The sun burned brightly in the cloudless sky. Birds sang their melodious song and bees hummed around the fully blossomed sea of rainbow colored flowers. I sat with my friends, Tucker and Sam, by the dazzling, lake enjoying the last of our summer vacation. It's the first day of August in the year of 2006. Meaning I would be a fourteen year old going into high school. My name is Danny and I live in a family of ghost hunter's. My parents have always loved ghost, sometimes I think they love ghosts more than me, and spend most of their time in their lab creating weapons, while making a ruckus. Today was especially noisy, so I decided to call Tucker and Sam and ask if they wanted to go to the park.
"Parents being loud again?" Sam asked with a giggle.
"Yeah, I think they're working on some big, new project. From what I hear, it's a portal to some kind of ghost dimension." I say blandly.
Sam's eyes grow as big as plates and gain a childish twinkle. "Oh, no. We are not going to sneak down to my parents' lab and try the portal out." I knew that look. It was the let's-be-trouble-makers look.
"Oh, come on, Danny. We'll be careful." Tucker butts in. Great, now both of them were ganging up on me. I felt small; my friends had trapped me like a cat had a mouse. The two of them were as stubborn as mules; they would go no matter what I said. Now it was a matter of if I was in or not.
"Fine, whatever!" I stated submissively.
"Yes!" Sam and Tucker got up quickly and started wildly jumping about. It wasn't a moment later that I realized they were already skipping merrily down the path leading to my house.
"Wait for me," I cried out loudly and speed off to meet them.
When we arrived at the lab an odd stench filled my nose. It smelled of rotting jams and fresh fish. The air was muggy and heavy, almost as if the very sky was coming upon me. We moved around the room looking at the various glowing substances and deadly looking weapons made to stun, burn, or blast any ectoplasmic life forms. I lead the way into the back of the room, cautious so I wouldn't alert my parents that I was trespassing into their lab. Once we reached the back I heaved a sigh of relief. No parents, just one huge, empty hole in the wall with wires scattered messily around and in the portal.
I turned toward Sam and Tucker who followed closely behind me, "This is it."
"Whoa." Their mouths were open so wide I thought they might fall off. Both stood staring intently at the dull space and probably would have stayed there for eternity if I hadn't said something.
"Are we all done here, because I'm really not supposed to be here." I urgently gesture to the stairs, "Besides, my parents say it doesn't work anyway."
"All the more reason to check it out. It's not like we're going to get hurt, you said it yourself, it doesn't work," Sam goes on ignoring me, "Who knows what awesome, spooky creatures might lurk on the other side."
Tucker spoke up. "Oh, Danny! Danny! We should all take a picture in front of it. You know, for memory's sake.
"No way!" I look sternly at them.
They both got down on their knees and clung tightly to my legs as children do when they want an expensive toy. "Please! Please!" I refused to budge, "Please! Pleasepleasepleaseplease! Pleeeeaaasse! "
After about a minute of this Sam figured it was time to bring out the big guns. She smiled evilly at me, "If you don't take the picture I'll share that embarrassing picture of you in the second grade to the entire school."
My face heated up and I was sure I was rose red. "That's not fair," I retorted childishly and stomped quickly toward the portal grumbling to myself about how I needed to stop giving her things to blackmail me with. I seriously needed to get back at her for all the blackmailing she'd done to me.
Tucker set up the timer on his sparkling new PDA which he always has on him. We took our places and a few seconds later a blinding flash came, followed by the hollow click of the camera. "There. Happy now?" I went to walk away, but felt a tug at my feet. The ground rushed toward me and I stumbled forward. Loudly groaning I scaled the walls. They were rounded. Had I fallen into the ghost portal?
"Danny, you okay?" My friends called to me.
"Fine." I staggered upright and a wave of nausea hit me hard. I grabbed blindly for something to steady myself with, but when my hand came upon a ledge I felt a small circle sink slowly into the wall. My eyes snapped open as green lights came on above my head and worked their way to the bottom of the portal and back up. My heart beat wildly, bounding in my chest as the light circled faster and faster around me. My blood ran cold and my skin started to tingle. Suddenly, in one great movement, light swarmed the hole and my vision went white.
I'd always thought that pain was a way your body let you know you were alive, but I didn't feel that pain. It scared me that the only thing I felt was the cold numbness consuming my body. I didn't know whether or not I was alive or dead. I creaked open my eyes slowly. My surroundings were greatly distorted and bright. Maybe I was alive? I could hear the faint voices of people calling my name. "Danny! Danny!" It sounded urgent, but hollow, distant, as if being spoken through glass. I was so tired. All I wanted to do was block out all sound, shut my weary eyes, and allow myself to drift into the solitude of sleep. So I did.
When I opened my eyes again I found myself floating loftily in a black void. The only light resonated from a tiny green fire that suspended ten feet in front of me. I walked towards it in fascination, the light reflecting off my skin making it a dully green hue. The flame was eerie, and yet gave off an aura so enlightening and comforting.
