Saving Sam: Chapter 4
A/N: Thanks much to my reviewers! Thanks to Sakura Scout for the favorite, and to autumngold for the specific comments. Read and enjoy, fellow humans.
"So, this is where we were before." Danny and Tucker stood at the entrance to the same dark alley they had visited the previous night.
"Yep. This is where you asked if it was a good idea, and Sam said that no it wasn't, and I said not to worry and that everything would be fine," Danny recited. Already in ghost mode, he drifted into the alley without hesitation while Tucker looked after him, thermos in hand.
"See anything?"
"Just a lot of garbage." Going intangible, he flew through it all quickly. "Nothing on the inside."
"No heavy, lumpy garbage bags?" Tucker said with an overly innocent expression.
Danny looked at him impassively. "That's so funny I could kick your butt. I was under the impression that you were her friend too."
Tucker's expression hardened. "I am. But you're taking this way too seriously. She's lost, not dead. We've lost track of her before, but we always find her. Don't take it so hard."
"Just because it's happened before doesn't mean we should be slacking off." Danny argued. "It was different this time. You didn't see the way they-" The blue vapor slid out of his mouth. Danny glanced around the area quickly, getting into a defensive position. Tucker scrambled to power up the thermos. Every shadow stared out at them, and every garbage can looked sinister. Catching movement, Danny jerked his head around toward the back end of the alley. A little dirty napkin moved up and waved itself.
"If you want to see your friend again, you'll agree to a truce."
"Show yourself and I'll think about it," Danny's eyes narrowed on napkin, trying to discern the ghost's exact position.
"Put down the thermos, first." Tucker looked to Danny, and Danny nodded. Tucker lowered it to the ground. "Good."
An image appeared. Danny recognized his figure as one of last night's attackers, but the ghost's aura was a deep, disconcerting darkness that overlaid the typical lime green. Danny had never seen anything like it. From the smooth, deep pitch of his voice, Danny guessed that he was the one who had given orders. The order. "Alright, let's talk," Danny said guardedly.
The ghost smiled easily and came a bit closer, allowing Danny a closer look at it. He was puzzled for a moment by its countenance. It had a thin, angular face, sharp Roman nose and high cheekbones. Danny looked it in the eye and saw a fairly reasonable being. He wondered how this could be the leader of the deadly crew he had fought the night before, but then he remembered Sam.
"We want Sam back."
"And we want our companions back, and I want something from you."
"What could you want from us?" Tucker asked.
The ghost glanced down scornfully. "Be quiet, mortal."
"Hey! I-"
"Tucker," Danny said, a plea and a warning at once. Tucker shut his mouth and simmered. "So, what do you want?"
"It is a matter I would like to discuss in private."
"He's not going anywhere and neither is that thermos until we get Sam back."
"Darn straight," Tucker muttered.
The ghost frowned. "Well, I guess I could always track you down at your house or school..."
"No, don't do that." That was the last thing Danny wanted. "Just tell us what it is, and we'll see what we can do."
"You seem to think that you have the advantage here, that you set the conditions," the ghost said quietly. "You don't. You can't kill my accomplices. They're already dead. I can find them again if you shove them through your toy portal. Your friend, your little girlfriend, on the other hand, is painfully human." His voice dipped to a sadistic growl on the last phrase, and it made Danny's skin crawl.
"Don't you hurt her! If you-" he started to shout. He grunted and started again. "Look, fine, whatever."
"Excellent," the ghost said with a smile. "Follow me."
Danny glanced apologetically over his shoulder. "Sorry about this, Tucker."
"It's no problem. If those are the terms that'll keep Sam safe, it's fine by me," he said. "Just watch your back, Danny."
Danny followed the ghost up over the city. The afternoon sun gave everything a withered, tired look which Danny mildly resented. They flew low over the city, skimming the tops of buildings and occasionally winding around them, passing over clueless pedestrians, strings of laundry, and afternoon traffic. Danny quickly became impatient with it all.
"How much farther is it to your little hideout?"
"We're nearly there," the ghost replied. Danny looked around. They had arrived at the docks, and the whole place was rank with decay and filth. The ghost flew into an ancient wooden warehouse that slumped against a potted gravel road. The little paint left on it was peeling, most of the windows were broken, and it looked like it should have collapsed a hundred years ago. The water slapped ineffectually at the shore on the opposite side of the road, rearranging the assorted tires, glass, and paper which lay scattered along it. Danny imprinted the place on his memory, unpleasant as it was, and took special note of a faded signpost that read, "Pier 17." He swooped down and followed the ghost inside.
