Chapter Twelve: Morning Journals

In a way, it felt like an anvil had been momentarily lifted off of his chest. Wes knew for sure that he wasn't crazy; Fenton and Phantom were actually the same person. That stupid bastard was leading everyone on, fooling them into believing that Wes was delusional. All of the torment and the Phantom jokes thrown at him, it was all Danny's fault... all of it. He could have spoken up at any moment, claimed instant popularity and praise by just telling the truth about his dual identities. Wes just couldn't understand why he was keeping it a secret, everybody loved Phantom (even Valerie had gone out of her way to prove that she could accept Phantom if she knew he was part human).

If there was one thing Wes knew for certain, Danny had no excuse for keeping his secret this long. And what was more infuriating was the fact that even though he knew Danny's secret, Wes still had no way to prove it to the rest of Amity Park. Damn it! It was like he'd been set up from the start. There had to be something he could do to expose Danny as a ghost!

Wes scrunched his eyes shut in frustration. He tried to recall the exact details of Danny's transformation twenty-four hours previous. Those white rings appeared first, triggering the flash of light that he kept seeing. They slid over his body, changing his physical, human clothes into the trademark, incorporeal jumpsuit. They sapped his pitch black hair of any color, leaving it completely white (saving his eyebrows for some reason) and switching cool blue eyes to harsh green. He had seemed so comfortable just floating off the floor, being released from the tether of gravity. And when he looked Wes straight in the eye... that spine-chilling gaze. He knew what was going through Wes's head, he knew how much this had been tearing him apart for the past two months, and he enjoyed it. Not wanting to be subject of this internal torture for any longer, Wes brought out his notebook and started scribbling ideas on how to reveal Danny's secret. He needed proof. It's not like anybody would take his word for it, nobody believed the crazy kid after all. So the simplest solution would be to get a recording of Danny changing forms (changing forms... how weird does that sound?). Maybe there was even some way to force his transformation... if he could figure out how to do that, oh Wes would have fun with that.

But while Wes came up with more and more ridiculous fantasies on how to mercilessly expose Danny, he realized that he wasn't actually getting anywhere. He needed to do more research on half-ghosts, but the internet was lacking in any sound resources in what he was looking for. He would go to the library, but anything about ghosts was either two centuries out of date or already checked out (Paulina Sanchez had a majority of the paranormal books reserved for her own personal 'research').

Feeling defeated, Wes decided that the internet would have to do for the moment, even if the search results kept returning the same collection of useless articles. He continued to skim for the next few hours, until he came across the same article about hybrids he'd found two months back. It was the one that had been written by that doctor in Wisconsin roughly twenty years ago before he lost his marbles. Even though the author had a shady reputation, Wes found that the information it presented about human-ghost hybrids similarly lined up with Danny. The doctor, Dr. Harris, had come across a majority of his information from a patient who had supposedly contracted 'ecto-acne', a condition the Fentons' had advertised to take precaution against after there was a contained outbreak in Amity Park a few months back.

After deciding that the patient in the article was definitely like Danny, Wes found himself wondering how this guy and Danny had ended up with ghost powers. Not to mention, the identity of the mysterious patient. To keep anonymity or some shit, the author had referred to the man (it was clearly a man by the pronouns used in the article) as 'VM'. Figuring that VM was the guy's initials, Wes scribbled them out on a sticky note: 'VM – name?' He figured it was useless because he probably didn't know the guy, after all it was twenty years ago and he might as well be dead, but something in his gut told him that it was important.

After searching through multiple Google pages, Wes decided to call it a night. Shutting off his computer, he climbed into bed. Looking at his clock, he groaned. It was already 2:40 a.m., and his Dad wanted to take him to some lame work picnic early in the morning. Great, exactly what he needed, another night of hardly any sleep.

Call Danny crazy, but he was somewhat proud of Youngblood this time. The little brat was finally going through his astronaut phase, and strangely, it made the 4 a.m. fight completely worth it. Sure, he was about a week behind in sleep (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration) and was already bruised from head to toe from his fight with Skulker... but God dammit! He'd been waiting to use space puns for forever!

