A/N: Presenting chapter two! Thanks to all you lovely reviewy people out there. (You may take your choice of Spam, pork 'n beans, or cocktail weiners.) Now, here's stuff what I should have mentioned before: these two chaps were first posted on the Out of Thin Air message board (Google it), and the peeps there were kind enough to give me the go-ahead for this here shindig. Everybody wave an' say hi to the nice message board peoples!

Animal House

By JadeRabbyt

THURSDAY

The bay looked as though something big and nasty had reared up on its massive haunches and, with a roar and a crash, smashed an angular hole in the smooth coastline of the lake. It had that ragged, torn look to it, with small indentations where claws or knuckles might have scraped against the sides. That the bay held the shape of a paw or hand strengthened the illusion that much more, and it was one more oddity in an already strange place.

The view from the plane couldn't fail to impress. To the north lay an endless spread of trees, a mat of spiky pea-green evergreens. Danny wouldn't have thought so many trees existed. The vastness of the place made him wish for the comfort of neon and macadam, but man's only impositions were a couple docks, two small boats, and a rough wooden cabin lingering at a distance from the shores of Paw Bay. Trees swarmed around the cabin and raced away into the horizon, marked by the sharp gray slopes of mountains. Behind the trees and the bay rippled the lake, which was an equally infinite entity. Big and blue and wavy and big. Big enough to hold Danny's interest for ten seconds before he went back to wondering how a rickety sea-plane with an engine like a wheezing hamster was supposed to land safely.

Fortunately, Jazz was petrified by that very same concern. Danny picked at the corner of the car magazine in his lap. "The feet fall off these things pretty regularly. I knew somebody who knew somebody who was in a coma for a few weeks after one of these things crashed." She turned away from the window long enough to serve him a death-glare. Danny held her gaze for a few seconds, but at last he had to smile. "It's true."

"It is not." Her white knuckles clenched the teal strap of her purse.

Danny grinned. "Sure it is. I mean, do you even hear the way this thing is rattling? We'll probably—"

"Danny, stop bothering your sister." Maddie twisted to face them in her seat in front, and Danny shut up. His mother was as tired as any of them after the long trip. "We'll land in five minutes or so."

The plane dropped lower as it approached a sturdy dock just outside the bay. From there they'd be walking along a dirt path to the house. Who knew how their luggage, let alone the lab equipment, was supposed to get to that cabin. Danny craned his neck at the window to get a better look. Jazz glanced at him, shuddered, and buried her nose in a technical journal on psychology.

The waves leaped up at them and the forest shot up in front of them. The dock looked too close; the water swept by too fast. Danny pressed his feet to the seat in front of him, not that he had to try too hard to do that. The plane inside of the plane was smaller than a bathroom stall. They'd go down fast if the plane hit anything at the wrong angle, but fortunately, the plane didn't go down. It bumped and shook and arrived at the dock intact. Jazz slowly loosened up.

"Just think," Danny said. "A week from now we'll be taking off."

She rolled her eyes and clicked off her seat belt. Long trips begged these kinds of conversations. "If we're lucky they'll let me toss you out on the way up."

Jack groaned and stumbled toward the exit hatch. "In the name of all that's decent, open the door!"

The pilot dutifully unlocked and opened the door, thanking them all for flying Air Dirt and Rocks—or some such thing—as the Fenton family just about knocked the plane off-balance trying to escape from the metal box. At length they sorted themselves out and the pilot crept back into his seat, shut the door again, and started to take off. No way out now.

He shouldn't bother about that, Danny reminded himself. These people did have a kid, the thermos he'd thrown in his carry-on backpack, and if nothing else, there'd be swimming. He swung his arms and shifted his legs, stretching. A light blanket of fog seeped up to the beach, lapping like a friendly animal at the dirt and sand there. Into the trees lay a misty darkness. Danny started to wonder what kind of people they were visiting. The place was creepy in a way he couldn't explain. Nothing screamed danger, but—

"Long time no see!" Jack shouted pleasantly. People trotted forward from the other end of the dock, and one of them raised a hand in greeting.

These must be the Kalens, and Corduroy must be the shrimp trotting along ahead and between the two parents. The edges of his bowl cut curled inward, and he was light-skinned and cheekily bouncy: cute to the point of irritating, but definitely normal. The father was Hal, Danny remembered, and where he'd expected somebody slightly goofy, maybe a little like Santa Claus on a moderately successful diet, there stood a guy who looked like he had bridge cables instead of muscles installed in his arms. Not buff, but very rigidly bound and controlled in the smooth step of his stride and the measured swing of his straight arms. Nevertheless, the expression on his thin face appeared happy enough with the Fentons. His wife Janice had the same light blonde hair as her son bound in a long ponytail.

