Chapter 10: Killer Silence
The silence is deafening. People think I'm dumb and incompetent, but I just get carried-away sometimes. I'm not oblivious. There are secrets in my house, secrets that make the silence cacophonous, roaring washes of guilt. I'll just have to wait, then maybe one day I'll know. Until then, I'll go on in carried-away ignorance, pretending I don't notice, blabbering on about ghosts and fudge as usual. I can ignore the heaviness in air. It'll be alright...
Now where did Maddie hide that fudge... Hmm...
"Suuure," Sam said, in a sarcastic tone. "Except that this is about 100 times more important!"
"Okay, okay... Geez!" Tucker said, putting his hands up, palms facing Sam in a defensive yet placating gesture.
"This isn't really much of a plan at all..." Danny said. "We have nothing but speculations and a dimly scratched out idea. There's no way this is gonna work..."
"We have to try!" Sam said.
"Well, why don't I go down and take a look in the lab then, and see what's new? That'd make things a lot simpler. You know you have me on your team now, so you don't have to make up crazy plans and strange excuses to check out the lab when we aren't looking." Maddie said.
"Duh!" Danny said, thunking repeatedly his head against the kitchen table. "I can't believe we forgot that!"
"I can believe you forgot it, but me? I'm never wrong! I'm never supposed to be wrong! This is almost as bad as the time when Dad shouldn't have gone after Mom but he did even though all evidence said he wouldn't!" Jazz began freaking out.
"Jazz it's ok... It's gonna be oooookay." Danny began trying in vain to soothe Jazz. Then he laughed. "I still have at least another thousand years to serve in prison."
"What?" Maddie said sharply. "You, in prison?"
"Oh, it's nothing, just the ghost warden named Walker. I got sentenced to prison for pretty much just existing, then I broke out, then he framed me when he took over the mayor, ect. ect. You know, usual bad guy crazy stuff."
"What does that have to do with when I went to the Divorce Party?" Maddie was clearly puzzled.
"Uhh, it's a really really long story. It's probably best if we wait till later."
"Right..." Maddie was still confused, but she didn't dote on it. "I'm gonna go check out the lab then, see if there's anything new, and run a couple of scans to see if I can find where he hid it."
"Okay." four voices chorused.
Maddie walked down the stairs into the lab, looking around with a sharp eye. Nothing had been touched since the day before. Even the dust was in the same place, or at least, that's what it felt like. Then again, that's what it always feels like when you're the only one who cleans. She took a moment to sigh in self-pity before moving on. She decided to do a scan, rifling through some forgotten inventions. She knocked over the Fenton Finder and the Booomerang and they activated themselves.
"You must be a moron to not notice the ghost in the kitchen. There is a ghost in the kitchen. You must be some kind of moron to not notice the ghost in the kitchen." It said in its automated voice.
"Can I break it? Please?" Danny poked his head into the lab, his hand already glowing green. "Please please please please please? I hate that thing, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!"
"Now wait a minute... If I tinker with it, I can use it as a scanner for your DNA, instead of scanning for ectoplasm and searching through everything that gets picked up in this lab, which could take days."
"You could just use the Booomereang for that, it's probably still locked on my signature thing or whatever. Although make sure it doesn't leave the lab, that thing hurts." he said as he rubbed the back of his head in memory of the pain.
"Your father might notice that the Fenton Finder is gone though." She countered.
"Oh, yeah... I guess you're right. Darn." he said as the glow around his hand faded. "Oh well. I'm going back into the kitchen before you throw that thing, and hopefully if I shut the door, it won't follow, but you never know, that thing found me ten years into the future..."
"What on earth? What are you talking about?" She half-asked, half-demanded. How had her son been in the future or the past?
"Another long story..." he said quietly, as a faraway look entered his eyes. She could see his pain and... burning shame? How much had her son been through that she didn't know about? "Anyway, go ahead and throw that stupidly-named tracking-device!" he said, about a thousand times more cheerful than he had sounded a few seconds before.
"Hey, that's my line!" Sam shouted down from the kitchen. He stuck his tongue out in that general direction as he ran back up the stairs.
Maddie threw it, but instead of going somewhere in the lab, or even banging itself to death against the door to the kitchen, it began banging itself against the west wall. This perplexed her, and she went over and grabbed it.
Maddie turned it off and went up to the kitchen to report her finding. All five of them tried to figure it out, but it just didn't make sense. She was pretty sure it was still electronically sound, and when she threw it in the kitchen, it immediately hit Danny in the back of the head. They kept at it until Danny's ghost sense went off, at which point Danny went ghost and flew up through the ceiling, leaving the four of them to continue to puzzle it out. Suddenly, Jazz went very pale.
"Wisconsin." she uttered. Sam and Tucker paled too.
"What?" Maddie asked.
"It'll be better if Danny tells you..." Jazz said quietly. The three somber teens and a completely perplexed Maddie sat in silence until Danny flew back through the ceiling and landed on the floor. Jazz didn't wait for him to turn back, but just blurted the state out. He got extremely pale, almost white. He began turning back to his human appearance when Maddie noticed something. Someone was in the doorway.
She didn't have any time; Danny was already fully human before she could open her mouth. Danny saw Jazz, Sam, Tucker, and Maddie all staring at the doorway, and turned to look. If he had been pale before, it was nothing compared to now.
"Hi Dad."