Chapter 16: Turning Point

It was the morning after Sam made the startling discovery that the portal was binding the ghosts to Amity that she saw a figure outside her window. Seeing as she was on the third floor and that there should have been no other living people in Amity besides herself and Danny, it was quite concerning. She nearly yelped when she had awoken to see the distant figure hovering in the mist, not quite close enough to see its face. Sam slowly walked to her window, straining to make out who it was. The ghost remained silent, just watching her and not moving.

An uneasy feeling settled over her. Should she tell Danny? He had been confident that ghosts couldn't cross the property line, much less enter the house physically. Tucker had gotten pretty close, but he hadn't crossed that boundary. And yet it seemed wrong that one was hovering so close by. Sam knew that it was watching her, she could feel its eyes on her even when she turned her back to the window. Maybe it would be a bad idea to tell Danny...he was too overprotective and paranoid as it was. She needed to worry about how she was going to convince him to take her to Fentonworks, so they could try shutting the portal down.

Sam drew the curtains shut and decided she didn't want to stay in her room any longer. Danny was on the first floor, on the other side of the house. She would just remain calm and not get worked up about one stupid ghost peeping into her window. It would go away eventually. Probably. And there wouldn't be a reason to upset Danny even more than he already was.

Sam changed into some fresh clothes and gathered her things along with the notebook. She crept downstairs, shivering as her bare feet made contact with the cold hardwood floors. She contemplated going back for a pair of thick, wool socks still in her dresser, but she decided against it. Her whole room had felt off this morning and she was still creeped out. Instead, she scurried into the living room and quickly lit the fireplace before settling into the plush couch. Cocooning herself in a soft blanket, she propped the notebook on her lap along with her own journal. She dutifully copied the relevant information about the portal into her own notes, just in case something was to happen to the original notebook. She copied the final page as well, which contained a log of the portal's activation.

September 2rd, 2004:

- 0800 hours: Ecto-filtrator examined, cleaned, and inserted

- 0900 hours: Circuits examined and connected

- 1000 hours: Mock activation sequence ran, cleared for final activation

- 1100 hours: Attempt to activate portal, FAILED. Reason: UNKNOWN

- 1200 hours: All power cut, more tests needed.

The log was short and abrupt, with no further notes. It was clear that the Fentons were disappointed and frustrated. She couldn't imagine how upsetting it was for their life's work to end on such a sour note. No spark, no closure. No reason why they failed. She wondered if they would have figured out what went wrong before Danny somehow activated the portal himself. He hadn't divulged to her whatever it was that he did to make it work and she assumed that he had never meant to make it work when he went in.

Sam finished copying the notes and returned both the notebook and her journal into her bag. The fireplace was at a full roar now and she was pleasantly warm, so she decided to make herself a cup of coffee. She stood up with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders and shuffled to the kitchen. She was pleased to find the pantry now contained coffee filters and absently wondered when Danny had gone off to get some. Once again she was reminded of her growing cabin fever, growing increasingly tired of having to rely on him to get supplies. Truthfully, Sam had been tempted more than once to sneak off on her own and explore. But after the run-in with Tucker and now the creepy ghost hovering outside her window, she knew that Danny hadn't been exaggerating about the danger.

How long would she have to wait in this house before the ghosts forgot about her? Even if she could convince Danny to take them both to Fentonworks and face the ghosts of Jack and Maddie, there were the other ghosts to worry about. He probably would not ever take that risk. But the arrival of the ghost outside her window did not bode well...Danny had even said that it may take months or years for them to give up on finding her. She would go crazy before that ever happened.

Sighing, Sam finished making her coffee and decided that it was time to talk to Danny. Besides their brief exchange yesterday, they had both been sulking in their respective rooms. Sam was a proactive person and she couldn't stand having to avoid her friend like this, especially now that she might actually an answer to their problems. It was a big house, but it would be impossible to keep this up forever.

She wrapped her hands around her warm mug and made her way out of the kitchen and to the wing of the house with Danny's room. She took a deep breath and gently knocked on his door.

"Danny?" She called out. "We need to talk." She heard movement on the other side of the door and took a step back. He opened the door enough to poke his head out, looking just as exhausted as he did the last time she saw him.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to come back later?" He tried with a tired smile. It was a lame attempt at humor, but Sam considered it to be a good sign that he was trying. She shook her head.

