A/N: Written for Ectober 2021, Day 29: Echo.

Star can't get Phantom's wailing cry to stop echoing in her head, but apparently, she isn't the only one with ghost trouble.

Even in the silence of her bedroom, cocooned in the soft fuzziness of blankets in the middle of her bed, the memory of that wailing cry still sent shivers down Star's back.

The echo of it hadn't left her ears since last night.

There's something wrong in Amity Park.

She'd gotten used to ghosts. She'd learned how to deal with it; everyone had. You couldn't live here and not adapt. It was still common enough to hear all sorts of shrieks and screams—that was a normal response to missiles firing overhead or ice turning up underfoot or your electronics suddenly having a life of their own—but none of them were like this had been.

This wailing had reverberated in her very soul. She could curl into the fetal position and cover her ears, but it wouldn't take the sound away. She'd tried. That wouldn't even dampen it. This was a cry of pain, of misery, of anger, of helplessness, and it wouldn't leave her.

Paulina was shaken, too, but not like this.

If she was still hearing this sound in her head, she'd done a better job of hiding it than Star had.

Star took a deep breath and went over what had happened again, trying to figure out if there was something that she'd missed, something that would explain this.

She had been over at Paulina's house. They'd been party planning up in her room. They'd had papers scattered all across Paulina's bed, consulting or altering or adding to them as they'd talked and gossiped and brainstormed over what to do and how to get Phantom his invite this time. She hadn't meant to sleep over—she never meant to sleep over without asking, since Paulina as well as her parents appreciated the warning—and Star still couldn't remember getting tired and falling asleep, but….

Even now, Star wasn't entirely sure how it had happened.

One moment, they'd been laughing and teasing each other, guessing at what Dash or Kwan or someone else would say or do once they told them of their plans. The next, Star had been jolted awake from a rapidly fading dream-turned-nightmare with this cursed keening cry ringing in her ears.

Wake uuuuuuuuuuuup!

It had seized hold of her lungs and caged them in iron, refusing to let them expand. Even as the roar of her own blood pounding in her ears had reached a crescendo, that sustained wailing had cut through in a terrible dissonance that refused to die away. She hadn't been able to move, every muscle tensed but leaden, fearing what moving might mean—

Paulina had found the strength to move. She'd sat up and had brushed the mussed hair out of her eyes, revealing the crisscrossing pattern of lines marring her usually flawless face in a mirror of where she'd been lying on the bedspread. "Are you okay?" she'd asked.

Star hadn't been okay.

She still wasn't okay.

Paulina had helped her up, had pulled away the piece of paper stuck to Star's face when she hadn't found the strength to do even that, and had hugged her before scooting to the edge of the bed and getting up to close the curtains, shutting out the distant streetlight—and stopping anyone who might have been outside from looking in, ghosts included unless they decided to come right through the wall.

The ceiling light had still shone down on them, but it hadn't felt safe anymore, hadn't felt comforting. Nothing did.

"The ghost boy saved us like he always does," Paulina had said, and Star had known that the words were true, but she hadn't felt safe. She still didn't.

In the end, she hadn't answered. She hadn't really needed to; they'd both known this was a ghost thing and that Phantom had broken them out of whatever it had been. They'd both known that Star wasn't okay and that Paulina wasn't as okay as she'd been pretending.

Still, it wasn't like Star would have gained anything by commenting upon Paulina's wide eyes, trembling hands, or false smile.

Sometimes, acknowledging things only made them real or gave them power.

Especially in Amity Park.

Star had watched as Paulina had cleaned up the papers scattered on the bed. They'd crinkled in loud protest with each movement, but she'd gathered them up and dropped them without ceremony on her dresser.

Unsurprisingly, Paulina hadn't protested when Star had asked to stay the rest of the night; she'd simply gotten out a spare set of pajamas for Star to change into. The soft knock on the door that had been Paulina's mother checking on them had come next, but by that time, Star had already been on the phone with her own parents to let them know what she was doing. She hadn't been surprised that they were up, too.

That wail had been enough to wake the dead.

