Author's Note: Some of you may have noticed that the formatting of my stories isn't the same as it used to be. This is because switched to a different system, a system that is less user-friendly than the old system, a system that requires me to make the same changes over and over again... And the worst thing is, I don't know how to complain.
Ah, well it doesn't matter. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter; as promised it is far longer than the last pathetic attempt.
P.S. Some of you have asked me of the meanings of a few non-English phrases that I've used in the story. Well, please forgive me for not explaining the meaning of Shou Ge Wang to you just yet (as you'll find out later in the story). However, I shall explain the meaning of the Latin motto, Veritas sine timore, which happened to be the motto of my old school. The phrase means 'Truth without Fear'.

Chapter Four: Dreaming my Dreams

Sam peered out from behind the bushes quietly.

When the receptionist had called Security, Sam had no idea that she would soon be surrounded by armed security guards, each holding a menacing weapon. She had never thought they would be chased out of the hospital by armed guards that seemed as willing to shoot them as a psychotic homicidal maniac. No, she had never expected them to be fully armed. It certainly hadn't been easy to avoid them, as there had been many of them, far more than a normal hospital. It seemed to her almost as if the hospital had its own private army at its disposal. No matter where they turned, it seemed as if these security guards were everywhere.

"There's way too many guards here," murmured Sam to Tucker, as she peered past the leaves of the bushes. "I wonder why there's so many? How can the hospital afford them all?"

"Maybe they've got a rich sponsor or something," said Tucker dismissively, as he looked around him. "Does it really matter?"

Sam shook her head, but not in response to Tucker's question.
"It doesn't make any sense," she said sternly. "How come they're wasting so much money on security when they should be spending it on the patients and on hospital equipment?" She just couldn't understand it. "We've got to get Danny out of here." She didn't like the feel of the place, not least because of the presence of the nearby Maudsley Institute.

"Agreed," replied Tucker with a nod of his head. "But how?"

Silence followed Tucker's question, even though Sam really wanted to answer. She had no idea herself.
"I'll get back to you on that one," was her reply.


Danny lay on the hospital bed, as still as stone, strapped down by white leather belts with wires attached to his forehead and his limbs. He was hooked up to a machine that monitored his heart rate and another his breathing and another that monitored his brain patterns. These had been attached to him ever since Dr. Fordyce had put him under with a powerful anaesthetic he had managed to sneak out from under the anaesthetist's nose, and he had been kept unconscious ever since being transferred to Maudsley.

Everything was in darkness and it seemed to make even the lights of the monitors and hospital equipment dim. What little light there as seemed suffocated and quenched in the darkness. It didn't suggest the strength of the night darkness, though. All this seemed to point towards a lack of light, as if even light did not dare to enter this place, this institute for the mentally insane.

The door opened and a sharp light flooded into the darkened room from outside.

Two men walked in and reached up to take something down from the doorway, before stepping aside.

Dr. Fordyce smiled, as he peered into the room. He walked in, one hand in his pocket, making his way towards Danny with that inane smile on his lips.
"How you doing, kid?" chuckled Fordyce, as he stopped by Danny's side. "You sleeping well?" The smile on his lips widened. "Good," he said, as he brought out a slip of yellow paper with a Chinese incantation written on it in red ink. "That's good to hear," he said, as he pressed the piece of paper against Danny's forehead, sticking the top of it to him.

He then turned to face the two security guards that stood outside.
"Well, what in tarnation are you two waiting for?" he shouted at them. "Get in here and help me move this boy. I can't possibly move him to Arcadia Tower by myself, now can I?" He sighed, as he shook his head. "I swear, you two are as dumb as dried cowpats!"

"Dr. Fordyce, sir!" cried out a security guard, as he pushed past the two standing at the doorway. "Dr. Fordyce, sir! I'm so glad I've found you!"

A frown appeared on Dr. Fordyce's face.
"What is it now?" he asked irritably.

"Blind Gerald's escaped, sir."

"Blind Gerald?" exclaimed Fordyce in astonishment and there seemed to be a tinge of fear in his voice. He then looked towards Danny and then towards the three security guards. On the one hand, he knew that Blind Gerald was very dangerous and needed to be contained. On the other hand, he didn't want to leave young Daniel Fenton in the Institute just in case Blind Gerald should come across him. "Find him! Quick! All of you! Get out and find that blind fool!"

"But what about the patient, sir?" asked one of the security guards.

"He ain't going nowhere," was Fordyce's reply, " as long as you put the Ba Gua back up."


There was a wooden booth in front of them, standing next to a grand concrete pillar. There was a security guard asleep inside the wooden booth within this grand hall of marble with staircases on the wall to the left and the wall to the right. They both went up, round to the wall behind them, where they joined and then back up again to the floor above and near the base of each staircase was a large marble statue of someone looking like a Greek or Roman statesman, staring emotionlessly and passively out at no one and nothing in particular.

"Come on," whispered Sam, as she looked towards the sleeping security guard, "and be quiet."

"Right," agreed Tucker, far too loudly for Sam's tastes.

"I think he headed towards the cemetery, sir."

"Shoot!" cursed Dr. Fordyce, as he ran down the marble stairs with the security guards following him closely. "Can't you morons do anything right? If I've told you once, I've told you a million times, never let those idiot colleagues of mine let Blind Gerald out." He stopped at the foot of the stairs, to glare back at the security guards whom had been doing their best to keep up with him. "Well? Hurry up? I've seen stone tortoises move faster than you lame cows. Get a move on!" He then rushed past the statue, stormed across the tiled floor burst through the doors, followed closely by the parade of security guards.

