Chapter 7: One Foot In the Grave
Currently, It was Sunday (otherwise known as Slasher Movie Sunday) so of course the four teens sat in Danny's room in front of his tv watching old horror movies that were absolutely soaked in blood and gore, just like they liked them. It served as a good distraction, if nothing else.
Even though just last night, Danielle was violently sick, she somehow persuaded Danny that she was okay enough to continue with plans they had with Sam and Tucker. Danny blamed her accursed puppy dog eyes. Their plans did start quite a bit later than they intended, seeing as they both slept in so late.
"Hey Danielle, I forgot to ask earlier but how's your burns?" Danny asked as he shoveled a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
Danielle glanced away from the TV to her twin. "The blisters look almost normal now, so I'm going to take that as a good sign."
Finally the heroine with ridiculously pristine hair and makeup despite being almost killed several times, outsmarted the bad guy and killed him, ending the movie. As the credits rolled, Danny stood up and stretched. "I think I'm gonna get more snacks before the next movie starts. Who wants to come with?"
"Don't we have a frozen pizza?" Danielle asked standing and stretching in a fashion almost identical to her brother.
Danny perked up at that. "You know, I think we do."
They all decided that they would go down to the kitchen together, which ended up being a colossal mistake. Jack Fenton was practically waiting in ambush for them.
As he bodily dragged the twins down the stairs and into the basement, Sam and Tucker awkwardly followed behind.
"Can't you just show Jazz whatever it is?" Danny said in a strangled voice.
"Nope, no can do. She and your mother went out. To the store I think? I hope they come back with some fudge," Jack said distractedly.
Four chairs were quickly pulled out and four teens were just as quickly (and near forcefully) seated in them.
"I overheard you asking Maddie about ghosts yesterday, and I think I know what that means. You kids want to hunt ghosts!" Jack Fenton boisterously said.
Danny actually had asked his mother about ghosts yesterday. Well, about ectoplasm mostly. He had foolishly braved the kitchen and had been corned by her, thankfully she hadn't dragged him to the lab like his dad did. She did however subject him to a thirty minute lecture about their findings on ectoplasm which he only half listened to. Danny had made the mistake paying half attention (a half more than he usually did) and asking one question, apparently. He didn't even remember what the question was anymore, or if he had even gotten an answer.
Jack continued. "Knowing you four want to go into the family business does my heart good." He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
"Actually, Dad, I want to be an astronaut," Danny timidly interjected.
"And I'm actually really leaning towards zoology," Danielle said, crossing her arms.
"I was really into ghosts," Sam commented as she inspected her black painted finger nails, "but they're so mainstream now."
Danny rolled his eyes good-naturedly at his ghoulish friend. Leave it to Sam to hate anything popular. She had the mindset that people were generally stupid, so if something was liked by a lot of people that must mean it was stupid, too.
"What about you Tucker," Jack asked the boy to the right of Danny.
A cocky smile spread over Tucker's face, and he leaned back in his chair trying to act cool. "And waste all these looks?"
"Oh, yeah, your looks would be much better suited to play the monster in a bad horror film," Sam snarked with a smirk.
"Ooooh, Tucker, do you need some ice for that burn?" Danielle added with faked concern, while Danny tried not to laugh at Tucker's indignant cry.
"Well, if you kids change your minds," Jack announced, interrupting the argument that was bound to erupt, "the first thing you'll need to know…" Jack went on to lecture about ghosts, which the four teens mostly ignored.
As his father rambled, Danny's mind drifted to other places. The teen glanced at the ghost portal seated in the wall at the far end of the lab. It was closed by enormous mechanical doors at the moment, but he vividly remembered the pool of glowing green mist swirling in a constant vortex.
Danny snapped to attention when his father cursed loudly. Jack turned around with a sheepish look. He must have forgotten there were young innocent minds in the room—or, well, young minds that weren't exactly innocent anymore.
"Sorry kids. It looks like I've misplaced the Fenton Thermos. Too bad, I really wanted to show it to you," Jack said making a sad puppy-dog face. It was weird how a grown man of Jack's enormous stature could pull it off so well.
