He could view the walls around him, which were broken and falling and slanted. He passed through them, incorporeal in the Ghost Zone like all things from the Human World. He needed not to obey the maze-like rules of the Ruins.
Everywhere he looked, there was what, anywhere else, he would think was graffiti. Here, though, he felt it was more. The colorful markings burned themselves into Danny's eyes, into his mind. He could not forget them if he tried. When he closed his eyes, the symbols, the words, wiggled in his mind's eye, floating here and there; they rearranged themselves into words he couldn't hope to decipher, then into words he thought he might know, then into words he understood (those he understood were the worst of them: They spoke of horror and sadness and anger and woe and death and change and- but not like anything Danny could absorb without damaging him, for they told him stories about what came before the Ruins, what kind of place it was, what beings lived there, which ones left it, how they changed it and molded it and tortured it- Danny's stomach rolled over and tried to die).
Danny had no way of keeping time. The only light was from the walls themselves, uneven, shaky, light the color of begging-for-more-time and running-from-what-you-love-most and how-to-remove-a-toothpick-from-a-porcipine.
"I hate these colors," says Danny, for the first time in- some amount of time (was time a thing anymore?).
The Ruins had two temperatures: Blistering and glacial. In the heat, the letters on the walls (letters he recognized, letters he didn't, letter he detested, letters he couldn't see, letters he wanted to leave him alone-) wiggled and screeched; in the cold, they swam and whispered.
Danny moved toward the cold, for his ears rang with the screams of rat-mongoose-deer-cats and chalkboard-needle-fire-glass-fear.
. * . * .
"Why do we have to go through these Ruins? If they're so horrible and dangerous, why not use some other portal?" asked Sam. Tucker nodded, wondering the same.
Amorpho looked like the idea never crossed his mind. "Frostbite told us to use that one, so we did."
"Why not use one that sends you to somewhere close to Amity?" asked Valerie.
"We have to find one first," stated Vlad. Paulina hang on his every word.
Dash pointed. "Let's ask that pumpkin."
. * . * .
"Wes?" Jazz asked tentatively. She didn't know him very well. He was the same age as Danny, she thought. She saw him in a basketball jersey most of the time, so she assumed he played or at least liked the sport.
Wes looked at her. His eyes were two different colors, heterochrome, she'd read. One was the regular green she was used to. But the right eye glowed red, like some ghosts she'd seen, like-
The cat! Kitty! Kitty had attacked her in the tunnels beneath the Penitentiary. She must have overshadowed Jazz. That would explain why she didn't remember anything between the attack and now.
"Jazz," intoned Wes, and it souded like Wes, looked like Wes, but- Something called to her, told her, warned her that this was not Wes, at least not the Wes she knew.
Maybe it was the fact that Wes was now floating.
Or the fact that Wes can throw ectoblasts like it was the easiest thing to do.
Sleepwalkers (the ghosts, not the people) and Walker's cops all around Jazz were dropping liike flies. The humans controlled by Nocturn were held back by some invisible force.
Nocturn was yelling. To Jazz's ears, it sounded like he was speaking in tongues (do ghosts have tongues?). Walker disappeared and reappeared beside Wes-not-Wes, his fist lit purple. He swiped at Wes-maybe-Kitty. Wes' body spun out of the way, Walker's fist almost grazing him.
Nocturn approached the fight metaphorically swinging. A bluish mist billowed out of him, filling the room. The humans around Jazz collapsed. Jazz slammed a hand over her mouth, willing herself not to breathe it in, even as her brain and lungs told her desperately to inhale.
The mist touched Wes-Kitty. Nocturn smiled a wicked grin.
"Victory is mine," he said.
"You sure?" asked Wes-Kitty, and Walker and Nocturn both dropped jaw, for the mist was very potent.
"Impossible!"
. * . * .
Danny was freezing now. He wore but a shirt and jeans. This cold was far worse than what he'd felt before he learned to manage the ice his ghost core generated.
Something about the Ruins was telling him to turn away from the cold, to leave and never return.
This feeling was exactly what made Danny press forward. The colder he was, the more determined he became.
He reached and reached, pushed and shoved against the waves of cold emanating from in front of him. Just a little further!
. * . * .
"Why would you do that?" screamed Sam.
"It was an honest mistake!" replied Dash, looking back at the great big pumpkin-shaped ghost. It hadn't taken kindly to being spoken to, much less Dash's attempt to eat one of its seeds.
The pumpkin was gaining on them. For something so large, it certainly flew fast.
"Through there!" VLad shouted, pointing to the closest portal. "It's small enough he can't follow! It's our only choice!"
They took it, throwing themselves through, one after the other.
"Where are we?" asked Tucker, for it was darker than Sam's favorite shade of black.
"Spread out, find a light or something," suggested Tucker.
A scream, high-pitched and piercing!
"Paulina! Calm down, it's only me!" placated Valerie, who had bumped into her in the dark.
"Watch where you're going next time."
"We can't see!" she retorted.
"Oh yeah."
Tucker walked slowly, carefully stepping, arms waving ahead. He caught a wall, scrabbling until he found a switch. Light flooded, illuminating the room.
"We're in Wisconsin!" exclaimed Vlad.