Ghosts of the Past

Well what Inspector LaRoche thought was going to be a routine crime scene investigation turned out to be a little more than expected.  The murder victim turns out to be the mayor’s son, the murder itself is a pretty grim affair, one of his officers is killed by a bear in some caves underneath an old well, and these people he’s with are claiming they were attacked by zombies or something.   He really should have stayed in Boston for another night.

Anyway, here he is, trudging through a muddy creek trying to find a place where they can climb the bank and get back to the farmhouse and ultimately back to Arkham.

When they finally find a place to get out of the creek, their clothes are filthy, their shoes are soaked, and their spirits also a bit soggy.  The cab driver seems happy enough, but he looks like an immigrant and this sort of thing probably counts as fun in the “old country”. 

The woods are dense, but eventually they find a trail of some sort.  At first it’s just a few old bricks stuck in the dirt but, when followed, turn into a genuine sort of path.  Now they’re getting somewhere.  They don’t have to walk far before the pilot guy – what was his name? – sees a flickering light up ahead.  Maybe this is our man?

Moving forward they can see that the light is coming from a candle, and the candle seems to be in the middle of an old graveyard.  LaRoche doesn’t remember a graveyard around here, but who knows.  They’re probably still on the old Trescott estate and it might not have been registered with the county.   Or maybe it was.  He’s a policeman not an urban planner. 

Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be anybody around, so he and the rest of the fellows take a closer look.  The candle is sitting in the middle of some kind of kind of symbol chalked on the ground.  Another mysterious pictogram….  great. 

The doctor – what was his name? – Kildare! that was it, finds a pouch on the ground with what seem to be some old coins.  Doubloons, and gold at that.  He remembered reading Treasure Island as a kid and making himself an eyepatch and a wooden cutlass.  Ah, to be young again. 

The others are poking around the tombstones when suddenly they hear the sound of stone sliding against stone.  You wouldn’t think things could get any weirder but coming out of the big mausoleum in front of them is glowing sort of figure dressed in an old sailors peacoat.  His? It’s?  face has a definite “aquatic” look about it with bulbous glowing red eyes and gill like jowls.   Human, no doubt, but maybe just a bit of flounder in the family tree somewhere.  The name on the door is: “Capt. Isaiah McCarty.”  That sounds kind of familiar, but now’s probably not the time to ponder.

The apparition floats into the graveyard and wants to know who has come to steal his treasure.  If he meant the Doubloons, LaRoche was more than happy to give them back.  One of the guys answers but apparently not to the fishy sailor’s satisfaction, because the next thing you know everyone is encircled by a ring of blue fire.  The ghost captain then starts calling his crew. 

“Mr. Poole!”

“Mr. Pearce!”

“Mr. Mills!”

“Mr. Marsh!”

“Mr. Mason!”

“Mr. Armstrong!”

Every time he does this a skeletal figure comes bursting up out of one of the graves.  Up to now this might have been a good story for the missus, but LaRoche is starting to think maybe he should keep this one to himself.

Fighting ensues, of course.  Bullets apparently don’t do very much, but blunt weapons seem to be effective against the boney antagonists.  Fortunately, the immigrant cab driver is pretty good with those.  Probably need to be back on the rough streets of whatever Carpathian commune he came from. 

The cab driver is doing his best, but these skeleton things are lethal.  One is even lobbing explosives.  The ghost appears to have touched the doctor - forgot his name again - and drained some of his life force, or something.  Whatever it was it didn’t look to pleasant, so LaRoche retreats into the mausoleum with the doctor and the detective. 

Inside they manage to lift the lid of its occupant’s sarcophagus and sure enough, there a shriveled old body in there looking pretty much like the thing outside, but a little more substantive.  Speaking of outside, things don’t seem to be going very well, in spite of the pilot and cab driver’s best efforts.

LaRoche fires a few more shots, for all the good it will do, as the doctor and the detective start rooting around in the corpse’s pockets.   Not sure how this is supposed to help, but it better, because the ghost of good ‘ol Capt. McCarty isn’t liking the violation of his privacy and is headed this direction.

The cab driver wallops one of the skeletons, not sure which one, and the pilot is doing his best to hold them off as well.   The doctor has found a pocket watch in McCarty’s coat – the corpse, not the ghost.  LaRoche didn’t have them pegged for grave robbers, but who knows, he only met them a few hours ago.  

At the urging on of the detective, the doctor takes the pocket watch, smashes it on the ground, and wouldn’t you know, McCarty’s ghost disappears, all the skeletons fall into bone piles on the ground, and the ring of blue fire disappears.   It must have been…what do call those things…Horcrutches?  Gorsuchs?  LaRoche can’t remember, maybe it’s because those books haven’t been written yet.  

Anyway, the immediate danger seems to be past, but they’re still no closer to finding the fugitive murder suspect.   LaRoche takes a few notes, pockets the evidence, and tries to figure out how he’s going to explain all this when he gets back to the station.

End-Of-Session