Paulina had dropped off to sleep again sometime after three in the morning, but Star hadn't. She'd stared up into the darkness, tossing blankets on and off as she grew too cold or too hot, and waited for that terrible echo to leave her head. When it hadn't, she'd instead found herself waiting for the first sign of morning light to show around the edges of the curtains. As soon as the first bit of light had begun to glimmer in the darkness, she'd abandoned the bed for the chair that usually held Paulina's rejected outfits, pulling it up to the window to watch the sky turn pink and the lowest clouds burn with bright orange fire.

She'd heard Paulina's parents get up, and before the colours of the sunrise had faded, she'd padded down the hall to the bathroom with an armful of Paulina's clothes and a towel filched from the linen closet. She'd cranked the shower tap farther than she usually dared, willing to trade the damage of the hot water for the chance to drive the chill from her bones.

Still, even once her hair had been dried and styled and her face carefully made up to hide any sign of her distress to those who didn't know her well, she hadn't felt like herself. A stranger had been staring back at her from the mirror with haunted eyes.

Normally, Paulina would've pointed this out. She'd have told Star exactly how horrible she looked before dragging her into the washroom to fix everything with the emergency makeup supply she kept in her locker. This time, even though she'd gotten a good look at Star before they'd been seen in public together, she hadn't said a word.

Star had drifted through school, not sure if she'd been imagining the cry piercing through the buzz of the hallway gossip or classroom murmurs or lunchroom chaos or the drone of Lancer's voice. She'd thought she'd been faking it well, laughing at Paulina's jokes and Kwan's quips and Dash's jibes—all of which had sounded forced, presumably because of the night before—but then she'd missed her cue in cheer practice. She'd gotten them all off beat and come down hard on her shoulder after aborting a cartwheel before she'd collided with Paulina, but while she'd gotten away with waving off her injury and apologizing that time, no one had believed her after she'd messed up her handspring in their next set.

Star had been sent home with strict instructions to care for her injuries, but after the first twenty minutes, she'd abandoned the ice pack entirely. It languished at the foot of her bed, hidden in the tea towel she'd wrapped around it. She couldn't bear the thought of putting it back on her shoulder in another twenty minutes when she was still chilled by something much deeper.

The cry had never come again the same way it had yesterday, but it hadn't left her, either.

Now that she was alone, that was clearer than ever.

The wailing hadn't been human. She knew that. It had been Phantom's. A human's cry wouldn't still be echoing in her head with a resonance stronger than memory alone could provide. There was power in it, power enough to set her heart racing as it had when she'd first heard it, power enough to steal away her breath and freeze her where she sat.

"It was just Phantom," Star whispered, but her words sounded terribly empty even to her own ears. She didn't know how to give them weight, to give them meaning. "He wouldn't do this on purpose. He's not like all the other ghosts."

For all that it was true, she might as well have been telling herself lies.

There was something wrong in Amity Park.

It wasn't a nice place to live.

Phantom had won his fight last night, but the ghosts wouldn't be held at bay by him forever. One day, he would lose. One day, he wouldn't find a way to fight back and regain the ground he'd lost. One day, he wouldn't find a way to triumph, no matter how many unlikely alliances or truces he struck up.

Or maybe, one day—maybe last night—he'd start to slip. To become more like all the other ghosts after all. It had happened before, with that rash of robberies. Maybe it was happening again.

Star turned to grab her pillow and bury her face in the feathers. She screamed, but the wailing in her head rose and blended with her voice.

It wouldn't go away, and she couldn't drown it out.

Star knew her options were limited. Ignoring the echoing cry when it was still raising gooseflesh on her arms wasn't going to work, clearly. Trying to distract herself from it would only get her so far. Her only real courses of action would be asking a ghost or one of the Fentons for help.

Despite her fleeting trepidations, she'd talk to Phantom in a heartbeat, but she barely saw him once the fighting was over; he usually did his best to disappear before anyone asked him too many questions. Harmless as some of the other ghosts may seem on occasion, Star wasn't wholly convinced she could trust any of them. She had a feeling that chasing down Skulker would only invite missile fire, not answers.

That left the Fentons.

