World of Darkness: Attrition - Ghost Lessons

[Gary Norton]

There was a road - plenty of them - running through the LA National Cemetery, which made it easy to access, it was a short distance from the UCLA campus area, and it gave the proper atmosphere for the knowledge Gary intended to impart to August - without actually putting her on the spot with real ghosts. Despite the age old horror stories - graveyards usually were not anchors for ghosts in Gary's experience.

,,

The cool, lightly warm air wafted across his face in the early evening as Gary leaned his back against a sturdy beech tree on the other side of Antietam Avenue. Declan had been making noises about Gary assisting August and teaching her, and eventually they'd had the time to put something clearly down on the schedule.

,,

Gary was here a few minutes early, to get focused and prepared for tutoring the medium. The Rotting Scholar rustled against his mind, and Gary remembered that a mere undercooked burger had driven him from his comfortable dreams of magic and occult pretensions, to this more dark yet thrilling truth of the Sin-Eater life.

,,

But as per Astra's warning back in March - was August ready for the challenges and potential sacrifices involved in the group's path, and Gary's path? Would she ever be?

[z-August Turner]

A fucking cemetery? August knew that Gary was probably trying to set some kind of mood, but she was still annoyed. First, learning about ghosts was going to be weird enough without doing it in a damned graveyard. Second, she had history in this place. On one of the crypts, Evan had tried to end her life.

,,

August shivered despite the typically warm LA spring. That night didn’t have the sting in her memories that it had once had; she wasn’t the helpless woman who’d been tied to that table. Granted, if she were captured again, she’d still be in trouble and likely need assistance, but she’d have a better chance of keeping her head and maximizing her chances for survival.

,,

This had been the starting point, she remembered suddenly. She’d seen Declan’s wolf for the first time and the events that had spiraled from there had led her to this point. All of it had really begun here, in this place. “Shit.” August wondered now if Gary’s choice was influenced by something else now; if there was a new phase of her life starting here, today. The thought was chilling—and exciting.

,,

Seeing her new teacher ahead of her, August waved and angled her approach to meet him. “Hey,” she said as she got close enough to talk comfortably. She offered her hand as she added, “Thanks for doing this.”

[Gary Norton]

Gary glanced up from his sitting position and reached out to take August's hand. "Hey. I couldn't see a reason not to. So - do you prefer sitting down or walking?" "It doesn't matter." August told him, and Gary shrugged. "Alright, we'll stretch our legs then." Using the hand of August's that he still held onto, and his other hand braced against the tree, Gary drew up to his feet and let go of August's hand so he could lightly brush off his pants.

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"So, how are we going to kick this off?" August inquired as they began to meander down a row of gravestones. That was a good question, Gary agreed, with a slight sense of being on the spot. He didn't really have experience with teaching others, much less about the business of ghosts itself.

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"Well, how 'bout this?" Gary offered politely, looking for a jumping off point. "If you're alright with it, could you please describe what experience with ghosts already?"

[z-August Turner]

August paused and Gary sensed she was suddenly uncomfortable. “All right. I think I saw my first one when I was six. I saw a woman in a funny dress, in the snow, telling me to run toward her. I was being chased by my father at the time, and she helped me stay ahead of him until help came. Then I saw them on and off all through my childhood. Once, friends of mine tried to get me to summon a ghost, though that didn’t work. When I was in sixth grade, I was put on medication and sent to a therapist because I had finally convinced them that I wasn’t clinging to imaginary friends.

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“After that, they were gone for a while, but last summer I was working as a camera assistant for a documentary on wolves. It was up in the mountains; it reminded me so much of the episode with my father that I started to see them again. I couldn’t finish the shoot; I came back to LA and put myself in the mental hospital for a week.” August sounded angry as she related, “They ‘cured’ me again but I kept seeing the ‘hallucinations’. I just started to ignore and avoid them.

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“Then a guy tried to kill me and was killed instead.” August looked really uncomfortable at that confession as she pushed on. “At Christmas time, the guy’s ghost possessed my cousin and wanted my help to kill his murderer. I contacted some people who put me in touch with a guy who had a… ghost-wolf? I don’t know. All I know is it ate the ghost.

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“My last major encounter was a guy who had killed his wife during his First Change. Her spirit was chained to him. I agreed to help him, but he disappeared before I could do much to help. Oh, and I helped a studio find the bodies of their ghost-hunting team when they all died from ghostly interaction at an abandoned building.” August stopped and glanced at him. “Did that all make sense?”

