Written for Dannymay 2021 Day 2: Home.
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The building that housed Fentonworks had never been normal, no matter what neighbors and real estate agents might profess.
Things had happened there. Deaths. Wild twists of fate and shocking coincidences. People who lived there heard noises, saw things, felt things. Experienced sicknesses with no cause. Were cured of sicknesses without cause. Survived things that should have killed them.
It was a thin spot between worlds. Reality was a rippling membrane, frayed enough for things to shine through.
The construction of the neighborhood itself had been… strange. It happened much faster than it should have, as if there was a whole extra shift of workers on the project.
The townhouse that would one day become Fentonworks had stood out even in that mystery. Extra rooms, a basement deep enough to cause a nasty fight with regulators, features not approved by the architect.
It was a wonder they hadn't hit any of the water lines or the sewage systems. A wonder- and an impossibility. So, the matter was ignored and dropped.
Then the next owners expanded that impossible basement, building another, secret basement and putting things in the walls- They were criminals, of course. It was expected for them to do illegal things. (Although exactly what they had done was… oddly uncertain.)
(Drugs, perhaps.)
Then, the lunatics. Then, the tiny cult that collapsed in on itself. Then the empty years, dozens of transient ghosts trying and failing to pass through, and the ghost hunters. So many ghost hunters, none of them particularly successful.
Then, the Fentons.
Then, little Jazz.
Then, little Danny.
Danny with wide eyes that saw too much.
And all the horrors that the Fentons could dream up, from living hotdogs to weapons that burned like stars and doors to places that should not be visited.
And this was Danny Fenton's home.
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The Manson estate was an odd case, even for Amity Park. Save for the basement, the entire building they lived in had been transplanted, brick and beam, from Germany.
Rich people were bizarre.
Even the Mansons couldn't explain it. The man who had done it hadn't been a Manson. The Mansons, who were relatively new money, all things considered, had purchased it from one of the man's children. Anything to boost their prestige.
It was fancy, and it was old, a gothic and statuesque mansion worthy of its name. Still, it wasn't quite fancy or old enough to merit the kind of expenditure moving it had to take.
Hence the rumors, squelched by the Mansons, that the place was haunted.
It wasn't.
The rumors, however, were enough to get one Samantha Manson interested in the occult. Especially given how hard she saw her parents working to hide the rumors from her.
No. The mansion wasn't haunted. For all it's oddities and quirks – which only multiplied as the Mansons added more and more features to it – the building itself was mundane.
(The land it was built on might have been another story.)
And this was Sam Manson's home.
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The Foleys didn't want to know what Tucker got up to in the attic, but liked to think that, with that one exception, their home was a nice one. It was on a nice street, in a nice neighborhood, just far enough away from Fentonworks to keep both sightings of the Ghost Assault Vehicle and resultant property damage and property taxes to a minimum. Within walking distance of the high school, a supermarket, and a park.
They kept the fridge and pantry stocked. Their food might not have always been healthy – red meat was an element of almost every meal – but it was always available and filling. They made an effort for the dietary restrictions of Tucker's friends of course.
All the rooms were kept clean and neat. Even Tucker's, by way of bribes. Everything was organized, everything had its place. Except, perhaps, for the stray shoe or piece of schoolwork.
But that attic.
It really hadn't been anything, before Tucker asked if he could move his computer stuff up there. Just a storage space, one too difficult for either Angela or Maurice to climb up there often. They didn't consider themselves old, but they couldn't call themselves young either. Not with a son Tucker's age.
Once Tucker had realized the attic was there, he had been fascinated. And, well, once he was old enough for them to not worry about him falling off the ladder, they let him go up.
Some days, it seemed, he didn't come down.
Better than his faintly disturbing Ancient Egypt phase, where he kept bringing pictures of mummified corpses to the table. Or, worse, the werewolf phase.
And this was Tucker Foley's home.
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Amity Park had claimed the distinction of 'most haunted town in America' long before the Fentons opened their portal. In fact, that was the reason the Fentons had set up shop there, in the first place.
