Dreams
Sam
I should have known it was just a dream. The permanent ban on dissecting animals in biology lab alone should have been a dead giveaway. Or Paulina having the worst hair day ever. Or the fact that there'd just been an announcement over the PA system that the next Morbid Antisocial Youth music video, which would be zombie-themed, was being filmed at Casper High and all students were invited to meet the band and be extras in full zombie makeup. And don't even get me started on the entire school (minus Tucker) voting to make the cafeteria all-vegetarian all the time.
But it was so clear, so real, that even though it was all too perfect to be true, I didn't know it was a dream. Not until I got the one thing I wanted more than animal rights, being a zombie in one of my favorite band's music video, and an all-veggie menu in the cafeteria combined—and was even less likely to ever really happen. Can you make room for your girlfriend?
I was in the cafeteria, where Danny was waiting for me. And I'd just called myself his girlfriend and he didn't even blink. In fact, it was as if we'd been together forever. He just smiled as I sat down beside him. Nice jacket.
That's when I noticed I was wearing a letter jacket. With Danny's name embroidered on it.
Okaaaaay. Even in the completely improbable scenario where everything else that had just happened were true, up to and including me being Danny's girlfriend, I would never, ever actually wear the symbol of our oppression at the hands of all things popular: the jock jacket. And why would Danny have one, anyway?
But it was so real. I could smell the stale odor of beef goulash that the cafeteria would never be able to get rid of even if they went all veggie for a hundred years. I could feel Danny's hand through the jacket as he put his hand on my shoulder. I could see his eyes turn a deeper shade of blue as they met mine, smell the fresh scent of his favorite shower gel as he leaned toward me, until his lips were almost touching mine.
Then I knew. Danny, my boyfriend? Danny, kissing me?
Impossible.
Before our lips could meet, however, a loud crash sounded across the cafeteria. Startled, we jerked apart and looked toward the source of the noise.
Danny Phantom had just knocked over the entire table of silverware and condiments.
Confused, I looked at the Danny sitting next to me. Wait. You can't be in two places at once!
Across the table, Dash Baxter leaned toward us. Actually, Sam... I'm Danny Phantom! He stood up and pounded his right fist into his left hand. Going ghost!
And then, Dash Baxter turned into Danny Phantom—or, at least, a Dash-like version of Danny Phantom—and I screamed. The cafeteria dissolved around me, and I was sitting upright in my own bed, which meant... it was only a dream. Not just the Dash-as-Danny-Phantom part, but the me-as-Danny's-girlfriend part, too.
Damn. Only a dream.
"That must've been some dream!"
I blinked, suddenly aware that I wasn't alone. Tucker was standing next to my bed. As if that wasn't weird enough, the mattress moved with the weight of someone other than me moving on top of the bed and I turned to see Danny, in ghost form, crawling toward me. Confusion as to what the hell he was doing there gave way almost immediately to mortification at what I'd just been dreaming about him—dear God, please tell me I wasn't talking in my sleep—and I turned away. "I don't remember!" I lied, while at the exact same moment Danny, sounding equally embarrassed, shouted "I didn't see anything!"
That's when enough of my senses returned that I realized that Danny and Tucker were in my room while I was sleeping. "What just happened?"
"We have another stop to make," Danny replied. "We'll explain everything on the way."
"On the way where?"
"To my house. I think this party could use a fourth."
What party? What the heck was he talking about?
Tucker, meanwhile, had grabbed something from my bed and was holding it in his hands, examining it. It looked like some broken tech, and I didn't have the first clue what it was or how it had gotten on my bed, but Tucker seemed to know what it was. "Why don't you guys go on ahead? I need to make a stop back at my house first. From what you told me on our way over here, I think I should do some scans of these helmets. One that's still in operation. If Nocturn is siphoning off people's dreams, he must be collecting them somewhere. I'm pretty sure I can get a general idea how these things work if I scan one that's still working, and then I might be able to trace back to where he's collecting the dreams, and we can shut down the whole system."
