He glared into the surrounding mists as they parted to reveal a grimy alley. To call it the scene of a violent murder would have been adding undue niceties. There were three women; he thought they must have been prostitutes at one time by what little clothing he could see. The bodies had been butchered, their ribcages lying open to expose their internal organs. Even worse, however, was the fact that they were still moving. One turned her head toward him, her glassy eyes pleading as she mouthed the words, "Kill me."

With great effort, he tore his eyes away to see the big man in a trench coat hunched over something at the other end of the alley. The man looked up and turned slightly, then shifted a bit and shuddered in delight. His breathing was short and high pitched, reminiscent of an overly hyper chihuahua. He stood suddenly and turned to face the unwilling spectator.

"They call me Creeper," he said, his voice tight with mad glee. He panted for a few seconds as though too excited to speak. "Want to know why?" He leaned closer and said in a quiet, confidential voice, "It's because…you see…I'm a CREEPY BASTARD!"

He jumped at Creeper's shouted proclamation and the insane bout of giggling that followed. After a few seconds, the man seemed to calm down as much as was possible for him and gestured to the butchered bodies. "NEVER let a woman tell you what she wants! They all want the same thing, anyway." His shoulders heaved with each quick breath, and he grinned. "I gave them exactly what they wanted, and they LIKED IT!" Then he moved away from what he been guarding and said in a more sly tone, "She liked it, too…"

Danny lunged for Creeper's throat with a wordless cry of rage that died on his lips as the sharp movement reminded him that he was injured. He gasped and clutched a hand to his stomach, but still managed to fight his way to his feet. He knew it had been a dream, that the sight of his mother laid open and writhing on the ground hadn't been real. However, that still begged the question: where had she gone?

He held still and quiet for a few minutes, waiting for the pain to subside somewhat before reverting to his ghostly self. As he drifted through the remains of the crack house, he called out for her, but the muttering of addicts was his only response.

The slurping and chewing noise of a gorger met his ears in the back alley. The scene looked disturbingly like the one from his dream. He flew above the gorger's head, certain it would be feasting on Maddie's broken corpse, but it was only another prostitute. With a sigh of relief, he started to go and time stopped. For just a moment, he saw the four women trying to escape Creeper. The ghostly pimp stood facing away with his coat held open. Danny was grateful that he couldn't see what was beneath it; he could just barely see some tentacle-like appendage with a knife, and that was more than adequate.

"Money grubbing WHORES!" exclaimed the voice of Creeper. "They're all the same: weak, pathetic, selfish. You'll learn that, too, eventually."

"What have you done with Mom?" Danny demanded, but to no avail; a simple memory couldn't answer him. There were three ways out of the alley. Since he highly doubted Creeper could fly and he had come from the right in the dream, he flew left, towards where his quarry had been standing.

Inwardly, he was rather astonished Silver wasn't tormenting him yet. Before he could reflect further, however, he came across another gutted corpse. Creeper had come this way. Danny increased his speed, looking for any sign he could find. Unfortunately, signs abounded. It was as though every woman in the area and no few men had been arranged into a path just for him to follow. After the eighth body, he noticed that every head was turned in his direction. It felt like the lifeless things were watching him fly by. On impulse, he turned around to reassure himself that the last one had not turned its head. He froze; the corpse was still staring at him with those blank eyes that were so like the glass things put on stuffed deer heads.

With a shudder, he grudgingly turned his back on it. There was a good chance that Silver was making him hallucinate, but he wouldn't have been surprised to find that it was real. He wanted to believe that this was just a part of the psychic's mental playground as Carnate had been, but he was afraid that wasn't the case.

She said this wasn't her game. The question was whether or not he believed that.

A scream interrupted his internal musings; he shot forward towards the source, hoping he wasn't too late to save the person. Ahead of him, some flickering light emanated from an alley, and a flaming body burst out of it, running around in frantic circles. The burn victim died before Danny could reach him, but he saw someone else run out followed by a creature that reminded him of the childlike Inferna.

It was vaguely humanoid with six appendages that sprouted from its shoulders like wings. The "wings" were in flames, but the body of the creature looked more like burning ember. It stalked after the escapee, leaning over slightly like the raptors from Jurassic Park. It screeched in much the same sounding voice and raised its arms. The man made the mistake of looking back; he stumbled and fell, cowering. Just before the flames reached him, he closed his eyes tightly and so was unable to see the black and white blur as it hit him and carried him safely into the air.

