Alright, a couple of things.

First of all, no, I did not get to Candace this chapter. I swear, I will next chapter!

Second, I've switched to an actual dating system, instead of just saying "two months later." Day 1 is the day Isabella tried to tell Phineas about what was happening to her, and she disappeared the night of Day 60.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review!

Isabella

Day 2

The good news: her alarm went off again.

The bad news: this time, it went off three hours late.

In contrast to last time, she woke up almost instantly. If last time had been a slow turning up of her mental dimmer switch, this time was closer to a sudden flick of an "on" switch.

She woke up next to her bed, and she reached out to the bed to pull herself up. The splitting pain in her head from the morning seemed to have subsided somewhat, and was now little but a dull ache.

This time, she didn't have to try to chase the sleep from her eyes. The dull ache seemed to be the only consequence of her sleeplessness.

However, it took her a moment to process the light streaming in through the windows. At first she thought they were coming from the big light in the ceiling.

Then she realized that she'd left the lights off.

She turned and saw the sunlight through the open windows. It took her a moment to realize the significance of the fact that the sun was out.

She let out a slow breath and sat down with a sigh on her bed. A quick glance at her alarm clock confirmed the time: eleven o'clock, and a good two hours late for whatever Phineas and Ferb were doing today.

But before she left, she needed to take a moment to think.

First of all, just what was happening to her? As far as she could tell it had something to do with the "Slender Man," whatever that was. She needed to do some more research about just what he did, but from her experiences, and the little bit she'd read online last night before... Before he'd come, unless she missed her guess, she could tell he messed with your mind. And apparently with electronics, too.

If he'd been after her for a while, that would explain a lot of what she'd been going through. She remembered the past few weeks; the dreams, the visions, and all those moments looking over her shoulder and expecting to see something there. Now that she knew what she knew, she was pretty sure he'd caused all of that

For a brief moment, she contemplated telling Phineas all of this. She thought of how terrified he would be for her, how he would likely insist on staying with her constantly, never letting her out of his sight for fear that the Slender Man would seize her.

But just as her heart soared at the thought of Phineas finally taking notice of her, she realized how selfish that would be. Whatever had brought this figure after her, he had come with a vengeance, and he had brought terror like nothing she'd ever known before. She couldn't inflict that on Phineas, or anyone else, either her own protection or to finally get Phineas to notice her.

... But this could be her only chance with Phineas, especially if it was possible that she would die soon.

She shook her head at the thought. How could she even consider doing that to someone else just for the sake of her own love life?

No. This was her burden to bear, and hers alone.

Confronting the thought brought tears to her eyes. She dropped to her bed, her chest heaving and tears beginning to flow. She sat there for a moment, just sobbing.

No, she told herself forcefully. You can't start crying. You can cry later, but right now you need to concentrate.

She forced her breath to gradually slow down, until her breathing was more or less regular. Then, trying to ignore the tears trickling down her cheek, she began to think.

First of all, she realized that she couldn't just stop going to Phineas and Ferb's inventions. If she did, they would start to try and find out what was happening to her. And if they tried... Then, knowing Phineas and Ferb, they would probably succeed. And if that happened, then the whole point of not telling them would be undermined, and they would be in danger despite their attempts to keep them away from it.

So, she had to keep helping them with their inventions and pretending like everything was fine, while also keeping them from finding out anything about what was happening to her.

Secondly, what about her mother? She hadn't seen her all morning, but that was only because she was at work until the middle of the afternoon. After last night, she probably already knew that something was up. Telling her the truth was out of the question, for the same reasons she couldn't tell Phineas. So, she would just have to make up something convincing.

Nothing came to mind at the moment. She decided to try and think of something later. Right now, she needed to head over to Phineas' house and deflect their suspicions.

Of course, it wouldn't be easy. She wasn't sure she'd ever actually lied to Phineas before.

