A/N: I thought this would be four chapters but the final chapter grew so long I decided to break it in two, so this is not the last chapter (Yay! I think?). Anyway to the Fentons credit the idea of a ghost and a living, breathing human being one and the same is a few miles beyond the realm of impossible. Besides, parents have been similarly oblivious in real life. One classmate of mine actually told her homophobic parents she was lesbian. Years ago. They've met her girlfriend. They still don't believe her.
9tail: Your wait is over :D
Guest 3: Definitely, not to mention what will happen to the town and the world in the absence of a certain heroic half-ghost.
Guest 2: The kidnapping ghosts were spirits obsessed with certain aspects of their previous professions (like most ghosts). Unfortunately their professions in life were Inquisitors and they died in the medieval era. Had Danny not rescued those children, they would have been tortured into confession by ghosts obsessed with getting confessions to crimes—by any means necessary.
Animals Rule: Wulf would be really cool, especially for a traditional Ghost of Christmas Future but he's not quite what I had in mind for this chapter. Hope you like it anyway.
Guest 1: Read and find out; hope you won't be disappointed.
GirlFish: More than a slap in the face. Secrets will be revealed! The terrible future will be shown! If the Fentons don't change their son will be only the first to die!
The Third
"Is this all some crazy dream?" Jack whispered, "Are we even awake now?"
"No and yes."
The floating figure looming before them spoke in a tone like one of Sweeney Todd's shaving blades. A pitch that slid into their brains, ghosted over primal terror and whispered 'beware' into wary ears. The first ghost had spoken with the voice of eternal patience and the second's tone had been caring even in the storm of its wrath but this wraith more than any other made them feel as rabbits before a cat.
This ghost of Christmas Yet To Come was shrouded in thick cloth of black so deep no other color could be seen. A hood masked most of the face, save for a glimpse of flickering white fire curling like a tongue. Jack's burn twitched with phantom pain. Claws tipped its fingers. Power emanated from it, far vaster and colder than any ghost they had ever heard of before.
Phantom held power, yes, but his power was hidden, muted for lack of a better word by a teenage form. Even Vlad's spirit—or the shape-shifter—was not so terrible in his power. He had been death, but the victim of death, not the power of death. Here was the power of Time at its most dreadful, it's most awful: its last. The power of time run out.
And none of the other Christmas spirits had such an expression on their faces. If madness could be a color, it would take the color of those glittering white teeth and if all the insanity in the world could be condensed into one thing, it would be the unholy grin on this ghost's face.
The Fentons backed away. The smile widened.
Heavily gloved hands—what form the specter's hands took beneath was a question they could happily leave unanswered—seized their own in an undeniable grip and once more the world warped around them. This journey passed entirely without a sense of movement, akin to that one amusement park space ride Danny had loved so much. The one simulating a space-ship flying to Mars. They felt a sensation of stomach-hurtling rapid movement, but their feet stayed firmly planted to the floor as time alone sped up. This new reality they were thrust into was still their son's room.
It was hardly recognizable.
Two frantic parents, spurred by adrenaline and threat upon their son's life, could not have torn apart the room so. Such damage had been cosmetic compared to what it had experienced in the time flown by. A hundred equally desperate people had torn through the same place with less consideration than the two Fentons. Bookshelves, drawers, the bed and every conceivable hiding place a teenager could think of had been utterly gutted, broken apart and the wood carried away for fires. A few sad schoolbooks—covers of schoolbooks, someone had ripped out the pages, doubtlessly for the content—and broken CDs were the pitiful survivors. His computer was long ago gone, not even leaving a dusty indention to betray its former presence. Nor a desk to leave a dusty indention on, though a few wood splinters and nails remained to hint at the wood's destruction before its demise. Sheets, blankets and even the bed itself had been picked over until there were naught but hard, coiled metal springs. Most of these had been clipped and taken; the remainder stood like a few proud trees against loggers.
Yet those damages could not compare to the worst of the room's destruction. Here and there were bits and pieces broken or warped of wood and metal hanging where one wall used to be. The former ceiling now had a lovely skylight, which would have been lovelier of the light shining through it had been a little less blood-red.
"They even took the UFO," the spirit grumbled in a shockingly Danny-ish expression, tugging at a bit of fishing line where a model space ship once hung. Maddie shot it a glance, heart paralyzed with horrified suspicion.
For Danny she gathered her courage. If their first spirit was really Vlad, could this poor ghost be the last remains of her son. "Are you my son?"
"Only a matter of time before you figured that one out dear." Its expression faltered with conflict.
"How can you be my son? He sounds nothing like you," Maddie asked.
"Perhaps I'm only saying all the things your son never had the guts to say. Believe me, he's wanted to do this so badly."
"Are you…our son?" Jack asked.
"Yes and no."
Maddie let out a frustrated noise. This ghost couldn't be entirely her son; at his worst Danny never made her desire to break her own teeth. She whipped around, kicking aside a useless curtain torn to rags—only for her foot to phase through—and stomped across carpet colored and textured like a science experiment kept long past the expiration date.
