A/N: ...I can never think of anything good to say.
.MOTNAHP YNNAD NWO TON OD I :REMIALCSID
(The disclaimer's backwards...)
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Chapter Three - The Trouble Begins
Danny waited. Sam should've found him by now, yet she still wasn't here. Danny had hid in a gym locker room (Not sure if it was the boy's or girls'...), behind a broken down locker titled #129. He was sitting on a large crack in the wall, humming some random tune he'd picked up from his parents when they were listening to the radio. Everything was supposed to be pitch black, if it weren't for Danny's bright, glowing green eyes that illuminated the entire room with a valiant emerald glow. He was kind of like a nightlight.
The boy sighed after a while.
"Guess the fun's over," he muttered. "Better get Sam out before she kills herself..."
He silently sauntered over to the door that led out of the locker room. He automatically turned intangible and phased through it. Danny gazed around the room, looking for any traces of the Goth girl. Of course, he wasn't really looking down onto the floor where all the dead people were, but instead he was looking were everyone would look if they were looking for someone.
Straight ahead.
Quietly, he lifted himself up off the ground and flew forward at a moderate speed, stopping every once in a while to really get a good look around. But then one thing caught his eye.
A banner, entitled "School Dance!"
Didn't that mean they were all killed on... October 28, was it? Think that's right.
But Danny flew away nevertheless. He could tell Sam once he finds her.
"Sam?" he called out. Nothing but the echoes of his own voice replied. "Sam???" he yelled again. He waited a while, but he still didn't hear anything. "Drat..." he murmured.
Suddenly there was a shrill cry of pain, fear, and horror all mixed in one.
Oh, crud. Sam.
Danny jolted away, streaming out the doorway of the gymnasium and back into the hallway.
"Sam???" he hastily yelled, now regretting that he ever played that "trick" on her. He ruffled his hair in agony and thrust himself forward once again in a random direction. He stopped abruptly when he saw a slight trail of new "red stuff," followed by some silent coughs.
Danny followed the blood stream frightfully, his heart pounding with the thought that Sam might be dead already.
Then his footsteps stopped.
"Sam," he knelt down to the limp object beside him, his arms wrapping themselves around her waist.
"Danny..." she whispered in response.
"D-did they hurt you?"
"Only a bit, luckily..." Sam turned around to show Danny one large gash in her arm. "That's all they did."
"...They?"
"Yeah... T-the... Dead... People..."
"Sam... I'm..."
"Danny, don't. It's fine. You were playing."
"But I was playing when I knew you could've been hurt."
"...True."
Danny tightened his grip.
"What?"
"Never mind..."
Danny paused before saying anything else.
"So... What are we supposed to do with that?" he gestured to Sam's wound.
"There's some gauze in my backpack. You could wrap it up with that," Sam suggested.
Danny agreed, starting to reach into her purple backpack and dig for the gauze.
"Found it," he said after a few seconds, holding up a roll of white cloth. He unrolled part of it and cut the other part off with a small ray of and ecto-blast. Danny carefully wrapped the gauze around Sam's arm.
"Okay?" he questioned to make sure she was comfortable. He put his emerald glowing eyes to her amethyst ones.
"Yeah," Sam nodded in approval. They both smiled.
DING, DING, DING!
Danny and Sam jolted, their heads turning to the immediate sound of a bell's vibrating echo.
Danny sprinted to the nearest window, while Sam stayed on the floor where she was sitting. He gasped.
"Sam... They're coming back to the church again..." Danny announced softly.
"Who?"
"Those people we saw earlier, remember?" said the ghost boy, turning around to look at the Goth girl.
"Oh." Sam tried to stand up to look at them, too, but instead she tumbled back onto the cold, dry floor, struck by a new pain.
Danny rushed over at this.
"Here; let me..." he picked Sam up cautiously and held her against his chest. Then he floated up onto the windowsill once again to show Sam what was happening.
"What do you think they're all there for?" Sam questioned, not really expecting a valid answer.
"Beats me," Danny admitted, shrugging. "Maybe they're having a party."
"Danny--" Sam stopped in the middle of her statement, sighing. "Ugh... Never mind."
Suddenly, a blue mist escaped Danny's mouth. His eyes alerted as a cold chill was sent down his spine. Danny looked at Sam.
"Um... Yeah. I'll be right back..." Danny said, placing Sam down and flying off slowly in search of the ghost. Every few seconds he would glance back at Sam to see if she was still there.
Then there was a hoarse crackle. Danny stopped in his tracks and looked around. His eyes widened at a daunting sight.
Blood was spilling out of the walls, oozing freakishly out of any miniscule crack and dripping all the way down to the tiled floor. It made a somewhat disturbing sound, sloshing around and splattering everywhere.