He might as well have been speaking in Esperanto as far as I was concerned, but Danny seemed to understand what he was talking about. "Why don't you scan Jazz's headset? We don't have a lot of time for you to go to your place first, especially if we have to walk."
"I don't have any of the gear I need on me. You didn't exactly clue me in as to what we'd need before we rushed after Sam. And what's wrong with flying?"
"I think that's how the Sleepwalkers found us before. The less I use my powers, the better."
"Well, if I borrow Sam's scooter, I can get from here to my house, grab the stuff I need, do a quick scan of my parents' headsets, and be at your house in the time it takes you guys to walk there."
"I don't know, Tuck. If they come after you while you're alone..."
"I'll be careful to avoid them. We need the data if we're gonna stop them for good."
I'd had about all I could take. "Uh... Would anyone like to clue me in on what the heck you're talking about?"
Tucker was already on his way out. "Danny'll tell you, and I'll meet you guys at FentonWorks. Your scooter's out back, right?"
"Yeah, but..."
"I'll see you guys in a few." Then, he gave Danny a strange look I couldn't quite interpret. "The walk will give you two a chance to talk."
The story Danny told as we walked to FentonWorks was a strange one. Apparently, there was a new ghost we'd never seen before, who called himself Nocturn, the Ghost of Sleep. He'd woken Danny up in the middle of the night... last night? Danny wasn't sure. But they'd fought, and Danny had lost, so Nocturn put him to sleep with this helmet-thing, which was what Tucker had been looking at in my bedroom.
Later, Danny woke up again and discovered what Nocturn had done, not just to him, but to the entire town. He'd put everyone to sleep, and the helmets were a sort of twisted version of the Native American dream catchers, only instead of keeping bad dreams away, they sucked the dreams right out of people. Nocturn, along with an army of drone ghosts he called "Sleepwalkers," fed off the stolen dreams. After Danny woke up the second time, they fought again, and Danny was able defeat him with a one-two punch of his ice powers and ghost ray. But the Sleepwalkers were still all over town, everyone else was still helmeted and sleeping, and Danny was guessing that Nocturn was only temporarily out of the picture.
"The helmets keep you asleep, and they also generate some kind of electric shield that keeps anyone else from touching you and waking you up."
I frowned. "So, how did you wake up?"
He winced, looking a little uncomfortable. "Something in my dream happened that was... well, kind of shocking, I guess. And that woke me up. So I realized that I could wake you and Tucker up the same way—by going inside your dreams and shocking you awake. There's this kind of overshadowing that goes deeper than the regular kind, sort of getting me right inside someone's mind. So I went into Tucker's dream first, then yours, and woke you guys up. The thing with Dash turning into Danny Phantom? That was me."
I could feel my insides shrivel and turn to dust. Danny had gone into my dream. He'd made Dash turn into Danny Phantom, which meant he'd heard me say to the other Danny—the dream Danny—that he couldn't be in two places at once, which meant he saw what had preceded that...
Oh, God. Danny saw me dream that we were about to kiss. That I was his girlfriend... It was probably the reason he'd knocked over that table, because he'd been so horrified by the sight of me almost about to kiss him...
Kill me now.
"Sam?"
I couldn't look at him. Could barely speak more than a single word, and that came out hard and brittle. "What?"
"Are you mad at me?"
"No, Danny. I love waking up to find out you were rooting around in my brain, watching my dreams."
He moved around in front of me, walking backwards so we were face to face and I couldn't completely avoid looking at him. "C'mon, Sam. What was I supposed to do, leave you asleep and let Nocturn feed off your dreams? It was the only way I could think of to wake you and Tucker up. I couldn't shake you awake, because those helmets shocked me anytime I touched you. And making noise didn't work, either. It's not like I was trying to invade your privacy. I didn't pick up your diary and read it for fun or anything like that. I had to do it to wake you up. Besides, it was just a dream. People dream all kinds of weird stuff, and it doesn't mean anything. Heck, Tucker was dreaming he was drinking chocolate milk with twins that looked like Starr, and you know how he can't stand her."