A small wooden door underneath the staircase opened ever so slightly.

Sam peered out from the crack and looked towards the booth with the light on and the security guard seated in it, apparently still asleep. She waited awhile, looking towards the security guard, afraid that he might awaken any time soon. Yet he didn't seem to and the longer she watched, the surer she became that he was fast asleep. She turned round.
"Come on, Tuck'," she whispered to him. She then thought for a while and then added urgently through clenched teeth, "And don't say a word."

The black-haired girl, dressed in black, a perfect colour for sneaking through a darkened building, snuck quietly out of the cupboard under the watchful gaze of the two marble statues and the dusty, oil paintings of Professor Zeross that glared at her angrily from their golden frames. She looked around her carefully and then focused on Tucker, signalling for him to be quiet in closing the cupboard door. Then with one quiet wave of her hand, she signalled for him to follow her and climbed the marble stairs quietly.

And Tucker was quiet, for a fear had gripped him, exacerbated by the décor of the Maudsley Institute and the sightless eyes that stared at him and seemed to stare through his still living flesh and into his soul. Fear made him long to be closer to Sam, closer to her and to her warmth and to be comforted by her presence. He didn't want to be alone in the Maudsley Institute, this former Manor, that had made his hair stand on end just from looking at it from a distance and had given him goosebumps even in the bright light of the day.

"Man, this place gives me the creeps," whispered Tucker, as he followed Sam up the marble staircase.

"Tuck', zip it," hissed Sam through clenched teeth. She shivered. Yes, she felt exactly the same way as Tucker did, but she didn't want to admit it. She didn't want to admit the fear that welled up in her heart and seemed to make her blood curdle in her veins. "Now come on," she said sternly, "and do as I do." She continued up the staircase and when she reached the landing next to the highly mullioned window, she ducked ducked underneath it, afraid someone outside would see them.

There was something about this very hospital and its adjacent mental institute that made Sam fear for her life, as she snuck through it. She didn't know why, but she had this irrational fear that if they were ever caught, they would be taken to some laboratory and experimented on. It was very irrational, and Sam mentally told herself that it was so. But was it really so irrational? Perhaps there was a reason as to why she had this fear and why this fear seemed to manifest itself in Tucker as well. She looked behind her and though it was quite dark, lit only by light bulbs within the dirty, dust-covered glass shells of old oil lamps, she could see the fear on Tucker's face reasonably well.

Maybe there was a good reason to fear the Maudsley Institute. It could even be possible that the people that came to this place were never mad to start off with, but had slowly cracked and gone insane within the very walls of this old derelict. Sam wondered and then she feared. She feared for Danny and what could happen to him and what might have happened to him already in this insane asylum. Sam feared that by the time they found him, Danny would be a shell of his former self or worse.

Perhaps that was why Samantha Mason quickened her pace, or perhaps it was merely just because of an irrational fear. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she felt as if she was being watched, watched by those sightless eyes that stared out from the paintings and those sightless eyes that stared out from the statues and marble busts. Maybe it was none of these things. Maybe it was all of them. Whatever the reason, not even Sam herself knew.

And he waited for Sam and Tucker to climb up the stairs and up on to the next floor. He waited for them to disappear out of sight, so that they would not see him.

The security guard slowly slid out from his chair, to land with a heavy, lifeless thud on the marble floor.

The masked man walked out, with metallic fibrils coming out from his belt to scrape against the floor. There were no eyeholes in his mask and all that could be seen on it was the figure of a Chinese character, painted on in red ink. This was quite amazing, for he bent down, and with amazingly accurate precision for someone who couldn't see, he placed a strip of yellow paper squarely on the dead security guard's forehead.

The masked man lifted his head and then seemed to stare upwards sightlessly.


Sam looked down the corridor. It didn't seem like a part of the building with its grey carpet and a huge announcement board that hung from the ceiling, that announced the wrong time. No, in fact, it looked more like something of an airport than a mental institute or a hospital.

"Come on, this way," said Sam quietly.

"What? How'd you know?" protested Tucker. "I say we go that way," he said, and pointed back behind him, past the landing of the staircases and down towards an oaken corridor with a chequered linoleum floor.

Sam shook her head.
"Nope, Danny's definitely this way," she said, as she pointed down the carpeted corridor. She then looked down at her makeshift compass, which was really an ordinary compass but with one of Danny's hairs attached to the pointer. "You've got to trust me on this, Tuck. When have ever I steered you wrong?"

"You mean, like the time you got rid of meat from the lunch menu?" retorted Tucker.

"This is not the time, Tucker!" cried Sam angrily. She sighed angrily, as she whirled back round. "Look," she said in an exasperated tone of voice, "just trust me on this, okay? I've got a… kind of Danny tracker. It can lead us to him. I know. I've tried it before, okay?"

Suddenly the two of them turned round simultaneously.

Standing at the top of the staircase was a man wearing a mask that completely covered his face, a mask without eyeholes, a mask with a Chinese word painted on it in red ink. From his belt were metallic fibrils, eight of them, giving him the look of some spider-human hybrid. And though he couldn't see, he turned round to look at them, or at least, it seemed as if he was looking at them through that solid mask of his.

Wordlessly, the masked man rose a small silver bell and rung it.

The masked man murmured something inaudible and then in response the sound of heavy footsteps suddenly followed, as if of people hopping up the stairs.