So after he'd caught Youngblood and his stupid parrot he floated around a little bit and somehow found himself outside of Wes Weston's apartment. To be honest, he'd been flying on autopilot and hadn't been paying attention where he was going (he thinks subconsciously it was just to avoid going home – his Dad installed a new security system that was supposed to wake up the entire house when a ghost came in, but Jazz reassured him that she'd tampered with a little, which didn't entirely resolve his anxiety).

Danny glanced in Wes's window, just to see if he was still awake or not. He hadn't seen the red-headed boy since two days earlier when he'd blatantly transformed in front of him (it was still, totally worth it). Seeing that Wes was sprawled across his bed, definitely asleep, an idea struck Danny. Grinning, he phased straight through the wall and examined the boy's room for a moment. This was going to be great... after all, what was the point of even having ghost powers if you didn't completely scare the shit out of someone sometimes?

He originally intended to rearrange some of the things in his room, making it clear that something had been there – creepy, but practically harmless. But when Danny was looking through some of Wes's stuff, he found something that piqued his interest: 'Journal of Phantom Data' Okay, he just had to see what he had here.

Danny flipped open the front cover and started reading. The first few pages were filled with random graphs comparing the frequency of his bathroom breaks to his ghost fights. But after that... it started to gradually grow more into a personal diary.

Entry 6, October 7th, 2005

Today I managed to tail Fenton for about an hour. Manson and Foley were there too. Around 4 pm he left to go to the bathroom in the Nasty Burger, and Phantom showed up fighting that Tech ghost (Techpiss or something) downtown near that pizza restaurant dad takes me sometimes. I almost asked Star to go there with me once, but then I kinda accidentally smelled her hair and couldn't think straight so I just left and never thought to bring it up again. Oh and her hair smelled like strawberries and vanilla. Anyway I tried running downtown, but by the time I got there Fenton had somehow gotten back to the Nasty Burger. When I went back there the three of them were already gone again, and I only found out because I asked Valerie. And then Valerie got mad at me because she told me to "drop my obsession with Danny, and that I need to mind my own business because he is under the Red Huntress's protection" or some shit. I don't know how I'm gonna tell her that I'm not Phantom – it's already been two days since she forced me into making Fenton's truce for her, which is really fucking stupid. I haven't seen Fenton since then, but I need to buy another camera because Valerie broke mine. She's mean to me.

At those words, Danny had to stifle his laughter to keep from waking Wes up. Skimming through the journal, Danny managed to get a light grasp of Wes's opinion of him.

Entry 11, October 18th, 2005

My Halloween is gonna be fucking ruined. And it's all Fenton's fault. Lemme start at the beginning, yesterday morning I saw Fenton at his locker and hung around close enough to hear him talking to his sister on the phone. From what I could hear, he was talking about some kind of "healing factor". So later that day, I was bored in history, and he left for a ghost attack, so I started to follow him. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I wandered around outside the school for a few minutes, and when I snuck back in – Fenton was there, and he FUCKING RATTED ME OUT to Principal Ishiyama. She gave us a hell of a lecture and now I'm stuck with that arrogant, lying, dead bastard during Halloween. And worse... Ishiyama's making us wear costumes. I have plans to go shopping with Justin this weekend, but I don't really know what I want to do. Who knows? Maybe if I want to scare everyone, I can go as my Dad's creepy ass boss, Vlad Masters. He came over to our apartment last weekend for some reason, and I'm pretty sure he saw all of my pictures of Fenton in my room and he just started laughing. I'm normally freaked out by him, but that fucking crossed the line. So to piss him off, I blasted Kesha music as loud as I could in his face – and as far as I could tell it worked as a pretty decent Vlad repellent.

At that point, Danny was rolling on the floor laughing. Vlad repellent... He was gonna have to tell this one to Tucker, it would be great material for their next pranking spat. Before he knew it, another laugh escaped his lips, and he did nothing to cover it. Until... he remembered where he was – oh, fuck. He froze in his tracks, and found that Wes was starting to wake up. Shit.

Wes jolted from his sleep, sitting straight up. His heart ran a relay in his chest, he swore he fucking heard someone laugh. Feeling slightly disoriented from sitting up so quickly, Wes haphazardly glanced around his room and saw no intruders. It had probably just been a nightmare... Wondering what ungodly time of night it was, he threw a glance at the clock. It was 4:23 a.m.; he'd only been asleep for about two hours. Then, his eyes shifted to his nightstand, where his Phantom journal lay face open. What the hell? Hadn't he left it by his computer?