I knew he was right, that he hadn't been intending to cross any boundaries or see anything he shouldn't have seen, but it didn't really help. If anything, it only made me more frustrated because I couldn't be mad at him. "I get that you had to do what you had to do, Danny, but that doesn't make it feel any less like an invasion. How would you like it if someone had seen your dream?"
"Like, say, the bad guy? And it's not like he was above throwing it in my face when we were fighting, either. 'Dreams are the gateway to the subconscious,' blah blah blah."
He was missing the point completely and, if I'd have been smart, I would have let it die, but it was too late for saving my dignity or pretending that he hadn't seen what he'd seen or that I didn't care. Gritting my teeth to keep down the bile that was churning in my stomach, I threw away any pretense that the specifics of what I'd been dreaming didn't matter. "Yeah, but I bet you weren't dreaming about him, were you?"
This gave him pause, and he seemed to be wrestling with something. "You're right," he said at last. "I wasn't dreaming about him. I was dreaming about you."
I stopped short, a mixture of anger and a humiliation worse than any I'd ever felt before boiling over inside me and making my cheeks burn. How dare he? What he saw in the course of trying to wake me up and get me out from that ghost's dream helmet wasn't really his fault, but to make light of what he saw? Nearly two years of trying to squelch my growing feelings for him and, to him, it's all a big joke? My eyes narrowed into slits as I glared at him, seething. "That's just great, Danny. It's not bad enough that you invade my privacy, however justifiable the reason, but now you have to mock me, too? Thank you for being so considerate." Brushing past him, I started walking away as fast as I could.
"Sam, wait!" A moment later, I felt his hand on my arm, and he pulled me to a stop and turned me toward him. "Sam, would you hold on for one second? I'm not mocking you. I wouldn't... I'd never...." He paused a moment. "I'm telling you the truth. My dream was the same as yours. Exactly the same as yours."
I couldn't even look at him. "Don't, Danny."
"I'm serious, Sam! Nocturn must've been getting a two-for-one deal or something, because he was feeding us both the same dream. I mean, come on. I'm on the football team, and popular, and you're wearing a jock jacket? Does that sound like your dream?"
Now I did look at him, a little thrown by what was actually a really good point. How was it that, in a dream where everything I ever wanted in life came true, I'd been wearing a jock jacket? And Dash had been sitting with Danny and Tucker in the cafeteria like we were part of the so-called "A-List"? That was about as far from my dream as the all-veggie cafeteria menu would be from Tucker's.
But it was Danny's dream.
Chewing on my lower lip, I studied him a moment and, in his eyes, I could see the truth. For all that he'd managed to keep his identity secret from everyone he knew other than his sister, Danny was a terrible liar. He'd get nervous, and stutter, and sound like whatever he was saying he was making up on the spot. But he wasn't doing any of that now. He was absolutely sincere, and I was having difficulty trying to wrap my mind around the idea. "Really? You really dreamed that you and I... that we were...?" Blushing, I looked down at my boots. Were we really having this conversation?
"Yeah. I dreamed we were... and we almost..."
He was as embarrassed as I was and, for just an instant, I wondered if that could mean he... But then, I came to my senses. It didn't mean anything. If Nocturn was doubling up on dreams and had pulled the popularity stuff out of Danny's, then it stood to reason that he'd gotten the girlfriend stuff from me.
That's when something else occurred to me. Danny had said that he'd figured out he could startle us awake because something had shocked him in his dream and woken him up. Pressing my lips together and still avoiding his gaze, I forced myself to laugh it off as a bit of self-deprecating humor. "So, I guess that was the horrible nightmare that woke you up."
"Who said it had to be a nightmare? Good dreams can be a pretty big shock, too."