The interior of the relic was worse than the outside. Its stench was the first thing that hit him, an eclectic mix of animal waste, mold, and something sharp and synthetic. The wood was rotting, and one wall was stacked with metal drums marked biohazard. Some were rusted, some were broken and empty, and some were leaking. The concrete floor looked damp and mildewed, and the only dim light able to penetrate the building came from several rusted-out holes in the sheet-metal roof.
"Nice place you have here," Danny said.
"Isn't it?" the ghost mused, floating near the center of the building. "It's an old chemical warehouse. Every once in a while, one of those drums explodes when the fumes get to some critical level. It's lethal to the living. Keeps people away." He gave Danny a smug grin. "Obviously, the fumes don't affect ghosts, but I wouldn't change back to your normal self here."
"No kidding. You don't have Sam in a place like this, do you?" he demanded in alarm.
"Not at all. She'll be fine as long as we can reach an understanding."
"What do you want?"
The ghost folded his arms and said evenly, "I want to know what's wrong with me."
Danny folded his arms and scoffed. "You've got to be kidding."
The ghost swept toward him and Danny noticed that those cold, calculating eyes that had previously appeared quite rational had deepened into burning black pits, its unusual aura a mere echo of the darkness in its eyes. "Shut up, little halfa, stop being so presumptuous and listen." Danny didn't feel as though he had a choice. Not with those eyes. "Listen," the ghost's voice growled. "Something's bad with me. I know that. I didn't use to be like this. Something happened. Something snapped. I don't know exactly when, and I don't remember exactly how, but as of late I've begun to think that it's irrelevant." The ghost's words careened around the inside of Danny's skull. Those black depths were eating away at him, pulling at him. Danny tried to yank himself away, but that darkness only yanked him back harder. "Whatever happened is now self-sustaining."
The ghost swooped up to Danny, who floated transfixed, powerless to move or dart away. "I used to be someone! I had a mind as sharp and incisive as the dagger I now carry in my teeth and wield against pedestrians." The despair seemed a black muck in the ghost's eyes that oozed from its sockets and slide into Danny's own. "But somehow, I got lost somewhere, or something happened and then I... I think it might have been suicide, but I just don't know." Those pits bored and struck down into Danny.
He tried again to jerk his gaze away. He couldn't. He felt his mind beginning to drop away from him and down into the depths of those eyes. He fought back with everything, but he was losing ground fast. A panic began to build inside him, an emerging tidal wave of sheer terror. He was afraid of the eyes, afraid of the creature, afraid of the nightmarish building, afraid that he knew what the ghost would ask of him. He had to remember Sam.
His mind seemed to spin a little less crazily, to slow down ever so slightly at that. Sam. He was out to save Sam. Okay, he thought to himself, to those eyes that still shot down into him. Okay, let's be depressed and miserable and hopeless, but know one thing. When this whole mess is over, Sam is going to be safe.
He was finally able to tear himself away. He panted for a moment, breathing deeply and looking away at the ground. After a moment, he found he could think clearly again, but he still felt a trace of those eyes in him...
He looked up and a little to the side of the ghost, using his peripheral vision just to be safe.
The pits were gone. The ghost scanned his face, a small, bemused smile on its face. "I want to talk to your sister."
"No." Danny's response was determined and final.
"I'll guarantee her safety, of course."
"It doesn't matter. You're absolutely insane. I wouldn't trust you within a thousand miles of her."
"But you trust me with your girlfriend." The ghost smirked. Danny resisted the impulse to jump over and rip its lips off. "Generally, I don't break my promises. Besides, I don't really need your help at all. I could always follow you until I find out where you live; your sister probably lives with you; I have a little doctor-patient chat with her and then kill both her and your girlfriend just because I can. Does that sound like a better deal to you?"
Danny twitched. "I'd stop you."
The ghost gave a sinister chuckle. "Ah yes, let's look at that scenario. You toss a couple punches here, and I'll beat you. You can't even handle my gaze. I pummel you until you pass out and turn back into a human. You either die here in the fumes or are left bleeding on some street corner. Then comes the fun part." Danny looked away. Clouds of darkness had once again begun to creep across the ghost's eyes. Something in the back of his mind whispered that he couldn't take much more of that. He thought about Sam. He was going to save Sam.