The man shook off his disappointment and turned his attention to his two children. "Hey, have you two seen it lately? You know, I showed it to you earlier. It has Fenton on it and it catches ghosts—well, not yet, but I'm working on that." He looked between Danny and Danielle expectantly as the teens wracked their brains. Danny (and for the most part Danielle as well) usually tried to forget about the inventions their parents made—especially now—but Danny would do anything to make his dad happy and get rid of the sad puppy face.
"Uh, I think I saw it last on the kitchen table," Danny replied.
"Yeah, wasn't mom working on it?" Danielle said, jumping in.
"Thanks kids!" Jack beamed. He slapped Danny on the back, nearly unseating him, while conversely he gave Danielle a light kiss on the top of her head, and then raced out of the basement.
There was a short moment of silence until Sam turned to Danny and Danielle. "Are you guys okay?"
Danny glanced at his twin to see she was ringing her hands (at least she wasn't chewing her nails) and was warily eyeing the closed Ghost Portal. He suspected she felt much the same as he did. He badly wanted to curl up in a ball and never visit the lab again. Being down here made his skin crawl. It was bad enough that the tables were lined with equipment designed for hunting ghosts—beings which he had developed a strange sense of sympathy towards even though he had yet to meet one—but he also felt a strange pull from the ghost portal that was in no way normal or even okay.
"Hey, ground control to Major Tom," Sam said halfheartedly, trying to regain Danny's attention.
He cursed inwardly. He had been drifting off a lot lately. It was probably some sort of trauma coping mechanism that Jazz would know about.
"I'm fine, Sam," he said a little too defensively.
His goth friend crossed her arms and raised a questioning eyebrow at his snappish tone.
Danny gave an impatient huff. "I'm fine, really." He turned to Danielle. "Are you?"
Her attention whipped from the ghost portal to her brother. She nodded a little too quickly. "Yeah, yeah sure. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Is this the first time you've been down here since the accident?" Tucker asked.
Danny and Danielle nodded almost simultaneously.
"That sucks. I gotta admit this place is giving me the creeps too." Tucker's attention drifted away from his friends to the work bench piled with all sorts of gadgets. "Even though all this stuff is pretty cool."
"Thanks Tucker for your thoughtful words," Danny deadpanned.
Tucker's attention was already honed in on the sic-fi looking gadgets on the workbenches—most of which probably didn't work.
Sam rolled her eyes at Tucker's antics and turned back to the Fenton twins. "Look, we have your back. You need to talk about it, I know it. It'll make you feel better if you just let it all—Tucker put that down!" Danny and Danielle both jumped at her sudden shout. Danny looked to see what had gotten his goth friend so worked up. When he saw that Tucker was holding a large futuristic looking gun, Danny felt like her outburst was warranted.
"Yeah, Tucker. That's probably not a good idea," Danny commented.
"Most of your parent's ghost stuff doesn't work, anyway, right?" Tucker said still inspecting the weapon. "Hey, wouldn't this be a badass as a weapon in Doom?" Of course Tucker would bring video games into this.
"Yeah, sure, but I really think you should put that down. Remember the last time we though something of my parents wouldn't work?" Danny said standing up and taking a step towards his friend.
Tucker visibly sobered, all humor slipping from his face. "Okay, yeah, you're right." He started to put the gun down, but his finger slipped and accidentally pressed the trigger. At the moment they were all much too concerned with not getting hit by a ball of plasma that came out of the muzzle of the gun to have actually seen where the blast had landed.
"Tucker!" Sam, Danny, and Danielle shouted in unison.
"It was an accident! It's heavy! It slipped!" Tucker said frantically, cringing away from the punch in the arm or kick in the shin that would either come from Sam or Danielle.
Danielle beat Sam to it, landing a firm punch on Tucker's shoulder. "What the hell were you thinking!? You could have killed somebody!" she shouted, her voice shaking slightly.
Danny pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, attempting to get his heart to stop racing. "Let's just put that aside for now and scope out the damage and try to fix it before my dad comes back." Danny hated to think what his dad would do if he found out they had been messing around with potentially lethal objects.