Danny gasped at the sudden weight against his wounded torso, but managed to carry the man to safety before nearly dropping him. "Are you okay?" Danny asked as he checked to see that they were out of the creature's range. He thought the man looked familiar, but couldn't place him right off.

As soon as he was released, the man sank slowly to the ground and put his head between his knees. He was muttering something that sounded like the Catholic Rosary prayers. Danny leaned down and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "Um, sir? Are you going to be alright?"

"I just had the weirdest dream," came the muffled reply. "I dreamt I was being chased by an arsonist, and then I was flying through the air, and there was this little white haired kid there…"

Danny blinked and took a few steps back. "I'm sorry to have to tell this," he said, unsure whether it had been a joke or not. "But that wasn't a dream."

There was a pause, then, "I was afraid of that." The man looked up and stared at him, and he finally realized who this was.

"Hey, you're Ed Johnson!" the ghost boy exclaimed. "Right? You're the head of the Paranormal Society."

Ed continued to stare, then he stood. "Are you a…a ghost?" he asked carefully.

Duh. "Um, yeah." Tired of being looked down at with those suddenly calculating eyes, Danny floated up to just above eye level. Ed walked around him, inspecting him much like one would a new horse or cow. The boy turned with him, not liking this at all.

Maybe you should have left this one, niño.

He certainly was not going to leave some poor human to be killed, even if the man was looking at him like he was a science project. Silver couldn't hear him think, of course, but he wasn't about to answer her aloud.

Ed chuckled quietly, then shook his head and smiled. "I don't believe it," he muttered. "The Amity Park ghost boy. Inviso-Bill."

Danny groaned. "It's Phantom, not Inviso-Bill. Ugh, that name's going to haunt me, isn't it?" He briefly entertained the notion of introducing whoever had come up with it to Klemper before he noticed the look of complete amazement on Ed's face.

"You're cognizant?"

Yes, stupid people should definitely be left to die.

About to give the man a sarcastic reply, Danny clamped his mouth shut and rolled his eyes instead. "Look, I don't suppose you've seen my-uh, I mean, Maddie Fenton around, have you? I kind of lost track of her."

"Why do you haunt the Fentons?" Ed asked curiously.

The boy stared at him for a few seconds, then shook his head and started to go. "I don't have time for this; I've got to find Maddie. Come with me if you want."

Ed ran to catch up. "I'm really very curious," he confessed. "Why are you helping me?"

What was that, the question of the year? "You know," Danny said, unable to hide the irritated sigh in his voice. "Just about every person I've ever met has asked me that, and it gets really annoying after a while."

Here, let me help with that…

Ed gasped and looked around. "Who said-"

Suddenly, a marksman burst out of the ground right in front them. Danny grabbed his terrified companion and made them both intangible, then finished the thing off. "You're slipping, Silver," he called, unsure whether to be amused or worried.

It felt like a bee had gotten loose in his head. In and of itself, that wasn't very worrisome; Silver's mental voice was always accompanied by a buzzing noise. Kat had once theorized that it was her regular thought process overlapping the telepathy. No, the sudden cause for concern was the fact that it was not followed by a superior-sounding comment.

Silver's alarmed scream cut through the sky as it tore through the boy's mind, leaving him with a blinding migraine. She came sliding out of a nearby alley, back flipped onto a car's trunk, then lost her footing and landed practically on her head behind it. Ed cried out and joined her behind the car, more to hide than to help. Danny shook his head one last time to clear it and saw what had frightened them both.

Creeper filled the mouth of the alley, wild-eyed and grinning. "Hm…" he mused, his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. "Now, aren't you an exotic one? Oh, I'd like to add you to my collection of whores!"

"Leave her alone!" Danny yelled, hovering between Creeper and the car. Inwardly, he was astonished by that. He had reacted to the threat to another's life before he remembered that said life was responsible for a great deal of mental anguish.

"Yeah, what he said, pendejo!" Silver agreed. She waved one of her pistols menacingly.

"Shut up," the boy said before turning back to Creeper. "Where's my mom?"

Creeper shifted his weight, and something moved rather disturbingly under his coat. "She's keeping me company," he admitted mysteriously after a few seconds excited breathing. "I think I'll keep her." He turned and walked into the darkness of the alley. Danny shot after him, but he had vanished. Angrily, he whirled around to find that Silver had knocked Ed unconscious and was gone as well.

Kill him twice for me, amante, she whispered, giving him the image of Maddie being dragged through an open manhole cover.