Memento Mori [Tag Terrence, open]

[dannykeaton]

There was something off about this house. Danny could feel the chill from the moment he’d walked in (well, crawled through a window) and it had nothing to do with the actual temperature of the place. In this age of DNA evidence, it was never a smart move for a person breaking in someplace to touch anything with their fingers. For Danny’s powers to work, though, he had to run his hands over almost everything. Not being in any kind of law enforcement system did tend to have its up sides from time to time. He was not looking forward to the day when he got arrested for the first time, as the minute they booked him there’s probably be half a dozen flags right away.

For the moment, though, he was concentrating on the present. Although Danny wasn’t a Hunter by any stretch of the imagination, he did like to use his abilities to try and help any vengeful spirits he could pass on. Normally, since he worked by himself, that meant the more non-violent oriented ones. This was a special case. One of the deceased that had used to be in this house was involved when Danny’s sister, Bethany, first went missing. Over the course of an investigation into several mysterious deaths in the Kansas region, a common factor the normal authorities couldn’t pursue became apparent. Thomas Kirkpatrick had been involved in a murder investigation some years ago, and all the victims had been investigated by him. The case was never solved, however.

If Kirkpatrick was attached to some object in this house, and was seeking revenge on everybody who he suspected in her death, Danny was beginning to seriously suspect there wouldn’t be a link here. His powers, more precise than EMF ever was, weren’t picking up anything remotely strange, however. It was far more likely that the corpse was the problem, but Danny couldn’t figure out where the guy was buried for the life of him.

Currently, though, Danny had another problem. It wasn’t spirit related. At least, he didn’t think so. His powers were telling him there was something more here in this office. Specifically, an otherwise ordinary wall kept dragging his extra-sensory feelers right to it. He got frustrated with the whole deal, and, feeling foolish, decided to use a splash of Psychometry to look into its history. Frowning slightly at the surge of images, he pushed on an otherwise ordinary section that stood out in his mind.

It slid back and away, revealing a secret chunk of steel lit by internal lights. And guns. A lot of guns.

“What the hell?” Danny muttered, running his gaze over the arrangement. This was no weapons cache of an enthusiast FBI agent. Beyond the guns were knives, silver by the look of them. Pasted to one wall were the kinds of articles only one group of people chose to cut from the newspaper. Articles on strange phenomenon and happenings. Danny cursed under his breath. “He was a freaking Hunter.”

Now Danny was very pro-Hunter. If a former Hunter had died, however, it stood to reason his friends would have cleaned out this cache a long time ago. Maybe it wasn’t his, then? These articles looked recent enough. He ran a finger along a gun, and found no dust. That raised another sticky dilemma. What if there was a Hunter living here now? Shit, could he have broken into a Hunter’s house? Danny looked around, slightly apprehensively. They did have a tendency to attempt an exorcism by gunfire at any perceived threat before resorting to conversation.

Concealing the case again, swiftly, Danny decided to get out of there as fast as he could. He was just like whoever this Hunter was, they weren’t around, otherwise he might have got a knife in his ribs by now.

[dannykeaton]

Stupid! Danny chided himself as he froze in shock. It took a moment of effort not to raise his arms in surrender. He should have searched this place for auras the minute he realized a Hunter could reside here. He certainly hadn’t heard as much as a floorboard creak to suggest this woman was about. And, speaking of which, Danny had to expend a bit more effort to keep his eyes focused on her face. She wasn’t acting much like a Hunter who had some interloper near a stash of their weaponry, but Danny didn’t think she was an ordinary civilian. Damn, what if there was somebody else who lived here, and not her. For someone who took pride in his research, he really hadn’t done his homework on the current residents here.

“I know this looks bad…” He began, resisting the urge to wince. Talk about horrible. Still, he was pretty much committed by that point. “But, um, I can explain. I mean, what I’m doing here. And it is a good reason! It really is.” Danny wondered if he looked about as awkward as he felt. There was half a room separating them. If only she’d been closer, he could have tried to slap a quick psychic whammy on her and run. Of course, if she was a Hunter he’d probably just end up with the fingers in his hand broken. He really needed to figure out what this woman was before it drove him insane.

“Look, did you know Thomas Kirkpatrick? I did.” Something of an over-statement. They’d only met a handful of times. Danny also assumed the man tried to track him down when he disappeared following his sister’s vanishing act and his parent’s death. “You can call the police if you want, I’m not going to stop you, but it would really help me out if you could answer a few questions about him.” He moved closer, trying to look harmless and keeping his arms by his sides, in plain sight.

[dannykeaton]

“You’re a hunter, aren’t you?” Danny asked, trying to keep a little excitement out of his voice. He didn’t want to get all star struck like he always did around these types. If he got this out in the open, and she was, he could see one of two things happening. One, he explained the situation; she understood and helped him put the spirit her suspected to be her Father to rest. The other, she’d probably shoot him. Suffice to say he was rooting for the ‘providing assistance’ option. If she wasn’t a hunter, and he was wrong, the only thing that might happen was he could confuse her somewhat. Which wouldn’t be as bad as the whole getting shot option, though it still raised the sticky question of his breaking and entering with absolutely no plausible explanation for his actions. If she was, though, this would mean something to her. “I’m…not. Not even close, actually. I’m kind of a specialist.” About as close to outright calling himself a psychic he could without knowing what she knew first.