A few security guards trudged up the steps, their entire bodies seemingly stiff, strips of yellow paper covering their faces and their eyes, with a Chinese incantation written on it in red ink. None of them looked very agile and it seemed as if their legs were glued together, as all they did was hop with their limbs stiff and outstretched. It would have been quite comical, if they weren't quite so dead.

"Jiangshi," murmured Sam, "Chinese Vampires." She then turned to look down the corridor and then towards Tucker. "Let's get out of here!" she cried, before grabbing Tucker's arm and running away from the masked man.

The masked man raised a wooden sword, pointing it at the fleeing kids, before ringing his bell. In response, the undead security guards started hopping after Sam and Tucker.

Sam and Tucker rushed past doors that led into empty libraries with empty bookshelves and empty Carrels and empty tables. They ran underneath the great neon sign and past two elevators that seemed to be out of order, before rushing out into a large open staircase that seemed to stretch up endlessly above them.

"Aw, man!" whined Tucker.

Sam sighed angrily, before grabbing him and running up the stairs as fast as possible. She knew that the stairs would put some distance between the masked man and his Jiangshi. That was what they needed, some distance, so they could have more undisturbed time in finding Danny in this Mental Institute. It was probably why she didn't say a word to Tucker. She wanted to conserve her strength for the dash up the seemingly endless flight of stairs.

Suddenly, Tucker tripped and he fell, his hand slipping from Sam's, and landed against the jagged wooden steps winding himself and bruising himself against the corners. He winced at the pain.

"Come on, get up Tucker!" called out Sam concernedly.

"Go on without me," said Tucker weakly.

Sam peered over the banisters to look further down the spiralling staircase and saw the Jiangshi hopping up the stairs considerably fast, doing six steps at a time.
"Don't be such an idiot," retorted Sam, as she rushed back to help Tucker back up to his feet. "We're doing this together. No one's going to be left behind. Besides, you can't have hurt yourself that badly. These steps are carpeted." She turned to look behind her and then said, "Now let's get going! Danny needs us."

As she turned back round, she couldn't help but wonder what kind of trouble Danny was in. Terrible thoughts entered her mind. Had the doctors here discovered that he was half-ghost? Were they experimenting on him right now?

Her mind was full of images of Danny in a glass tank, fluid illuminated green like in all those science fiction movies, with wires attached to him and air pumped in through an oxygen mask. Images of him on a cold, metallic table, being dissected couldn't help but fill her mind and cloud her mind, becoming the only thoughts that she could think about. They were all horrible images and she feared the worst for her raven-haired friend.

Ah, but she had to be strong. Yes, she had to be very strong and ignore those thoughts. What Danny needed now were his friends to rescue him from the terrible fate that Dr. Fordyce had condemned him to.

Sam bravely flung the thoughts out of her mind and ran alongside Tucker up the stairs.

It was a long, seemingly slow, tiring and terrifying trek up the stairs in the dim corridor lit only by a single light bulb. Their shadows elongated to their side, stretching up like dark figures, stalking them. Images of more Jiangshi filled their mind and they expected to be cornered after every turn of the staircase, only to find the stretch of stairs before them as empty as the promises of being caught. And all could be heard was the loud stomping of feet, of the Jiangshi leaping up the stairs as best as they could with their stiffened limbs, rigid with Rigor Mortis, and the scraping of the metallic fibrils that sprouted out from the belt of the Masked Man.

"This way," whispered Sam, as she turned off the staircase and on to a darkened corridor that stretched out before them a myriad of doors lining its walls like guardians.

They soon ran across a mesh fence built into the corridor with a padlocked mesh wire door in it. The fence had been painted a hideous blood red that severely clashed with the white walls of the corridor, lit only by small, bare light bulbs that hung from the ceiling uselessly like meat on a butcher's hook.

"How we going to get through there?" wondered Tucker out loud.

A smile spread across Sam's face, as she pulled out a Bobby pin from her hair.
"Watch and learn, Tuck," she told him, "watch and learn." She grabbed the lock and inserted the pin in, slowly jimmying it around inside in an attempt to pick it.

And all the time, Tucker was looking at the lock and then back down the corridor. His fear, which had started from just looking at the outside of the Maudsley Institute, had grown to terrifying proportions. He could smell his own fear, hear it, see it and taste it in his own mouth. It clouded his mind. It clouded his judgement. It made him nearly wet his pants. Scratch that. He did wet his pants, which would explain why he could smell his own fear.

"What's that smell?" exclaimed Sam curiously.

"Smell? What smell?" replied Tucker, a great blazing red creeping across his face. Then there was an awkward silence, in which Tucker feared Sam would catch on. "Haven't you got the lock open yet?" he asked irritably.

"Touchy," responded Sam, without even realising that Tucker wasn't acting himself and neither was she. "There!" she exclaimed, as the lock snapped open. She flung the door open. "Get a move on, Tuck'," she said, before she ran through the doorway, compass in hand to determine Danny's location.

The compass was something of her own design, after she had done much research.

According to Chinese exorcists, you could easily tell if someone was possessed by holding a compass near them. A ghost would deflect the pointer of the compass. Thusly, Sam had taken a hair from Danny's head when he wasn't looking and constructed a compass of her own, with his hair wrapped around the compass pointer. The idea was simple; the compass would be constantly deflected, thanks to Danny's strand of hair and would thus mask the influence of the Earth's magnetic field. It ensured that the compass would never point to magnetic north because of the Earth's magnetic field. It would, instead, interact with electromagnetically with Danny if she got close and the pointer would swing towards him, guiding her towards the youth.