Jack Fenton was someone she wanted to avoid at all costs, and Jazz Fenton was all too likely to assume there was something deeper going on and try to turn Star into her latest case. Maddie Fenton seemed knowledgeable enough, and Star figured she was the safest bet. Danny…. Danny might know something, but with how often he ran away from any and every ghost fight, Star wasn't exactly sure he'd be able to help her.

Still.

Valerie could give her his number. She'd have it from when they'd had been dating, and asking him about this first might save her from having to actually go to his house. At this point, it seemed like the lesser of the two evils. The worst Danny was going to do was laugh in her face or say he couldn't help her.

Besides, the one time she'd actually fought ghosts alongside Danny—and, come to that, one of the few times she could remember where he hadn't immediately run away from the fight—he'd been good at it. She'd been able to believe that there was something to Jack Fenton's loud proclamations that ghost hunting ran in the Fenton family. Danny had been good at organizing everyone, too. He'd chickened out once Phantom had shown up, but he'd still started their rebellion, so she couldn't fault him for everything. He clearly had some knowledge and skill even if he barely used it.

Star dug through the pile of blankets for her phone and sent a quick text to Valerie. Can u give me Danny's #?

Valerie's answer was almost immediate, meaning she wasn't working. Star hadn't been able to remember her schedule. Why?

I need 2 ask him smthng

It was maybe thirty seconds before Valerie replied. Star had assumed that she'd been looking up Danny's number, but instead, Valerie came back at her with something else. This is a ghost thing, isn't it?

Star bit her lip. She didn't really want to tell Valerie everything now. She wasn't even sure how she'd explain it to Danny. What if something was wrong with her? She settled on something simple: Duh

Did Kwan put you up to this?

What? What did Kwan have to do with any of this?

I told him not to confront Danny. I'm not sure yet. If he's going, I need to be there!

Star stared at the message, and then she sent one to Kwan. What's up with Fenton?

His response was almost as quick as Valerie's had been: Srry didn't know how 2 tell u. Did D tell P? F mite b overshadowed

Crud, she'd known Kwan was keeping something from her—the last few days, his laughter had been too forced, his smiles too tight, his eyes too tired, and his denial when she'd called him on it yesterday too immediate for anything else to be the case—but she'd thought he'd been planning a surprise for her. Instead, he thought Danny might be overshadowed? He'd told Valerie and Dash? Paulina didn't know—she wouldn't have been able to keep this from Star and frankly wouldn't have had any reason to, especially if Kwan hadn't said anything before solely because Valerie had asked him not to—but the others were clearly in cahoots.

For how long?

IDK

Well, that was utterly unhelpful. It must be a recent thing, though, if no one had noticed earlier. Right?

Star groaned and flopped backwards into her pillows. Crud, she didn't want another thing to deal with. Especially a ghost thing! Why did it have to be another ghost thing? Now, even if she did go to Phantom with her problem, he'd think Danny being overshadowed was a little more serious. Not that she could blame him. Even ghosts had to prioritize.

Sure, in theory, Danny's parents could deal with it instead of Phantom, but either Kwan had noticed before they had, meaning they were blinder than Mikey without his glasses, or they'd already tried to deal with it and had failed.

Worse still, if they had tried something and it had failed, they might not even have noticed.

First things first. She needed as many details as Kwan could give her. How do u know? Ur prank? She knew Kwan and Dash had had something planned, but she couldn't imagine anything in Danny's behaviour that would've raised a flag. He hadn't fallen asleep in English today, ducked out of class to go to the bathroom and not returned until the next period, come in late, earned detention, or failed their pop quiz in math. While all those things were technically unusual for him, they were hardly signs that he was overshadowed.

Yeah. V's looking footage

It was their prank, then. Filming something; she couldn't remember exactly what, if Kwan had ever told her the details. Still, that explained Valerie's involvement despite her history with Danny—and, frankly, with them. But if Danny was overshadowed, should Star even risk asking about this echoing wail in her head? Maybe it would go away on its own after all. Maybe she just hadn't waited long enough.

Or maybe she was imagining it.

Or maybe a ghost would be the only one who would have answers for her. Could she trust a ghost who wasn't Phantom? No one in their right mind would ask a ghost like Plasmius, and even ones that seemed mostly harmless like the Box Ghost were technically one of the bad guys or Phantom wouldn't be fighting to protect the town all the time.