My head jerked up, my eyes widening in stunned disbelief as they locked onto his. He was clearly just as surprised by his own words as I was, as if he'd just let slip something he'd never intended to say out loud, and that made my heart pound a little harder in my chest. Had he really just said what I thought he'd said? Could it possibly mean what it sounded like it meant?
In the year and a half since I'd first started feeling more than friendship toward him, I'd never allowed myself to entertain even the slightest hope that he could ever return those feelings. And, if I did get the occasional glimmer, I'd quash it without mercy, reminding myself that I knew full well what his type was, and I was not it.
This was different, though, and I couldn't hold back the euphoria that was flooding over me at the thought that maybe he did want this. Maybe he wanted me. He hadn't said so in so many words, but what he had said—and the look in his eyes as he stared into mine—certainly hinted at the possibility, and the question it begged hung between us, an almost palpable, living thing. Was it a good dream? Do you want us to be... something more?
Just the thought of how he might answer, however, turned elation into cold, stark terror. If he said no, that it was just a dream, he didn't like me that way... just imagining it was painful enough. Hearing him say it out loud? I don't think I could have taken it. It was one thing to know in your heart that what you want isn't gonna happen. It was another thing altogether to hear the words laid out plainly. It'd be like when he'd said that he liked Valerie, only a million times worse because, this time, it would be directed at me.
But... what if he said yes? If he did want this? If he wanted me? A dark voice whispered a warning to me: If you get what you want, you'll lose everything.
You'll lose him.
It was my deepest fear, and one I usually kept buried deep under layers of ideology and conviction that Danny was exactly who he was always meant to be. Fighting ghosts, fighting for others who couldn't fight for themselves... it was just so right. Risky, yes—for Danny, and for Tucker and me as well, and anyone else who was a part of that fight. But risk came with anything that was worthwhile in life, and we all accepted that as part of the package.
Still, I was a goth at heart and, for all my determined optimism that the world could be a better place if we worked to make it that way, there was a part of me that believed in the eternal nature of Darkness, and that life operated on a sort of Monkey's Paw principle: you can get what you wish for, but it will come at a very high cost.
I'd gotten what I hadn't even known I'd been wishing for the day Danny stepped into that portal... and it could cost him his life. That is the price you will pay for the part you played in his becoming who he was meant to be, the Darkness insisted. In finding him, you've lost him. How you lose him depends upon how much you have to lose.
It was an irrational fear, I knew. I didn't believe in Fate, or Destiny, or that denying how much Danny meant to me was any sort of magic talisman that could keep him safe from the dangers he faced by virtue of being who and what he was. But the fear was a real, living thing inside me, telling me that I could lose him to a Paulina or a Valerie... or I could lose him to a Vlad or a Ghost King.
But one way or another, I was going to lose him.
And a year and a half of carefully constructed defenses clicked into place. You're making too much of this. He didn't say you were anything more than a friend to him. All he said was that dreaming about kissing you wasn't necessarily a nightmare. Was it a good dream? Of course it was. He's a fifteen-year-old boy. Any dream remotely connected to sex would be a good dream, even if it was about someone who would always only be a friend to him. Does he want you to be something more? Maybe, but that doesn't mean it would mean the same thing to him that it does to you. You're a reasonably attractive girl, and he has to know by now you're available to him. There are worse ways he could pass the time than a friends-with-benefits arrangement with you until something better comes along...
An uncharitable thought, that. And, if I were being honest with myself, not really in Danny's character. If meaningless fun was all he was after, he could have had any number of make-out sessions with Paulina just by hitting on her in ghost form. But he'd never done that, not even at the height of his crush on her. Still, it was easier to convince myself that he'd want such a thing with me than it was to open the door to hope... and the fears that followed in its wake. Whatever the answer to the question—Do you want us to be something more?—I wasn't ready to hear it, so I left it hanging, unasked, between us.
