A/N: Um. Heh. It's been two weeks. Story is running away from me again... see that tiny figure holding it by its tail? That's me. Still going in the right direction though, so no worries.
I'm sort of changing tactics. You may see shorter chapters, closely following each other (because I'm real good at updating... right.) I'm doing that because I want to separate sections that don't belong together.
LOST
Chapter 14: Exploring
I was late and I hadn't called them where I was, so my parents gave me the standard lecture again about calling them, they worried about me, and I should be more careful. I was restless, eying the leftover spaghetti with the faintly glowing sauce and only half listening, the thoughts in my head swirling, revolving around the center thought in my brain: Find Sam. Find Tucker. At any cost.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry Maddie, I forgot," I said hastily when she stopped to take a breath.
She stopped talking and looked at me, and I saw the realization there that she couldn't get through to me no matter how hard she tried. I felt guilty again, but I suppressed that feeling. I had more pressing matters.
"Honey, please understand," she said, an uncertain look on her face, "I know you don't think us a real family, but we have certain rules here, and if you're going to live here, you'll have to abide by them..."
I sighed and I shouldn't have. Or taken a mint or something. Because she smelled my breath. She stiffened.
"You've been drinking," she said accusingly, a scared and disappointed expression washing over her face.
Jack, who was just getting up to get a second desert, started and sat back down at the kitchen table. Jazz, who had been clearing the table, ignoring the fact that her father was still eating, almost dropped the glasses she was holding.
"O-only a little bit," I stuttered, backing away. This was not going the way I had planned. "One beer. Didn't even get to finish it."
A silence fell over the kitchen as they all stared at me. A car drove by. The refrigerator hummed. I looked at the ground, avoiding their eyes.
"Sweetie," my mother started.
"I'm not drunk!"
She shook her head in exasperation. "Who gave you that beer, Danny?"
Well, that was one question I wasn't going to answer. "I'll be in my room," I said, abruptly turning around.
I rushed up the stairs, but I couldn't get away that easily. My mother followed close behind. She entered my room with me and then hesitated.
"I don't want to do this," she said, "But I'm going to search your room."
I threw my hands in the air and let myself fall down on the bed. She didn't trust me. Well, I wouldn't trust me either, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. She opened the drawers of my desk, felt around in my closet and then made me get off the bed so she could feel under the mattress. I looked at her coldly, and she finally gave up.
"I'm sorry, Danny," she said, "But in your condition..."
I turned away and purposefully stared out of the window.
"Danny, please understand, it's not that I don't trust you, but I know it can be hard..."
"You have no idea," I said hoarsely, "Could you please just leave me alone?"
She left. I kept staring out of the window, but finally turned around when I didn't hear the door close behind her. Jazz was standing there, a hurt look on her face.
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, God, I'm sick and tired of being psychoanalyzed the whole day," I said, dropping down on my bed once again, "Please drop it, Jazz."
"I can't."
She stepped into the room, closing the door behind her and I groaned.
"You have ways to hide things in a way that we can never find them. Danny, please look at me. Did you hide beer, or anything else with alcohol in it in your room, underneath the floor, or in the wall or something? Do I need to tear down your room just to make sure?"
I lifted my head and scowled at her. "No," I said, "I've never..." I stopped. I stared at her without really seeing her. Hide things so they would never be found, by turning them intangible and burying them underground. Or in a wall. Or beneath the floor planks without leaving marks. Only accessible by tearing down the room.
The crowbar.
I jumped up, yanked the doors of my closet open and dove into it, retrieving the crowbar stashed in the back and generally making a mess of things. Then I looked around. Where could I use this, what part of the room would be accessible with a crowbar... I dismissed the walls. Too smooth. Or the ceiling, too high. It needed to be easily accessible in case of emergency, in case I wasn't there to retrieve whatever it was that I had hidden. That left the floor.
I looked at it intently. The planks were really close together. No cracks to be seen, nowhere to jam the end of the crowbar in and start pulling. I yanked the small rug beside my bed aside. Nothing. Jazz seemed to get what I was trying to do, because she pulled the bed aside completely. I shook my head at it, not accessible enough. I wandered to my desk, weighing the crowbar in my hands. I kicked the trashcan. A soda can fell out. Under the trashcan, there was a small crack in the floor, almost unnoticeable. I dropped the crowbar, turned my hand intangible and stuck it through the floor.