Come to think of it, his dad had been gone for quite a while. Danny thought again about where he had seen the thermos last and remembered that he had seen his mom go off with it somewhere—likely to put it back in the lab. Oops. So he had sent his dad on a wild goose chase. Oh well.
The four teens began to look around to see what mess the blast made. They froze when they noticed the scorch marks on the control panel to the ghost portal.
The teens stood staring at the damaged panel, waiting for something to happen. They jumped in unison when sparks suddenly flew from the panel accompanied by a loud pop. The large doors then slowly began to open.
Danny was ready to go run up stairs and tell his dad that the portal was malfunctioning, but he couldn't. He was frozen to the spot. Danielle, Sam, and Tucker seemed to be frozen in terror, as well.
The portal simply sat open for several moments, and the four teens started to relax. It was even peaceful how the luminous green mist swirled slowly. One could almost forget that it was extremely dangerous.
A sudden, tingling cold seized Danny, starting as a lump in his chest then migrated up through his throat. It was all topped off by a puff of cold steam issuing from his lips. Considering recent events, this new development couldn't mean anything good.
Danny's suspicions were confirmed when glowing green tentacles slid out of the portal and wrapped around Danielle's ankle—who was unfortunately the closest to the portal. Danny, Sam, and Tucker collectively yelled for Danielle as she was lifted high in the air.
The rest of the monster glided out of the portal. It looked vaguely like an octopus with a blobby head and wispy tentacles. Did animals have ghosts—or souls? Ghosts came from souls, right? Danny might have to pay more attention to his parents lectures in the future.
Danny snapped to action, and more out of instinct than anything else, he began to transform. The lump of cold in Danny's chest intensified until the frigid sensation completely washed over him. A pale blue ring of light formed around his waist then split itself in two and traveled up and down his unimpressive frame.
Every one looked at him with shocked expressions. Even the octopus ghost looked startled for a moment before emitting a menacing hiss and lifted Danielle higher in the air.
Danny's mind instantly snapped back to Danielle's troubled state and he glared at the ghost. "Give me back my sister!" he shouted and lunged grab his twin.
Whoa his voice sounded really weird. There wasn't time to think about that though because he had to save Danielle.
Danny flew up Danielle suspended about five feet in the air without even realizing it at first and grabbed her hands.
"Danny you're flying!" she said looking at him in awe.
"Wait, what?" he said before looking down and seeing that he was about four feet off the ground.
He had no time to think about how that was even remotely possible before he was caught by another one of the ghost's tentacles. The wispy appendage firmly curled around his waist.
Danny was surprised when a plasma blast shot from behind him hit the monster in the face. Danny glanced behind him to see Tucker had picked up the gun that had started all of this and was aiming it at the extradimensional monster.
Sam lunged to yank the gun out of Tucker's grasp. "Tucker, stop! You might hit one of them!"
"I will not! I'm a level fifty sharp shooter in Doomed!" Tucker argued.
The octopus ghost (ectopus, maybe?) was at least distracted for a moment from Tucker blasting it in the face, and Danny managed to get free from it.
He punched it in the face—well, the globulous mass that he guessed was the face. The monster let out an earsplitting wail and finally let go of Danielle. Unfortunately for her, it was still holding her about four feet above the ground and Danny had no time to catch her.
He winced when she hit the floor with a soft thud. "Are you okay?"
Her only response was a raised middle finger.
"Yeah, she's okay," he mumbled to himself.
Before the ghost could grab him again, he flew clear to the other side of the room. He made a running—or flying start, actually—and slammed both feet into the ectopus's (yes, of course he was going to keep calling it that!) face sending it flying back through the portal.
Danny, now huffing from exertion, flew over to the damaged control panel. Hopping that some of the buttons still worked and that he wouldn't make things worse, he began hitting what he thought was the "close" button. Thankfully, it worked and after a moment of frantically pressing the button, the doors closed.