"I don't kill you," the ghost continued, enjoying it. "I leave you and kill both your friends. The only reason you won before was because of that thermos. That will be easy enough to steal." As an afterthought, he added lightly, "I'll do your family too, of course, if I can find them."
Danny didn't say anything for a minute. The ghost waited, watching Danny's gears grind against the options, trying to find a way out and finding none. It laughed. "Let me see if I can make the decision a little less difficult for you. It's not something I do very often for anybody, but since I'm asking you for a favor the little honor I do have is telling me that it's not nice to torture people when they want to do something nice for you. In your case, I suppose, it would be more like me forcing you to do something nice for me, but still..."
"Get to the point."
"I really don't intend to hurt your sister. I promise."
"Ha!" Danny's laugh was short and cynical, delivered with a pained expression.
"I'm being serious. My behavior, at certain times, is something I can't seem to control. I won't get into the details now; you probably aren't interested anyway, but I consider it a shameful thing to be unable to control oneself."
Danny looked him up and down, wondering how this ghost could possibly judge anything as shameful, but he reconsidered his options and spoke again. "If I did this for you, and it's strictly an if-"
"Of course."
"I would have to be present, and I'd have the thermos with me."
The ghost waved it aside. "Fine, I trust you."
"You give me Sam before you see my sister."
"And I get my companions."
"Fine. And Sam and Tucker would be present."
"No," the ghost said firmly. "The girl is fine, but I don't like the boy. His mouth is too big and his head is too thick." He glanced at Danny. "Rather like yourself, actually. I imagine you two make quite the little team."
"We three," Danny corrected.
"Yes, of course," the ghost hissed pensively, softly. "You three." He looked back at Danny. "So, will you do it?"
Danny grimaced and kicked his legs in mid-air, feeling cornered and frustrated. "I'll see what I can do."
The ghost grinned. "Excellent. Return here when you're ready. You have until Friday."
Danny nodded. Today was Tuesday.
"One more thing, Danny." The ghost smiled facetiously. "My name is Alex." Danny made a small show of turning around and drifting calmly through the wall. Once outside, he shot off like a rocket. "Don't hesitate to decide earlier than that. I can assure Sam's basic safety, but I also assure you that she is very uncomfortable!" the ghost roared after him, erupting into a laughter that bounced across the surrounding warehouses like cold bullets of hail.
Danny fled, leaving the docks far behind. He raced across the city, the buildings and earth only a blurred, glittering streak beneath him. Tears rolled down his face in a steady stream. He wanted to race away from those eyes, those pits with the tangible darkness that seemed press the heart in his chest into stillness. He flew until he was over the suburbs and until the suburbs turned to fields, cows grazing on the grass, tinted orange and spiked by shadows in the failing light. Danny came down for a landing, but he couldn't get his feet up in time and hit the ground hard, rolling head over heals across an empty field of sparse trees and coarse bushes. He came to a stop on his side and didn't move for some time.
He watched a solitary ant skitter across a blade of grass, criss-crossing over its own path in search of something to put in its tiny mandibles. Drained in body and mind, he watched the ant and the thin veins that ran parallel up the blade. It looked so vivid, so wonderfully tangible and real compared to the void in Alex's eyes. Even when the sun went down and the ant had gone away, the blade still stood there, a thick, opaque, verdant green. He rolled over and looked at the stars. They sprinkled the sky in uncountable millions, twinkling through the darkness in swiftly shifting colors. Pink, blue, white, red, yellow, white again. Danny looked past the stars into the blackness, bracing himself instinctively.
What met him was not hostile; it was not even mildly contentious. It was a clear, rich, beautiful blackness. It sang notes of infinity and eternity in his ears, and echoed away across the earth past all horizons. The stars littered it like trumpet blasts of momentary but brilliant glories, and the soft, dusty streak of the Milky Way ribboned across the sky like a gentle piano sonata. Danny lay back and watched the grand composition until the darkness in Alex's eyes was thoroughly drowned in the celestial roar.
Danny stood up and decided to see if he could find his way home. He didn't know where he was; he still had to worry about Sam, and he didn't know what he was going to do about Alex's request, but at that moment, it all seemed to him like he had a decent chance of fixing everything.
A/N: I desperately hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if you didn't I desperately want you to tell me why. I should also mention that Chapter 5 may be delayed somewhat. I have Doom 3, the best computer game in all the known universe, and a brand-new 3.6 GHz computer, the fastest commercial computer in all the known universe. How can you, the reader, yank me away from my zombie-slaughtering extravaganza and push me back to the word processor? Just drop me a review.