"Ah, a guest. Come to greet me in my humble home?" I sprang back, franticly searching for whatever could have held such a chilling voice. "I'm over here Daniel," then it said more to itself then me, "Or should I call you Danny?" I looked back to the flame and realized with mixed emotions that the voice had come from the little green light. As if on queue, the flames molded to make hollow, black eyes and a mouth. His whole face twinkled with mischief and he grinned mockingly at me.
"…What are you?" I stated shakily, trying to keep my cool.
"Oh, how rude of me." He floated closer to me. I expected heat, but instead felt a tingling cold wash over me. "My name is Phantom. I am the ghost between life and death." He was too close now; I might as well have been sitting in a freezer for a year. "I am neither dead nor alive. I have no purpose, no body. All I am, is a lonely soul that simple exists." He gave me a pained smile.
Suddenly, I felt pity towards him. He must have been here for centuries alone and in the dark. "You can't just exist. Didn't you once have a body? Maybe a life?" I didn't know why I cared, I had problems of my own, but the way he said "simply exist" made me think about my life. I always felt invisible to my parents. I felt I could relate to him, that we had a deep connection.
"A body? Yes. A life? I guess you could say that." Phantom's smirk completely vanished and his eyes no longer held that mischief they had in our first meeting. For a moment his face flashed with loneness, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. Now, he looked at me with hate in those black hollow holes of his. "You look confused. Why don't I enlighten you?" I stared, silently preparing myself for what he had to say.
"It all started the night I was born. From the moment my mother saw me she loathed me. This was because that night my father had left her to take care of their child. You see my father was actually part ghost, and I was unfortunate enough to inherit that blood. Being born with unnatural green eyes and hair as white as snow along with many ghost-like abilities Mother could have accepted me, but when Father left she was too heartbroken. I reminded her too much of the father I would never know. She couldn't stand to look at me. If it wasn't for the neighbor I would have died in a cradle. She was never there for me!"
"When I was six and was about ready to start school she still barely looked my way. Then it was time for my first day of school. That was the worst day of my life. She dropped me off and I hurried excitedly to class. The other kids saw me and either looked away in fear or pointed and laughed. I eventually started getting into fights. I was beat, manned, and/or almost drowned. Most nights I'd come home late at night cold, wet and with bruises and blood littering my body. Not once had Mother asked me what had happened, let alone took care of my wounds. By the time I was ten I was an expert at stitching."
On the night of my sixteenth birthday my mother came into my room. I was so surprised. I even dared to hope that she had finally gotten over her depression. I realized I was terribly wrong when I noticed the kitchen knife in her hand. She was done, sick and tired of the pain I made her feel. She couldn't stand my mere presence anymore, and on the same night I was unfortunately born I was brutally murdered by the same one who had brought me into the world."
I could only stare with sympathy in my heart as Phantom finished his story. "After that I awoke here. My body had been so marred and disfigured I wasn't able to keep a physical form in this world. My soul had turned so black with hate I couldn't move on or go back. So here I am, trapped, alone." He turned toward me with an inhuman smile. "What do you think? Tragic is it not? Nothing can be done for a soul such as mine."
I realized then that Phantom was insane, but I couldn't stand by and do nothing. "You can get out of here. I'm already dead. Can't you use my body?"
"It's not as simple as that. Your body belongs only to you, unless." I noticed a gleam in his eyes and I suddenly felt uneasy about this whole thing. "Danny, how did you die?"
"Um… I think I was electrocuted." I had no idea how that helped, but it must have because Phantom's grin now stretched ear to ear. I felt regret well up inside me. Why had I even offered him help? He was obviously insane and desperate. Who knows what he could do once he was back in the human world.
"This might work! Your body might not dead, but in shock. If that's true your soul should be going back to your body in a few moments. During the soul transfer I will be able to go with you if we are touching."
"It's worth a shot." I felt nervous now. Was this the right thing to do? But at the same time I was excited. I could go back, live my life like I had planned. On its own my hand reached out to be gently placed on top the fire's head. We waited and waited, I had almost lost hope when I became lightheaded.
"It's working." Phantom said, and surely enough my surroundings vanished.
"Gasp!" My eyes flew open and the upper half of my body shot straight up. I looked around, dazed, until my eyes came upon my friends. We stared at each other and I swear I could hear crickets in the background. They were gawking at me like a freak at the circus. Finally, Tucker spoke, "Dude, you might want to look in a mirror." Curious, I stood myself up on unsteady feet, walked to the lab mirror, and gasped in horror at the boy staring back at me with glowing green eyes and a head full of unnaturally white hair.
In the back of my mind I could hear Phantom cackle with laughter, "Oh, you fool! You were careless now you will suffer the same fate I did, and once your mind has crumbled I will take over your body and extract my revenge on this pitiful world for what it has done to me."
Sure enough, Phantom's words were true. I tried my best to protect the people I loved with my newfound powers Phantom involuntarily gave my, but they always slipped through my fingers. First my friends then my family. To make matters worst the government found out I was half ghost. They took me, tortured me, questioned me, and experimented on me. It didn't take long for me to be driven completely insane and Phantom managed to get his revenge.