Danny slid down the wall, involuntarily transforming back into his human self as he went. He looked up with wide eyes at his shaken friends, breathing heavily. "I-I think we're safe now so…" He gave them a trembling smile and held up a thumbs-up, his hand shaking violently.
"Th-that was too close," Sam quaked. "What was that thing? And did you just—" The sound of the basement door opening cut her off.
The teens heads whipped towards the entrance to the basement, and they froze.
"Hey, kids?" Jack called down into the basement.
At a supernatural speed, Tucker put the blaster down and the four teens regained their seats.
"I hope you don't mind I left you and your little friends down here so long," Jack said reaching the bottom of the stairs. "Your mother came home and she bought fudge like I had hoped, and I got a little side tracked," he said with a sheepish look.
"Oh, yeah, and your mother said she put the thermos back in here. Oh, well, guess I didn't look hard enough. Its probably under a pile of junk or something. You should really clean up down here, Danny. That's your chore, remember?" Jack said with a scolding look.
"Oh, uh, sorry dad," Danny stammered, still slightly out of breath. "I'll get on that in a little bit, I promise."
"It's all right. Now where were we? Oh, yeah, what exactly are ghosts? Well, traditionally they're thought of as the residual energy of a deceased person's consciousness, but Maddie and I theorize that some ghosts may be—"
"Hey, Jack?" Maddie said sticking her head through the basement door. "I know you must be having a lot of fun telling the kids our new theories, but I really need to speak with you for a moment, is that alright?"
"Oh, yeah, sure thing, sweet cheeks!" Jack said with his usual enthusiasm.
Maddie came down all the way into the basement and turned to the still slightly shaking kids in the chairs. "Why don't you go ahead and take your friends back up stairs?" she said to the twins. "We can continue this lesson on ghosts another time."
They didn't need to be asked twice and quickly booked it out of the basement back upstairs to Danny's room.
Tucker being the last one through the door closed it quietly behind him. The four teens simply waited in silence hoping one of them would break it. Danny sat down on the edge of his bed letting out a slow breath and laying his hands on his knees as if he was bracing himself. He glanced over at his sister. She was seated in his desk chair, having drawn her knees up to her chest and was currently working on chewing her fingernails down to the quick.
"You know we should…we should probably talk about what happened in the lab just now," Sam said, finally acknowledging the elephant in the room.
"T-talk about what?" Danny stammered, his fingers twitching on his knee. "Talk about how I'm probably dead? Okay cool. Then lets get started with what the fuck am I going to do?!"
"You're not dead! You can't be dead, Danny! Y-you don't look dead at the moment! You changed back just like you did the first time," Sam said.
"Well, what about back in the lab? I certainly didn't look alive then! Plus, Mom and Dad have plenty of theories about ghost being able to shape shift so…yeah…"
"Wouldn't you be able to tell if you were dead though?" Tucker asked, his voice being a couple octaves higher than usual.
"I don't know what being dead feels like, Tucker!" Danny said giving his friend a helpless look.
"Well…do you feel any different since the accident?" he asked.
Danny did indeed feel different. Cold, he felt cold, but on the inside, if that made any sense at all. He had tried to ignore it until then, and it wasn't even that noticeable at first, until the cold lump had intensified and consumed him back in the lab. Now he was keenly aware of it sitting right at home in his chest.
But he still got hungry, he still needed to sleep, and breath, and he was pretty sure he could feel his heart beating in his chest, especially now. He still had to preform all the bodily functions of a living person, so therefore he should be alive, right?
"I do feel different," he answered slowly, "but…I don't feel dead. Ugh! I don't know!" He threw up his hands in frustration.
"Maybe…you're only like halfway dead?" Danielle said, speaking up for the first time since they had reached Danny's room.
He looked over at her a little shocked that she had spoken. He thought she had entered "Shutdown Mode", but then what she had actually said finally registered.
"Thats…that…that can't be possible! You can't be half dead, Ellie! You either are or you aren't!" he stammered.
"Ghosts are supposed to be impossible too, remember?" she said in a very serious, un-Danielle way.
"Man…if that's true—that you're half dead, I mean—then that really gives the saying 'one foot in the grave' a new meaning," Tucker said.