No haunted town was complete without at least one haunted house. Amity Park had several. Not to mention a haunted hospital, a selection of haunted schools, a haunted museum, a haunted pool, a haunted crosswalk, a haunted mall, a haunted football field… The list went on, essentially ad nauseum.
Of course, that list mostly consisted of places that became haunted after the Fentons built their portal. But even before then, some places offered their dubious charms to tourists.
Mostly gullible ones. More than half of the claims of hauntings before the portal opened were fraudulent in their entirety. These places quickly went broke and got abandoned when real ghosts started showing up.
One of these was the ominously named Raven House, which stood in the hills on the west edge of town.
The story the tourists of years gone by had been told was that a widower had lived out here, all by himself and that one day, he stopped coming to town, or paying his bills, or even getting his mail. When the mailbox at the end of the long driveway was full, the mailman decided to go check on the widower. What he found was a flock of ravens and a skeleton, entirely picked clean of flesh.
No such death had occurred there, nor in any part of Amity. No such person had ever lived in the house, either. The last owners, before the company that decided to market the house as haunted, were a couple with two children.
It wasn't until months after the portal started up that it became haunted in truth.
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"This place isn't haunted," said Danny, panning his flashlight over cobwebbed corners on the ceiling. "I don't think it ever was."
"That's what, strike five?" asked Sam.
Danny shrugged. "Yeah, I think so."
"Four, actually," said Tucker. "We counted the hospital as inconclusive, since we don't know if anyone was there before Spectra."
Danny nodded. "It's weird, though, isn't it? That no one lives here, I mean. It looks like a perfectly nice house."
"Décor's a bit… eh. Trying to hard to be haunted," said Tucker, poking a raven decal on the wallpaper.
"I like it," said Sam. "Needs cleaning, though."
"Hey," said Tucker, "you're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you? Because I'm pretty sure that'd be illegal."
"It isn't as if anyone else is using the place," argued Sam. "It could be a great backup hideout, if we ever had to… you know." She glanced at Danny. "Plus, we'd be doing them a favor, really, keeping things clean and lived in."
"I think it's an okay idea," said Danny.
"Yeah, but you think lots of dumb things are good ideas. Like showing up at a party hosted by people who publicly humiliate you on a regular basis."
Danny grumbled something about trauma responses that sounded like a direct quote from Jazz and something else about that incident being ages (aka weeks) ago. Then, he brightened.
"We could get one of the little ectoplasm generators to power everything," he said. "Remember all that stuff we lifted from Skulker and Technus? We could actually use it. Study and test things without worrying about whether our parents will walk in. I mean, your attic is great, but still."
"Plus, we can have actual lab safety protocols. No offense, Danny."
"I am the one that half-died in a lab accident, so… None taken."
Tucker rubbed his chin. "Alright. I suppose I can see the appeal… But if we have stuff that can trace back to us, we could get in serious trouble."
"We'll be careful, then," said Sam.
"Anything I take from Mom and Dad has plausible deniability. They'll assume ghosts stole it."
"We also need to clean if we're being serious about this. And get a fridge. And figure out the pluming situation."
"Fridge is on the list. We have to be careful about the outside, too. If this place is suddenly well maintained, people will notice."
"Sure, but that isn't something they'd call the cops over," said Danny. "They'll just assume new people are moving in. If anyone sees it at all. We're pretty far away from anything. But pluming won't be too hard. We just need to bring our own water. Like, toilets flush using physics. If you dump more water in, they'll go, no electricity required."
"How do you know that?"
"I can't even tell you how many time Mom and Dad blew out all our breakers with stuff in the lab," said Danny. "You pick up a few things."
"Well," said Tucker, swinging his flashlight over to examine a discolored spot on the ceiling. "Then… Home sweet home, I suppose."
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There was a house in the hills in the west hills of Amity Park.
And this was the home of two and a half humans and half a ghost.