Please don't hurt me.
Sam clutched the thick tree branch closer to her, grip tightening, her knuckles turning white from the strain. Twigs stabbed into her palms, soft skin that wasn't used to fighting. She needed to avoid this, if possible. She tried again to reason with the ghost. Her eyes flicked over each of its five heads as she spoke, unsure which one (if any) had its eyes and ears. "Look, if other humans have hurt you, I'm sorry. You didn't deserve it. But I just want to talk, no fighting. Can we just talk?"
The creature slithered closer slowly, threateningly, leaving a trail of foul-smelling slime in its wake. Ectoplasm. Did that mean it was bleeding? Or did other ghosts just leak like that?
"Um… can you talk?" Sam took a few steps back, slowly, trying not to frighten it. It lowered one of its grotesque heads in response and emitted a threatening growling sound from one of the mouths filled with countless tiny yellowing fangs. Its blob-like translucent body inched forward a bit more before snapping at her with another one of its heads, a warning. It was still a few yards away – its multiple necks were long, but not long enough to reach her.
Yet.
Sam consciously slowed her breaths, trying to even them out, to disguise the panicked gasps that she wanted to gulp down. Like her body didn't know which breath would be her last, greedily screaming for more oxygen.
It's okay. You can do this. You knew this was a possibility.
"I'm vegan, you know? I don't know if you used to be an… an animal, or something, but I think… violence against any life is wrong, so-"
A scream. Sam flinched. The sound of panicked footsteps running away echoed behind her. A few people had come across the ghost in the park since she arrived, thank god they all had the sense to run away.
If they're the ones with sense, then what are you doing here?
The ghost leaked more ectoplasm onto the ground, casting the park in a neon green light. Wrinkles appeared in the crevices of its gelatinous body. Sam resisted the urge to gag at the stench. It was a smell she caught on Danny now and again these days, but it was always fleeting, never this bad. The ghost's translucent skin warbled. The world's most disgusting water balloon.
It propelled itself forward more, hovering, closing the distance. It was just a few feet away now, well within biting distance. All of its heads snapped in unison. Somehow Sam knew this was the last warning. Her head swam. This ghost was a lot quicker than it let on. She knew she couldn't run.
Sam swallowed with difficulty. The growing fear wasn't helping her queasy stomach.
Last chance. Make it count.
"My friend… my friend, he… he died, and we don't know how any of this works, being a ghost. You do, right? He needs help, and I-"
The ghost lunged. Sam tightened her grip on the branch and held it out in front of her, doing what she could to block the attack. Two of the ghost's heads chomped down on the thick wood, its small yellow teeth grinding into the bark. The others reached around and found hold in Sam's skin.
She cried out, she couldn't stop herself. It only made the ghost dig in harder. One head was latched onto her calf, the other two on each arm. The ghost had gnawed through her clothes as easily as the skin of a fruit. Her clothes grew warm as they soaked up her blood. A thought passed through her mind, a worry about how horribly infected the wounds would probably get. She immediately cursed herself for thinking such stupid thoughts. She wasn't going to live long enough for them to get infected.
Sam held her breath and yanked back, trying to escape the ghost's grip. A cry ripped through her throat. The ghost's teeth just dug in deeper, tearing at the branch, ripping through her flesh.
Hot tears stung at her eyes. They blurred the ghost, now just a bright green light shining encircling her. She was going to die here. Knowing there was an afterlife somehow just made it worse.
Sam's breathing quickened. She grew light headed. "Please please please I'll leave you alone I'm sorry I shouldn't have come here I just…" She gasped more, raspy, quick. Spots clouded her vision.
She could have sworn she heard her name before she plunged into unconsciousness.
Danny's foot connected with the monster's head with a horrifying squelch.
He'd never kicked anything in the air before — the unexpected change in momentum sent him spiraling. He had just enough time to protect his head and neck with his arms before he crashed into the ground a few feet away.
Danny groaned, the sound drowned out by a warbling growl. Danny pushed himself off the ground and into the air again, up and away from the creature to get a better grasp of the situation. Even landing on grass, he knew that his knees would bruise.
"You get messed up from some dirt and you think you can fight a ghost?" he muttered to himself. Puffs of condensation spilled from his lips, unhelpfully clouding his vision. "Yeah, thanks, got it," he snapped at his ghost sense. "Super helpful!"
The ghost made an animalistic sound in response, harsh screeches emitting from all five of its heads — four more than Danny originally suspected the ghost had. Great. Danny didn't need to speak the language to know it was pissed. But at least with all the attention on him, the ghost had dropped Sam so it could focus on snapping at him with all of its bulbous, eyeless heads. Sam lay abandoned in a heap behind them, tossed aside unceremoniously, the thick branch she was using as a weapon still laying in her hands.
Danny hoped Tucker would be here soon. Especially because he sure as hell didn't have a plan.
Danny flew backwards, leading the creature away from his friend, careful to keep out of the ghost's reach. Its large size was deceiving — the ghost seemed to have no issues giving small bursts of speed to keep up with him. It could fly, but it seemed to need to stay close to the ground. It left glowing, wet imprints on the ground whenever it landed in the grass.
This was it. All of the time spent practicing his powers, preparing for the worst — this is what it was leading up to. Playing cat and mouse with something from his nightmares. This was worse than everything his parents had described. Danny had always pictured deformed, dead humans — not whatever the hell this thing was. Was it even an animal? Did a human just end up like this somehow? Was he going to end up looking like this eventually?
Lost in his increasingly panicked thoughts, Danny didn't notice as the ghost slowly closed the distance — launching upward with a lunge and sinking its teeth into his right leg. Danny yelped as the creature whipped him back toward the ground, smashing his body into the grass face-first.