An unsettling feeling burrowed its way into Wes's chest. The fact that it was completely dark in his room immediately became disturbing to him, so he reached over and turned his bedside lamp on. Light filled the room, and Wes hesitantly picked up the book. It was open to an entry he had written a month ago, which was definitely not something he had done. He'd left the book closed on the other side of the room... so how had-?

Had his Dad come into his room in the middle of the night to read his journal? No. Walter would never do that; he wasn't the type to go snooping around, especially when it came to Wes. Seeing as there was nobody else in their apartment, that meant there was only one plausible deduction.

A ghost had come into his room and read his journal.

And only one ghost had a motive to do that: Danny.

Suddenly feeling very invaded, Wes wondered if Danny was still lurking around in his room, watching invisibly as Wes stared at his journal in confusion. It was an unsettling thought that he was being watched... even right now.

"Danny, if you're even here, screw you, and go to sleep, you dick."

Wes felt both startled and reassured when the temperature in his room rose by a few degrees.

Walter Weston was a very competent man, and perhaps more insightful than anybody else could give him credit for. In fact, if he hadn't been tied to the same secretary job for the past seven years, he might have been the head of his own company by now. But after all these years... he couldn't bring himself to leave Vlad Masters. At first, he had stayed purely out of fear, but now something else kept him at the billionaire's side. Probably loyalty or some bullshit.

To this day, he could still recall the day he had stumbled upon Vlad's dirty little secret. It had happened about a year into the job, nearly six years ago. At the time, he had been a single father of an eight-year old boy making frequent commutes up to Wisconsin to do paperwork for one of America's richest. Honestly, Walter had noticed a number of strange things about Vlad from the beginning – they were hard not to notice. From simple behavioral quirks such as muttering indecipherable things under his breath, to the way he seemed to unnaturally glide when he walked. And his mansion... that place gave him the creeps. Sure, it seemed harmless at first: a giant castle decorated in the signature colors of the Green Bay Packers and had all the latest technologies money would buy. But the place gave off an aura... that there was something dark lingering within those corridors. Not to mention, even if he turned the A/C as high as it would go, the temperature would never reach above 60º.

It had been a regular day in mid-February and Walter had been emailed a shit-ton of papers that Vlad needed to sign. So he printed them, and approached Vlad's office. Remembering Vlad's rule about barging in unannounced (which had been made clear to him from the very beginning), he stood outside the giant mahogany door between him and Mr. Masters.

"Um sir," Walter said hesitantly, "Kav Corp just sent a bunch of papers for you to sign concerning your latest business deal with them."

"They don't waste any time do they," Vlad grumbled, his voice sounding both muffled and echoey from behind the door. "I just made that damn deal last night."

"Well, that's the world of business for you," Walter said. "Everything's faster with the help of the Internet."

"Well the Internet can fuck off," he heard Vlad say, "I'm busy."

"May I ask doing what sir?" Walter asked.

"Personal planning for future projects."

Walter furrowed his eyebrows."Is this another classified thing that you think I don't know about?"

His boss started laughing, "Oh, I know you don't know about this."

"Well," Walter was starting to get irritated with the evasion of the topic, "you still need to sign these papers, sir."

"Give me a minute, leave them outside the door," he paused. "You can go and play Solitaire or something."

"With all due respect, I don't think these can wait. Kav Corp needs these signed as soon as possible, and the last two times you told me to leave them outside your door they didn't get signed for at least four days. I think it's in the best interest of DALV for you to sign these now."

"Walter..." Vlad's voice suddenly grew grim, "I will not say it again, leave them outside the damn door."

Growing tired of this idiocy, Walter resolved to push open the door to his boss's office so he could see him face to face. He was frustrated with arguing with a door. "Mr. Masters, whatever this personal planning is, it can-"

Walter never finished his sentence. In Vlad's office, sitting (floating, hovering?) in his boss's seat, was a terrifying monster with blue skin, glowing red eyes, a questionable haircut that resembled devil horns, fangs, and a white and red cape. Everything in Walter told him to do something, scream, run hightail out of the office, or do anything other than what he did. But his body was petrified, he couldn't bring himself to move it, or even make a sound. Was this was shock felt like, he thought helplessly. The creature's horrible red eyes bore into him, and he looked back. And it was in that moment, he noticed that thing in front of him looked as nearly frightened as he was.

