Danny and I share everything.
From video games to illnesses to a crush on the same girl.
We've known each other all our lives so this is only natural, right? To want to share everything with the person you trust the most?
Most of the things we shared together were pretty innocent at first. I'd loan Danny my stuffed octopus, he'd loan me his toy spaceship. It was a pretty good deal, twice the amount of toys.
As we got older we began sharing secrets that we didn't want our parents hearing, beatings in the hallways at school, even feelings that we didn't know what to do with.
It wasn't until freshman year of high school that things…
Changed.
Sam and I were now in possession of this potentially fatal secret.
I mean, it had been fatal. But only halfway. Now, it held the capacity to be fatal again. And again.
And again.
Danny had died in the portal accident and he had been so terrified to tell his parents and that fear only grew as he became both the town's hero and sworn enemy.
Now the things Danny and I shared were depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
Ghost hunting doesn't bode well with one's mental health.
Instead of Danny walking in the house like he owned the place to return one of my video games, now he was sneaking in through the window of my bedroom because he had a nightmare about his hellish future self from ten years in the future of a botched timeline.
This is when things seemed to start going downhill for us.
Soon enough, Danny was staying out almost every night, only returning home once the sun began to shine over the horizon. At first he would usually stay with me or Sam during the night but eventually we had no clue where he was going at night. We just thought it was one of those things that Danny believed he was protecting us from, but we all know how that goes.
Then students began disappearing during the night. The first was Spike, an upperclassman who had a bleak look on life. Everyone thought it was a suicide. That he jumped into the lake. But his body was never found.
After that, the students began to be more familiar as time went on.
After Spike it was Sarah. Then Ashley. Mikey, Mia, Ricky, Wes.
Then it was as if whoever was doing this got ballsier because soon then a-listers began disappearing too. It started with Star and went on with Dale, Kwan, Paulina, and finally Dash.
The student body was on edge and everybody was glum. Teachers were losing sleep and students kept throwing glances over their shoulders. Soon a song could be heard being whispered by a handful of students, one that the residents of Amity Park soon recognized as the song of the dead.
Sam and I tried convincing Danny that we should look into this, try to figure out what was happening with the disappearances of Casper High students. But all Danny said was that it wasn't a ghost that was the cause of this. That it was probably some serial killer and that it would be too dangerous to go after them.
Then one day I decided to go to Danny's, try to talk to him since we haven't done much of that lately. But when I entered the house something felt… off.
It was like the air was too thick and cold and held some kind of static to it. There was no sound of boisterous Jack Fenton lumbering through the house nor any soft feminine voices discussing the well being of a certain raven haired boy.
Suddenly, I heard the scrape of metal come from downstairs in the lab. By the time I made it downstairs, I could see Danny transforming back into his human half, wiping sweat away from his forehead.
"Hey dude." I called. Danny jumped, turning to look at me with wide eyes.
"H-hey, Tuck. What's up?" Danny asked, glancing back at the wall behind him with nervousness.
"Nothing much. I just wanted to check on you. How have you been holding up?"
"Oh just great. I've been playing doomed and watching all these space documentaries and everything. And the everlasting hassle that is ghost wrangling."
I nodded, studying Danny. He still hadn't moved away from the wall where his fingertips were ghosting against it. I walked up to him and he tensed as I looped an arm around his shoulders.
"Well hey, I say we go to the movies or something, get you out of the house."
"Sure. Let me go upstairs real quick and then I'll call Sam." Danny took one last glance at the wall, still reluctant to leave it, before heading to the stairs.
I began to follow him upstairs before something stopped me in my tracks.
There was a horrible smell emanating from somewhere in the basement. A smell not unlike the stench of ghosts, but more metallic and earthy.
I began trailing it and it led me back to the wall Danny had been so hesitant to leave behind. I looked it over before seeing the metal paneling was lifting from the wall at the bottom, and I began to tug on it.
After a minute or so of pulling on the metal I thought it wouldn't give. But finally it bent back an inch and a perfectly manicured, but partially decayed, hand dropped into view from behind the wall.
I backed away, but as I walked backwards I ran into someone's chest. They turned me around and slammed me down onto the ground and I was suddenly looking up into their green eyes.
Danny was above me in his ghost form, panting and twitching. Something wasn't right here.
"Danny?" I whispered.
For a second his tremors stopped and his eyes seemed to focus before glazing over again. He squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head, pressing his forehead to mine soon after.
"If you come back," Danny croaked, "I need you to stop me."
He squeezed my shoulders where he had pinned me to the floor before backing up and blasting me with the largest ecto-blast I've ever seen him make. It boiled my skin and burnt my hair, and I could hear my screams reverberating around the metal plated lab we were in.
Soon though, it all stopped and I could feels hands on my shoulders again, shaking me. I began to sink into a dark void, I couldn't tell where I was headed, or if I was even headed anywhere.
But this was looking to be one of the last things Danny and I would share together. I was there for his death, and now he would be here for mine.
After all, Danny and I share everything.