"In here!" exclaimed Sam, as she pointed towards a door with a four-leaf clover painted on its white surface and wire mesh covering it. She touched the door knob slowly, almost wary as if she feared it would burn and her fingers wrapped around it slowly, turning it slowly and opening the door slowly.

"Danny!" exclaimed Tucker, before rushing straight into the room. "Man, what have they got you on?"

Danny lay on the hospital bed, strapped down by white leather belts with wires attached to his forehead and his limbs. He was hooked up to a machine that monitored his heart rate and another his breathing and another that monitored his brain patterns. These had been attached to him ever since Dr. Fordyce had put him under with a powerful anaesthetic he had managed to sneak out from under the anaesthetist's nose.

"Don't worry, Danny, we've come to get you out of here," Sam told the raven-haired youth, but got no response from him. She flicked the light on and gasped.

Attached to Danny's forehead was a slip of yellow paper with a Chinese incantation written on it in red ink. It was a spell designed to keep a ghost in place. Normally, these could not be placed on ghosts and were instead placed on those that were possessed or the Jiangshi. It paralysed them and an unscrupulous exorcist could use them to control their paralysed victims.

A tiny silver bell suddenly rang.

Danny sat up.

"I must thank you for leading me to the Shou Ge Wang," gasped the Masked Man, as he stood at the doorway. "Fordyce certainly put a lot of masking on the boy. I couldn't get a lock on him, but somehow, you managed to do so." He chuckled, but it didn't sound like a chuckle. It was more like the sound of bubbling water. "To think, now I have the power of the Shou Ge Wang, the Harvest King!" He laughed out loud. "The Power to travel between the World of the Living and the Dead!"

Sam turned to look at the Masked Man and then back at Danny. Her memories turned to the time Danny was controlled by Freakshow. She had to rescue him that time too and break Freakshow's spell over him.
"What do you want with him?" demanded Sam angrily, as she secretly motioned for Tucker to move closer to Danny and remove the piece of yellow paper.

"And why should I tell you, young lady?" asked the Masked Man curiously. "What I do is none of your business, little girl." He paused for a while, as if to smile and it almost seemed as if his smile could be seen through the shiny, metallic mask. "Now get out of the way. The Shou Ge Wang and I have a lot of things to do in preparation for Qing Ming."

Suddenly, Danny reached out and grabbed Tucker's hand.

"I don't think so, little boy," chortled the Masked Man. "Now, Shou Ge Wang, throw this trash away."

In response, Danny went ghost, his hair becoming as white as snow and his clothes changed to the black jumpsuit he wore every time he changed into his ghostly alter-ego. Danny's gloved grip on Tucker tightened before he threw his friend against the wall of the room.

A blast of light suddenly hit Danny in the chest and threw him against the wall.

"What? Impossible!" cried the Masked Man in response, as he whirled around him to find the source of the blast of energy. "What could have possibly…?" He trailed off, as he noticed the object hung above the doorway, a circular mirror set in a wooden eight-sided shape that had its edges painted green and had the Eight Chinese Trigrams painted around its circular edges in green paint.

"It's a Ba Gua!" exclaimed Sam in recognition of the Chinese Feng Shui tool.

The Masked Man cried out.
"No wonder I couldn't get my Jiangshi to follow me in here!" he cried out. He then drew his wooden sword and flung it at the Ba Gua with such force that he cracked the circular mirror, before ringing the bell again. "Rise! Rise up!"

"No, Danny!" cried Sam. "Don't do it!"

"Foolish girl," laughed the Masked Man. "You think that he can hear you now?" He laughed again. "Fordyce put him under so that he wouldn't be awake. These Blue Bow people, they know that a conscious Shou Ge Wang will interfere with their plans, so they put him in a permanent vegetative state." A smile returned to his lips, hidden underneath the metallic mask. "But that suits me just fine." He then pointed his wooden sword straight at Sam. "With him like that, he will never be able to return stray ghosts to Feng Du and I will be able to eat my fill."

Danny's right hand suddenly began to glow green, before he lifted it and aimed straight at his best friend. He then fired at Sam, a beam of pure ectoplasmic energy flying through the air straight at her heart.

"Sam, catch!" cried out Tucker, as he pulled out a Ba Gua from his backpack and flung it at Sam.

Samantha Mason caught the Ba Gua in her hands.
"Sorry, Danny," she apologised, before she tilted its mirror towards the energy beam. It caught Danny's blast in the shiny mirror surface, before reflecting the energy back at Danny. She watched, as Danny leapt out of the way after the ringing of the Masked Man's silver bell.

"Wretched girl," growled the Masked Man. "What do you think you can do with that Ba Gua of yours? The Shou Ge Wang is mine, little girl. Nothing you can do can stop him from being mine." He then raised his wooden sword and rang his bell again, before rushing straight at Sam thrusting the point of the wooden weapon straight at Sam.

The blade looked blunt, but Sam didn't want to take the chance. She dived out of the way, just narrowly avoiding being hit by the Masked Man's wooden weapon, but that was not enough. Sam had to raise her Ba Gua quickly and reflect another one of Danny's energy blasts.

"Banzai!" cried Tucker, before he rushed straight at Danny and crashed into him, sending him falling to the ground.

The Masked Man spun round, his metallic fibrils flailing out and their sharp edges slapping against Tucker's skin, scratching him. Wordlessly, he lunged at Tucker, thrusting the wooden point of his sword straight at the boy.