Which, of course, turned up nothing. I frowned a little, wondering if I could pull it off, and then concentrated on turning my fingers tangible, while keeping my arm intangible. This sounds easier than it is. Somehow, I had to connect so something that was there through something that was, basically, not there. After a few tries I stopped wondering about how it could be possible and just did it.
I felt it immediately. I curled my fingers around the small object and pulled my hand back, remembering to turn everything I wanted out of the floor intangible again. I held out my hand to Jazz, who was leaning over me. A memory stick. Dusty. Excitement rushed through me, and I quickly turned on my computer.
"There should be a map, too," Jazz said.
She obviously had forgotten all about why she was there in the first place, and I was glad. I didn't want her focusing on my supposed drinking issues, I wanted her to help me find my friends. Solve that mystery and the other problems would go away. I stuck my hand into the floor again, and this time retrieved a piece of paper. The map. It was yellowed with age, annotated with notes and scribbling in the margins. It looked well used.
I was grinning like crazy when I sat down behind my desk, impatiently typing in my new password and sticking the memory stick into the computer. Muttering 'Come on, come on' to the computer, I waited for the thing to settle down, staring intently at the little hourglass that refused to let me do anything until the thing was done starting up. Finally, I was able to access the memory stick, and I stared at its contents in amazement.
Hundreds of files. Documents, pictures, a database. A real treasure.
"This is it," Jazz said excitedly, "This is what I found on your computer the other day, only there is so much more of it now! Look a the size of that database! I bet it catalogs ghosts..."
"You were in my computer?" I asked.
She turned red. "You excluded me. I needed to know. Besides, it's a long time ago, almost three years..."
I frowned at her, but decided to let it rest. For the moment. I turned back to the screen and double clicked the database. Luckily, it didn't need a password. I typed a request for a listing of all the ghosts, and was rewarded with a long list of names, alphabetically sorted. Amorpho, The 'Ancient Ghosts', Aragon, Behemoth...
"There's so many of them..." I said.
I mindlessly scrolled down the list until I reached 'Skulker', and clicked that one to get more information. There was a picture of him, a list of strengths and weaknesses, and I laughed a little at the picture of the tiny blob that really was Skulker. There was also a reference to Vlad.
"Vlad," I breathed, "He works for Vlad..."
I stared off into space. What did that mean? Why had he attacked me that day? My mother's voice coming from outside the room brought me back to reality.
"Danny? Are you going to eat your dinner or should I put it in the fridge?"
I had dinner by myself, sitting alone at the kitchen table, ignoring the faint green glow that came off the spaghetti sauce. It occurred to me that I no longer questioned my mother's cooking or my father's absentminded use of the ecto oven to give 'that extra glow' to his food. My mother was in the living room, and my father sort of hung around, hovering in and out of the kitchen, looking every time like he wanted to say something, but then thinking better of it. It was awkward. I ate quickly and hurried back upstairs, mumbling something about homework.
When Jazz entered my room an hour later, I was sitting at my desk, my math books in front of me without really seeing them. Instead, I was staring at the framed picture of me and my friends, trying to get through to them somehow, trying to access that part of my brain that hid them. The more I tried, the more they eluded me. The map of the ghost zone was laying next to my math book, which practically guaranteed that the book was a lost cause.
She pulled up another chair and sat down next to me, pushing the map away. She tried to guide me through the math problems, but I couldn't bring myself to listen. The unimportance of it all struck me, and after the third attempt to make me solve an equation she threw down her pencil in frustration.
"I know what you're thinking," she said to me, "We can't just go barge into the ghost zone, it's dangerous. It's huge, endless. That map, it shows only a very small part of it."
"But they're in there. I have to at least try," I said, putting the map on top of my math book again.
We both looked at it. Jazz sighed. "We have to try," she said, "But first, we're going to study that map, and all those ghosts. We have to be prepared, Danny. You were once familiar with the ghost zone, you knew the dangers of it, but not anymore. Come on, let's finish that homework and then look at those ghosts again."
She forced me to concentrate, and I really tried this time. Somehow, I managed to finish my homework without Jazz practically having to dictate everything I wrote down. Then we looked at the database again. Bertrand. The Box Ghost – I'd met him. Box Lunch. Bullet.