Do u know which ghost?

No. Ask V

Star glanced back at her last message from Valerie and then typed, Kwan filled me in. Not going anywhere yet. U know which ghost?

Star had been expecting another negative response. She hadn't been expecting Valerie to come back with, Maybe, but I'm not confident enough to tell anyone else yet

What? Spill!

I can't yet

Star huffed, but she knew how stubborn Valerie could be. No amount of wheedling or needling would move her when she decided to dig in her heels. When? She didn't think Valerie would give her a straight answer, but it was worth a try.

I think I need to talk to him first. Which is why Kwan can't talk to him without me. Or you! What did you need from him? I know some stuff about ghosts

Star texted Kwan the news first. Val knows but won't say

She does?

Star smirked, knowing Kwan would immediately start trying to wear Valerie down. She might not move for Star, but water could wear down mountains. Kwan could be just as persistent as Valerie could be stubborn, and this was not the first time Star had pitted the two against each other.

She'd turned her phone off vibrate since she hadn't gotten any sleep, so she wasn't surprised when it rang in her hand ten seconds later. Valerie. Star answered, but she barely had her phone up to her ear in time to hear Valerie hissing at her. "What did you tell Kwan?"

"What you told me. That you have an idea of who it might be overshadowing Danny, that's all."

Valerie growled, but she carefully kept her frustration out of her voice as she asked, "What's your ghost problem?"

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing or you wouldn't want to talk to Danny."

Right. Star should've known that wouldn't fly. "I don't even know if he could help, so it's not like you can."

"Try me."

Fine. Whatever. It wasn't like she was going to lose something by telling Valerie first. "Okay, um…." How could she put this in terms someone else would understand? "Were you woken up last night, too?"

"Yeah. That was Phantom. I didn't see the ghost scum he was fighting, though. Some sandman type that put everyone to sleep except for him, I guess, unless he woke up before the rest of us."

Star frowned. "Do ghosts even sleep?"

"Well, I mean, a ghost's powers would have to work on other ghosts and not just humans, right?"

Valerie laughed.

Star knew that laugh of hers.

It wasn't any of Valerie's real laughs, something deep and loud or shallow and snorty or something in between, the kinds that escaped despite trying to be contained. This was the closest Valerie ever got to a high giggle or light trill. It was her nervous laugh, a false one, the sort she used to give whenever she really didn't like Paulina's new shirt or shade of eyeshadow but didn't want to admit it. Like Star, Valerie had always pretended the things she didn't like were delightful to appease Paulina. Valerie would always find a way to compliment the cut of the shirt or the richness of the colour or something instead of how it looked on Paulina herself.

Chances were, Valerie wasn't lying—technically. Chances were, she was saying something that was true. But she was also telling Star what she thought Star wanted to hear.

The problem was, this time, Star didn't know what Valerie wasn't saying.

"I guess," Star mumbled, wanting to dig but not knowing how.

"So what about last night?"

Star swallowed, but she knew that slight edge in Valerie's voice. She wouldn't drop it unless Star specifically asked her to—and, truth was, Star wanted to tell someone. "I can still hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Phantom's cry."

Silence.

"It's like…." Star sat back up, idly twisting the edge of the blanket under her fingers as she tried to think of how to explain it. "There isn't silence, you know? When there should be silence, that's what I hear. My grandpa always used to complain about this ringing in his ears making it so he couldn't hear people clearly, but this isn't a ringing. It's just an echo or something. Like the sound is still bouncing around inside my skull. It's not really better in a crowd—I heard it all through school today, and sometimes it was loud enough that I had to guess half of what Paulina was saying to me—and it just. I don't know. It hasn't stopped. Do you think I should just try to talk to Phantom the next time he shows up?"

"He hasn't been that easy to track down." Valerie's voice was dry. "Especially lately. I didn't even see him last night, and we know he was out then."

"Well, duh, he would've been in Amity Park, not Elmerton."

"Whatever." That was Valerie's I'm-not-going-to-argue-with-you tone of voice. "It could be an effect of being too close to Phantom's wail."