Four indents, like tiny graves, half-filled with dust in the rotted carpet told where the bed had once been. The door was missing in action, along with the doorway and a foot or so of the bordering wall. The few support beams remaining after the pillage groaned ominously beneath their load. Worriedly the couple stared at the remnants of the ceiling, but it barely had enough material left to shield from weather. Possibly, as usual for their spirit forms, they could feel nothing of the temperature. Had they been human, the stench of rot would have been unbearable.
The couple avoided a hole gaping in the floor by the new doorway—some new terrible ghost…or perhaps some new terrible weapon?—and stepped into the hall.
The rest of Fentonworks fared no better. Walls had holes blasted out of them here and there, the remnants rotting apart. Weather eagerly pounced into the abandoned house as though it too sought shelter. No human sign lingered less than years old. Furniture was gone or destroyed, the few remaining Christmas lights hung limply; dark, green plastic ghosts broken, wires bare and almost black with rust like pieces of old fencing rather than festive decorations.
Jack and Maddie stepped around the pit where their lab had once been. The bottom was filled with brackish water and the Fentons doubted anything was left. Phantom must have escaped, tearing apart their lab in the process. Maddie couldn't bring herself to hate him for that though. Not with what they had planned. Beyond the cesspit of a basement they could see the ops center, or what was left of it, collapsed in the front yard and reduced to scrap metal like a carcass picked over by vultures. Beyond metal ribs they glimpsed the rest of the town.
Where their neighbor's house had been was a trench of annihilation carving a trail of splinters and shredded roofs where homes used to be. Perhaps a particularly vengeful tornado had descended upon them and slashed such a path through the urban jungle. More likely that Vortex ghost had decided to take some vengeance against the town and mayor who bound him to their bidding.
Urban jungle Amity Park truly was. Vines and trees and a great many plants sprouted over up-turned tanks and abandoned buildings groaning beneath their weight. Streets were barely recognizable beneath gouges taken from them and toppled buildings piled upon them, all layered with bramble and bush and unnaturally giant trees. Cars and helicopters and even fighter jets lay like downed animals over the remnants of Amity Park and atop all these weeds, shrubs and grasses broke through metal, split the asphalt and cracked the great slabs of civilization into so many tiny pieces. Nature had taken back what humans had stolen from her.
Death had taken over life.
Their city was overgrown with the greenery, which failed in any way to be reassuring. Leaves and vines alike glowed too brilliantly green, or worse purple, the flowers produced too brightly colored and Maddie could swear they were surrounded by a ghostly aura. The overall effect, rather than showing the beauty of life, only seemed a monument to the triumph of death. A hint of the ghost zone infecting the living all covering a still more horrifying truth:
Amity Park was a war zone.
On the losing side.
"Welcome, to the glorious future," Their guide deadpanned, its expression showing no mirth.
Though quite confident now in their intangibility and invisibility within other times, Maddie and Jack still stepped and poked around the place with caution. Neither wanted to disturb anything, not for fear of causing some wreckage to tumble down on them—they were some form of spirit and held no fear of that—but for fear of unearthing some ghastly bones. The deathly wasteland, the barren, decrepit state of their dying house heralded only worse for their children. Danny and Jazz were probably…not around anymore. Neither dared do anything to uncover irrefutable proof of their children's' deaths, though they both had the trench-deep, leaden-cold suspicion that none of their family had survived.
Or worse, maybe the Fenton family was still out there, but in what state? Maddie could almost imagine Jazz, hair cropped short, dressed all in armor, eyes like dead things after all she had gone through. More readily she could imagine Danny in such a role—if he somehow survived. Over the last couple years or so she got the subtle impression her son was tougher than he looked. She still didn't want to imagine him grown up in this terrible future. Was he hammered into a grizzled, scarred, battle-hardened warrior; drained to a mere skeleton of a human being, digging for food like a rat; or was he a ghost himself.
"What can we do to prevent this?" Maddie asked in a hushed voice. She did not dare ask where Phantom was.
"First you take a good look at the future you made," their guide accused, sweeping a clawed hand over the devastation.
What had happened here? The Fentons thought as they slipped through with careful steps over what had once been their driveway, now a collapsed, overgrown tank. Had Pariah Dark returned? Had the ghosts banded together to take Amity, overwhelming even its so-called protector? Or had their worst fears been realized: Phantom dropping his hero persona to unveil the evil monster hidden all along within?
They must have said the last question aloud. "You really think Phantom had something to do with this?" The spirit of Christmas Yet to Come glared in lieu of an eye-roll. "No, the little bastard promised never to harm his beloved town…no matter how many times the stupid people kicked him to the curb. If you want to know who is responsible look in the mirror."
"Then who?" asked Maddie.
The ghost sneered, "Certainly not the brave and heroic ghost hunters who did something as stupid as capture and vivisect and murder the only ghost capable and willing to stop all this." The Fentons said nothing. "You could say my other half had a hand in this, but you made all this disaster and ruin possible," its expression turned blank, "and it's not the only future you've ruined."
"But we can change this?" Jack asked hopefully.
"The future may be your choice—whether in ruins or," the ghost huffed, "gold—but people like you don't realize just how inevitable the future really is. You will keep seeing ghosts as evil until the day you die…and beyond."