About ten minutes later

Isabella carefully gave herself a once-over, trying to make sure that she had fixed up everything about herself that might say that something strange was going on. She'd washed the blood off of her face, changed her bloodstained shirt and put on a bit of makeup to cover the dark circles and tear stains around her eyes.

She checked her phone again. There were still five messages from Phineas, all asking what had happened to her and where she'd been. The urge to call him back and tell him everything was overwhelming.

She sighed and slid the phone into her pocket. No, she told herself. You can't put them at risk like that. Not for yourself. Not for anyone.

With a hint of trepidation, she pushed open her bedroom door and looked into the hallway beyond. The sunlight in the hall beyond reassured her for a reason she couldn't name, and emboldened her to push it open a little further.

The hall was empty.

Almost involuntarily, she let out a sigh of relief before stepping into the hall.

The house was eerily silent, and Isabella felt a sense of quiet dread as she tiptoed down the stairs. The living room was empty, too; almost frighteningly so. She wavered between serving herself a bowl of cereal and eating something at Phineas' house before deciding that she didn't want to stay a moment longer by herself than she had to.

Nothing bothered her on her way out the door, nor as she walked across the street to the Flynn-Fletchers' house. When she actually reached the house, however, it was as if a volcano had gone off.

Adyson was the first to spy her. "Isabella's back!" she yelled as Isabella opened the creaky fence door. Everyone else turned from the project currently being worked on (something that resembled a giant upside-down Art Deco umbrella) and, after a moment of gaping, flooded towards her.

She couldn't make out any individual questions in the maelstrom of speech, but she was pretty sure she heard at least a few "Oh my God, what happened to you?"'s and "Are you okay?"'s. She didn't even try answering anything. Instead, she just put on a smile and said, in as inauthentic of a voice as she could muster, said "Hey guys. What's up?"

There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone assembled tried to process the ordinary-ness of what she had just said. Phineas was the first to recover, exclaiming "You just ran off yesterday without telling any of us anything. We called you, like, five times and you never called back. You had all of us worried sick."

He a hand on Isabella's shoulder. She could feel his hands trembling; feel his fear and concern for her. She could feel her will to keep the truth from him slipping away by the moment.

No! she told herself forcefully. If you want to keep Phineas safe, you can't tell him anything.

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," she said, hoping she didn't sound as nervous as she felt. She ran through the excuse she'd decided upon one more time

"I'm sorry I left so quickly. I forgot about a school project that I'd meant to work on today, and I kind of freaked out."

Phineas just stood there for a moment, sputtering like a fish out of water. Isabella could tell he didn't believe her at all.

Better he thinks I'm a liar than he knows the truth, she thought.

"I..." he stammered. Everyone else seemed just as stunned at the blatant lie she'd just uttered.

After a moment, Phineas stopped trying to push out words, took Isabella by the shoulders and led her to the edge of the yard, a little ways away from the others.

"Isabella..." he said quietly. "I've known you for years, and I can tell that something's up. Is there someone who's trying to hurt you, or... I don't know. What's going on, Isabella?"

Isabella could hear the concern in Phineas' voice. She could see it in his eyes, and she felt her willpower beginning to waver again.

Maybe... Maybe he can help me, she thought to herself. He could protect us both.

No. No! She'd decided this already; she couldn't put Phineas at risk like that.

She tried to put on a bit of a smile.

"No, it's nothing like that," she said, trying to keep her voice from cracking. "I just freaked out a little. I was feeling stressed."

"But you..." he shook his head, as if still trying to understand what was going on. "But before that you were freaking out about... I don't know, you said you felt like you were being watched. Like you kept seeing stuff that wasn't there."

"... I was really, really stressed."

Isabella could tell just how thin her lie was, and she could tell that Phineas wasn't going for it. If she was going to be honest with herself, she was hoping he would push her and try to find out the truth, even though she knew she couldn't let him find out under any circumstances.

So she was both more grateful than she could say and more disappointed than words could convey that he didn't.

"Well..." he said. "If you say so, I guess. Just... You can tell me if something's going on. You know that, right?"