Danny cried out, cold ectoplasm from his nose dripping down into his mouth, more vapor from his ghost sense spilling into the air. Intangible! Turn intangible NOW! He needed to ignore the shooting pains in his leg, the awful texture of the grass rushing by as the creature tugged him across the lawn like a wild animal — focus. Intangibility. The overwhelming tingling sensation, the flips his stomach did in response to the weightlessness, the — there!
He slipped out of the ghost's grasp.
It was too fast.
The second he made his move it circled around behind him and caught him in mid-air, wrapping two of its thick, slimy necks around his body like a mutant boa constrictor. Danny pulled against it. No use. It trapped his hands. The monster wrapped itself tighter around him until his lungs couldn't expand anymore. He knew he didn't need to breathe in his ghost form, he knew it. But that didn't stop panic from constricting his thoughts, screaming for him to STRUGGLE, GET LOOSE, BREATHE in such an unhelpfully human way.
The monster's necks wrapped tighter still. He felt like a balloon that was about to burst. Danny tried to cough, but his lungs had no room to expand. He kicked frantically at the ghost, but his feet immediately lost footing as the beast hoisted him into the air, holding him above its torso. Something inside his body twisted, a sharp, deep pain that scrambled his thoughts even more. Danny let out a pathetic choking noise as he tried to find something, anything to attack.
The only physical impact he could muster was some of the fluid leaking from his nose harmlessly dripping toward the ghost's body.
Landing right into the gaping maw that was opening up in its torso.
Rows of teeth revealed themselves in the giant cavity, seeming to reach for him, a thousand grasping fingers beckoning him to his permanent new home. Danny's kicking grew stronger, panicked, enraging the injury that was stabbing at his side. All five of the ghost's long necks wrapped around him, securing him in place and stopping his wind-milling legs as the monster lowered him closer to his fate.
Danny had thought a lot about his death over the last month. His second death. After experiencing it a first time, it was hard to regard life with the nonchalant approach of youth. He knew more than anyone that he wasn't immortal, that anything could go wrong at any time. It felt like his second death, his final death, was always around the corner.
He knew it was childish, but he wanted to make sure his last words were something profound. Something about how he loved his friends, his family. How he wanted them to remember him before the accident, to remember the kid who just wanted to go to space.
None of that was on his mind now. Just animalistic panic. An innate need to break free. To survive.
The beast's putrid stench wafted toward him. Danny's head spun. He squeezed his eyes shut as the monster suddenly howled in his face, a noise that rattled his brain further and made his ears ring.
The creature's grip on him spasmed suddenly, punching into the wound in Danny's torso before dropping him.
With his last breath of air, Danny screamed.
And landed face-first on dew-soaked grass, smashing his nose and sending more warm, metallic blood into his mouth.
Warm. Blood.
His eyes shot open, scrambling away from the neon glow of the ghost, vision panicked and unfocused. Its multiple necks flailed, writhing in the air. Danny looked down at himself – he had changed back. Goddamn it, when had he changed back?
Danny gave himself no time to think about why it seemed to be panicking. He scrambled to his feet. He just needed to grab Sam and get the hell out of here before —
"Sam?" Danny asked, the blood pouring from his nose muffling the last letter of her name. The exhale made his side ache. He whirled around. Where was she? She was right here, he couldn't have been dragged that far away. He came here to protect her and now he couldn't even —
"Get the HELL away from my friend!"
"Sam!?" Danny whipped toward the voice, back toward the ghost. His right leg with the bite injury gave out, causing him to stumble back to the grass, landing on his injured side. He cried out at the shooting pain that flooded his thoughts. He rolled onto his other side with a whimper, trying to push himself back up.
Hands grabbed him underneath his arms. They pulled weakly, trying to get him to his feet. "Danny, we need to go. Now. Can you fly?"
Danny pushed off the ground with a grunt, managing to limp to his feet. "I don't know, I… Sam, oh my god, your arms."
Sam shook her head, dismissing him. "Let's go, then." She took off, a limping haggard jog in the opposite direction of the ghost. Danny followed closely after her with a matching limp. The cardio required bigger breaths — it felt like his lungs were grinding against whatever injury he'd sustained.
Danny looked Sam up and down as they moved, trying to get an idea of what happened to her before he showed up. Her arms hung limply at her sides. Wet, dark blood stained the sleeves of her coat. White insulation popped out from the large tears in her coat, mostly dyed a deep red.
"What… happened… to it?" Danny asked, trying to take shallow breaths to avoid more pain.
"I stabbed it," she snapped.
"You… what?"
"I had a stick, a big one, I just…" Sam looked behind them, back at the creature.
She suddenly came to a stop. "It's leaving."
A.N.: I'm sorry for the slight delay on the upload! Yesterday ended up being much busier than I expected. To be fully honest — I stole a lot of Sam's fight scene from an original story I wrote when I was 14 and a little too into the Darren Shan Demonata series, lol. I've always been a big horror fan, although I doubt that comes across in this fic, ha!
Thank you to hazama_d20 (on AO3) for the beta-read.
I want to thank all of you for joining me on this journey. My very first fic is coming to an end, and I did NOT expect all of the love I got on this. I was honestly ready for a total of 10-15 views, especially since I was under the impression that the DP fandom was dead (obviously incorrect)! Whether you've been reading since the start or are checking this our years from now: thank you for letting me be a part of your life.
Shout-out to Katpet for the review (and the binge read)! For the favorites, thank you to dannyphantomgirl8, TheFourthMusketeer, brooklyn1shay2black3, abnormalpsych, and kiritoissei! And lastly, thanks to The Full Catastrophe for the follow. See you in two weeks for our last chapter!
- Ani