Tucker cried out and cowered.

Sam rushed in and shouldered the Masked Man with enough force to make a football couch proud. She shoved him aside.
"Tucker, get rid of that spell!" she shouted at him.

"What?" exclaimed Tucker.

"That paper!" said Sam.

Tucker suddenly ripped the piece of paper off of Danny's forehead and expected his friend to snap out of his comatose state.
"Nothing happened!" protested Tucker. He then looked towards Danny. "Come on, Danny. Wake up!" He started shaking the white-haired ghost boy. "Wake up, Danny!" he cried, before slapping his friend across the face a few times.

"He can't hear you, man," said the Masked Man, as he staggered back on to his feet. "Fordyce put him under a long time ago, man." He chuckled. "Even if he does wake up, he'll be tripping for a long time. That drug is a powerful one, man. He'll be seeing things that aren't there and the things that are there will be deformed beyond recognition." He laughed out loud.

"Danny, wake up!"

The Masked Man reached into one of his pockets and brought out another slip of yellow paper with a Chinese incantation written on it in what appeared to be red ink. It was another Talisman and it was not red ink that it had been written in, but a mixture of chicken's blood and ink. He cried out a few words in Chinese and the piece of paper became as stiff and rigid as a piece of cardboard, before he threw it through the air.

It cut past Tucker, tearing his shirt and leaving a red cut in his arm before it landed on Danny's face and settled there like a piece of paper should.


"Danny! You okay?" asked Alex, as he looked at Danny with a curious look on his face.

He didn't know why. Danny felt stiff in his own limbs and they felt heavy, as if they were made out of rusted metal. He didn't seem to be able to move them as well as he would like to, almost like when your limbs feel heavy in a dream. Why was that?
"I…" he began and then trailed off. He wanted to tell Alex that nothing was wrong, but he just couldn't bring himself about to do that; he just couldn't let his new friend worry like that. "I'm fine. It's just cramp," he said dismissively.

Yet it was more than cramp. He knew that it was more than cramp. It was a stiffness that had weakened his limbs and made him collapse to the floor.

"You don't look so good," commented Alex. "I should get the Matron."

"No! I'm fine, really!" protested Danny. He then tried to get up to show that he was okay, but he felt far too weak, almost as if this body of his wasn't his own.

Alex shook his head.
"I'll get the Matron," he told Danny sternly.

An awkward silence soon followed Alex's words. It was an awkward silence, yet words were exchanged. Though neither said a word, the expressions on their faces said more than any words could ever do. After all, words are quite subjective; they are sounds given to ideas and things and concepts by humanity, a humanity that does not understand all that surrounds them.

"Yeah," said Danny quietly. "Thanks."

"Come on, Danny. Wake up! Wake up, Danny!"

A frown appeared on Danny's face, his eyebrows rising upwards quizzically.
"Huh?" he exclaimed, as he looked around him. "That… No way," he murmured. "That was Tucker's voice." He stood up, without even thinking about it and looked around him.

"Danny, you're okay!" exclaimed Alex in surprise.

Danny looked down at himself. That was right. He was standing now, of his own free will, and the pain and the cramp and the stiffness had all seemed to disappear.
"Yeah, I guess I am," he agreed with a nod of his head, as he thought quickly for some kind of explanation. "I told you it was just a cramp," he said with an awkward, forced smile spreading his lips. "Say, did you hear that a second ago?" asked Danny.

"Hear what?" asked Alex curiously.

There was no reply from Danny, as he looked around him curiously. It was almost as if he was in a completely different world, as he stood there in the empty school corridor. He didn't even hear Alex's pleas to hurry to class. His mind was more absorbed on Tucker's voice, which had called out to him nonsensically. Danny couldn't understand it. Did that mean Tucker was somewhere in the school?

"Danny, did you hear me?" called out Alex again.

"Huh? What?" exclaimed Danny, as he turned to face his silver-haired friend. "I'm sorry?"

"If we're late, Reverend Fordyce will tear us a new hole," Alex told the raven-haired youth.

"Yeah," said Danny dismissively, as if he didn't care. "You go ahead," he told Alex. "I've got to check something out." He then turned, running as quickly as he could back down the corridor and Alex's cries fell on deaf ears. He didn't his friend calling out to him. All he could hear was the nagging feeling in his heart and mind, that feeling that something was desperately wrong.

Why was Tucker there? How did he hear Tucker's voice echo through the corridor? Perhaps it was a PA system. Perhaps Tucker was in the Principal's Office. Yet if that was the case, then how did he get there? Why didn't Alex hear him? Why was he even there?

"Stop right there!"


They had been running for ages.

Sam was sure that the Masked Man could have had them killed anytime he pleased, which meant only one thing; the Masked Man was toying with them. They were being chased around for sport, for the Masked Man's amusement. In the short amount of time they had spent at the Hospital, they had become the hunted. They were hunted by the armed Security Guards and now by the Undead. No longer were they the ones helping Danny hunt ghosts. No longer were they the hunters. They had become fresh meat.

The black-haired girl turned back round to look behind her. She didn't see anyone behind her, but that didn't mean they were safe. Sam was well aware that Danny could walk through walls and fly. She was well aware of what he was capable of and knew that he could be anywhere. He could even have been behind them, following them whilst invisible.

Tucker suddenly swore, as he skidded to a halt.
"He's in front of us!" he cried out.