She gushed with pleasure at their visit. "So happy to see you again!" She embraced Maddie, smiling warmly. "How was the trip?"

"Great, just fine. We got past the airports and everything just fine."

"Hal! How've you been doing? I haven't seen you since…" Jack paused. "Well, since freshman year in college!"

Danny and Jazz exchanged a glance. They didn't exactly have joyous memories of the last bitter college reunion.

"We've been doing alright." Hal folded his hands neatly behind him. "The research is going better than ever, actually. Janice and I are delighted to have your help." Hal's cool voice gave the same impression as his physique, but he looked like an OK guy to Danny.

"I'm so glad you guys came out!" Corduroy caught both Danny and Jazz in a hug with his small arms. His gray-blue eyes glimmered up at them. "I don't get to see other kids much, but we can all play now!"

Jazz patted his head. "You're Corduroy?"

He grinned. "Yes. And you're Jazmine and Danny, is what my parents say."

"You can call me Jazz."

So far, so good. Danny's earlier misgivings must have been a false alarm. "So you just live out here, without any roads or anything?"

Corduroy nodded. "That's right. My parents have a lab under our cabin."

"Though it's really big enough to be a house," Janice interposed. She cleared her throat. "We've got enough room for everybody, so don't worry about that."

Jack laughed. "Especially since I'll probably want to sleep in the basement. I hear you guys have built some top-of-the-line stuff."

"That's right." Hal smiled. "We have."

The adult Kalens lifted what luggage had managed to fit in the plane and helped Danny's parents heft it down the dirt forest path, littered with leaves from the wilting trees above. Corduroy darted around Danny and Jazz, bragging of all the toys he had and all the things they could do. The lake was open for swimming, and the woods were full of all kinds of climbing trees and hollow logs if you knew where to look. "And you and me can play," he said to Danny. "You're just like me."

Danny didn't notice, but Hal slowed his pace just the slightest bit up ahead.

"I guess I am." Cord probably hadn't had any friends over in years, assuming he had friends this far out. For all the embarrassment Danny's parents had caused him, he'd take that any day over this kind of isolation. Almost any day, at least.

They reached the cabin, which was indeed more like a house. Corduroy had a room under the tented roof, and Janice had emptied a workroom for Jazz and Danny, although Danny would rather room with Corduroy. There was enough room and both sets of parents were agreeable, so Danny climbed up the ladder at the end of the central hallway and made himself comfortable. The ceiling slanted at the sides and was a foot lower than it should have been, but otherwise it was acceptable. The skylights were hard to beat—they gave an open view of the trees and sky above, said Corduroy, because the roof rose above the thick mist at night.

Danny's parents took the guest room across the hall from Jazz, and everybody miraculously liked where they roomed. Danny had just finished throwing down a sleeping bag, his backpack, and one small suitcase when Hal lifted the trap door and climbed halfway into the room, his feet still resting on the ladder.

"You boys going swimming?"

Cord had suggested that, and as cold as the waters looked Danny didn't plan on turning the offer down. Three hours in a plane took a lot out of a person. "I planned on it."

"Well, be careful. Danny, you should know that we have some pretty delicate experiments running around here, and most of them are in the basement." Hal shot a tight smile at Danny. Danny wondered about the 'most of them'. "Whatever Cord says, do it. He knows the area like the back of his hand, and he'll make sure you don't get hurt. Right Cord?"

Corduroy nodded solemnly. "Yes Dad."

"We're not going to have any accidents, are we? You'll follow the rules we set?"

"Yes Dad. Rules rule." The kid recited the phrases like a litany.

Hal shook his head at Danny's decidedly worried expression. "Don't worry. We let Corduroy take the boat out sometimes," he explained. "The lake is deep and cold as an icebox at this time of year, so you have to be careful."

"Oh. That makes sense." Maybe Hal seemed odd to Danny because his own father was so… unique. Unique was a good word for it.

Hal wished the two of them a good time and descended to the lower floor. Danny and Corduroy jumped into their suits and clattered down the rungs of the ladder. Before they left, Danny ducked into Jazz's sterile white room with its single dresser and springy cot, where he met her shuffling through her clothes. "Hey Jazz, we're going swimming. Want to come?"

She looked up from her soft wheelie-chair. The room looked small, but a large window made it comfortable. "I think I'll stay here and unpack. Maybe tomorrow."

Danny shrugged. "Suit yourself." He turned to leave but was stopped by a call from Jazz.

"Can I see you alone for a minute?"