"You aren't convincing us of the supposed morality of spirits," Maddie snapped. "The other two spirits might have been…they were helpful," she admitted.
"Ask Phantom if you want helpful…oh wait? You can't. And pardon me if I'm not wasting my only taste of freedom being good enough to be considered an actual person by a pair of ectophobic deluded, obsessed slabs of meat."
Silence.
"Then why help out at all? Why show us this?" Jack asked.
"Besides the freedom? Even for me this future has no happy ending. I'm not around. One of my selves is dead and the other is going to die so depressingly remorseful." A smirk split its face, "Besides, you are both going to be miserable. I can't miss out on this opportunity: considering I never got it in life."
They dared not ask what had all this to do with their son's disappearance, or worse, their son's disappearance to do with all this. Each hunter quickened the pace, their feet passed through the unstable rubble and slippery slush as though it was not there. Yet even their swift pace brought into sight not a single person or thing. Not even the marauding birds or scavenging squirrels. Not even a rat, though they appeared to survive all else.
At least, not any living ones.
Suddenly their guide hovered before them; harsh leather gloves clamped down on their arms and the ghost flew upwards, dragging them away. The desolate remains of Amity Park were swallowed in indistinct greenery, then an overlaying fog granted an unnatural glow. Beyond the destruction, at the edges of the strange, ghostly plants, signs of inhabitance could be picked out with sharp eyes. Where forests and farmland had been fresh signs of humanity could be seen.
That was almost worse.
Upon these fringes of former forest and farmland ramshackle homes had been put together from the refuse of the former city. Cardboard boxes were the best of available homes and these inhabitants reflected their new homes. Eyes shrunken in pits of sockets stared unseeing at the trio of spirits, bones protruded from gaunt faces, paper-thin skin shifting around skulls. The survivors took feeble, hesitant steps from their homes. Twitchy limbs and too-wide eyes spoke of long years existing in terror. Humans moved like cockroaches, shoulders hunched inward, cringing from the sky, flinching from any strange glow and doing their best to blend with whatever cover was available.
"Beware!" a figure suddenly swooped overhead, a ghost. As though by magic humans vanished in every nearby nook and cranny like cockroaches from a sudden switch of light. Maddie and Jack stared at the ghost, then the places where humans crept seconds before with no small amount of confusion. A second look at the specter as it flew over the fringes confirmed only the box-obsessed ghost. The blue-overalled idiot had never really been a threat. Oh he was mildly disorienting to anyone new to town, but Amity Park residents had grown so used to him as to see him as either a pest akin to a mouse or an easily manipulated, free worker. Certainly the ghost had never inspired this level of fear to the point of deserted streets.
Well...deserted trails anyway.
Their guide tugged them onward, bringing their attention beyond Amity Park.
Overgrown destruction spread everywhere; not a single road or building or structure built by human hands was left standing or intact. In the present ghosts rarely dared set a ghostly tail beyond the borders of Amity. Why was unknown, but in this future they had and humanity paid dearly for it. Chicago was recognizable only by its position next to Lake Michigan. It looked like a landfill for ancient buildings and these were slowly swallowed into the swamp the city had been built over. Amid trashed buildings floated pitiless ghosts the likes of which the pair had never seen before. Wraiths terrified, destroyed, maimed and killed with impiety. The remnants of humans with all compassion and goodness flayed from their tattered souls. Before their very eyes one such ghost reached into a human, gripped the heart and simply pulled, ripping the vital organ free and forcing the living person to collapse into a boneless sack of meat. Its clawed hand squeezed and the heart stilled, life-blood oozing out between fingers alongside pulped flesh. The ghost continued squeezing and rubbing the glob like a child with a much-loved doll.
Small towns and once great and glorious cities alike had been battered and broken like their inhabitants. Blood stained far too many streets and buildings, old and dark and caked in too many layers for either of their comfort. Rotting corpses had been left out for the crows. Some were long picked over, others buzzing with flies. No one dared reveal themselves long enough to hold a funeral, or even a burial.
No sign of Phantom, either as ruler or destroyed.
At last their guide floated back to the ground and released his terrible grip. Hundreds of miles had been covered, yet the Fentons did not even have to massage feeling back into their limbs. Immediately they knew why their guide had chosen to bring them here. Rising before them was an oddity in this post-apocalyptic future: a building entirely untouched by the destruction and devastation that swept the country.
They were not in any way reassured.
The construction was a monument to imposition, intimidation and designed specifically to make any visitor feel as small as an ant and as insignificant as a grain of sand. In this it succeeded beyond all expectations. Though the material was modern, whoever built it had a castle in mind. If ever a place had been built for a dictator to reside, this was undoubtedly it. No gardens or fountains of water or white marble broke up or softened the foreboding appearance of stone and metal. Hovering above and around the building were ghosts, green-glowing and equally ominous like terrible gargoyles in the armor and stance of guards.
Against these ghosts Maddie and Jack passed undetectable as ever, for no guard looked their way, or eyed their spectral guide as it passed, just as Phantom had not. The Fentons walked cautiously, shoulders hunched against discovery, without exposure toward massive, metallic doors. These doors were heavy and thick as safe doors, yet wider and taller than any castle door with such fortitude that should the whole world crumble, they would still stand. They laid particularly cleverly upon their hinges. At a simple nudge they could be swung open as one tiny busy-body of a ghost did so, yet such was their weight that machinery or a dozen of the strongest ghosts must have had to lower them into place.
