Passions of the Dead and the Living
28th of September 2006 A.D.
Lieutenant Murphy's desk stretches out like a rampart of lacquered wood all but hidden under neat piles of paperwork between the computer and the twelve ounce coffee cup that looks solid enough to bludgeon a man across the head. As for the officer herself, she takes in the sight of you and Lydia with the sort of weary gaze mom gave last year when she was informed she was in charge of the Christmas pageant at Amanda's school after the teacher in charge somehow got the mumps. The question is does she think of you and Lydia as an untimely blight on her plans or just a pair of seven year olds.
"What's this about Bachelor's Grove? It's still a month to Halloween."
Before you can speak Lydia clears her throat. "Yeah, that's a good part of the reason I want to do it now and no later, besides promising to do it of course. The Dead have a lot of energy behind them thanks to that TV show and vow to be good or not if they take that into Samhain someone's gonna have a visitation they don't want. Plus after all that's happened they deserve to engage with the living properly and not through cold glass."
"Can you take that from the top Ms..."
"Rhi," your friend gives her name, in English 'king' or 'lord', though you gather that Welsh naming conventions do not really work like that. Arwan had never forgotten what he was, what he intended to be again. "You can just call me Lydia." She flashes a shy smile, taking full advantage of those dimples while she can, you note amused.
"My father was a traveling mediator in the ways of death and the dead, keeping the living and the dead safe from each other's worst impulses. Alas I do not think separation works a well as it once did these days " As she speaks her grows not older, but more sober, an image of innocence frozen upon a marble slab. "Modern man has lost much of his fear of death and in many ways it is good that it is so, graveyards are no longer the final internment of whole generations dead to sickness, practitioners of medicine are no longer stigmatized for seeking the secrets still buried in dead flesh, but as fears of earthly maladies fade there is little enough to ward the living away from the spiritual dangers of improper contact. Most of the faiths of this land assume that the living would have a healthy weariness of the places of death and so do not teach as the ancestor worship of old did the propitiation and the bargaining with those who have crossed the Veil. Haloween is a time for handing out candy, for sending out children abroad in the night, content in the belief that it is all good fun, the fascination for the macabre and otherworldly is intemperate. I do not believe is is the dead who should be made to suffer for this lapse."
Much to your surprise the detective does not look the least loss at the manifesto, which you suspect has more to do with Lydia's disagreements with her father than anything. Leaning back in her somewhat battered chair the officer asks: "Right, people are pissing off ghosts because they don't believe ghosts exist anymore, but what do the ghosts want?"
"Pathos," Lydia answers with emphasis that makes it clear she did not just translate it into Latin to sounds cool. "They seek to be, and to be is to feel, desire or duty, love or hate, all ghosts need to feel things they treasured and held close in life in order to linger, to resist the current that would bear them ever onward into the unknown. It can be as simple as a specter with a passion for art lingering in an art gallery, as convoluted as a murder victim appearing only to descendants of witnesses of of their murder on the anniversary of the deed. Where things get complicated is where the living are involved. As one spirit explained it to be the difference between emotion for a place or an idea and emotion provoked by interacting with the living is like the difference between food and drink, you need the former to subsist , but the latter is
intoxicating. In that context a 'ghost hunter' show with hundreds of thousands of people watching for the chill down their spine, but with no investment in any particular spirit is like... sending hundreds of bottles of unlabeled vodka in the mail. The recipient does not have to drink them and indeed most would prefer not to, but if there is nothing else to do, no company more enjoyable..."
From the way her eyes darken for just an instant the lieutenant is no stranger to solitary drinking. "So you are giving the ghosts something fun to do so they won't break into the hard liquor. What's to stop them from doing it later?"
"Power unshaped evaporates sooner or later, in this case I would wager sooner because it's so hollow," you reply.
"And you need police officers to keep trespassers out so they don't get mobbed you said over the phone."
Lydia opens her mouth, to argue with the word 'mobbed', you would guess, but in the end she closes it and just nods, the details do not matter as much as making sure no one gets hurt. Instead she asks how much it would cost, offering to pay without hesitation.
"I'm going to need a signature and something to put on the forms and ghost dance isn't going to cut it," the lieutenant says.
"Seance," you offer simply. "It's the truth, but no one has to believe we are
actually communing with ghosts, just that we don't want anyone to crash our Ouija Board party."
In response Lieutenant Murphy cracks a smile, unlike most people in her position she'd taken the detailed explanation of how spirits work and why remarkably well, more relaxed for knowing. "Glad it isn't some monster that goes bump in the night on the loose this time."
The words bring you up short, there
is such a monster you know, the Skinwalker, but you can't think of anyway Special Investigations would be able to so much as ruffle its fur feathers or scales. Yet you have no doubt Karin Murphy would want to know anyway, this is her city and her area of responsibility and this is the woman who had braved Arctis Tor with a gun loaded with cool iron.
"Perhaps it might be in your favor if the detective where to be somewhat upset at the Wizard Dresden for keeping her in the dark..." It takes you a moment to realize what Usum is getting at at which point you are very glad for all the practice you have had not blushing.
Do you tell Murphy about the Skinwalker?
[] Yes, she deserves to know and who knows if those people from the Library of Congress have her back maybe she can do something about it
[] No, it is more likely to get her or one of her officers hurt
[] Write in
OOC: Well here we are, Harry has done a Harry and kept Murphy in the dark again, question is what are you going to do about it? 