Danny looked down at the shorty next to him. Cord fidgeted obliviously. "Um, why?"

She gave him a look. "Come in and shut the door."

If he didn't hear about whatever this was now, she'd only bug him later. Danny sighed and did as she asked. "What is it?"

"There's something wrong with Corduroy." Danny laughed, but Jazz was utterly serious. She frowned on his levity. "He should be taller, and his mental processes should be more sophisticated for his age. It's probably nothing, since there are genetic anomalies that can do that kind of thing, but just be aware of it, alright? He's probably sensitive, you know."

Leave it to Jazz to bring up something like this. "I think he's pretty cool. I mean, maybe Cord is a little slow, but you're the only one who noticed."

Jazz glanced at the door. "Probably. But I still thought you should be aware of it."

"Mr. Kalen just gave us a lecture on the dangers of boating. If you're finished, I'll just—"

Jazz lit up. "Did he do anything weird?"

"Who, Mr. Karlen? Why?"

Jazz rested her hand on a journal on her dresser. "I've never seen such a person before. He's… weird. Like one of those Buddhist monks you read about. I've never been able to observe them before."

If there was one thing Kalen did not remind Danny of, it was a Buddhist monk. "O-Kaaay…" Danny reached for the doorknob. "You go study the natives, but Cord and I will be at the beach."

Danny escaped the lair of Jazz and bolted out the door and followed Corduroy down the well worn path to the beach. Cord raced down the sand, his feet kicking up puffs of sand as he went. He jumped into the water like it was a heated pool. "Come on in!"

Danny followed suit, but he had to shriek when the water hit him. His face promptly began to turn blue, but the water was up to his stomach and he couldn't just leap back out. "The water's g-g-great."

"It is!" Cord certainly wasn't bothered. He was swimming around like a fish with gills, dipping his whole body underwater to scour the bottom before popping up again. "I go swimming here all the time."

"Really?" Danny gave himself a minute to adjust, but that minute did nothing but bring him that much closer to hypothermia. Or possibly frostbite. "I don't know. This feels a little cold to me."

Corduroy laughed and splashed Danny's face. Danny began moving back toward the shore, trying not to run too fast. "Aw, that's the same thing my parents say," Corduroy called after him. "They say it's because I'm young. I'm supposed to take the cold easier than older people."

"That's probably true." Danny sat down on a rock. After that water, the misty atmosphere felt like a microwave. Corduroy smiled smugly, the water up to his neck. Danny looked beyond him and saw something flip in the water farther out. "Are there fish in here?"

Cord nodded. "All kinds of 'em."

XXX

"So how did you guys get out here, anyway?" Jack stabbed a chunk of catfish off his plate and stuffed it in his mouth. "Isn't this supposed to be national forests, or something?"

Janice smiled. They sat around the living room since the table wasn't big enough for seven, but they had managed to arrange a circle of sorts. Everybody was enjoying the fish she'd made, smeared with lemon and butter and some spices that gave it a zesty taste. "Techinically, yes. But we're here on a grant from the DoD."

Jazz put her fork down, and Danny pricked up his ears. "The Department of Defense?" Jazz's mouth dropped open a little bit. "You guys are working for the military?" Jack and Maddie were paying attention to this one as well. Only Corduroy continued to savor his fish.

"Yes." Hal wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Don't be worried. We're just a backwoods project somebody thought might be a good idea."

"He's right," Janice affirmed. "They don't even ask for our research. They just put us on so they have something to tell the newsies when some kind of ghost attacks. The whole 'we have a division working night and day on the problem' shpeal. Nonsense, of course." She shook her head and took a drink of water from her glass. "Meanwhile, we get more money than we know what to do with."

"Is that so?" Maddie was sure that whatever supplies they needed would have to be airlifted in, and that kind of support couldn't be cheap. "You guys don't give them anything at all and they just pay you for nothing?"

"That's not exactly how it goes." Hal grinned tolerantly at his wife. "We show them our basic research once a month. They never complain."

"What kind of research do you guys do out here?" They hadn't let Jack into the lab. Tomorrow, the Kalens had said, but Jack was curious. "There can't be many ghosts in a place this disserted."

Janice stole a glance out the window. "You'd be surprised."

"We're involved in the animal kingdom, actually. Animal spirits." Hal smiled at their amazement. "You guys didn't think of that?"

"Well, we have," Maddie admitted. "But it's not exactly our area."

"We do mostly catch and release." Jack laughed at his own joke, and everybody pretended to be impressed with his clever pun on their dinner.

"That might be helpful for us," murmured Janice. "You say you're shipping the equipment?"

