Chapter 7
She sighed as she turned over in her bed. Seven...no...Phantom... It was almost like he had been humanized, as much she hated to admit it. Another thing very strange about him was that he remembered how he died. He remembered what it felt like to die. He remembered waking up after the accident as a spirit having no true purpose anymore. So he made a place for himself, and named himself so as to be uniquely identified.
She could only imagine how he felt as he looked down at his lifeless human body. If she were in such a position, she would be scared. She wouldn't know what to do now that there were grieving family members and friends. She wouldn't have wanted to cause them all that sorrow and regret, if they ever fought with her.
Phantom had had a very painful accident, a hard time dealing with his death, and now he was rejected by the people who used to live alongside him. Maybe his own friends and family had rejected his new form as a ghost... Maybe they didn't believe it was actually him... If that was the case, then he had been forced to run away, probably into hiding, and reappear as Danny Phantom. And it was possible that the underlying reason he chose to protect Amity Park could be so he could prove to his close ones that he was still himself, despite the change in appearance.
She closed her eyes and remembered what he said to her.
"The hardest part is knowing that you can never be accepted, even by those closest to you, for who you really are. Nobody ever stops to think that no matter what, you're still you."
His words still swirled about in her head.
So people had rejected him. Even those closest to him...just like he said. He said he had two halves, a good and a bad. His ghost form was his bad half. So his good half must've been the half he tried to show his family and/or friends. But it was like he said...
"But what about the other half? What will happen to the good half if everyone only sees the bad half? I'll tell you; the bad half will be dominant, and everybody will ignore the fact there is a different side to you, that there's more to you than meets the eye. So the good half will be rejected if someone were to find out about its ties to the bad half."
And even what he said about his bad half...
"And the sad thing is, the bad half isn't always bad."
There was no doubt in her mind now. He had tried to show people both halves, all of him, but they ignored his good half and focused on their hatred for the bad one. Maybe that was why he took offense to being called only a ghost and just a lesser being. Maybe it was why he felt so uncomfortable with his past. Now that she knew what happened to him, it was no wonder why he didn't want to talk about it. He'd been through so much, and unfortunately remembered every last bit of it. He acted like nothing was wrong but she saw his faint expressions, the emotions in his eyes, and the occasional crack in his voice when his past was brought up. He didn't want to remember. He wanted to forget. Because he hated the pain. And he wanted to get rid of it.
...And all this time she had been bringing him back to relive each moment of what happened.
She resolved then that she wouldn't ask him about his past again, nor about matters concerning his family or home. Ghost or not, she didn't want him to go through all those memories again. After all, memories were all ghosts had. None but Phantom seemed to remember how they died, or any events leading up to their death.
Then again, none of them had Phantom's solid form. Come to think of it, how did he have a solid form? His matrix was completely unstable! He should've fallen apart even before he was made! But...he didn't. Somehow he maintained the density of a human. Something unnatural had obviously happened when he was created.
Mental fingers in her head snapped. Of course!
"But, if you must know, I died in an accident."
"An accident?"
He nodded very slowly. "I was the fool who caused my own death."
That accident had to be the error in his creation! At the moment he had said "accident", she was assuming a car accident since that was the most common cause of accidental death in the U.S. She had been wrong. He killed himself. It was, in reality, an accidental suicide. And what he said afterward...
"I...I did something I knew I wasn't supposed to, and suddenly I'm in just...I-I can't even begin to describe how much pain I was in! I passed out from nerve overload or something...and then, BAM, I'm dead."
Curiosity. That was it... That was it! In the most literal of all terms, curiosity was what killed Phantom. Meaning that he really was the cause of his own death, and his curiosity pushed him into whatever accident he had...which ultimately caused the malady in his creation. That accident, possibly coupled with the emotions that stemmed from his pain and the pain itself, had forced Phantom's dead spirit to take on a form. Why it was so unlike the other ghosts' she still didn't know, but even with all those negative emotions held during the accident, something else had to have happened. It had to be the accident itself that was the underlying cause of his abnormalities.
Mulling over every word of the conversation yesterday, she thoroughly checked each and every sentence for some clue, some hint as to what exactly that accident was. But he had chosen his words carefully; she couldn't find anything. Could she go up to him and ask him directly? The better question was, should she? He would only make her chase her tail for awhile before bringing up something he was more comfortable with. He didn't trust her with his memories. Admittedly, she never gave him any reason to do so.
Trust... That was the key to unlocking Phantom. For some reason his spirit ran on trust, on that particular emotion. It was important to him; she assumed it was because of his "halves" and what happened when he tried to prove he was still the boy was before he died. If it was her, she would become overly wary as well.
