Author's Notes: Oh, hey. An update. Sorry this took so long.

Also, the winners of the contest. The answer was "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath.

MISCeLeniiOUS - First place, now voice Six. (Your physical appearance will show up soon. Not this chapter, but soon. Swear.)

JackieDanielStark - Second place, now an upcoming ghost.

NikaStarlight - Third place, now an upcoming mental patient.


Chapter Ten
Decisions

The visible owner of the first voice, the Man with Half a Face, was upon Danny within the blink of an eye. He firmly placed his putrified hand over Danny's mouth, and Danny nearly gagged. "Don't scream," the ghost said. "Scream, and they might come."

"Or perhaps they won't," said the seventh voice. "After what he did to the surgeon's room, I'd wager that they're scared of him."

"Either way," said Four, "they're wondering what to do with this particular inmate. No doubt about that."

"Oh, his face! The surgeon's face!" Six squealed. "Did you see his face when everything came tumbling down? Did you?" She burst into a fit of giggles.

"It was splendid," said the fifth voice, "but the boy obviously overreacted. There are far worse things than physicals." Danny attempted to say something, but the man's hand muffled it into an unintelligble slur of sounds that may have been something like a question of one word. Physicals?

"We don't have time to talk about this," the man said to the darkness. "If you have them, keep your mouths shut. We have business to discuss." He looked down at Danny. "Do you promise not to scream?"

Danny nodded. In his mouth was the lingering taste of ectoplasm and carnal decay. It was far from pleasant, but he was in no position to complain. "What's going on here?"

"A lot," said the Man with Half a Face, almost bitterly. "The head surgeon is cleaning up what is left of his laboratory. The people who aren't starving don't know what they're eating. At least one death is occuring, right now, as we speak; therefore, at least one more ghost is listening to us. And you and I are conversing civily about entirely uncivil things, in an entirely uncivil place. That is what's going on here."

"I. . . I don't understand," Danny said, bluntly. "I don't understand any of this. Like, at all."

"Why are you here?"

"My parents think I'm nuts and hurting myself," Danny said, rolling his eyes. "Some quack sent me here. And I let it happen, 'cause I thought I'd be out in, like, two, maybe three, months max."

The ghost snorted, somewhat amused. "In two or three months," he said, "you'll be dead."

"More dead," Six added, her smile somehow apparent in her voice.

"Shush," the man hissed to her. He turned to Danny. "That is, if you don't help us."

"Uh, yeah, I heard the 'help us or join us' thing the first ten times you guys said it," Danny said. "What do you want help with?"

"Revenge." The man paused. "The ghosts here are numberless, and every one is depending on you for their release, whether they know it or not."

"Can't you guys just go into the Ghost Zone?" Danny asked. "Isn't that where you came from?"

The man arched what was left of his one eyebrow. "Did you come from the Ghost Zone?"

"Well, uh, no, I guess," Danny said.

"Everything in there is from somewhere else," explained the first ghost, "with some exceptions. It's a place of dead things and forgotten things, manifestations and creatures made of pure energy – things that were once human and things that were never human at all. Dead myths and dead eras. . . Monsters. . . Nothing comes from it. It all goes there."

"Okay, but why don't you just go there?"

"Obsession, maybe," said the man.

"We can't leave," the third voice moaned.

"We have a purpose," the man continued. "We watch over this place, and wait for an opportunity to end it. You, I believe, are our opportunity. You can hear us, see us, feel us, even smell us, because, really, you're one of us. And the patients – they can see you, hear you, feel you. . . They know you're real, because you're one of them."

"What do you want me to do?" Danny asked.

"Kill," said Five, simply.

"What? No! That's totally nuts!"

"I'll beg your pardon!" Four said.

"We want you to end Sanatorium Mortifera," the Half-Faced Man said, "by any means possible."

"I. . . I don't know," Danny said. It wasn't really a question of whether or not he would do it; he had to, or he would die. He needed to think about how he was going to do it, which he couldn't do at that moment. He was weak, fatigued, and fairly sure that, if he wasn't half-ghost, he would have died from starvation by then. He curled up on the floor, apathetic toward its filth. "I need to sleep on it."

"You don't have very long," the Man said. "We need your decision as soon as possible."

"Mmhmm," Danny agreed absently. He shut his eyes, hoping that, when he opened them again, he would be home. All of this would be a nightmare. There wouldn't really be an asylum or rotting ghosts. He'd get dressed and go to school and be as normal as he could possibly be. . .

Then the door opened and ripped him from his normal life.

"My, my, Daniel," said an impossible, familiar voice – one that Danny partially hated and partially welcomed –, "you look terrible."

Danny made an unintelligible noise, neither moving nor opening his eyes. Footsteps fell toward him, getting progressively louder as they neared.

"I wouldn't go near that thing if I were you. It isn't human," a doctor warned.

"Oh, shut up," the familiar voice said. "I know perfectly well what I'm doing."

An expensive Italian leather shoe nudged the boy, as if he were an animal found on the side of the road – possibly alive, but most likely dead. The owner of the shoe made a disappointed, tsk tsk sound, and mumbled something like, "Perfect timing."

Danny opened one of his eyes. "Vlad?" he asked, not quite sure if he was lucidly dreaming or hallucinating, or if this was real. Danny then opened both of his eyes, squinted at the older halfa, and frowned. "You're not actually here."

"And why would that be?" Vlad asked.

"Haven't you heard?" Danny asked, a bit of sarcasm leaking into his voice. "I'm nuts now. You're a hallucination."

"I assure you, Daniel, that I'm really here."

"Oh yeah? How'd you find me?" Danny asked.

"Money has a way of getting information out of anyone."

"Pfft. What'd you do? Bribe Grimm?"

"That's exactly what I did," Vlad said. "I'm here to help you, my boy."

"Well, that's really convienient," Danny said, rolling his eyes. "Just peachy-perfect. Where the hell were you when I was being sent to this hell-hole to begin with?"

"Attending to business, I'm afraid," Vlad said, smiling in a way Danny guessed was supposed to be congenial. "That's beside the point. What would you say if I were to take you out of here, right now? I have a room set up for you, and we can send for your things. . ."

"You can do that?"

"What can't I do?"

Danny was about to say, "Modesty is one," but was cut off by the doctor in the doorway.

"Uh, sir? You're going to need to speak to the Head Surgeon, as he would very much like to study this mentally unstable specimen. . ."

"Of course," Vlad said. He turned back to Danny and said, "Think about it, Daniel. Rotting in here, or becoming the son of a billionaire. It's not a difficult decision."

With that, Danny was, once again, left alone with his possibly insane thoughts – and the possibly insane ghosts.