"No, I think we should talk now." Danny swung the door fully open, and Sam saw that he was just wearing a pair of grey sweatpants, exposing his bandaged arm. His chest was littered in years' worth of faded scars. Some of them looked like they had been serious injuries.

"I know." He agreed, defeated. "Give me a second." He scooped a shirt off the ground and pulled it on, wincing a bit as he raised his injured arm. Though the show of pain did concern Sam, he seemed to be moving better than when she had bandaged him. She moved aside so he could shut the door behind him, and he nodded at her to lead him. The house was still uncomfortably cold, so Sam headed back to the warmth of the fireplace. She delicately sat on the couch, trying to avoid spilling her mug. She was a bit hurt when he sat in the armchair across from the couch instead of next to her.

"So, I read the notes..." She began slowly. "And I think I figured out why they were important." Danny only stared at her, not saying anything yet. "The portal is what's keeping the ghosts here, and you by extension. I think if it was turned off, you would be able to leave Amity. I think the ghosts would disappear too." She finished, deciding to not beat around the bush. He seemed to consider her words.

"I thought that might be a possibility too." He finally admitted. "But I wasn't sure." He added.

"Well, we can't be sure until we try it." Sam tried. "I understand that it's not that much to go off of, but it's worth a shot." Danny frowned, and his eyebrows knit together.

"It's very risky. Maybe too risky. We don't know what shutting the portal down would actually do. This is all assuming that my parents are even right about anything to do with the portal at all. It wasn't supposed to blow up and it wasn't supposed to contaminate and kill everything in Amity either. It definitely wasn't in their notes that being inside of it could do what it did to me." His shoulders were tense, his fingers gripping the sides of the armchair with enough intensity to go white.

"Danny, your parents were very smart people. They have the best understanding of how any of this stuff works. This is our only chance." Sam reminded him. "Do you think that whatever might happen would honestly be worse than what's already happened?" She asked. He turned his head, staring into the flames in the fireplace.

"Do you know how I turned the portal on in the first place?" Danny asked quietly. The question caught Sam off-guard.

"No. You didn't tell me." She answered. He was unnaturally still, like a statue.

"You read the log, right?"

"Yeah..." She said, still not understanding where this was going. "They shut off the power after it didn't work." Danny muttered something unintelligible before speaking up.

"They did shut it off. For about a day. And then they plugged everything right back up and tried it again. And again. They were obsessed. They had poured so much into getting the portal to work that they couldn't give up. Not until several days went by. Eventually they gave it a rest and left the house, it was making them obsessive and they knew they needed to get out of the lab." Danny turned to look at her.

"Only they were so caught up in the whole thing, that they forgot to power everything down that final time. What are the odds?" He laughed humorlessly. "If I had gone in there after any of the previous attempts, it would have been powered down. Harmless." He leaned forward.

"The real kicker though, is that the most essential thing they could have missed was right in front of their faces the entire time. Obvious as could be. Only I didn't know about it until it was too late."

"What was it?" Sam whispered.

"The on button." He said simply. Sam blinked.

"The...on button?" She asked. Could such a complex machine really have such a thing as simple as that? And they missed it?

"Well, to be fair it's probably more accurate to call it a kill switch. When they were physically constructing the portal- all the bare bones stuff- the tunnel would have been unsafe to walk around in with all those wires and high voltage with no safety measures. There was a button in there that could be hit to kill the power from inside, so that they could cut the power if they needed to while working in it. Only they forgot to release it after that stage of construction. A big red button that would have turned the whole thing back on, and they missed it." Sam was beginning to get the idea.

"Oh." She replied softly. Danny leaned back and nodded.

"So, when I went in, thinking that everything was shut off, all it took was for me to accidently hit the switch and release it. And the activation sequence started up, no problem. With me inside. So yes, my parents were smart. But they were very fallible. They missed not one, but two vital things. Now you might understand why I'm a bit hesitant to trust their work." He finished.

Sam knew he had a point. Everything he had said so far was reasonable. But she also knew that he was going to resist the idea no matter what.

"But what if it works? Why are you so scared of the possibility that this may work?" Danny looked troubled, beginning to fidget.

"Well...I'm a ghost too." He said. "You're assuming that shutting the portal down would make the ghosts disappear. Okay, well what about me? Nothing in their notes says anything about half-ghosts. We don't know what will happen to me." Sam blinked at him.