It was Danny who finally broke the silence. "So... if Nocturn is duplicating people's dreams, do you think maybe Starr is dreaming that she's on a date with two Tuckers?"
I almost sagged in relief at the change of subject, and my lips twitched into a mischievous grin. "Now, that would definitely qualify as a nightmare shock."
He laughed. "Yeah. I think we'd be hearing Starr scream from here."
Crisis narrowly averted, we started walking toward his house again. After we'd gone a little ways, however, Danny nudged me. "So... are we good, then? You're not still mad at me? 'Cause the last time I invaded your privacy, you didn't talk to me for, like, three days, and I really don't wanna go through that again. Ever."
The quiet intensity in his voice made my stomach do a small flip, and I smiled in spite of myself. "Yeah, we're good." But the reminder of what he'd seen in my dream made me nervous all over again. Would it change things between us? Would our friendship mean the same to him as it always had, even if he knew I wanted more? Had the dream opened a door in his mind that hadn't been there before? This time, I needed to know the answer. "I mean, we're best friends, right? We'll always be best friends, no matter what?"
His reply was emphatic. "We'll always be best friends. No matter what." And that was all the answer I needed.
Tucker caught up with us just as we'd arrived at FentonWorks and Danny was unlocking the front door. Leaving my borrowed scooter and bike helmet on the sidewalk, he joined us on the front porch "Sorry, it took longer than I thought, but I got some good scans of my mom and dad's helmets. I'm pretty sure that we can trace the dreams he's feeding off of back to where he's collecting them and, from there, I should be able to take out the whole system. That'll shut down all the helmets, and everyone will wake up." He paused, frowning. "Wait. Are you guys just getting here, too? What took you so long?" He gave us a suspicious look. "Did you take a nice, long stroll or something?"
Danny's answer was testy. "It's a long walk from Sam's, especially when you've gotta stick to the shadows and avoid Sleepwalkers patrolling the city. Let's just get inside, okay?"
"Okay, okay, geez. Lighten up."
Danny didn't answer, and I was more than happy to let the subject drop as we went inside and upstairs.
Heading straight to Jazz's room, Danny frowned when he saw her slumped over her desk. "She's not in her bed."
Tucker shrugged. "Maybe she was working on something when the Sleepwalkers got her."
"Yeah, but so were my parents and you, and you all ended up in your beds. And Jazz was in bed when I checked on her earlier. So, how did she get to her desk? Unless..." His eyes widened in alarm. "I'll bet the Sleepwalkers came here looking for me after I got away from Nocturn. Do you think they were trying to take her, maybe to use her as leverage or bait?" Then, he gasped. "Be right back."
He took off down the hall, and Tucker and I exchanged glances, trying to decide if we were supposed to follow him, but he returned a moment latter, rejoining us at the door to Jazz's room. "My parents are fine. Still asleep, but fine."
I looked inside the room at Jazz, asleep at her desk. "She might have woken up on her own, like you did..." The thought of what exactly had awoken him hit me, and I stopped short. Danny realized it, too, and we both blushed and turned away.
Tucker was eyeing us before he asked Danny, "Just what did you dream that was so shocking, anyway?"
I had to bite my lip to keep from threatening death and dismemberment. It was Danny's dream, not mine, and defensiveness on my part would only serve to raise his suspicions.
Danny just brushed him off with a hasty, "Never mind that," before heading into his sister's room. "Whatever happened here, we'll have to worry about that later." He looked over to me and Tucker as we came in after him. "Any objection to me waking up Jazz?"
I shook my head. "Nope. The more of us, the better."
"You guys stay alert. I'll be right back." And he turned intangible and did a swan dive right into Jazz's head.
As soon as Danny was gone, Tucker took the opportunity to grill me. "So... what were you dreaming about?" His eyebrows waggled in a way that suggested he had a pretty good guess.