"Except Paulina's fine, or at least she isn't complaining about anything, and I was at her house when it happened."

"You could be more sensitive to it."

"Great. How do I stop being sensitive to it?" That came out more than a little snappish, so Star took a deep breath. "Sorry. It's just annoying. And…and scary. What if it never stops?"

"It'll stop."

"You don't know that."

"Trust me. I know more about this kind of thing than you think."

"Oh, yeah? Then tell me what's really going on! I'm—" Star broke off, swallowed again, and whispered, "Please. I'm freaking out. What if something's wrong with me?"

"There's nothing wrong with you. I'll make sure you get help, okay? I promise."

"You can't promise that! What are you going to do, talk to Fenton? You said he was overshadowed!"

The wail in her head was rising again, surging with her own panic.

"I think I can still talk to Danny."

"Him or the ghost?"

"Both, I think. Please. Trust me."

Star barked out a laugh. Valerie thought this was a matter of trust? "It's not that I don't trust you." Star knew how to navigate trust issues. She was still Valerie's friend, after all. "It's that you can't know what this is and you're pretending you do! It's that I know I can't keep doing this. That something might be wrong with me, that it's not just an Amity Park thing, that I'm broken or something, and I just—" Her heart was sounding in her ears like a kettle drum now, complemented by the ghostly echo and punctuated by each rapid breath. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Star. It's going to be all right. Listen to me. Take a deep breath, okay? In and out. Breathe with me."

Star tried to comply, but it was harder than it should have been; that iron band was back around her lungs, and they didn't seem to want to expand.

Valerie was still talking to her, but it was getting harder and harder to hear her as that wailing grew louder and louder and—

"I'm going to call Paulina for you and ask her to come over." Valerie's voice sounded more distant than it should be, like she'd left her dropped her phone without realizing it wasn't on speaker, and Star strained to catch each word above the cry building in her head. "Is that okay? You should have someone with you, and I…. I'm the best person to talk to Danny about this. I need to talk to him anyway, and I'm going to find him right now. So can I ask Paulina to come over there and sit with you?"

Trust her, Valerie said. As if she knew as much about hunting ghosts as Danny did. Or the ghost inside of him, whoever that was. Star would have surely seen the ghost around Amity Park at some point, wouldn't she have? Would she know who it was once she saw them? Would she even care, as long as they could make this stop?

"Okay." Star wasn't sure if Valerie would be able to hear her. She might be too far away, or maybe that sound wasn't entirely in Star's head. It was so loud. "Thanks."

"I'm going to make sure it stops. I promise. You're going to get through this. I'll talk to you soon."

The phone went dead in Star's hands. She automatically flipped it closed and dropped it, curling up and burying herself in her nest of blankets and waiting for this sound to get out of her head.

Wake up, it called to her. Wake up!

What if she wasn't awake after all? What if she thought she'd escaped a dream and only found herself caught in this nightmare instead?

Wake uuuuuuuuuuuup!

Star pinched herself, but that was no more effective than it had been last time. Still, she jerked when her phone rang, and she fumbled for a moment before she answered, throwing it on speaker so she didn't have to move. "Hello?"

"Star? I'm coming over."

It was Paulina.

Whatever Valerie had told her, Paulina hadn't argued.

"Talk to me," Paulina ordered, "and start with whatever is going on here, because there is most definitely something going on, and I don't know why I'm the last one to hear about it. I mean, Valerie barely talks to me except when she has to, but she phones me now to tell me to get over to your house? That means you are so much worse than you've been pretending, which frankly makes sense because you have not been on your game today and I did not need the disaster that was cheer practice to see that."

"Sorry. It's kinda a long story." It wasn't. Was it? Things always seemed to be a long story when she had to explain something to Paulina, but maybe that was because Paulina was so good about prying for details Star hadn't realized she'd omitted.

"Is it going to explain why Dash didn't go after Fenton today after he failed Falluca's pop quiz or why Kwan looks like death warmed over?"

Star shifted, grabbing the phone with her good hand as she straightened out and rolled onto her back. "Maybe."

"You're going to have to be more specific than that," was Paulina's dry response, and it coaxed a bubbling giggle out of Star before she composed herself and started to explain what she knew.