[Gary Norton]

"Yeah, I got all that." Gary assured her, noting all the scholarly tidbits of interest, but also observing that August had been dealing with the basic fact of ghosts being around for far longer than he had. The difference, was that her experience was more broad than deep, so to speak. Gary possessed the advantage of constant contact with and study of the supernatural, particularly the ghosts of course, which was why he was the one teaching here.

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"The ghost-wolf thing is something new though." Gary mentioned, trying to put August in perspective. "Always something out of the rabbit hole. Ok... general experience. I figure we'll start with the cosmology then."

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"Cosmology?" August queried, giving Gary the skeptical look - why would Cosmos have anything to do with this? Gary snorted. "The composition of the universe. You won't find any relevant articles in that... magazine. So where was I?"

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"The universe."

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"The universe, yeah." Gary nodded. "What matters for our purposes are the following. We've got Earth, this little old material world. Then there's Twilight - where the ghosts usually are... how do I describe it? Ok, imagine you're in a room, and there's a section of the room with a thin hazy curtain cutting it off from the outside. It's technically part of the room, but really, most people can't see what's behind the curtain, much less touch it."

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"Except us." August caught on, with a hint of understanding. "Yep," Gary confirmed, "there are those, like you, me and others, who through whatever means, who can see or even affect what's in Twilight. Tends to mean ghosts. And many can do the reverse. Finally," and here Gary got suddenly uncomfortable and even a little worried in his expression, "the Underworld. The realm of death, a horrid stygian place I've only been to a few times. No Heaven or Paradise there. There are far more ghosts bunked in those depths - or so I hear. You following me so far?"

[z-August Turner]

“Yeah, so far, it seems pretty clear.” August strolled along next to Gary and gave him a smile. “There’s our world, and the ghost world – and since it’s named after Twilight I should be able to remember it.” Missing Gary’s cringe, August continued, “Then there’s the Underworld, also named after a cool movie, so the names will be easy, at least.”

,,

The green-eyed girl frowned a beat later and said, “So what I do, is look past the curtain?”

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“Yes, it is. Things can brush past that curtain and you can be touched by them, too.” Gary considered a moment before he admitted, “I won’t say you’re affected more easily by them. I think because you can see them—“

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“That they are more likely to choose me. I figured that out a while ago, thanks.” August’s tone was wry but not mocking; she sounded like an old veteran discussing the war. “Oh, I almost forgot, I can do the manual writing thing.”

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“You mean the automatic writing?” he corrected gently.

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“Yeah, that.” August shivered a little. “It’s not always a good experience, though.”

[Gary Norton]

"I wouldn't expect it to be." Gary agreed sympathetically. They paused by a tombstone, with the marker for a woman, deceased yet noted as a beloved wife and mother. Gary looked a little at it as he went on. "Obviously, you've already started to catch onto this, but death changes people, not for the better usually. That's reflected in their ghosts."

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"Yes." August shivered a bit more, thinking briefly of Evan, the bastard, and worried for a moment about Tyla and if that applied to her.

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"Sometimes they mean well." Gary established. "Often, they're just not lucid or really in touch with reality. Sometimes they lie, or want retribution disproportionate to the wrongs. Or they're just plain malicious. The worst of the lot... aren't even human in any way anymore. Certainly, I always say verify before trust."

[z-August Turner]

“Okay, that’s good advice for anything,” August said softly, “but how do you verify a ghost? It’s not like you can call their references.”

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Gary laughed. “No, you can’t, but if they give you historical details, check those out. They can give you a clue to if the ghost is lying or doesn’t remember. As for how to know the latter from the former, that takes more verification. Some ghosts just honestly forget.”

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“Do we have names for the kinds of ghosts?” August asked.

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“You mean like in D&D?” Gary asked with a smirk.

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“No, I mean like in how our species has to classify and name everything.” August gave him a little smirk as she spoke.

[Gary Norton]

"Oh, yeah." Gary waved a hand dismissively as he launched into a description in the tone of voice that was just enough to sound serious yet indicate he wasn't really. "You got your baseline ghosts, then there's poltergeists, shades, spectres, phantoms, bogymen and Caspers."

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August laughed at that. "Caspers, huh?"

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Gary shrugged. "Eh, really ghosts are ghosts. There are only a couple exceptions... I wouldn't expect you to run into those." Especially since a medium but still ultimately mortal woman like August would be boned (not in the good way), if she somehow ran into an independent geist or a Kereboroi of the Underworld.