His words made her want to start crying.

No, Phineas, she thought to herself. I can't.

She clapped her hands together, trying to keep the tears out of her eyes.

"So," she said with what she hoped was a convincing smile. "What are you guys doing today?"

Perry

Day 62

Perry's bailed out of his hovercar while flying over Doofenshmirtz' house, dropping onto the balcony with the aid of his logo'd paraglider.

Doofenshmirtz stood near the door his back turned to Perry. Normally, Perry would have found some sort of stealthy way to approach and apprehend him, but right now he had more important business to pursue, so a more direct approach was necessitated.

He let the glider fall and walked over to Doofenshmirtz, who made no indication of noticing him, and reached up to tap him on the shoulder.

Nothing happened.

"Ah, Perry the Platypus," said Doofenshmirtz, without seeming to turn around, though his voice seemed to be coming from the doorway, as opposed to from his body. "I see you have discovered my life-size cardboard cutout of myself. Go ahead, walk around it. It's flat!"

Perry did so, and saw that what he thought was his arch nemesis was, in fact, a cardboard cutout of his arch nemesis, which explained why his voice hadn't seemed to be coming from his body. While doing so, he also stepped on a pressure plate and, after the sound of an inator going off, felt himself trapped between two large pieces of green and orange cardboard.

Wait. Was he stuck between two life-size cardboard cutouts of himself?

"And now you are nothing but a cardboard cutout, Perry the Platypus!" As he spoke, Doofenshmirtz walked out of the doorway where he had apparently been lying in wait. "So, now you have experienced first-hand my latest invention- the Life-Size Cardboard Cutout-inator! It will-"

Perry made his characteristic growling noise.

"Yes?" Doofenshmirtz asked. "If you have questions, I would appreciate it if you would save it until I'm done with my monologue."

Perry reached under his hat and pulled out the photos he'd retrieved from the O.W.C.A. vaults, bending the top of one of his cardboard cutouts in doing so. Doofenshmirtz took the photos and began leafing through them.

"Auntie Hansel!" he said with a gasp. "And... And Arndt? He was an O.W.C.A. agent?"

Perry growled in response.

"I... This is incredible. An O.W.C.A. agent in my family? This blows my mind. It just..."

Suddenly he noticed Perry's bent cardboard cutout.

"Oh, for the love of... Could you at least pretend to be trapped?"

Perry rolled his eyes, but returned his arm to a trapped position between the cardboard, and Doofenshmirtz returned his gaze to the pictures.

"I..." he murmured. "I'm sorry. I should explain.

"You see, I'm Drusselstinian, but I have a lot of family in Germany, which makes sense, since Drusselstein is little more than a comic send-up of rural Germany. My aunt Hansel was one of those relatives; she lived in this little village on the Black Forest. She used to come visit Drusselstein in the summers with her children. No husband; she was a widow.

"Anyway, she had a daughter Eloise who she brought with her, and Eloise was... Well, she was quiet, first of all. In all of her visits to Drusselstein, I don't think she said more than five hundred words. And when she did speak, it was... Strange. She never mentioned him when her mother was around, but whenever she wasn't, the only thing she could talk about was 'Der Blass Mann.' It's German for 'the pale man.' She never really elaborated on just who he was; I'd always just assumed he was a family friend of some sort. But it still creeped me out whenever she talked about him.

"She only made the mistake of mentioning him when her mother was around once. She just started screaming at her never to talk about Der Blass Man again, like he was some sort of imaginary friend she really, really wanted Eloise to forget about."

Perry gestured at the picture of Arndt- well, at the picture he was in. There were at least five other people in the picture as well, but Doofenshmirtz seemed to understand what Perry was asking about.

"Oh, right. Arndt was aunt Hansel's German Shepherd. Whenever he came, he spent most of his time either playing with Only Son- you remember him, right? Anyway, Arndt was always either playing with him or watching Eloise. He always seemed on edge with her. I mean, he loved her, but he always seemed really nervous. He kept growling at thin air when he was with her, especially when they were outside, and he never really trusted anyone besides her. He always growled at us whenever we got near her.