But he was too guarded right now. He wouldn't let his little walls down unless she let hers down first. She sighed; this would take some time. She still didn't fully trust him despite his background. He was a different ghost, but a ghost nonetheless. She didn't feel comfortable with letting anything slip, but she knew that if she didn't trust him, he wouldn't trust her. It went two ways with him...unfortunately...
Her alarm clock began screeching, signaling not the morning, but Phantom's midnight feeding.
Sluggishly, she slid out of bed and went downstairs to heat leftovers. But she stopped as a thought hit her. He was a ghost but he acted like a teenager. Teenage boys loved to eat just food, but they also loved to eat real food; the kind of food a mother would make for her family.
She shoved several chicken wings into the microwave and waited for them to heat. It was stupid to waste electricity by heating up food for a ghost that would only freeze it as soon as it went in his mouth, but it almost seemed to her as if Phantom deserved a little kindness in his afterlife. She still didn't fully trust him on anything, but if he was truly protecting the city and as he claimed, "laying his life on the line" without anything in return, then why not let him have a small thank-you? After all, whether he was marking his territory or not, he saved the lives of the living and chased other ghosts out. Heated leftovers would hurt anyone.
After combining the chicken wings with a mixture of vegetables that consisted of carrots and broccoli, she took the dish down to the lab, where Phantom had yet to wake up. She knew better than to expect a full night's sleep out of him. He would be waking up in a short bit with a snarling stomach.
And to prove her point, his stomach growled. Ah, the sound of a rumbling tummy... She had never heard it come from a ghost before. Well, until she caught this weird ghost. She had been so shocked back then but now it was a consistent noise. It was like an alarm clock, going off every two hours.
He flipped over onto his back and placed a lazy arm over his eyes, probably in the typical teenage attempt to block out the light coming from upstairs. To prove another point, he groaned and let his head lean to one side.
"Sev- I mean..." She cleared her throat, not used to saying his name. "...Phantom...time to eat."
"Turn off the lights..." he grumbled.
His stomach angrily grumbled back.
"Yes, I'm sure you don't want anything to eat. Get up and get your food," she said.
He slid his arm off his head but kept his eyes closed. "Don't wanna..."
"Your stomach says otherwise; now get off that floor."
"Mmmmm... 'Kay...just a second..." he sighed.
Maddie decided to give him "a second", but ended up waiting two full minutes before becoming impatient.
"I said get up!" she shouted, her own temper rising as her brain began registering how badly she wanted to sleep right now.
He yawned and slowly lifted himself off the floor. When he stood up after a good thirty seconds, he wiped his eyes and stretched, yawning again before setting bleary eyes on the chicken wings.
He really was like a teenage boy; like a zombie when he was woken up.
She slid the food through a slot in the door and he took it, looking like he was ready to simply drop it and go back to sleep.
His stomach growled again, though, and he forced his eyes to stay open while he began nibbling on a wing.
She went back upstairs, knowing that his plate would be void of any food come morning.
She did manage to get to sleep after while, but her dreams were tumultuous. Every last one of them was a horrible nightmare about Phantom's life. In one of them he was just a little boy, probably around five or six years of age, and was surrounded by friends any family.
Everyone loved that little boy; he was nothing more than a little goofball. Then he aged in a flash as the scene of a small boy frolicking in the park changed to an older boy in his preteens. He was more mature than before, but he was still a goofy kid at heart. His friends and family had gathered around him on his birthday and he was smiling the biggest smile as he prepared to blow out his thirteen candles.
The scene changed to complete blackness; in that blackness, a heartbreaking scream was heard. The darkness cleared up to reveal a boy around fourteen years old buried and crushed beneath large pieces of cement and two steel girders. One of his arms could be shown sticking out from the mess; the skin on it was split and bloody, and the bone underneath was broken so that the middle of the forearm hung limply at an unnatural angle. It looked like he had three joints...
The boy could faintly be heard gasping his last breaths.
Phantom slowly detached from his human body and floated gently above himself. He opened his eyes and immediately looked at his disfigured arm. Shock washed over him and for the longest of times he could only stare. Eventually he began to panic and he looked down at his ghost self to find a completely different appearance. He scanned over himself quickly, screaming as the reality of what happened finally hit him.
He immediately began shoving thick pieces of concrete aside until his dead body was uncovered. At this point Maddie could've thrown up. Even on the pieces of concrete Phantom had moved, blood had been leaking everywhere. There were puncture wounds ranging from large to enormous all over his human body.
Phantom shook in fear as he realized he was dead. Nevertheless, he shook his horribly marred body by its shoulders and shouting to it in a desperate attempt to revive himself. Needless to say, it didn't work. He shook his body more vigorously.