Feigning indifference, I shrugged. "Oh, you know... nothing specific. I was just sharing a glass of chocolate milk with two friends who looked just like Starr." I gave him a pointed look, wondering how long it would take him to put together what I was doing, especially since it was a tossup which I was less likely to do: drink milk, or willingly spend time with Starr.
Given the surprised smile I got in response, it didn't hit him right away. "Hey! That's what I—" He stopped, his smile turning into a disgruntled frown. "Oh. Danny told you my dream. I'm pretty sure that violates the Dude Code."
My grin widened, but I almost jumped out of my own skin a second later when Jazz bolted upright in her chair, screaming. The helmet on her head shattered, and Danny shot out of her, turning solid in midair and performing an impressive back flip before landing gracefully on his feet behind her.
Jazz's knuckles were turning white as she gripped her desk. "Did I just dream I was a professor at Yale? And married to... Dash?"
Danny looked a little too smug. "Yep. Dash is really coming in handy today." He flashed me a conspiratorial grin. "He's, like, the poster boy for nightmares."
I almost choked on the reminder of how he'd used Dash to wake me up—and what had happened just before that. After a second, he remembered, too, and we were both turning away from each other again, blushing, as we chuckled together. "Yeah... heh. Nightmares."
I thought Tucker was going to start in on us, in which case I was going to have to kill him, but Jazz interrupted, spinning around in her chair to face us. "What's going on? What are you doing in my room?"
"It's a long story," Danny said, sounding as grateful as I was for the distraction. "We'll fill you in on the way..." He paused, scratching his head. "Tucker? Where are we going, anyway?"
Tucker consulted his PDA. "Looks like the signal traces back to the lakefront. Down by the docks."
Danny nodded. "The docks it is. But first, a quick trip to the basement lab. We're gonna need some weapons."
It was a little before dawn when we arrived at the docks. Tucker's equipment led us to an old mattress factory, which had a newly-installed antenna sticking out of the roof. We went over the plan once more: take out the Sleepwalkers, get Tucker inside to hack into the antenna and bring it down, then take Nocturn out with a Fenton Thermos.
Outside the factory was a pretty standard battle against the Sleepwalkers, except for a harrowing moment when two of them grabbed me and flew me several hundred feet into the air. Jazz blasted one of them with her ecto-weapon, and Danny got the other with his ice ray, but that left me with nothing holding me aloft. I screamed as I fell, but Danny caught me a safe distance above the ground and set me down on me feet on the docks, leaving me a little breathless—whether more from the fall or from an embarrassing bout of hero-worship at the way Danny so effortlessly plucked me out of the air and saved my life, I can't honestly say.
Once inside, however, things got much more dicey. The center of the main warehouse had a huge contraption that was connected to the antenna above. The front of it was an enormous glass chamber, inside of which was a ghost I didn't recognize, but seemed vaguely familiar anyway. He was at least fifty feet tall and dressed in what looked like black robes that ended in spidery tails, like Morticia Addams' dress in The Addams Family. His face was gray, with purple ram-like horns sticking out the side of his head, and his eyes were closed in deep sleep.
Danny seemed shocked by him. "No! Nocturn! He's huge!" He flew up to the top of the chamber to where the ghost's giant face was. "He's absorbing dreams and getting more powerful. We have to stop him!" He tried to pry open the glass door but couldn't budge it. Punching it with his fist had no effect, and neither did his ghost ray.
I called up to him. "Danny, you need to stay focused! The longer Nocturn's in there—"
"The stronger he gets," Danny finished. "I know. That's why I'm trying to break in and wake him up." He stopped as an idea occurred to him. "Wait a minute. Wake him up. We wake him up, the same way I woke all of you." He flew back down to land on the floor in front of me, Tucker and Jazz. "Think about it. You all woke up by being surprised. If I beat him in his dream, it'll startle him awake, and then we can—"
"We catch him," Jazz said, holding up a Fenton Thermos.
I wasn't crazy about this plan, however. At least not with Danny facing Nocturn in his dream by himself. "Danny, you can't go into the dream alone. You don't know what's in there. I'm coming with you." I gave him my best don't-even-try-to-argue-with-me look.