As soon as Walter got over his initial shock, his mind went into overload with questions. What was this thing? What was it doing here? How was it floating? Why did it look like a vampire? Was ita vampire? Where was Mr. Masters? Had Mr. Master's been in this office at all? Had it been mimicking him, or was it a recording? Was it hiding Mr. Masters? Had it eaten Mr. Masters? But all he managed to get out was, "Are – h – how – Masters – what – you – what is – what are – oh, God."

In that moment, all of Walter's blood went cold. The thing locked eyes with Walter once again and spoke, "I told you not to come in without warning."

Walter felt sick... it had spoken with Vlad's voice. So that meant that... that thing was Vlad? How did that make sense? His boss was human right? He had to be loosing his mind. There was no way that Vlad Masters could be anything other than human, because there wasn't anything other than human beings. There was no such thing in the paranormal! But here in front of him was... this blue skinned creature that spoke with his boss's voice. How was that supposed to be explained?

"Is... is that really you, Mr. Masters?" Walter chalked up the courage to speak again.

"Would it make you feel any better if I told you I was a new AI robot?" the thing – Vlad, asked hopefully.

Walter wasn't convinced in his ill thought cover-up for a moment, "No."

"Butter biscuits..." the thing cursed, "it was worth trying." In a moment Walter wasn't prepared for, a white light exploded out of nowhere, leaving two black rings surrounding Vlad. They moved around his form, revealing the now very human Vlad Masters.

Walter's draw had dropped to the floor, "Wha-"

"You will not tell anyone, about this. If you let one word slip out, I will bury you, your son, your siblings, and anyone you've ever loved. Got it? You will not talk about this to anyone, try not to even think about it if you have to."

Walter nodded.

"Good. Now close your mouth, you're drooling on my very expensive carpet."

He gulped, "If – if you don't mind me asking – uh, what was that?"

Vlad froze for a moment, running something over in his head, before he invited Walter to sit down with him. "Do you believe in ghosts Walter?"

"Not really. But I might be having seconds thoughts..."

"In college, me and a few friends had a strong interest in the paranormal. Back then we thought we were so clever," he said the word bitterly, "so we tried messing with a portal to another dimension. The thing blew up in my face, and left me hospitalized. I never heard from those friends again, and from my time in the hospital, I realized that the accident left me with more than ghost acne."

"I'm sorry," Walter interjected, "did you say ghost acne?"

"Well the technical term is ecto acne. But anyway, the portal gave me ghost powers, and the ability to switch between a human and a ghost form at will. For the past fifteen years, I've used these powers to my personal advantage. And... in the past fifteen years, you're the first person to find out about this... condition of mine."

There was a moment of silence between the two, before Walter stood up from his seat, "You have my silence, sir."

"I should hope so," the man muttered.

"Hey, even if I do try to tell anyone, there's no chance anyone will believe me. Right now, I don't even believe me. So don't stress about it too much, Mr. Masters."

Just as he was about to walk out of the office, Vlad spoke again, "Walter, wait."

"Yeah?"

"You can call me Vlad. I know it's not very business appropriate, but... this is personal now."

Walter smiled."Thanks, Vlad. But don't think that fancy ghost powers will get you out of signing those papers."

And that had been that, for the past six years Walter had kept Vlad's secret, even when the world was slowly starting to accept the existence of the paranormal as he did years ago. But now... his son, Wes, had somehow found his way onto the same track he was on. Danny Fenton was also a half-ghost, and Wes was jeopardizing Vlad's work to keep half-ghosts secret. If there was anything Walter could do, it was to keep Wes off of Vlad's trail. He found himself in his son's room one day when he was gone to school. There was a sticky note on his computer that read 'VM – name?' next to a printed article of a record of Vlad's hospitalization. Walter grabbed the sticky note and the article and put them through the paper shredder. It was for the best that Wes didn't figure anything else out.