Jazz started rubbing her eyes. I was tired too.
"Look, let's call it a day," I said, "We'll look at it again tomorrow, we'll have the whole afternoon because it's Friday."
She left, and I turned off the computer and dropped down on my bed. Laying down like that, completely still, I could hear the noises of the house. The TV was on downstairs, some wildlife documentary, probably my mother watching. Faint sounds coming from Jazz's room. A few cars driving by outside. And the distinct pull of the ghost portal.
I had resisted the thing for over a week now, and I now knew why it wanted me. I was part of it, I was made of ectoplasm, I needed to go in there and search my friends. I remembered Vlad's comments on how he hadn't been able to find me, that I 'wasn't in the human realm'. Assuming that he wasn't the one who had abducted us, and I know thought that he hadn't, we had been in the ghost zone. All I had to do was go in there and find them.
I waited until the sounds in the house died down, Jazz in the bathroom brushing her teeth, the TV turned off, my father's heavy footsteps on the stairs. A soft knock on my door and my mother entered the room. She looked at me for a moment, still laying on the bed with my hands behind my head, opened her mouth to say something, but then thought better of it. She smiled, said 'goodnight, sweetie', and left.
I gave them another hour to completely settle in their beds and fall asleep. I watched as the digits on my alarm clock slowly increased, until it was one AM. Then, I got up, transformed into my ghostly self in a flash and let myself sink through the floor all the way down to the basement. I wasn't going to wait any longer.
The lights in the lab were out, but I could still see. The vials on the shelves were giving off a greenish glow, on the other side of the basement some piece of equipment had a red blinking light on it, and I was giving off a faint white glow. In my eyes, it was as bright as day. The edges of the portal were also faintly glowing, and I floated closer to it and put my hands on the steel doors.
It was tantalizing. A slight, pricking feeling ran through my arms. I wanted to push myself through the door, but that was impossible. The door – thankfully – was ghost proof. I let myself drift to the red button on the side instead, and with some difficulty pulled off my glove. I studied my hand for a moment, surprised how normal it looked despite the unhealthy pallor and the faint glow that came off it. Then I pressed my thumb on the button and the doors slid open. It obviously paid to be a Fenton.
Now extremely aware of the green swirling of the ghost zone, I turned around and looked at the now open portal. It was calling out to me, and I felt myself smile in anticipation. This was what I had wanted to do the whole week. I no longer understood why I had been so afraid of it. The zone was welcoming me, inviting me in, and I was going to accept the invitation.
I drifted closer and put my hand against the swirling green. Then, mentally taking a deep breath, I thrust myself forward and entered.
I don't know what I expected. Maybe just more of that green stuff, swirling around me. Like taking a bath. But it was strange, comfortably eerie, vast. The main color was indeed green. There seemed to be no up or down, no 'sky' or 'ground', just an endless... something in all directions. I was connected to it, I could feel it's rhythm, it's flow, it's... well, you can't call it a heartbeat, but it had one. A silent drum, reverberating through me, encouraging me to go in further, and I did. I moved a few feet, I thought, and then looked back at the portal.
It was impossibly far away. I blinked in surprise and then narrowed my eyes. Anxiously I moved back to it, and it was there, right in front of me. Distances, it seemed, were something else around here. Suddenly I was worried. I had looked at the map and it had seemed simple, easy, but if the dimensions here were different...
I caught a movement from the corner of my eyes and swirled. In the distance, vague figures moved, passing me, apparently not noticing me. I realized I should be on guard here. However much this felt like home, it was still enemy territory. Ghosts were dangerous.
I moved away from the portal again and decided to take a quick look around before returning to the lab. It wouldn't hurt to know what was here, what I was up against. I looked back a couple of times to ascertain that I could indeed find the portal again, taking note of my environment, if you can speak of one in there.
The ghost zone was extremely weird. I had no reference points, only strange shapes and streams of ectoplasm. Purple doors, of which I had no idea where they led. Islands were floating, far away, and I curiously let myself down in that direction. I landed on one of the islands and looked around.
Some sort of forest, lots of fern, high trees, purple flowers. It all looked sort of normal, which, of course, was strange for this place. I took a step between the fern and I felt something snap beneath my feet. Curiously, I looked down and used my hands to push away the leaves.
