Perry followed the girl into a room that appeared to be the kitchen.
"I was the cook for the woman who lived in a place like this, but then… the accident." Leanna sighed. "I am happy I was able to live in this kind of house again. I love the house. It is my one true home."
She turned the light on. In the light, Perry could see that Leanna was strikingly beautiful for a human. She had long strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes. Her face had a concerned expression.
"How's zee weather?" Perry asked mockingly.
"I know you must be… a little unhappy at being kept here." Leanna said. "I am sorry. I shall work on moving the house shortly. Daly told me to leave the town and… I should have put it somewhere else. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. I will be back."
Leanna's heels clicked away. Perry opened up the huge fridge.
It was completely filled with apples.
"What a selection." He mumbled, slamming the door shut again. He was very attached to his body here, at what he guessed was the mountain's peak. He felt a mattress against his back, his head against a pillow, felt his limbs both responding to his movements here and refusing to move in the real world. He tried desperately to open his eyes, but at no avail.
He would just have to wait until Leanna moved her stupid hulking hunk of mansion.
...
"Perry?" Phineas called, opening up a refrigerator. "Ew. Rotting apples."
A large ghost swept past Ferb. Sneakers began to sing louder.
"Ferb?" Phineas pointed.
They were completely surrounded by shrieking ghosts.
A cloaked ghost reached out for Phineas… and slowly pulled back its hood, revealing the friendly-looking face of a man in his late teens.
"Hi. We're kind of stuck." Said the cloaked ghost. "Can you help us?"
Phineas stuttered.
"Sure." Ferb said.
"My name is Richard." The cloaked ghost said, sitting down in the air. "This is Tina, Henry Brown, Louis…"
Phineas looked at the hundreds of ghosts surrounding him. "Um, maybe we'll learn your names later."
"Yeah." Richard said. "Well, how do I explain this… We're from a place called Gluum."
"I've heard of Gluum." Phineas said. "Our platypus was talking about it after he visited it during an operation. We thought he was crazy."
"Good, I won't have to go into specifics. Anyway- all of us here- we're dead now, but when we arrived in Gluum before, we were simply spirits detached from our bodies. We were told by the ghost in charge, Daly Wuaz, that we had to climb Gluum Mountain in order to get back to our bodies. Sounded easy enough."
"See, when I lived in Gluum, my neighbor was a girl named Leanna." Said a cow, the ghost named Louis. "She lived in a huge mansion- an exact replica of this one. She was a cook working for a rich family. When the family died, she inherited their mansion. She loved it more than anything, or so she kept telling me. Later she was exiled out of Gluum, and I didn't see her again until… that day."
The ghosts stared at the floor for a moment. Richard began to speak again.
"I was almost to the top of Gluum Mountain when I suddenly wound up in Leanna's mansion. Leanna greeted me. She appeared glad to see me again, and apologized for her house being in the way. I was confused at first. She offered to move it. She told me to stay. I let my guard down. And then… she drained me of all my life energy, killing me forever- and chaining me to this real mansion, where I have stayed for years. That was her plan. Capture ghosts with life energy. Drain the energy for herself… so she could return to life in the mansion she loved. Daly has no idea. If he did, he'd banish her completely."
"Crazy." Phineas said.
Richard nodded. "Same thing happened to these guys. We're stuck here unless we can defeat her."
"What happens if she gets enough energy?" Phineas asked.
"She returns to life." Louis said.
"And then she'll probably watch a movie or something." Said another ghost.
"How do we defeat her?" Ferb asked.
"We have to prevent her passage to the real world." Richard said. "Did you happen to come across her skeleton?"
"Yes." Phineas said. "But… the door to it disappeared, I think."
"This home is a maze." Richard said. "But as long as we find and destroy that skeleton, everything will be fine."
"Wait… some ghost told us our platypus was in here. And he's in a coma. Do you think…"
"Haven't seen a platypus… yet." Richard said.
"Ferb!" Phineas grabbed Ferb's shoulders. "We gotta save Perry!"
The ghosts stared at him.
"…And get hundreds of ghosts back home to Gluum, too." Phineas said.
...
Perry climbed upstairs. He was starting to get annoyed. He could have been home by now, if that stupid mansion hadn't been there. And Leanna appeared to be taking her sweet time moving it.
He ran into her on the third landing. She appeared to be thinking about something.
"Look, I'll help you move this place if you like. I really gotta get home."
"Do not worry. You will be in the real world soon." Leanna said. She frowned and looked across the room. "Where did I put that…"
"Perry!"
The voice was very faint, but Perry recognized it as Phineas's all the same.