And then there were the moans. Deceased faces appeared from the crimson liquid, showing their unearthly sharp teeth and inhuman jaws, snarling and crackling for a taste of any tender flesh that they could grasp, which, unluckily for Danny, was right in front of them.
The monsters showed their claws, now sprouting out from the vile-smelling blood and landing onto the ground, the red liquid splattering everywhere. Danny wiped some off from his face, and stared at the new threat opposed to him.
The blood skeletons moaned gruesomely at the young ghost boy. Danny stood still, immersed by the sight of the creature, fear welding up inside him. No ordinary ghost this was. It just looked... different. And something told him that this was only the beginning.
He flew. The fear got the best of him. Danny sped back to the area of which Sam was sitting, and then, much to her surprise, grabbed her by her uninjured arm and took off to the sky from the windowsill.
"Danny? W-what happened?" she asked, fiercely tackled by the incoming air rush as the ghost boy flew upward, speeding away from the school. But Danny endured on his flying, breathing ever so quickly as his heart pounded violently inside his chest to steady with the trepidation as he somewhat ignored Sam's question.
However, it wasn't soon until he abruptly stopped, a blank stare on his face as he looked up into the sky and his grip on Sam becoming tighter.
"Danny?" she asked once more, unsure if he was okay. "What's the matt--"
"The sky..." Danny sputtered. "It's... It's... Red."
Sam widened her eyes. She turned her head upwards also, and saw that the sky, indeed, was a dark shade of merciless crimson. She gasped at this.
"W-what do you think happened?" she inquired at the ghost boy, shaking him a bit to get his attention... Or at least part of it.
"I... I don't know," Danny finally answered to her question. He shook his head, trying to clear his dazzled expression.
"What do we do?" Sam wondered once more.
"By the looks of it, I guess there's going to be more of those... things coming out..." Danny started to say, his breath and heart slowing a bit, as he glanced around Silvertia for any signs of those creatures. Once he was sure that nothing was going to jump out at him, he continued," Let's just stay in the air; I don't think those things can fly."
Sam nodded her head in agreement.
"Should we still look for Tucker though?"
"... But what if those things attack us again?"
Sam thought at this.
"I bet you could handle them," she encouraged.
"I don't know if I could," Danny admitted. "Those things are just... so much different than the ghosts back in Amity. In fact, I don't even think those are ghosts at all."
Sam sighed.
"Danny, I don't get it. One moment you're just walking into a room full of dead people, and now you're scared to death when a few of them move!" Sam pointed out.
"Well, I don't know!" Danny answered. "I guess I wasn't thinking, that's all..."
Unexpectedly, something fast sped past them, causing Danny to lose track of his levitation for a few moments, but he quickly returned to his original pose with Sam.
"What was that?" Sam asked, looking up at Danny. He returned a confused look.
Then there was a horrid screech, startling them once more. Sam and Danny winced at the sound, but quickly recovered, finally seeing what was assaulting them.
The creature had landed on a nearby building, proudly showing its ruffled wings and monstrous fangs. It was some sort of deceased animal, with two "stilts" sprouting out from its head, sharp, silver claws, blood-red wings, midnight-black body with many bones showing, and a lashing, whip-like tail that swayed from side to side.
The creature then emitted another ear-splitting shriek. Sam covered her ears in pain, while Danny painfully withstood the sound, not wanting to take chances of dropping Sam if he had done the same as she had.
When the sound had calmed to a short stop, Danny took this chance to immediately bolt off into the opposing direction of which the monster had perched. He then spotted a random building and phased through the roof, landing in a small room with a small transom. Danny let Sam down and looked up to the ceiling, wondering whether or not it would break if the monster had followed them. Danny counted about four large indents on the pale-colored ceiling.
Then the roof quivered. The cracks grew a fragment larger as a small cry could be heard. And then another. And another. Suddenly, the rattling stopped, but the danger had not yet ceased. The creature had appeared at the window, hovering around and trying to break the glass pane that separated the room from the outside.
It scratched the glass violently, trying to break in, but with no coming prevail. Danny and Sam scooted to the back corner of the room, Sam coming in first and Danny covering her. They both had their attention turned to the threat barging at the window. Danny charged up an ecto-blast and held it in his hand, ready to shoot it at the opposing force in case it managed to break the glass.
Tension rised. The beast continued clawing at the glass pane, with every single strike, another beat of anxiety arisen.
It took a while until it, at last, ceased its attempt to break inside. The creature screeched once more before it finally thrust itself upwards to soar off into the glistening sunset sky. Danny and Sam both rushed to the transom and watched as the beast flapped angrily away. All that could be seen of it now was only a tiny speck of black in the background of the twilight sun. They both looked at each other and smiled.