Through the towering doorway they stepped into hallways with the appearance of deliberate enlargement for terrorizing in a manner any ruler would envy. Maddie felt like Susie in Calvin and Hobbs on her way to the principal's office. Here there were some signs of humanity—paintings, carvings and mosaics decorated floors, walls, ceilings and windows, though this art inspired no hope within the couple. A central theme was prevalent in every statue and stained glass window: Conquest. Ghosts overthrowing human leaders, ghost armies marching through cities and trampling over human resistance were ghastly depicted in every brush stroke and hue of color. And over all the other ghosts, depicted again and again was the same ghost with a ring, a scepter and a crown.
"That's not Phantom," said Jack, "That looks like the Wisconsin ghost."
Uneasiness crawled like a thousand tiny ticks beneath her skin as cold red eyes met hers, though they were but glass. Thus far no shade of the past, no ghost of the present, no Phantom of the future had seen them but the stained-window articulation of the Wisconsin ghost appeared to be the exception. Those eyes were so alike to their guide's in form, differed only by white and pupil as they stared right through her spiritual form, burning bare flesh despite the cover of her hazmat suit.
Maddie would not admit it aloud but no other ghost made the hairs on the back of her neck stand rigid with wariness, made every muscle tense to fight, made her teeth clench like this one. All ghosts had obsessions and the ghost huntress recently gained the disturbing belief that she was its ghostly obsession. Or worse, Danny. Regardless of her discomfort, if her suspicions were correct, this ghost was the key to saving her son or at least preventing this hellish future. They had to move deeper.
Her attention was ripped back to the future when the hallway opened into a throne room so grandiosely massive it dwarfed the dauntingly enormous hall as the ocean dwarfs even the largest river. The ceiling must have been a hundred feet off the ground, though it was impossible to tell, the walls hundreds of feet apart from each other and equally hard to tell due to the company. The immense room those walls enclosed was packed with ghosts and humans alike shoulder to shoulder, standing in rows like sardines or hovering above each others' heads. Yet the monstrous space only miniaturized them rather than becoming smaller with clutter. Atop a dais stood a throne of reasonably tasteful if redundant decoration—rather than being cobbled together of all the most expensive gems and metals. Perched upon velvet cushions was the ghost depicted in so much art. Though it looked even less human than before: the glow of its eyes brighter, the fangs longer, the hair occasionally flickering as though shifted to flame. Its normal white and red clothes had been transformed to royal clothes, though obviously modeled after a businessman's attire. The green crown, once the Ghost King's, burned on its brow with a darker fire than on Pariah's.
"Jack. Maddie."
The couple crouched into defensive stances at the otherworldly echoing voice, fearing discovery at last, but the ghost's eerie stare wasn't in their direction and neither were any other spectral eyes, save their guide's. The ominous spirit urged them forward, through the crowd.
"Goddamn!" whispered Jack when they stumbled to the front.
The Fentons had known, in an intellectual way, they were traveling through time. Their childish guide confirmed their presence in the past; they knew they were in the present with the mammoth bestial ghost; their fiery-haired guide had announced their arrival to the future. Yet before they had only seen the past and present versions of Phantom and occasionally other, inconsequential individuals. Strangers. People he hadn't known or had only barely been familiar with. Now, for the first time, they set eyes upon familiar features. However much they did not want it to be, Jack and Maddie could not help but see the similarities. Despite the shocking differences between them, they recognized all too well their own visages.
The Wisconsin Ghost had not discovered them, had not been talking to them. It had addressed people in the future, who had managed to survive, as impossible as the sight was. Maddie's jaw hung loose at the sight of herself—her future self—however impossible the sight appeared to be. For staring through her own eyes upon herself was akin to a dream, or a stranger distortion upon reality. Yet could these people possibly be themselves?
The other Jack was more difficult to recognize beneath folds of skin hanging limp like over-sized clothes over a frame as emaciated as any survivor. Lacerations and sores poured blood and puss all over the scarred, bloody, dirty, bruised skin worn nearly transparent from fighting a losing war. Those rags might have been salvaged from a landfill. Looking at the face of his future self, Jack knew with terrible certainty his very soul was not untouched by the ravages of time. Laugh lines had been worn from his face like the rough features from a stone stuck against the onslaught of rapids. Deep frown lines had replaced them, carved from despair and death and the harsh, horrible life awaiting present-Jack. Wrinkles deepened with centuries of age pressed in short years and lack of nourishment. Those intense eyes were fixed with a fury and focus most did not realize Jack could possess, and fixed firmly on the Wisconsin ghost. He struggled with every bit of strength left to get to his feet, despite the ghost warriors pushing him down to the floor.
"Vlad…the ghost who came to warn us…he's from this future." The instant the conclusion left his lips, Jack knew it to be true.
"Bingo," their guide confirmed. "Now on with the inevitable."