There was a scraping noise of metal against tile, as the Masked Man walked round from the corner flanked by two Jiangshi and with Danny by his side.
"There is nowhere to run, children," he said, unaware of how often that phrase and its derivatives had been used. "Don't waste my time."

"Oh, please!" cried Sam angrily. "We know you're enjoying it!"

"That may be so," chuckled the Masked Man. "That may be so." He then rang his silver bell, as he aimed his wooden sword straight at Samantha and Tucker. "Get them."

Sam and Tucker turned tail and ran back down the way they had come. They didn't care that Danny was more than capable of catching up with them. All that mattered was getting away from him, from their friend, now under the control of the Masked Man as if he was some kind of marionette. They had to get away. There was no telling what he would be forced to do to them if he ever caught up with them. There was no telling what would happen.


"Stop right there!" protested Alex, as he skidded to a halt in front of Danny, spreading his arms so as to take up as much space as possible.

Danny skidded to a halt, surprised to see his friend in front of him so quickly. He wondered how Alex could have got ahead of him so quickly and began to wonder if Alex had taken another one of those not-so secret routes that littered the place, routes that would have been secret to complete strangers but not to residents of the school.
"Alex," he sighed.

"What do you think you're doing?" asked Alex angrily, as he glared at Danny. "Do you want to get into trouble?"

"No, I don't," was Danny's reply, as he shook his head. "But didn't you hear that voice over the PA? That was Tucker! My best friend! He was calling to me."

Alex looked as if he was about to say something, but then stopped. A thoughtful look spread across his face, before the anger drained away from his face and was replaced by a cold, calm expression that didn't seem to match Alex at all.
"I think, Daniel, that we should get you to the Matron," he told Danny. "You're getting delirious." He approached Danny slowly, walking deliberately as if he was a man trying to capture a snake. "Now, just take a deep breath and…"

He didn't finish his sentence before the bell rang.

Alex cried out suddenly, clutching at his head. He fell down to his knees as the bell continued to ring, its sound apparently deafening to Alex.

If asked, Danny would admit that even he gritted his teeth upon hearing the bell. It seemed to drill into his skull, but it was bearable, giving him only a minor headache. But the ringing of the bell seemed to be drilling into Alex's skull, almost physically like some kind of power drill.
"Alex! What's wrong?" cried Danny, as he rushed over to his friend. He tried to kneel down beside Alex but, in his writhing of pain, Alex hit Danny with such force that he knocked Danny back over on to his rear.

And it was from the floor that Danny realised something. There were no bells in the school. Even when the fire had set the alarms off, there were only sirens. He had never seen nor heard a single bell upon entering the school's hallowed grounds. Where was this ringing coming from?

"Get out!" cried Alex suddenly, his voice high-pitched with pain. "You've got to get outta here while you still can! Get going! Go!" He suddenly rose to his feet and with one great push, he shoved Danny aside…


The corridors of Maudsley all looked the same, as did almost every stairwell.

Each one was painted a hideous off-white, with the paint peeling off the walls. Each one had the same linoleum floor or wooden floor, and almost every single corridor contained some painting of Professor Zeross or some bust of his visage. And Zeross seemed to stare lifelessly form every corridor, from every wall, from every marble pedestal, making them feel as if they were being watched by unseen eyes.

Soon, they skidded to a halt.

Sam looked all around her. There were several routes they could go, but which one was more likely to take them away from the Masked Man and his battalion of Jiangshi? She picked out the compass from her pocket, the compass that she had rigged to point towards Danny instead of the North Pole. Sam swore under her breath upon seeing the compass needle spinning round uselessly in some poor imitation of the blade of a blender or the rotors of a helicopter. Something was interfering with the compass, but she had no idea what. She looked all around her.

"Sam, what are you waiting for?" asked Tucker, as he rushed back towards her. "We've got to go!"

"The compass' broken," was Sam's exhausted reply.

"Who cares?" protested Tucker, as he turned to his left and saw the marble staircase that led to the ground floor of the Main Hall. "Come on! We gotta get out of here!"

Sam shook her head.
"No, we can't leave Danny behind," she told him.

"Hello! Danny's out to kill us, remember?" cried Tucker.

Tucker did have a point there; Sam had to admit that, but she didn't want to leave Sam behind. She was sure that Tucker didn't want to either. Yet what could they do? If it was as simple as removing the Talisman from Danny, there wouldn't be a problem. Yet even removing the Talisman from his face wouldn't wake Danny up. He was out cold.

"We've got to think up of something," said Sam, as she looked around her and spotted one set of double doors right opposite the staircase. "Come on. Let's hide in there."

"No way!" protested Tucker with a shake of his head. "That's way too obvious."

"Exactly," said Sam with a smile on her face. "It's so obvious, they won't think we'd be hiding there." She grabbed Tucker's hand, before saying, "Come on." She pulled him along and pushed open the double doors slightly so it just open enough for them to squeeze through, which she did. Sam then pulled Tucker through and then the two of them closed the doors behind them.

Tucker turned round and then he felt his heart sink.

They had stumbled across a former Chapel that seemed foreboding in all its religious splendour. It was a grand chapel with gold gilt and wooden floors and great wooden pews. Great stain-glass windows lined the walls, but iron bars guarded the windows, as if the Chapel was an annex of some prison. And the roof seemed high above them, supported by ornate pillars that towered over their heads. It was evident that much money had been spent on this vast, ornate chapel, the great huge golden cross that stood at the altar at the far end, and the five wooden seats that sat at the back of the chapel, each with a Latin inscription marked on it to identify who sat in which seat.