"Wake up! Wake up! Come on, wake up! Don't...DON'T DIE!" he frantically yelled to his limp, lifeless body. "Y-You're me, please! You have to wake up! I can't be dead! You can't be dead! DANNY! OPEN YOUR EYES AND BREATHE! Please, Danny! I-I can't...I-I can't... I'M NOT DEAD! WAKE UP!"
Tears began to stream heavily down Phantom's desperate face as he let go of his body and began ramming himself into it and pressing up against it with as much force as he could muster.
It took her awhile to figure out that he was trying to get back into his body, but was only succeeding in getting his own blood all over himself. This could easily have been how Phantom died; it was possible that her recent contact with him had triggered some sort of memory that was being shown to her. He must've been curious about a construction, or possibly even a demolition, site and ignored the warnings to not go in. He must've gone in anyway and stepped on something he wasn't supposed to, causing the collapse of tons of concrete and the two steel girders. He had been unable to get away and had been crushed. The thing was, he was still alive even after that, being as he was still breathing. In about ten seconds that breathing had stopped to be replaced with Phantom. This would explain why Phantom remembered the sheer agony of his death; he was still alive when it happened.
The scene changed again, but this time it didn't change to a year later or even a few days later. It was probably only an hour or two later.
The siren of an ambulance was drawing near and the flashing lights could be seen off a distance on the road in the far background, past the site. Two adults, one male and one female, were the grieving over the horrifying sight of their baby boy lying dead on the pile of concrete.
Phantom peeked out from over the pile; apparently he had at some point gotten behind it, perhaps from fear of what had actually happened to him.
"Mom! Dad!" he called out excitedly, leaping over the pile and his body, to greet them.
So those were his parents... She was already assuming that was who they were but she had been hoping otherwise.
He grinned his first grin since dying and ran up to them, clearly expecting to be comforted and told it was going to be okay, that he was fine, that they loved him.
That didn't happen, though. Instead they looked up as he was coming towards them and glared furiously at him. The pair stood up and did nothing to make him feel better about his death.
He ran up to his mother and hugged her tightly, new tears coming to replace the old ones. The woman jumped and pushed him away from her, grainy blotches of his blood sticking to her shirt.
The poor boy frowned. "What's wrong, Mom?" He then looked down at himself, as if suddenly remembering what he had become. "Oh. I-I know... I mean...it's kind of shocking to me, too, but I can't get back in my body. I-I've tried, I really did; a-and I've tried to get myself to wake up but...but I... Mom, I died... I'm sorry, I knew I shouldn't have gone in there; you told me not to! I'm sorry, Mom, I should've listened." He turned to his father and continued, "Dad? Are you okay?" He turned back to his mother. "Mom?"
Neither of them answered and the boy took a step back, still frowning. "Guys?"
Again, no response.
He let out a short, forced laugh. "I-I'm sorry... I am. I didn't want to die... I swear, I did everything I could!"
The man snarled at him while the woman continued to glare.
"Guys..." Phantom croaked. "T-This isn't funny..."
His mother looked away. His father's face remained unchanged.
More tears rimmed this poor boy's eyes.
"I'm still Danny..." he choked out.
"YOU ARE NOT OUR SON!" they screeched in unison.
He flinched at their words. "No...! I-I really am Danny!"
"No you aren't! Our son is a kindhearted young man who..." The woman trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. "You aren't him. You're just a ghost!"
Phantom flinched again and hung his head, gravity pulling the fresh tears out and onto the pavement surrounding the site. "I got curious, I went in there and all that stuff fell on me... I don't want to be a ghost, Mom. I'm not just a ghost...I-I'm your son, bu-"
"YOU ARE NOT MY SON!" his father screamed. "You're nothing more than a glob of ectoplasm that shouldn't even exist!"
The boy's breath faltered and he slowly shook his head. "No I'm not... I'm a person..."
"YOU WILL NEVER BE A PERSON!" How a mother could say that to her son, Maddie would never know.
Maddie immediately woke up, sweating and nearly crying. Phantom wanted to be a person; he wanted to be their son again. He didn't want to be call just a ghost because that was what his father had told him. And her? She had said the exact same things his parents had. She had told him that he shouldn't exist just like they had. She told him he could never be compared to a person. She told him he was too low to be considered any good.
He had always been different, had always been unique...and she put him down for that even though he couldn't help it.
No...NO. He was still a ghost! Just a ghost. Just one more ghost in this world. Just one more thing to study. Just one more non-person to realize that he wasn't a person and had never truly been one.
He was just one more shaped blob of ectoplasm.