I started to tremble and my knees buckled. Before I knew it, I was down on the ground, my left hand touching something round and smooth, my right hand touching the many stick-like objects hidden beneath the fern. There was another color here in the ghost zone, another color beside green and purple. White. Bones, hundreds, thousands of them, scattered on the ground, just beneath the undergrowth of the trees. They were dry and incredibly smooth, and they rattled against each other as I tried to move.
My left hand was resting on a skull. A human skull. I didn't need to wonder about the cause of death for that one, as it had a small, round hole right between the eyes. I wanted to scream, but somehow forgot that I had no air in my lungs. No sound came out. It took my frozen brain a few seconds before I realized I could just fly out of there.
Not.
I pushed myself up and tried to mentally access the 'go fly' in my head, but it didn't work. Somehow, this floating piece of rock was keeping me down, gravity where no gravity should exist. I realized belatedly that I should have avoided coming down here. I blundered into this place, thinking of it as if it were a walk in the park. The ghost zone was dangerous. Jazz had warned me, tried to explain it to me, but I just hadn't listened to her. Again. My mind had been on that strange pulling, and I had been convinced that the ghost zone wasn't dangerous to me. Because I was a ghost.
I let some air into my lungs and it sounded like a sob. Slowly, I pushed myself up, willed myself to stand upright. I had to get moving, had to get out of there, if not flying then on foot. Which meant...
I took a step, and felt bones snap beneath my feet. I whimpered. Another step. Rattling, something rolled away, something white and round, bouncing through the fern. I stopped. I couldn't do this. I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes, trying to shut the world out. I put my gloved hands on the trunk, trying to feel some reality, something to hold on to, something else than the bones on the ground, the bones I could still feel beneath my boots.
The bark felt strange. It moved. It tugged on my gloves. I gulped, and forced my eyes open. This time, I did have air in my lungs. I screamed, and scrambled backwards. The bark consisted of thousands of little mouths with pointed teeth, gnawing at everything that touched the trunk of the tree. It had bitten a hole in my left glove, and as I watched, the place where I had touched the tree seemed to try to reach out to me, mouths opening wide, as if waiting to be fed.
I fled. I ignored the bones on the ground, their rattling, the snapping sound. I rushed away from the trees, weaving my way through the forest until I suddenly came to the edge of the floating island. Without stopping, I leaped. And flew.
Blinking, I turned around and viewed the island. It looked innocent, beautiful even with the large purple flowers growing on the edge. Deceivingly so. Islands, I decided with a shudder, should be avoided at all cost. I let myself drift upwards, towards the... well, not the sky. To the part of the ghost zone that I thought of as 'up'. I decided that I had seen enough of the place, that I needed to get back to my parent's lab, get some sleep. I was just about to move in the general direction of the portal when something grabbed me from behind, something wet and slimy, wrapping itself around my body, moving me towards it.
I struggled and groaned and managed to turn around, just in time to be able to stare into the huge yellow eyes of an ectopus, which inexorably drew me closer. For a moment, I was paralyzed, then I remembered I had means to do something about it so I tried to go intangible. Which, of course, didn't work. This was the ghost zone. I struggled to get my hands free, to no avail. I was really starting to get worried now. The ectopus was way stronger than I was, and it started squeezing. If I had been human, I'd have been dead, because there was no way I could have breathed.
I was under the ectopus now, and in a strange sort of fascination I looked at the opening there, which it was drawing me near to. At one point, I decided, the thing would have to let go of me, assuming it wouldn't eat its own tentacle. I stopped struggling, hoping the thing would think I was unconscious, and ease its grip somewhat. I knew I could get out of this. The only thing I needed to do was stay calm, which, in the end, proved harder than I thought.
Its mouth, for lack of a better word, opened, and the creature suddenly let go of me, flinging me in the direction of the opening. Before I knew it, I was in it and it started closing around me. It was dark and slimy and it burned.
I panicked. I kicked and tried to move, but the space was very tight, and some sort of acid started eating it's way through my jumpsuit. I couldn't move, and my mind screamed 'intangible', which wouldn't work here. I struggled some more, and then, finally, let the energy stream to my hands the way Vlad taught me, focusing everything I had in there, and then letting go.