"The last time Eloise visited was when she was about fourteen. I was maybe ten at the time. On her last visit, she seemed happier. But it was a really creepy kind of happiness, like she'd joined some sort of cult. She kept telling me how she'd accepted Der Blass Mann, and how he was finally coming for her. Whenever her mother wasn't around, of course. It really creeped me out, and I tried not to be alone with her on that visit.

"And Arndt was acting really strange then too, I remember. He didn't seem to be as concerned with keeping us or whatever it was he was always growling at away from Eloise; he seemed more worried about keeping her company. He kept whining- you know, that weird noise dogs make when they're scared of something? And he would not be separated from her under any circumstances. He stayed with her no matter what. He seemed... Almost scared for her. Of what, I have no idea."

He sighed and lowered the picture a little bit.

"Four weeks after they went home to Germany, my parents received a letter from aunt Hansel. It said that Eloise had gone missing in the night, along with Arndt. The police found what was left of her scattered across a forest clearing."

He shuddered. "It still scares me to think about- almost as much as Der Kinderlumper."

Suddenly his gaze refocused, like he'd been caught up in his recollections and was just coming out of them.

"Anyway, why did you want to know about Eloise?" he asked, passing the papers back to Perry.

Perry growled and pulled out a clipping from that day's newspaper- an article about Isabella's disappearance. Fortunately for everyone still in shock about it (i.e., just about everyone involved), only a single reporter had come around to ask about it, so the article was a pretty small one- maybe two paragraphs.

Of course, if Isabella stayed missing for much longer, that was likely to change.

Doofenshmirtz took the article and looked over it.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "Was she your owner?"

Perry growled again and shook his head.

"Um... Her friends? Was your owner a friend of hers?"

Perry nodded.

"Well, I'm very sorry, but I don't see what this has to do with-"

Perry pulled out the picture of Eloise again and held it up next to the article. It took Doofenshmirtz a moment to make the connection.

"You..." he stammered. "You think whatever happened to..." He looked back at the article. "To Isabella is somehow connected to what happened to Eloise?"

Perry nodded again.

Doofenshmirtz chuckled and passed back the article and the photo.

"Do you want my opinion, Perry?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued "I think you're so torn up about her disappearance that you're grasping at straws to try and explain what happened. Give it a few days. I'm sure the police will find something."

He looked down at his watch.

"Oh, geez," he said. "It's four-thirty already, and I have a guitar lesson at five. Do you think we could squeeze in a little scheme-foiling before I have to go?"

After a moment, Perry nodded. He'd gotten a lot more information than he'd really expected already.

Then he tore brought down his arm tearing through his cardboard restraints.

"Ah-ha!" Doofenshmirtz called out, obviously eager to get down to the thwarting. "You are too late, Perry the Platypus. Soon I shall have turned all of Danville into cardboard cutouts, and there is nothing you can do to stop me!"

Isabella

Day 2

Isabella pushed the sliding glass door shut behind her and gave a sigh of relief. So far, the day had gone well. The other kids were obviously still concerned about the day before, but she had stuck to her excuse and they seemed to be accepting it, if still not quite believing she had homework over the summer.

But the obvious concern Phineas still had for her had been enough to almost bring tears to her eyes a few times. She could tell just how transparent her lie was to him, and it was heartbreaking to think that she couldn't let him know the truth under any circumstances.

She shook her head, trying not to let her mind linger in that field. Then she saw a drop of blood hit the floor, and she remembered why she'd made an excuse to get back inside.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and tilted her head back, scanning the room for tissues. She spied a box on the counter and grabbed it, then took a seat in the den, making sure she couldn't be seen from the yard.

The couch made a bit of a "foomph" noise as she fell onto it with a sigh, her head held back with a clump of tissues over her nose. She could distantly hear the other kids working on the day's project- a space elevator- in the backyard. Candace had left just a few minutes before, vowing to fetch their mother, and Perry had vanished not too long before that.