Sam wondered about the Chapel. Would ghosts be able to penetrate it? It didn't seem to be the sort that ghosts would like, judging from the design. Yet she wasn't too much of an expert in those sort of things. She walked down the aisle, looking around her for any signs of Jiangshi or the Masked Man or even Danny, and as she walked down the aisle, she looked up and down the Chapel up to the stain-glass windows and… The stain glass windows caught Sam's attention. There was something about them that seemed strange…

"Those windows," murmured Sam, as she looked up at them and saw the images of four-leaf clovers and acorns on them, "they're ghost-proof."

"Say what?" exclaimed Tucker. "How'd you know that?"

Sam explained to him how she had read up on ghost superstitions and normal superstitions. She told him how she had come across references talking about how clovers were supposed to protect against the spells of magicians and the wiles of fairies, and how that it seemed to work against ghosts too. Sam told him of how there was a superstition that placing an acorn at the window will keep lightning out, and how since ghosts were electromagnetic entities that the acorns worked against ghosts too.

"Huh, I always thought that ghosts were made of ectoplasm."

"They are, but ectoplasm is merely junk matter condensed into a gelatinous form by the ghost's electromagnetic waves," said an old-sounding voice, a voice that didn't belong to Sam.

There was suddenly the noise of footsteps and hopping and of metal scraping against the floor. It was an ominous medley of sounds that set their hair on end and sent chills running down their spine.

The Masked Man had followed them into the chapel and got his Jiangshi to surround Sam and Tucker on all sides, and behind him were three Jiangshi, each with a Talisman on their foreheads, two of which were carrying one metallic pole each on which was a yellow banner with a Chinese incantation written on it that was the same as the one written on the Talismans on their foreheads. The one in the middle held a lit red candle with a Talisman stuck on to one side of it.

"It would seem that you underestimated me, children," said the Masked Man sternly. "Did you really think that this Chapel could shield you from me and my Jiangshi?" He chuckled, before telling them, "Yes, ghosts cannot get in through the windows, but they can get in through the open doors." He lifted his silver bell and rang it sharply.

In response, Danny materialised by the Masked Man's side, taking shape and becoming tangible in mid-air. He floated there limply, as if he was tired or dead and the Talisman, the yellow piece of paper, stuck to his head failed to move.

"Danny!" cried Sam.

"Have you forgotten already?" asked the Masked Man. "He cannot hear you, not since Fordyce so helpfully put him under."

"You won't get away with this," shouted Tucker futilely.

The Masked Man laughed.
"Whatever makes you think I won't?" he asked Tucker curiously. "Have I not already got the Harvest King under my power?" he asked them, as he drew out his wooden sword. "Have I not already demonstrated my hold over him? Have I not tracked you down and surrounded you? You cannot escape. You cannot leave this place alive."

He rang his little silver bell again.
"We are the Mao Shang," he told them sternly, "and we have hunted ghosts for centuries. Me, the members of Blue Bow, we are all Mao Shang and the Harvest King is the greatest of us all. Yes, the Harvest King is the greatest of all the Mao Shang and now he is under my control, making me the most powerful of all Ghost Eaters and Ghost Hunters." He smiled. "Now, Great Harvest King, cut these little whelps down to size," he ordered.

Green, ectoplasmic energy began to form in Danny's right hand. It started off as a few globules of green glowing energy, before condensing into a sphere of energy in the palm of his gloved hand, tingeing his white glove green with its glow. More energy began to build up in the palm of his hand as Danny mindlessly and unconsciously concentrated his energy into that single sphere. Then with one violent movement of his fingers, he clenched his hand into a fist and in doing so, the sphere of energy elongated and became a blade of green energy shaped like a sword.

The Masked Man watched with satisfaction as the green energy of ectoplasm in Danny's hand became more solid and started to glow with a ferocious energy that suggested heat and power that only a laser could hope to achieve.
"Silly kids," he chuckled. "You had no right to interfere with the Plans of the Shi Ti'en Yen Wang. You had no right to even be near the Harvest King, appointed as King by the Lords of Death themselves." He laughed, as he raised his hand slowly, the bell's handle gripped firmly between forefinger and thumb. "I shall send you both to Feng Du and when you are there, tell the Shi Ti'en Yen Wang that they will be next." Then he rang the silver bell, shaking it side to side. "Kill! Kill them both!" he ordered.

"Danny, no, don't!" protested Sam.

"Yeah, man," agreed Tucker with a nod of his head. "Don't do it! We're your friends, Danny!"

The Masked Man laughed.
"He can't hear you, children," he told them. "Kill!"

Danny raised the sword of ectoplasmic energy, aiming it straight at Samantha. His entire body seemed tensed, as if ready to pounce, as if ready to strike and pierce Sam through the chest. There was no emotion on Danny's face, from what could be seen around the Talisman that hung off his forehead as if it had been pinned to his skull. He seemed as if he was in another world completely, even though his stance suggested that something was in control of him and making him move as if he was in control of his own body.

"Kill!" cried the Masked Man and Danny rushed forward, thrusting the point of the ectoplasmic blade towards his friends.

"Danny!"

Tucker opened his eyes, to see that the blade was only inches away from his nose. He glanced sideways at Sam and then back towards his best friend.
"Danny?" said Tucker quietly, his throat constricted from fear and making his words a strangled whimper.