"You're alive, Danny. You're still human. Why would you disappear too?"

"Sam, you're assuming that I'm more human than I am ghost. Maybe the portal is the only thing keeping me alive at all." He answered darkly. She considered it. Maybe he was too ghostly to not survive the portal shutting down. Maybe he really couldn't exist outside of Amity Park. But for some reason, something in her just couldn't accept that.

"You've been able to break all the other rules so far. Why not this one too?" She asked. "I told you, I have to believe that you're still alive for a reason. I was meant to find you. The dream I had about the portal, Tucker trying to warn me, it's all falling into place. I feel like we're heading towards something and we shouldn't be scared of it."

Danny gazed at the floor, eerily silent. Sam reached across the coffee table, taking his hand in her own.

"I've never believed in something so strongly, not in my whole life. We're going to both make it out of this. I promise." He looked back up at her, his eyes wide and wet.

"Promise?" He whispered. He sounded so young in that moment.

"I promise." She answered, firm and resolute. He swallowed, sitting up a bit.

"Sam, I-" Suddenly his whole body went stiff. A pale mist escaped his lips, curling up into the air like smoke. He stood up at once, his whole demeanor changing.

"What was that?" She asked, freaked out. Danny's back straightened, and he stood in a strong, tense stance. The rings appeared around his waist and he was in ghost form.

"My ghost sense." He answered dismissively. "It goes off when ghosts are near." He slowly turned until his head faced the direction of Sam's room.

"How close is near?" She asked, disturbed by his intensity. Something must be really wrong for him to act like this.

"Too close." He hissed. "Nothing should be able to get close enough to the house for me to sense it like this." His eyes slowly traveled up and Sam knew immediately that it must have been the ghost from earlier. Had it gotten even closer?

"Danny, I should probably tell you something." She began. He didn't turn around, his back still facing her.

"What?" He asked.

"I saw a ghost outside my window this morning. It was far away! I couldn't even make out its face, so I thought it wasn't anything to worry about." The words rushed out of her, she felt guilty that she hadn't told him sooner. He didn't say anything.

"Danny?" She asked. "Is it in the house?" She felt panic begin to rise in her voice. Sam moved to face him. He shut his eyes in concentration, his eyebrows furrowed.

"No, but it's trying to get in. It's just outside your room." Another stream of mist escaped his mouth. "Oh my god." He said. His head turned, and Sam whirled around to see what he was looking at and nearly screamed.

A ghost was pressed against the glass of the back door, its pale hand stretched above its head. The ghost had a wide mouth full of rotting teeth. Its hand made contact with the door, rattling the glass. Danny stood in front of her protectively.

"This is bad, really bad." He muttered. His hands ignited in green flames.

"How are they doing this?" She asked. This was supposed to be the one safe place in Amity.

The ghost at the door wailed suddenly, his horrible mouth twisting.

"NOT YOURS!" It howled. "NOT YOURS!" Its hands continued to beat on the door.

"They're challenging my claim to the house." Danny said grimly. "Reinterpreting the rules."

"What does that mean?" Sam said, confused.

"It means they found a loophole." He glanced at her over his shoulder at her. "You're a former resident and you're human. If you have a greater claim to the property than me then it's not my haunt to claim. It would be neutral territory for the ghosts."

"They can do that?" She questioned.

"Evidently." He muttered. "Shit! I didn't think this was possible." He slowly backed up, pressing against her.

"So if this is my-"

"Shh!" He said. "Don't say that out loud. Don't admit ownership when they're this close. They won't be able to get in for now, I'm human enough to blur the lines as long as you don't claim anything."

"But they will get in eventually, won't they?" She asked. He nodded.

"Eventually, yes. More of them will show up and it will be harder for me to keep them out."

Sweat was already beading on his forehead and the back of his neck. It was obvious that Danny was doing something to prevent them from coming in.

"How much time do we have?" Sam asked.

"Maybe a few hours." His head tilted. "There's already more surrounding the house. I can feel more coming closer."

"What now?" She was afraid of the answer. There wasn't anywhere else to go that they would be protected. The fire died in Danny's hands and he finally faced her. The ghost continued to pound on the door. Sam thought she could hear distant rattling upstairs too.

"We have no choice." He said, defeated. "We're gonna have to make a run for it. I guess we're going through with your plan after all."