Suddenly, she heard the sliding glass door open and someone step through. Still on edge from the previous night,

Whoever it was who had just come in took a few steps into the room. Then, after a moment's silence, Isabella heard Adyson say "Isabella? Why are you hiding behind the couch?"

"Oh," Isabella said sheepishly through her plugged nose. "Hey, Adyson."

She stood up slowly, trying to keep her head tilted back and her nose plugged. "What are you doing inside?" she asked, hoping to divert attention from her nose bleed.

"Ferb needed something from the garage," Adyson said. "Um... so, why are you hiding, again?"

"Oh, it's nothing," she said. "Just... you know, allergies. And it's pretty dry out."

"Yeah, but I asked you why you were hiding, not why your nose was bleeding."

Isabella's mind raced for a good excuse. "Phineas," she blurted out before she thought about what she was saying, since he was usually the first thing that came to her mind in any given situation.

Her one-word response evoked a quizzical look from Adyson

"... I don't want him to see me like this," she finished after an awkward pause. "I would be embarrassed."

Another awkward pause followed, as Adyson's expression shifted from one of bewilderment to one of disbelief.

"You're kidding me," she said in a tone that mirrored her expression. "Something's going wrong and you aren't running to Phineas for help? You take any opportunity you can get to hang out with Phineas, much less to get sympathy out of him."

She sighed.

"Look, I know something weird happened yesterday, something you don't want to tell the rest of us. But... you know, if something's wrong, you can tell us. You can tell Phineas, at least."

No, Isabella thought to herself. I can't tell anyone, least of all Phineas.

She tried to hide these thoughts with a fake smile, and an assurance that nothing was wrong. But she could tell Adyson wasn't buying it.

Well, if she couldn't convince Adyson she was fine, she could at least get her to not tell Phineas. She pulled the paper towel off her nose and wiped the excess blood off her upper lip and chin. It still seemed to be bleeding, but she needed to convince Adyson it was alright.

"Look, just... just don't tell Phineas, alright? I'd be really embarrassed if he found out."

Adyson still looked unconvinced, but at that moment, Phineas stuck his head through the sliding glass door and said "Hey, did you get that wrench yet, Adyson?"

Isabella surreptitiously hid the bloody paper towel behind her back.

"Hey, Phineas," she said.

"Oh, hey, Isabella. What are you doing in here?"

"Oh, I just needed a drink of water," she said, a little stab of emotion going through her at the lie. "I'll be out in a sec."

She looked at Adyson, mentally admonishing her not to tell Phineas.

Her glance elicited a little eye roll from Adyson, but she looked like she was going to keep quiet.

She thought so, anyway.

She sighed. It's going to be a long summer, she thought to herself.

Boy, she has no idea.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed:

Art n'Music: Oh, just you wait. It's gonna get a lot better... (or worse, depending on your perspective)

Sleeping Kangaroo

gamelover41592: I probably would do that if supported it...

Dora-nichov Russian Werewolf:

14AmyChan: But not just yet...

EDD17SP: ... Wow. That's a long review.
First off, thanks. I expend so much effort trying to get my friends to do critical assessments of my work that I tend to forget how nice it feels to have someone just say "This story is great."
Second, I do have an idea for a whole Perry storyline, and on fitting it into the rest of the story, but in all honesty, I'm really pantsing this and I'm looking forward to seeing just where everything goes as everyone else is.
Third, that was supposed to be a sign of his general messing with electronics, but I guess I really should have made that clearer.
And fourth... Geez. They must have really ****ty update schedules to be worse than me.

Guest

ayahsad167: Yes. Yes, you are. Congratulations!

Web2theweb1

AuthorD: Technically, humans are animals...

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Another Guest:

Bob (another guest)

Yet Another Guest: Actually, I was referring to the one I live in. It's defended by flamethrower turrets and land mines.

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to review!