As sharply as the future Jack contrasted with his happy-go-lucky past self, so did the future Maddie with her emaciated husband. Her body showed only faint signs of enduring her husband's treatment. The scars this brutal future left on her, even the scars of present and past had been subjected to cutting edge medical treatment, leaving behind only a few faint white lines. The blood and dirt caking her like Jack had been meticulously scrubbed away, her skin and body revitalized with the greatest of care to remove it from the horror of this reality. Not a strand of gray stained her shining chestnut hair and present day Maddie had to tug her own hair in order to confirm the presence of a few marring streaks.
Jack might have been dressed in clothes an escaped prisoner, homeless for years, would have snubbed a nose at but this future Maddie was the opposite. The garments clinging to her body were of only the finest silks and satin, cut and fitted by the finest tailor to emphasize her features perfectly. Yet they were not clothes she would ever willingly don herself, at least not in front of ghosts. The fabric provided no protection what so ever against an ectoplasmic blow or even cold, was sheer in many places and designed to cover as little as possible. Yet the expression upon her face was an equally sharp contrast with the seductive clothing. Lines drawn harshly into a tiger's snarl, teeth bared, lips bloodless in a sneer of utter contempt, eyes narrowed around scars of bitter loathing for every ghost she faced, especially the one on the throne.
"Going to finish us off Vlad?" future Jack spat fearlessly.
"Vlad?" Past Jack whispered.
"The Wisconsin Ghost also called itself Vlad Plasmius honey," Maddie whispered.
"Oh, right."
The Wisconsin ghost chuckled, "I do not need to kill you. Indeed that would be too swift, too merciful a fate. I have merely brought you, my dear friends to my seat of power—"
"We're no friends of yours," interrupted other Maddie.
"But how can you not be when you, in your greatest and most terrible failure have granted me my greatest and most terrible triumph," said the ghost ominously.
"Granted what? We've fought you tooth and nail!" said other Jack.
"Ah but you have rid me of my one true nemesis," Vlad reminisced as he stood, pacing toward them. "The only one with the power to possibly defeat me, much as it galls to say so. The only other contender for the crown. Phantom was young yes, but he had so much power, so much potential and he alone could have stopped this." Something like regret flickered through Vlad's eyes. "He would have been a great prince, a great heir," a forlorn sigh, "But of course he would have refused. Just as he refused apprenticeship." Voice raising again, the Wisconsin Ghost continued, "Certainly I wouldn't have been able to rise to the lofty height of world ruler had he still been here to fight against me. I owe my triumph to the two of you, who cut him apart on Christmas of all times! And gave me my greatest Christmas present at last." Plasmius focused on Maddie, "Exactly what I wanted all along." He paused and glanced to the side where no one stood. "…Almost."
"Phantom wouldn't be any better a dictator than you," growled other Maddie.
"He wouldn't have been a dictator at all my dear," the Wisconsin ghost shook his head as a displeased parent would to a child who never stopped sneaking cookies. "Fool as always, he had wanted nothing more than to help the ungrateful masses."
"He's an evil, wicked ghost," shouted other Jack. Present-day Maddie shifted awkwardly as if a friend had made a very racist comment in her hearing.
The Wisconsin ghost smirked horribly at other Jack, "Oh my, and you still don't know. He never got the chance to tell you did he? You gagged him before he could say a word?"
"What are you talking about?" Other Jack asked in an ironic echo of his past self.
"Surely it's obvious even a fool like yourself can figure it out: Danny Phantom, Danny Fenton. Surely white hair and glowing green eyes didn't disguise your own son from you?"
"He's not our son!" four voices shouted in concert.
The response had come automatically for the present-day Maddie, yet the words came weakly as pieces of a disquieting puzzle began to condense just outside of her reach. This strange Dickens-obsessed ghost had always insisted that her son was in danger, but she couldn't find him, had not even seen him. Had only seen Phantom. All three spirits—or possibly only one shape-shifter—swore to show her Danny and took her to Phantom time and time again. They said she needed to figure it out for herself, needed to see.
No.
Fenton? Phantom? The same being? "Is it possible?" Maddie whispered. No, it couldn't be. Her son ate, slept, drank, got sick, all human things, all signs of life. Yet her mind wouldn't dismiss the conclusion. "But he would have to be living and dead at the same time?"
It shouldn't be. Ectoplasm and living flesh didn't mix any better than water and oil…but those substances could mix, with enough electricity.
Jack, displaying the occasional spousal ability to read minds, shook his head, "No. The electricity necessary would immediately stop the heart. The ectoplasmic construct would only be possessing a corpse." He twitched, imagining such a thing.
Jack's mind was not so rational as to piece puzzles together or follow a trail to a conclusion; he could not have invented a fraction of what he did if his mind worked in such an ordinary, ordered way. Conclusions seemed to leap in his head and he figured out from them the ways to work them in reality. The scientific method was backwards for him, yet he was almost always accurate. Maddie often came to rely on this odd gut instinct, which was why she turned to her husband to ask what was and was not impossible.
"Could ectoplasm, bound to flesh on a molecular level, preserve a corpse?" Maddie asked fearfully. "Well enough to have the facsimile of life?"
Jack considered Phantom, hair stained black, eyes blazing blue with icy power, so exactly like Danny who was in danger, in trouble because…
"Corpses can't have growth spurts. Your theory isn't possible," Jack shook his head. Their guide chuckled.