He got the message. "I don't really have a choice, do I?"
"No, not so much." I grinned, victorious.
Tucker leaned toward us. "You kids have fun. I know I always say I wanna be the man of someone's dreams, but this isn't what I meant."
Danny nodded in agreement. "Tuck, you and Jazz stay out here and calibrate your PDA to shut down this dream machine. That should stop the Sleepwalkers, at least." He stepped closer to me. "You sure you wanna do this? I've never overshadowed someone with a partner before."
I'm not sure why I did it, but something about the way he was looking at me reminded me of the way he'd looked at me in my dream, but instead of embarrassing me this time, it felt like a link between us, something we shared that no one else did. "Can you... make room for me?" I asked, intentionally repeating the phrase I'd used in the dream, only without the girlfriend part.
His responding smile nearly turned my legs to water. He went intangible, then reached for my hand. I shivered as his powers washed over me, making me into a temporary ghost.
"You okay?"
"Tingly, but good," I responded, not sure whether it was the ghost powers or him that made me feel that way, but I shook it off, focusing back on our mission. "Let's do this."
I'd phased through walls and stuff with Danny more times than I could count, but this was nothing like anything I'd ever experienced before. It felt like getting pulled down through a drain, shrinking as we went, two Alices tumbling through the Rabbit Hole.
When the pulling stopped, I opened my eyes to find myself in a strange world with black skies and neon-violet craggy mountains. A few miles away, a gigantic tower rose up above the mountain peaks, and thousands upon thousands of green Sleepwalker ghosts were marching toward it, an army heading back to base. On top of the tower, Nocturn stood like a symphony conductor, orchestrating it all.
Beside me, Danny was still holding my hand. We both looked and felt normal and even solid, as if we'd phased into just another section of the Ghost Zone instead of inside Nocturn's mind. With a little hesitation, Danny let go of my hand, but even without the contact, I stayed put and, satisfied that I was okay, he turned to watch Nocturn. "You gotta hand it to the guy—he's got a vision."
As if in answer, lightning flashed around the dream ghost, who glanced in our direction before disappearing.
Danny looked at me. "Uh-oh. Did he just see us?"
Nocturn reappeared behind us, answering that question. "Ah, the ghost boy and his girlfriend, once again together in Dreamland."
Later, it would occur to me that neither of us bothered to contradict him when he called me Danny's girlfriend. We'd been called that so many times over the course of our friendship that denials had become second nature, and popped out without us even thinking about it. I tried not to read too much into the fact that, this time, neither one of us said a word. We'd been in the middle of a battle, with more important things on our minds, after all. Still, I couldn't help but wonder... did it mean something? One dream, one statement where he almost sort of implied he wouldn't mind if I were his girlfriend, and suddenly the dam I'd carefully constructed against hoping he could ever think of me that way was cracked and leaking.
But that was later. At the time, we'd been too busy trying to stop Nocturn to give it much thought. After two blasts from Danny's ghost ray, I had him trapped in a Fenton Thermos. Capping it, I looked up at Danny. "That was too easy. Something's not right."
He landed beside me. "Why didn't Nocturn wake up?"
The ground shook in response, and Nocturn, huge as ever, rose up beyond the hill where we were standing. "Did you honestly think you could defeat me in my own dream? I am the King of Dreams! You cannot win in my world!"
Danny grabbed me by the forearm. "Then we'll just have to take back the home field advantage. Let's get out of here." He closed his eyes, and the dreamworld around us faded, but only for a moment, and then we were back, trapped. "It didn't work! I can't get us out!"
Nocturn rose up, towering a good fifty or sixty feet over us. "I told you, I control all dreams, especially my own. And in my dream, you two shall remain... forever."
We turned and ran, but an entire legion of Sleepwalkers was behind us. Danny grimaced. "Oh, boy."