“Now don’t freak or anything, but I’m getting a little bit tired over here.” Danny said, before putting his arms down. It wasn’t like she’d ever pulled a weapon or anything. He’d have to run like a SOB if she ran to call the police. Luckily, his Eliminator was only about a block away. Short of leaving the engine idling, it wouldn’t take him long to jet. Unfortunately, also in his bag slung across the Eliminator was just about all the proof he’d compiled on the deaths concerning the spirit so far. He hadn’t brought it with him, of course, since he wasn’t planning on actually needing it to convince anybody. He hoped to come here to gain more evidence, maybe a note of a burial plot, or anything like that. Not only was there no paper trail, he hadn’t gotten any kind of psychic blast from the grounds of the house that suggested anything larger than an animal ever died here.

The woman had caught him by surprise because Danny hadn’t been focusing on his presence detecting like he should have been. After the confrontation, and about five minutes too late to help, he was paying closer attention. On the fringes of his range he could detect somebody else. The way it was colored to his perceptions suggested a guy. Which meant he could probably safely add ‘getting his ass kicked’ to the outcomes list. Of course, it was possible the guy was the hunter around here. That might explain a lot. Depending on her reaction, though, Danny would know what to do.

[dannykeaton]

Should he? Well, what was the harm? Hunters were well connected enough, despite her non-answer, which meant she could easily find out who he was. “My name is Danny. Well, Daniel if we’re being all technical, but you can call me Danny.”

“Listen, I’m just going to go ahead and assume you’re a, y’know, Hunter. If you’re not this’ll sound crazy, and I’d appreciate a five minute head start before the police get here.” Danny kept some distance between them. He really didn’t want to pull out the psychic KO on a girl that looked as nice and innocent as this unless he absolutely had too. Alternatively, he didn’t want the fingers on his hand to get broken if he tried, or to be ganked by the newcomer he sensed downstairs.

“Three people have died in the last two weeks. You probably haven’t heard of them, the deaths were totally separate, with nothing tying them together, and looked accidental to the police. Being the awesome…specialist that I am, though, there is a common factor between them. A really old one.”

He leaned back against the desk, gesturing around him with his hands. “All of them were suspects. In an unsolved case some years back. The McMurdo case? I don’t know how well you knew your Dad, he is your Dad, right?, Dad’s work, but it was an unsolved case. Some serial killer the FBI was never able to catch. Even I nearly missed this one. All the suspects, though, are dropping like flies.”

He decided the best way to break this might be quickly. “I think there’s a vengeful spirit playing catch up for what it sees as unsolved business, only they don’t know who the real killer is, so they’re just shooting blind at anybody the authorities looked into. Two of the three people were released because they had airtight alibis. They were innocent. Even if they weren’t, these deaths were…nasty.”

“I think,” He emphasized on the ‘think,’ as there wasn’t much room for absolute surety in this business, “I think it might be your Dad.”

[dannykeaton]

“Nice to meet you.” Danny said wryly. He wasn’t used to making introductions with people he met under such inauspicious circumstances. I mean, he was breaking and entering. Was it normal to be nice to people you met rummaging through your stuff? At the very least, it was fairly obvious he wasn’t trying to steal anything. If he had been legging it out a window with a TV, well, that probably would have been a different story. What somebody who lived on the road would need with a TV was a question for another day. “I don’t know if you know, but there’s somebody else in this house now too. On the off-chance you’re unlucky enough to get two people breaking in here on the same day.”

Danny felt vaguely like they were playing ring-around-the-Rosie with the way they’d just about circled each other trying not to spook the other person out. He’d ended up near the door, which was fine for him. Danny didn’t think he’d have to beat a quick exit, but at the very least the option was still open. It wasn’t every day he had to basically accuse a person’s Dad of murder. It probably wouldn’t have made Danny happy to hear such things about his late father. He could only imagine what it would actually do to a person. Damn he would give anything to not have had to admit this to her. “It’s, um, just a working theory. Nothing set in stone yet. There’s always the possibility it was somebody else involved with the case. Maybe it didn’t even hit your Father hard enough to make him go all Spirit Rambo on these people.” He explained.

“I just started with the guy I knew. It was half the reason I came back here to check this out anyway. I mainly deal with spirits, but I typically leave the vengeful kind to the Hunters. Basically I try to convince the more pleasant-minded ones to cross over. I can do vengeful if I have too, though, and I want to help.”

He was about to feel like a jerk. Man, he really didn’t want to say this. Come on, Danny, buck up. You’re already three/fourths of the way through anyway. “Look, there’s only one reason I’m here. If you are a hunter, you know there’s an easy way to see if we can stop these crimes. Classic salt and burn.” He grimaced slightly. “I know it sucks, I wouldn’t have wanted to come here at all and just did it myself without involving you, but I can’t find where your Dad ended up. At all.”

“Spirits can sometimes lay dormant for a long time, Terry. Sometimes the wrong thing just sets them off. I hope I’m wrong, and if I am I’ll do my best to find the real spirit behind it, okay?”