If looks could kill, Tucker would be dead a thousand times over from the look Sam gave him. She only turned her glare from the poor squirming techno geek because Danny burst into hysterical laughter.
He laughed so hard that his sides began to hurt and his eyes teared up. He was sure he was freaking his friends out, but he couldn't seem to stop the manic cackling.
"Shit, he's loosing it," Sam muttered.
"No, no, I'm good. I'm okay," he said, his fit of laughter finally subsiding into giggles. He wiped a few tears from his eyes. He then stood up and clapped his hands. "Okay, whose up for finishing that slasher movie marathon!"
"Danny!" Sam said, giving him an incredulous look.
"What? Sunday's almost over and we haven't even gotten through the Friday the 13th movies."
"Danny, we have serious things to discuss," Sam said. "More serious than watching cheese filled horror flicks!"
"Hey, there's something else," Danielle said, still uncharacteristically serious. "Dan called me last night before I got sick." A guilty look crossed her face. "I forgot to call him back," she muttered more to herself than to the rest of the people in the room.
"Well, what did he say?" Danny asked reluctantly.
"He rambled on about something not being right about you and him, that you didn't come out of the portal right. I'm pretty sure he was like, waisted," she said.
Danny pursed his lips. "Was that all he said?"
"He said that something happened to him only a couple days ago, but I had to hang up before he said anymore. I-I was only half listening because I was sick."
Danny shook his head. "Whatever the case, I don't want to deal with Dan right now."
"Danny!" His twin glared.
"Look, we have Sam and Tucker over. They shouldn't deal with that," he said.
"We can just go..." Tucker said awkwardly.
"No," Danny snapped. He turned back to Danielle. "I'm, really, really in no mood to—"
Suddenly his body decided it was a good time to go intangible, and he slipped right through the floor.
With a grunt, he hit the kitchen table, sprawling over the top of it. A string of muttered curses flowed from his mouth. And here he thought he was finally getting over the whole "phasing through stuff at annoyingly inconvenient times" thing. He lifted his head and saw to his relief that there at least wasn't anyone in the kitchen to watch him defy the laws of physics once again. He let his head fall back down onto the table surface and glared at the ceiling.
The sound of hurried footsteps coming down the stairs could be heard, and soon the anxious faces of his friends and twin sister were leaning over him.
"Dude, are you okay?" Tucker asked. Danny only responded with a glare. "Sorry, standard question," Tucker amended.
Danny let out a sigh. "As I was saying…I'm not in the mood to deal with Dan right now."
"Uh, yeah, okay," Danielle said, nodding her head vigorously. "But this evening maybe...?"
Danny slowly closed his eyes. "Okay, fine, but could someone please help me up for now?"
…
"So what was so important that you needed to get the kids out of here?" Jack asked with a slight frown.
"Well, while I was out I took some readings around town. Jazz didn't appreciate it one bit, but from what I gathered I'm really glad I did," Maddie explained as she pulled out a small device that looked similar to a Geiger counter. It was dubbed Fenton Ectoplasmic Atmospheric Reader, or FEAR for short—a completely coincidental, and in Maddie's opinion, unfortunate acronym. She looked up to her husband with a frown. "Jack, I'm worried about this data. Just look at it!"
He took the device from her and scrolled through the display, humming to himself. "Well…that doesn't look good at all," he said stating the obvious.
"You're telling me! It's starting to look more and more like our hypothesis is correct. Every last number points to a general weakening in the barrier between our world and the Ghost Zone, and it looks like its happening all over Amity Park."
"Got any ideas on how we can fix it, Madds?" Jack said, setting the FEAR down on one of the workbenches and wrapped an arm around her.
"We could...shut down the portal..." The words tasted bitter in her mouth, and she was hardly able to force them out.
It could possibly reverse the weakening by sealing up the original tear, but it was such a disheartening idea. They had worked years, suffering countless losses and now they had finally done it. However, if ghosts started escaping the Ghost Zone and began reeking havoc on the town, they would be morally obligated to stop it in any way possible, even if that meant throwing away years of work.