"Or perhaps your mind can't come to the appropriate conclusion, trapped in denial that you tortured your own son to death." The last word escaped in a snarl made more terrifying with vampire fangs. Now the Wisconsin ghost stalked toward them like a predator, fury roiling in red eyes.
Yet Maddie had the disquieting thought that they were close to the terrible truth. "It's lying." Maddie whispered like a drowning victim grasping for a line. "It's a ghost. The Wisconsin ghost. It's lying." Her voice became firmer. Even among filthy lying ghosts the Wisconsin Ghost was particularly well-distinguished for its distaste in truth.
A ring of darkness appeared around its waist, though it did not pause or falter in approach. The blackness into two and slid over its body, transforming in wake the familiar ghost form to an even more familiar human form.
"Vladdie?" both Jacks whispered uncomprehendingly. The older Jack went ash white as some horrific conclusion struck his heart, something the younger Jack was thankful not to comprehend. He was too busy dealing with his mental blue screen of death because that last action did not compute.
"Your son Danny is dead." Vlad announced, voice colder in human form, eyes like ice. "He died by the hands of his own parents, who captured him when he was already sorely wounded, who let him bleed out onto the floor like a lab-rat. And who murdered him with vivisection on their own table! With his death the one individual who might have been able to equal my power was killed…whom I have not been able to kill and so I came to rule."
Belief came, slowly, horrifically dawning upon their future selves features. When nothing else, not the destruction of their home or the deaths of their children or the rule of ghosts could break them, this did. Shattering started in their eyes, which grew dull and glazed, and spread out over their faces, rendering them slack and trembling as it passed. Sucking away life to turn them into living ghosts with hellish despair.
"No!" younger Maddie shouted. "It's just a trick! Don't give in! Plasmius is a liar!" But the shades of the future yet to be could not hear this echo from the past.
Their ominous guide grabbed Maddie and Jack just as their counterparts let loose their first sounds of utter despair and grief. "Interesting as this is, we have other places to be."
Present Jack's mind re-booted. "What if he isn't lying?"
"Congratulations, the impossible has happened. Jack Fenton's brain cells started working. But before we get to the main event, we need to visit another time."
Time flew, or maybe they did. When the world once more slowed to reality the wasteland Maddie saw made the former war-zone Amity Park look like a golden age.
The Fentons had been flung onto a world of death. Stretched before them, like the seas of the past, was a desert of ash, harsh and gray and utterly light-sucking. The sun shone blood-red upon blackened, skeletal trees, what few were left standing in the barren waste. No shelter could be seen, no life beneath the haze of fog—or was that smoke?—no death either. The only sign of any ghost was the Christmas specter who had taken them to this desolate place, which she supposed was another Christmas.
Though how could it be Christmas without anyone to celebrate?
"What happened!" Jack asked.
"Nukes. Humans overthrowing the rule of Vlad Plasmius with a bang," The ghost smirked its own joke. "You say we ghosts are destructive but this," the ghost shook his head admiringly, then grimaced, "Not as fun though. Everything all wiped out at once. This is Amity Crater now."
"How can you say that?" Jack gasped.
"Sadist," the ghost said, with an appropriate Joker smile. "Come on, not all ghosts are fluffy little forgiving angels like dear Phantom." The expression died. Its undead corpse rose. "Some of us actually know how to carry a grudge."
"What did we ever do to you?" Maddie protested.
The ghost's full attention focused on them like a tornado. No smile split the darkness. For once their guide was expressionless. "Only everything. Really, you killed me, twice technically," Feeling crept into his words. "You…broke my heart—three times over if you can imagine that—tried to kill me again. Lost count of just how many murder attempts because once obviously wasn't enough and finally died on me." The ghost let out a breath as though the recital had been too much work and gave them a spiteful glare, "Didn't even have the decency to come back." Its attention jerked over their shoulders, "Here's another death. Maybe the last one."
Vlad.
"He would survive," Maddie grumbled. The man, or ghost, or whatever he was, could survive like no one else. A cockroach in human form. Though for once he looked desperately as though he wanted to die. No trace of royal finery could be seen in the rags of what was once a hazmat suit that barely draped over an emaciated frame. Both Fentons winced at the state of their old friend. He staggered back and forth, stooped over so badly fingers brushed ashes, moving only because his legs didn't know how to stop.
His flesh was also torn, torn by ghost hunting weapons of the past…present…future…
"Vladdie," Jack whispered in recognition.
"He's going to die too?" Maddie asked their guide.
Maddie caught a flash of red eyes rolling in exasperation, "He's going to die too—all torn up from the horrible things he did." The ghost mocked dryly.
He didn't have the chains, but otherwise his skeletal frame, pin-cushioned with blood blossoms, ectoplasmic blades and more than a few Fenton inventions, was a nearly perfect copy of the ghost who had invaded their living room only hours ago. Clothes torn, flesh torn, bones torn, he shouldn't have been able to walk. Yet he did.
"You!"
A flash of black and red shot through the smog like a diving eagle. "Damn it! Of all the people to survive! Woman's like a cockroach." The Future Ghost snarled as Red Huntress came into view.