The ectopus absorbed the blast. Of course it would. I wasn't the only ghost who could fire ectoblasts, if the ectopus were to catch ghosts this way, it would be able to withstand the ghost firing at it from inside its mouth. I fired again, and again, using more energy with each blast, knowing it wouldn't work, but not knowing what else to do. I felt myself go cold, and I was wondering if this was it, if this was ghost death, if there was such a thing. I was dissolving, I could feel the ectoplasm seeping out of me, my protective jumpsuit nearly gone.
Cold.
Something in my mind clicked, and again I reached. This time, I didn't try to form an ecto beam. This time, I concentrated on the cold. I let it seep into my hands, let them glow with it, and I felt a shudder going through the creature. I had it now. I had to control it, I couldn't let it control me... who had said that to me? Struggling, I tried to gather more of the coldness from inside of me, tried to spread it around me, effectively freezing the ectopus. Then, when I thought I had done enough, I let out a massive ectoblast. The ectopus shattered.
I was free. Dazed, half crazy, I looked around at the floating remains of the thing. I had blown it to pieces, but to my horror I saw that the tentacles were still moving, groping aimlessly at things it couldn't see. I turned around and stared straight into a yellow eye, hovering about three feet away from me. It blinked.
I bolted.
Without looking back, I sped off as fast as I could, which turned out to be pretty fast. I found myself swerving around the island, evading floating purple doors and strange green clouds. I only stopped when I remembered I should probably pay attention to where I was going. Drifting quietly, extremely on edge and looking around frantically for any movement, I tried to make out where I was.
The ghost zone was endless. Jazz had told me that too. In fact, there were so many things Jazz had told me that I didn't pay attention to I wondered how I managed to get up in the morning. I turned around and looked behind me. The scenery didn't change at all. Everything looked the same. Islands. Doors. Strange, cloud-like green globs. Huge spirals, like far away star-systems. A huge purple football.
I stared at it. No way.
I approached it wearily, then tentatively pushed it out of the way. A portal, right in front of me. Relief washed over me and I quickly went through it, to find myself in Vlad's lab. And although I was glad to be out of the place, a small part of me already regretted leaving the zone. I looked back longingly at the green swirling, promising myself I'd get back in there some other time, then made a movement to close the door.
"Daniel."
I jumped three feet in the air and swirled around. Vlad was standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a blue dressing gown over purple pajamas. His face was expressionless, but the way he had said my name signaled trouble.
"Hi Vlad," I said flippantly, "Just passing through."
He casually raised his hand and shot me with a pink ecto beam, hitting me in the right shoulder.
"Hey!" I shouted, "What was that for?"
"I thought I told you not to drink any alcohol," he said, walking closer.
How had he found that out so quickly? He raised his hand again, but this time I saw it coming and put up a shield. He didn't fire though, but smiled instead.
"Been exploring the ghost zone, have you?" he asked.
"So?"
He shook his head and gestured to the mirror at the far end of his lab. Frowning, I flew to it and looked at myself.
My arms were bare, with deep, jagged marks on them. The protective suit I had been wearing had been eaten away. One glove was gone too, the other had holes in it. There were holes on my chest and on my legs. My boots seemed to be OK.
"Holy crap," I said.
I reached for my human form and let the two rings appear around my waist. After the transformation, I looked again. White t-shirt, jeans, red sneakers. I sighed in relief. My arms were a bit red, and I could feel it itching, but that was all. I was about to turn around to look at Vlad, when he painfully grabbed my arm and slammed me against the wall.
"I don't appreciate being disturbed in the middle of the night," he said.
"Well, then you should have stayed in bed... ouch!" He had slammed me against the wall again.
"There is an alarm on my portal. Ghosts with any sense stay away from my lab. Obviously, you're lacking that particular trait."
No argument there, I suppose. I grunted as he leaned against me, making it hard for me to breathe.
"Do you have any idea how foolish this was? You're a target, Daniel, there are a great number of ghosts that would love to get a shot at you. You've revealed yourself. They'll know you're back now, and you're not ready for them."
I scowled at him. He sighed.
Go home, Daniel," he continued, "I'll decide on what to do with you tomorrow."
Only then did he let go of me, and I stumbled forward, gasping for air. I took my time, leaning my hands on my knees, refusing to look up at my archenemy. Archenemy, who had me completely under control. Somewhere deep inside of me I felt the start of something dark and ugly.
"I hate you," I said.