Jack took his arm from around her and took a step back. Maddie turned around in her chair and saw a horrified look firmly affixed to his face.
"Maddie, how could you say something like that?" he said, shock clear in his voice. "We've been working on this since college!"
"I know, but we can't allow potentially dangerous entities to enter our world! If turning off the portal will stop that then that's what we have to do!" Maddie said trying to keep a level tone but failing spectacularly.
She sighed and made herself mentally take a step back. "Look, maybe it's Amity Park. This place already had unusually high readings of ectoplasm long before we got here. The barrier was thin here even before the portal. That's why we decided to settle in this town in the first place. Maybe that's where we went wrong. Maybe the barrier was too thin. If we pick up and move another place and start over we could salvage some of our work. We just need to…" she trailed off and let out another sigh, letting her head fall into her hands.
Even if they could find another place to start over they might never get the portal up and running again. This time was no more than a fluke in the first place. Plus, what if they ran into the same problem again with ghosts escaping into their world?
"Maddie," Jack said laying a hand on his wife's shoulder. "We can figure this out. We always managed to work around these problems before. Anyway, this gives me the chance to make more gadgets to fight any ectoplasmic scum that comes through." His voice became an excited boom.
Maddie gave him a watery smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Yes, I suppose for now we could at least develop some weaponry to fight these monsters while we think up a more permanent solution."
Jack gave her a brilliant smile that just bordered on mania. "That's the spirit!"
...
The purple light of dusk filtered through the blinds. Sam and Tucker had left for home about half an hour ago, and there was no excuse for Danny to use now.
He paced around his room unhappily while Danielle sat on the edge of his bed dialing Dan's number. She sent him a glare, mentally trying to get him to stop. He returned her look in kind and continued to pace.
Danielle rolled her eyes. The whole feud with Dan was really starting to get on her nerves. Before, it was them just being shitty during the holidays, but now it was actually starting to get in the way of things.
A second later Dan picked up with a bland greeting.
"Hey, Dan, I meant to call you back earlier," she said.
There was a pause. "Right," he breathed, sounding tired. "Look I'm sorry I drunk called you last night. Dad dragged me out to California with him and I'm..." he trailed off with a sigh. "I can't even remember what I said."
Danielle chewed her bottom lip. "It's alright. It's not like this is the first time you've ever done this," she said. "But, um, you were talking about what happened with the portal...and all that. You might have rambled a little bit."
There was another pause over the line then a muttered curse. "Of course..."
"We need to talk, so Danny's here. I'm going to turn you on speaker phone. Please be nice," she said, shooting her twin a look as well.
"Fine," he said quietly.
With a nod of approval, she pressed the button. "Okay, and you're on the air," she said with faked enthusiasm.
"Hey," Dan said. He sounded like he really wanted to throw a 'twerp' or something on the end of it but restrained himself.
"Hey," Danny answered blandly.
"So, um, anything new with you guys?"
"Hey, stop stalling," Danny said, instantly calling him out.
Danielle shot her twin a quelling look, and, ignoring Danny's indignant frown, she said, "Yeah, we do actually."
"Okay...you first."
Danny huffed and threw up his hands, but thankfully didn't voice a protest.
"Okay, I'll tell you what happened this afternoon, but it's a doozie," Danielle cautioned.
"Yeah, so is mine," Dan said solemnly. "Just get on with it."
So she told him about the ectopusses and about Danny transforming, her twin chiming in intermittently.
Then Dan told them everything, even explaining what really happened over three years ago during the final summer he spent at their house, why he did what he did and never meant to go that far. It still didn't excuse what he did, and he even admitted as much, but at least it shed a little light on the situation. Neither of the twins interrupted, probably because they were too shocked by what they heard.
Finally, Dan finished his piece. He concluded with a halting, 'I'm sorry.'
There was a drawn out pause and then Danielle asked quietly, "You've been hiding something like this for years?"
He sighed through the line. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "I should have told you when I was still there, at least about what...happened after the portal." There was another beat and then: "I think I have to go now. Goodbye." The line went dead.