown travellers.
Dro’s methods did not include unnecessarily terrorizing the innocent —though he was quite capable of it if the occasion warranted. He stepped back and moved away from the old door.