"Phin?" He whispered.
"Perry! Where are you? Don't let her get you!"
Perry looked at Leanna.
Normally, he would never trust anyone. It always took him a while to be sure of people. And in his line of work, trust wasn't an option unless you were working with a partner.
And yet, he had had just walked in here, completely buying anything this girl said.
"You never meant to move this house, did you?" Perry asked, balling his hands into fists.
"I must return to the home I love." Leanna said. She slowly looked down at him. "So I must take your life energy." She smiled, a vicious smile full of greed.
She suddenly reached out and grabbed at him. Perry felt something tugging on his chest. Something was leaving him. The ability to wake up was slowly slipping away from him.
"BOYS!" He shouted.
"Perry!" Came a slightly louder reply.
Perry kicked Leanna in the stomach and dashed down the hall.
...
"Benedict, get a better auditory experience from above! See if you can tell where those voices are coming from."
A young bald eagle fluttered up to match Richard's speed as he ran. "What'll you give me?"
Richard didn't respond.
"You'd better not give me one of those pancake thingys from Paul Bunyan's pancake house." Benedict said as he floated to the ceiling.
"He reminds me of Perry." Phineas said sadly.
Ferb pulled him along.
"They're in the sleeping room." Benedict said.
"Bedroom." Richard corrected, quickly changing his direction and floating up a flight of stairs.
An insane peal of laughter sounded from the bedroom. "I'M GOING HOMEE!"
Another voice, one Phineas had longed to hear for so long, sounded from underneath the floorboards.
"Perry." Phineas stopped.
Sneakers squirmed in Ferb's arms and stopped singing her ominous song.
"Come on." Richard said. "We have to get Leanna."
"I'm going down for Perry." Phineas ran down the stairs.
"You could get lost in here!" Richard yelled.
"I'll supervise them." Louis offered. He floated after Phineas.
"Cooking room." Benedict said, flying through Louis's body.
"Kitchen." Richard said.
"It's cooking room in the new language I just made up." Benedict said. "It's either gonna be called Richard the Lionheart or Richarditis. I haven't decided yet."
A grocer ghost with a nametag that said CHRIS on it looked nervous. "Richard, should we follow the kids? She's bound to show up wherever her next victim is."
"Oh, can it, Chrisalis." Benedict said. "She's in the Cooking Room. I already told you."
...
Perry was sure that wherever his heart was, it was beating up a storm.
He was hiding behind the back of a stairwell in the basement, although he didn't think it would do much against Leanna.
He heard voices sweeping past him.
"…Follow the kids…"
"Hairpins, hairpins…"
It made him nervous.
Suddenly he heard Phineas's voice again. "Perry!"
"Phin… how are you here?" Perry whispered.
He didn't want to yell. Leanna would surely hear him.
"Chrysalis." Said another voice.
Great. He was trapped in the basement of a crazy chef, atop a mountain, surrounded by invisible people spouting random words.
He'd had stranger days.
"ENERGY! GIVE ME THE ENERGY!"
Leanna appeared directly in front of him, her eye twitching. Perry started and ran back up the stairs.
...
"Where is he?" Phineas asked.
"Probably back home, in Gluum." Benedict said. "Must be nice, being back home. Wouldn't know how THAT feels."
"Gluum isn't Perry's home." Phineas said. "Danville is. We have to get him back."
"SKELETON!" Chris screeched, streaking past them.
"Oh, Chrisalis." Benedict said.
"Guys…" Ferb pointed.
A large skeleton was walking toward them, clutching a yellow ball that seemed to glow brighter and brighter.
"III'MMM ALLLMOOSSSTT HOOMMEE!" The skeleton said.
...
Perry tried to break away from Leanna. He could hear Phineas very clearly now. Voices were everywhere.
He also heard Daly yelling, but he doubted Daly could catch Leanna now. She was almost in the real world.
...
"We have to destroy her." Phineas said. "Ferb, do you have that laser we got from the laser museum?"
Ferb shook his head.
"Dang. What are we supposed to do?"
"We could panic." Benedict suggested.
"Or," Ferb said, picking up a small stone from the floor. "We could hit it with a rock."
He tossed the rock. It hit the skeleton right in the skull.
With a terrible yell, it fell to the ground and moved no more.
...
The mansion vanished.
Perry was back on the mountain. He turned to look at Daly, who was holding a protesting Leanna back.
"GO!" Daly snapped.
Perry reached and pulled himself to the top of the mountain. He was aware of his presence in the real world. He was there. All he had to do was wake up.
He forced himself to open his eyes.