Slowly, Danny's hand gloved hand reached up and grabbed the Talisman by its bottom edge, pinching it between forefinger and thumb. Then with one tug, he pulled it free from his face. He turned round to face the Masked Man, his glowing green eyes staring straight at him and though he recognised the Masked Man, his face didn't show it. Danny's face didn't even register emotion, as he recognised the Masked Man as being the same one that had hospitalised him in the first place. It was almost as if the Talisman had side-effects and that one of the side-effects was the removal of his very emotions.

He didn't even react when the Masked Man rang the bell again and then aimed his wooden sword straight at the ghost child.

The Jiangshi made their move. They leapt almost comically towards Danny and would have been a hilarious sight indeed if it weren't for their very hideous nature. Yet even though they closed in on Danny and his friends, he did not move. It was almost as if he couldn't move or as if he had lost the will to fight, and there continued to be no expression on Danny's face.

Suddenly, Danny sprang into action. In a flash, he rushed forwards and with one swing of the ectoplasmic sword in his hand, he rushed past the Jiangshi and stopped on the other side of them. He did not look back. Danny didn't look back to see what had happened. He knew that the Jiangshi had stopped in their tracks, as if they had become statues and he knew why.

All the Jiangshi that Danny had struck at suddenly slid backwards, but not all of them. Only their top halves slid backwards, as if they had been cut clean in half, which was exactly what had happened. Yet before their upper halves could leave their bodies, they all went black and disintegrated into dust that dispersed into the air to settle on the ground like black snow.

"What?" exclaimed the Masked Man in disbelief. "How could you have disposed of them so quickly?"

"I know it's you, Blind Gerald," said Danny sternly, as he glared at the Masked Man. "You can't hide from me behind that mask."

"No!" protested the Masked Man with a desperate, violent shake of his head. "You're wrong! I'm not Gerald! I'm not Gerald!"

With one battle cry, Danny rushed straight at the Masked Man and slashed at the metallic mask, cutting it clean in half. He then leapt into the air, kicking Blind Gerald in the head with such force that he sent the man crashing into his three remaining Jiangshi and knocking the candle out of the hand of the third Jiangshi. Danny would then have made his move to finish off the Jiangshi, but he saw that he didn't need to as the flame of the candle spread on to one of the Jiangshi and then started to spread through its body.

Blind Gerald cried out as the flames started to lick at his own clothes. He slapped at them frantically in an attempt to put them out, but it didn't seem to work. The flames consumed his three Jiangshi and seemed to be hungry for him as well, spreading across his clothes like some burning rash across skin. And his shrieks of fear echoed all around them.

There was a whoosh and a gust of foam hit Blind Gerald putting him out and covering him.

Dr. Fordyce's gaze turned away from the foam covered Blind Gerald, as he dropped the fire extinguisher, and his eyes focused on Danny instead.
"So, Mr. Fenton, it would seem that you failed to tell us something about yourself, hm?" he commented calmly. "I must admit, I'd never thought you'd wake up after all the drugs I gave you. You should have been sleeping 'til Kingdom come."

Danny turned to look at Blind Gerald and then Fordyce.
"He was working for you, wasn't he?" he said and it seemed more than a statement than a question.

"You ain't quite as dumb as you look, boy," was Fordyce's reply, as an inane smile spread across his lips. "Yeah, I asked him to take you out, but he got greedy so I had to shoot him full of haloperidol." He chuckled. "Made him crazier than a turkey on fire."

"Nice hospital you've got here, Doc," said Tucker sarcastically. "Let me guess. You must be a sure win for Doctor of the Month, right?"

Danny, however, remained silent. He was cold and his breath had become like a mist, as if the room was very cold. Could it be that Fordyce was a ghost and if so, why didn't he sense it before? Well, whatever he was, Fordyce seemed to be hiding something. Was Fordyce stronger than he looked? It was quite possible and Danny didn't like the thought of it.
"You just leave my friends out of this," he told Fordyce sternly. "Do what you want with me, but you leave Sam and Tucker alone."

The smile on Fordyce's lips seemed to widen, if such a thing were possible.
"Now, you know I can't do that," he told Danny with a shake of his head. "They've seen too much." He then delved into his pocket and threw something at Danny.

The white-haired youth became intangible but even that was not enough. Whatever it was that Fordyce threw at him, it seemed to stick to him and it burned as if it was molten wax. Danny cried out in pain and in that instant he became solid again, just in time for Fordyce to hit him with two of his outstretched fingers that hit him with such force that he was thrown back through the air.

"Stupid boy," said Fordyce. "I take back what I said about you." He reached up and took off the toupee from his head, throwing it aside. "You're dumber than a sack of bricks if you think you can take me on," he told Danny, as he lowered his head to reveal the four-leaf clover tattoo on his bald head. "There's not a ghost around that can harm me, boy." He raised his head again to reveal that inane-looking smile on his lips.

Danny looked up from the floor and towards Fordyce. He saw the doctor standing there, looking just like Reverend Fordyce did in his dreams. He remembered the words Alex had told him before Alex had helped him to wake up. And as much as Danny wanted to do something against Fordyce, he knew he had no other choice but to do as Alex had told him to do. He got back up to his feet and turned to look at Sam and Tucker, before turning back round to face Fordyce.
"I don't know what you did to Alex," he said sternly, "but I'll be back to save him."

He then took to the air and curved round to grab both Sam and Tucker underneath one arm. Using his own supernatural strength, Danny picked them up and became intangible, flying through the floor.

"Harvest King," drawled Fordyce with a smug smile on his face. "You weren't so tough."