I pulled a mini bazooka out of my backpack, extended it to full-size, and threw it up on my shoulder. "Fight, Danny!" I shot at the Sleepwalkers surrounding is, but they absorbed both the bazooka blasts and Danny's ghost ray without sustaining any damage.
"Your weapons no longer work," Nocturn told us. "The dreams of your families and friends have made me and my army unstoppable. Now you will join them, and patrol the nights for eternity!"
Even for a self-proclaimed creature of the night, patrolling the nights as a vaguely humanoid-shaped blob under this windbag's control wasn't my idea of a good way to spend eternity. But we were vastly outnumbered, and two of them grabbed us and pinned us back while Nocturn laughed. "Only a miracle could save you now."
And then, we had one. The Sleepwalkers dropped us and were gone.
I looked around, confused. "What happened?"
Danny grinned. "Tucker and Jazz did it!"
Above us, Nocturn was shaking like an old man. "I don't understand. Why do I suddenly feel... weak?"
"Because this is now your worst nightmare," I informed him with a smile.
Danny flew in front of me, blasting him with his ice ray and freezing him solid. Then, he moved aside. "Sam, will you do the honors?"
I knelt down with the bazooka, switching it from ray to missile, and took aim. "My pleasure. Sweet dreams!"
I hit him right in the chest, and he shattered. A moment later, the world around us shattered, too, leaving us in blackness. I felt a violent jerk, like someone pulling me by the collar, but I couldn't feel a hand or any other sign that Danny was near me. I tried to call out to him, but my lungs felt flat, and I couldn't take a breath, so I reached out wildly, hoping against hope that he'd find me. Finally, I felt my fingers brush against something—his glove, I think—and then I felt the reassuring grip of his hand around my wrist just before something like lightning went through us. It didn't hurt or feel like a shock, but more like it was taking us apart, like we were being beamed out of Nocturn's dream via a Star Trek-style matter transporter.
The next thing I knew, we were back in the mattress factory, kneeling side-by-side on the floor, Danny's hand still firmly grasping my wrist.
It wasn't quite over, though. Nocturn was awake and out of his chamber, and he roared in fury at us. "I shall destroy you for waking me! Sleepwalkers, form!"
Nothing happened. Danny and I climbed to our feet, and I grinned up at the giant ghost. "Boy, somebody woke up cranky."
"In your dreams, Nocturn!" Danny added. "The antenna's gone, and so is your dream machine. Everyone you put to sleep is waking up. You have no power."
He came at us as if to attack, but before he could even lash out at us, he was caught in the beam of a Fenton Thermos and was gone. Tucker, grinning, capped the Thermos. "Consider this your wake-up call."
Danny, Tucker, Jazz and I sat on the edge of the dock outside the mattress factory, watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan. Danny looked up at the orange sky. "Think everyone will believe this was all a dream?"
Tucker gave a wistful sigh. "I gotta say, Nocturn was an evil creep, but I wouldn't mind having my dream again. I could get used to that."
Jazz nodded. "Me, too. Yale professor? What's not to love?" She turned to me and Danny. "What about you two?"
We both gasped, neither one of us wanting to be put on the spot. "I..."
"Uh..."
Danny winced. "I don't even remember what my dream was about."
"Uh... me, neither."
We both grinned a little too widely, but Jazz didn't seem to notice. "Really? That's too bad."
Danny laughed, but it sounded false to my ears. "Oh, yeah, well... dreams... 'gateway to the subconscious...' Uh... I don't think so."
"Yeah, dream on," I agreed quickly.
We both blushed and turned away from each other. But when I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, I caught him doing the same thing back at me, and we both couldn't help but smile. It was almost like our mutual embarrassment over the shared dream connected us to each other, rather than putting distance between us. A secret just between the two of us.
It was terrifying, this new link between us. For so many reasons, I was afraid to hope where it might lead. But I had to admit, scary as it was... I kind of liked it.