"Glad that's over," Danny commented.
Suddenly Sam's smile turned into a frown.
"It may not be," she answered.
"What... What do you mean by that?" Danny wondered.
"Look," Sam said, pointing down from the window. There, Danny saw the same thing he had seen while he was in the school: blood. But this time, pouring from the road. And he saw the blood skeletons he faced earlier, too.
"S-Should we stay up here?" Danny said after he took everything in.
"Beats me," Sam shrugged. "Maybe... Maybe not..."
SCCEEEEECCH!
They both covered their ears at the familiar sound. It was back.
Danny and Sam stared out the window once again. And there was the "Screecher," for sure, but this time with a bunch of others too.
"Sam?" Danny asked, awestruck.
"Run," Sam somewhat answered, still staring out the window.
Danny, as fast as a bullet, grabbed Sam and darted out of the room, phasing through the other side, out of the building. He continued flying as fast as he could, hopefully out-flying the beasts.
But it wasn't long until one of them knocked him over.
"Aaahhh!" Danny and Sam screamed as they both plummeted onto the blooded road. They both landed with a thump, Danny still holding onto Sam.
The twosome groaned. They slowly opened their eyes, but their vision was rather vague and distorted.
Danny got up first, rubbing his head in pain. How high did they fall from? Must've been some 50 feet...
He stood up straight, and then looked down at Sam, who was also trying to get up. Danny lended a hand to her and pulled her upright. However, the monsters had already landed in a circle around them.
They all growled softly, waving their tails back and forth, crouching down for an attack. Danny stood up against Sam, who was gesturing somewhat weirdly for Danny to make a move. Danny finally caught on and prepared to attack.
He thrust himself forward, blasting two Screechers with ecto-blasts, knocking them back. Danny was then trampled over with a few other ones who bombarded him, but blasted them all off with an ectoplasmic explosion. Danny took off to the sky and looked back to see all of the Screechers following his tail.
The ghost boy zigzagged around, turning invisible at random times to heighten their confusion before blasting all of them one-by-one. However, one caught him by surprise from the back and grabbed his arm, followed by a painful thrust onto the ground.
The Screecher took no time to hesitate, immediately following Danny after he had been propelled downward. The creature landed beside the hole of which Danny had made when he had fell, and waited for something to come out.
Green light arose from the hole, binding the beast in an array of sharp, hot, flame. It uttered a shrill cry of pain before landing on the ground, defeated. Danny rose from the hole and stared at his victory, a smirk forming on his lips.
He was caught off guard, however, by another Screecher tackling him. He unluckily landed in front of a bunch more of those deceased monsters, and was then brutally bitten and clawed by them. Danny struggled to get free from their grasps, but there were one too many. A few Screechers had given out their signature screech, causing Danny to fall to the ground in pain. Another had then seized Danny's arm with its mouth and threw him against a brick wall, causing the unstable building to crumble on top of the poor ghost boy.
The pack of Screechers all snickered at him. (And, for a Screecher, sounded more like a really loud grasshopper) They all gathered around the broken building and dug for the fallen ghost boy with glee for their new meal.
But then they all perked their ears up. They all screeched at once, and flew away in sheer terror at what they had sensed all so suddenly.
Sam ran over to where she saw Danny get defeated after she saw the beasts had flown away. She gasped at the huge pile of debris the fight had compelled, but rushed over nevertheless to aid her fallen love.
"Danny! Danny!" she called out helplessly, moving various rocks away. "If you hear me, say something!"
Almost immediately, there was a slight movement under some rocks. Then, there was a powerful ectoplasmic blast that disintegrated all the building's remains into a pile of nothingness. And arising from that was Danny, limp and weak, but still alive.
"Danny!" Sam exclaimed in joy, rushing over and glomping him. He hugged her in return, but then laid out a painful moan, falling to the floor and reverting human.
"Sam... Ow..." Danny groaned, his eyes shut. Sam could already notice all of the injured he had acquired during the fight, many of them rapidly dripping a mix of ectoplasm and blood. Automatically, Sam reached into her backpack and grabbed the roll of gauze that Danny had used on her earlier.
"Danny, hold still," she whispered softly to him, starting to put a portion of the gauze over a gash on his right arm. She continued wrapping the ghost boy in gauze until she started to hear a faint snarling sound. However, Sam quickly endured to her wrapping.
Then it came again, but this time, louder and more vicious.
Sam alerted, observing the area for any sign of movement. Nothing in view got her attention. She was just about to finish wrapping Danny when...
"Have you no idea what's coming?"
The girl turned around, astonished at the voice of another human.
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A/N: ACK! Seems like I can never grip the actual character of the characters!!! ...Oh well. I guess I like OOC-ness. XD
Moonstar5569