She too had changed. Her helmet had been shredded. Blood caked over a head-wound. Her hair was cropped short and stained gray in places as though aged through trauma. Her face—so familiar, like Maddie should have her name on the tip of her tongue—was carved in lines of fury and gaunt from hunger, though she was in no way emaciated. Emotion kept her going, a burning revenge lighting those green eyes with a ghostly light. Were she to die here and now, she would doubtlessly become an obsessed hunter-ghost. A robotic arm gripped a ghost-bazooka Jack would have been proud to heft. Propped on one shoulder, the Huntress fired. With a flinch-wrenching crack a ghost net shot out, but not one made of thread. It was made of chains.
Vlad didn't dodge. At the sound of his name, their former friend didn't respond for a few seconds but when he did it was with a stop. Perhaps, like Phantom earlier, he had expended all his strength, but Maddie saw the look in his eyes. Despairing, not the eternal despair of one whom even death can grant no release, but a sort of hopelessness mixed with resignation. Vlad, once King, stopped and knelt because he wanted to.
Chains bit into his shoulder, his chest, wrapped around his throat and torso, the ends cracking against his head and legs as he toppled over.
"I should have done this a long time ago," Huntress drew a gun. Not a ghost-hunting gun but a human one.
Vlad bowed his head. "You knew I horded power. It was inevitable," he said bitterly.
BLAM.
Vlad dropped dead. Red Huntress lowered her arm. She regarded the body. "I guess I would kill a human."
"Didn't know she cared," Their guide simpered. "Heh, she's got to be about the last human around."
Jack and Maddie took the ghost's word for it. Where fields of crops used to be there were now only grave yards, or even grave-pits in this future Christmas, as though dead bodies had become too numerous to be buried individually. They had to be thrown away like garbage. Neither Fenton had any interest in exploring this death world further.
"Take us away!"
"Fine, fine…the worst is yet to come." It snapped its fingers. Again the rush of time, this combined with the rush of space as they were flung backwards through time (though undoubtedly still in the future) until they landed back at Fentonworks lab. Christmas day. To the side the containment unit was empty, bloody and both rushed in without a second thought to read the message Phantom had literally painstakingly burnt on there.
"I forgive you." Maddie said softly. Not a plea for help, not a cry for mercy like every other ghost had given them. Not even a confession as she secretly feared. Maddie frowned. Why write that? The words made no sense. She shook her head, trying to loosen a needle of pain in her heart. What did they need to be forgiven for? For destroying a filthy, disgusting ghost?
Even in her own mind those thoughts resonated hollowly.
"He must have spent all night on them," Jack whispered, touching the anti-ghost glass. A ghost would have felt flesh-scalding pain not unlike a hot burner, but his hand phased through as not even a specter could.
"Humans have the most sensitive nerve-endings in their finger-tips of the entire animal kingdom," Maddie said. "Scraping these letters so deeply, while blindfolded, must have taken hours." She sighed, "Alright ghost. We won't dissect him. Now let us go back so we can erase that horrible future."
"No, you don't get to stop here," for a moment their guide seemed furious at them before its face went blank. "Don't you want to see your greatest wish granted?" It nudged them forward.
Even if Maddie hadn't known what she and her husband were planning to do to Phantom, the ghost's enthusiasm would have kept her back away from the ghastly scene. The monstrous ghoul stared at them intently like a vampire scenting lifeblood. The Fentons hesitated, backs turned away from their counterparts, who had Phantom strapped on the dissection table.
Like they'd always wanted.
"We can change. We have changed. We don't want this anymore," Jack pleaded.
"Look." The ghost's command was the dry rasp of death. Lips turned into a snarl, fangs jutting like an ancient predator. It would not allow them to change the future, not before seeing it. Fearfully they obeyed.
Splayed out below them was the ghost boy, Danny Phantom, writhing as much as bindings would allow, gag swallowing every scream. They had created it to be powerful enough to withstand Phantom's sonic attack. No sound escaped. Scalpels dug into him, bones broke, hands clenched into fists spasmodically. The massive blindfold blackened half of his face but the sliver of bare skin between metallic gag and blinding cloth shone with fresh tears.
The future Maddie and Jack were too enamored with working, humanoid ghost organs to pay a care to Phantom's face. The scientists turned away, Maddie with an entire limb, Jack clutching something that pulsed, ready to run them through Fenton ecto-somethings. Phantom laid there, harsh breaths echoing through the lab as though his pain was physical weight.
His open chest looked so much and so little like any dissection diagram. Human organs—no, no, no he could not be! Maddie's mind shut the doorway to that insane abyss—but ectoplasm still flowed, staining the perfect scientific diagram. Too much ectoplasm. After bleeding all night how could Phantom still have any left to give? And the carved chest, baring broken ribs jutting like claws on either side, still twitching with life…exposed in a way no human could possibly survive.
In this odd spiritual form, unable to feel or taste, Maddie still felt the sting of acid crawling up her throat to her tongue.
The Fentons tore their eyes away from the gruesome vivisection, looking at his face instead. The blindfold still covered half his features but a clack snapped their attention. A strap fell away, hitting the table, then another and the gag flopped over to one side. Phantom spat the remains out of his bloody mouth. A chipped tooth toppled to the floor. In his agony, Amity's hero had bitten straight through the metal. His voice was free, but raspy and weak as any human of the future and could only whisper soft, choking words.
"I forgive you. You're good parents. I forgive you. I love you. You're good parents."
These words were spoken as a chant, a prayer, the crazed babble of a madman. Phantom trembled—through exertion against pain or fear or both the present Fentons couldn't guess. More blood splattered the metal table as he spoke. Their future selves didn't notice. The words constricted Maddie's heart like a serpent. Danny Phantom was dying—never mind the impossibility of a ghost's death—blood staining the table, dripping to the floor, organs faltering and stilling. Alone, in agony, as they'd feared was their son's fate.
And he wasted his last breaths soothing the deaf ears of their counterparts. Maddie turned away, unable to watch anymore. Pain turned to fury like a flicking switch which desperately needed an outlet; she spun around and charged, eyes venomous, teeth bared, fingers clawing at her future self, who paid as much attention to that as to Phantom's dying words. Strikes, punches, kicks, yells were as ineffective as a ghost's. Blows and words slid through the other Maddie, face alight with a smile, eyes insect-like beneath safety goggles.
"Listen to him!" she screamed, grasping hands phasing through her future self. "He's…he's…a person…" Anger bled out, leaving a raw nerve of guilt, "worth listening to," she finished lamely.
"Insipid, sentimental garbage," the future ghost grumbled, "I'm going to be sick. Why would she listen to you? You're just a ghost to her."
"Shut. Up." Jack snarled at the Ghost of Christmas Future, hands balling into fists.
Phantom's mantra slowly died. His hands stopped twitching; his head slumped to the side, his chest stilled heaving. He stopped struggling.
Jack and Maddie rushed to the table, phasing past their future selves, skidding to a stop by the table. Two pairs of tense eyes waited for him to move again, but even his core lay still. They tried touching him, shaking his shoulder as though he were only a child who needed a parent to wake them up. Their hands phased right through.
"Phan—Danny?" Jack whispered.
"Not Danny, no ring. He…he would have changed back." Maddie spoke the only words that kept them sane. If Phantom was Danny…no, no, no, nononono they couldn't. They couldn't possibly. They would have recognized their own precious son—who was also in danger, who died in the future. This couldn't be their future! Maddie's sanity danced at the edge of a pit and that pit led to hell.
Jack bit his lip, "That's…comforting," but his shoulders didn't slump with relief.
Maddie shoved the horrific (wrong) conclusion to the back of her mind. "He looks so…still," Maddie says softly, focusing on Phantom. Watching the unmoving ghost didn't make her feel better. She turned away.
Jack swallows burning bile, "Like…like he's really…"
"Dead," Maddie finished.
"This was what you wanted." The ghost of Christmas Future pointed out. "To strap him to a dissection table and rip him apart molecule by molecule." Jack flinched. "Congratulations." It duplicated, both copies leaning nose to nose with the Fentons, speaking in the voice of a desert: "Wish granted."
"Please," Jack begged. "Let us change this. We're not who we were. We can move on and learn to listen to ghosts...this doesn't have to be our future."
"You wanted this." The ghost of Christmas Future no longer sounded dry but furious. "Hours ago you wanted to kill him, to vivisect him until he died!" Bitterly it added, "Phantom's just a filthy ghost after all."
"No ghost is just a filthy ghost," Maddie said evenly, "Especially not Phantom…and not even you." That struck the Christmas spirit to dumbness. "This…what we have been doing? Is wrong," she admitted, then met the spirit's shocked stare. "Let us make it right."
The ghost snapped out of his shock. "As if you could ever make this right," the ghost growled. "You don't change, don't forgive. Don't get to forgive after everything you've done to me." The grin came back, more psychotic than ever. "Good riddance."
Jack closed his eyes, bowing his head like a man in prayer, "We are Scrooges. We will doom the future with our hate," he glanced at Phantom and again bowed his head, "Murdered this young ghost out of hate but if we're really Scrooge we still have time to change." He'd never sounded so serious in his life.
"Beg me. After all you have done to me. To your own damn son you don't give a fuck about, to Vlad. Beg me."
Maddie didn't hesitate, "Please give us a chance to free the spirits we've captured, to use the lessons taught to us by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future." Again she met his eyes. "You have taught us to listen. Now let us act." Her eyes hardened, "This future will not come to pass."
We promise," Jack finished.
The ghost of Christmases Yet to Come remained unmoved.
"I think not."
A/N: Oh man! So many good suggestions for Christmas ghosts I'm disappointed to only choose three. Clockwork for Christmas past because he's one of the few child ghosts and fit the role as a young-looking but ancient ghost. Frostbite fits the enormous ghost of Christmas Present with a heart to match. I'd thought of doing a lot of different ghosts for Christmas Future but how can I resist a true personification of a horrible future ;)
Besides, Dan's a lot better at chewing the Fentons out than Danny would ever be, considering his love for them has turned to hate, he has a lot of real reasons to hate them and has a lot of Plasmius's grudge-holding. Enough of a grudge to damn the future!
Happy Holidays!