"It should've been here today." Maddie glared momentarily at the ceiling, chastising the invisible pilots. "I guess it'll have to be tomorrow. You guys are welcome to take a look at our things when they get here. Like Jack said, we can catch and contain ghosts, and we can easily return them to the Ghost Zone."

"Mom and Dad can make animal people." Cord continued snarfing his fish as if everybody's parents could make 'animal people'.

Jack smirked at Hal. "Care to explain that?"

"Tomorrow, I promise. Corduroy is basically correct, though. My wife and I have been working on separating various animals from their spirits and converting their energy into forms useful for homo sapiens."

Maddie leaned back, impressed. "I can't wait to see what you've done."

"Are any of the spirits dangerous?"

Hal glanced askance at Danny. "Of course not. We're not fools."

"It's nothing personal, Mr. Kalen. We're just used to things going horribly, terribly wrong back in Amity Park," Jazz added.

"Well, you kids can relax. Everything we keep here is completely controlled." Hal chuckled. "They are, after all, only animals."

Janice looked a little hesitant at her husband's last statement. She looked about to speak but changed her mind. Jazz noticed it and challenged her with a pointed look to speak, but Janice shook her head dismissively. Don't worry. It's nothing.

XXX

Jazz woke up and it was dark outside. She shot up in her cot and listened. The travel alarm clock on her dresser recorded 3:07 in bright red numbers that lit the dresser and a small part of the room in a thin red glow. The darkness outside hung like a shroud, utterly impenetrable, squeezing in around her Through some mix of mist and shadow, she couldn't see anything except her alarm clock on the dresser. Jazz could have sworn, however, that she'd heard a low, tremulous growl.

She stumbled into her suitcase and extracted a small flashlight, usually used for reading. Jazz clutched it to her chest and stood rigid, facing the window. She didn't care what the Kalens' said, and she didn't care what Danny thought. This place was one step short of a dance, and she didn't like it. Still, it was true that everything looked evil at this time of night. Jazz made her way over to the window and peered out, keeping her face a foot or two away from the glass. If something broke in, she wanted to have some wiggle room. Jazz turned the bright clock on its face. If the darkness in her room could be made to match the darkness outside, then she could observe unobserved.

A minute passed. Jazz didn't move, and neither did her lightless flashlight. Finally she succumbed to curiosity and, moving slowly, clicked on the light and pointed it out into the night. The mist lit up in a solid white sheet, but she still couldn't see a thing. Minutes passed, and nothing moved or crunched or growled, not even a breath of wind rustled the branched. Later, she would think that such a silence was unusual for a forest, but at the moment the silence reassured her. She must have dreamed the growl. This wouldn't be the first time that vivid dreams had waked her, though this was definitely one of the stranger times, if that was the case. Jazz couldn't remember having a dream, only the thick sharp snap of a branch followed by a deep, thundering noise. She took one last look at the window and saw an enormous silver lizard's eye squinting back at her.

The hard gray eye had one black pupil in its middle. The breath of the monster formed a cloud on the window. From red serrated teeth dangled the neck of a deer, its severed artery still belching dark streams of dark blood across its own mottled white breast. The deer stared unblinking into the woods, held in the thick, foaming jaws of something completely unknown to Jazmine Fenton. By the time she had gathered her breath for a scream, the monster had disappeared. She screamed anyway.

The house blinked awake in an instant. Jack and Maddie arrived first, with Hal and Janice on their tails. The roof thumped as Danny and Corduroy raced for their ladder.

"What's wrong? What did you see?" Maddie had her in her arms. Jazz couldn't stop staring at the window. It felt like her eyes would pop out of their sockets, but Jazz couldn't look away.

"A thing…" She gulped a breath. "There was a thing. It was in the window. A deer…" Her jaw worked. Was she awake, or was this a dream? She knew in her gut it had been real. "It had a deer. The deer was dead, and there was blood." Jazz saw Danny begin to edge toward the door, but she shook her head at him. Maybe he didn't know that she knew about his freelancing, but thankfully he had enough sense to take the hint and stay put.

Cord rushed to the window and stared out, pressing his nose to the glass. "I guess we got hungry." He looked pleadingly at Hal, who for the first time since the Fentons' arrival, did not look composed at all. "We didn't mean it! We must have gotten hungry."

Hal scowled at Corduroy. "Get back to bed. We'll discuss this extensively in the morning." Cord blushed deeply and sulked from the room.

"'We'?" Jazz's mouth twisted with the word.

"Our son has a disability. He gets confused with his language sometimes, saying 'we' when he meant 'he'." Janice licked her lips. "It's nothing."

"The shrinks tell us he has a bad brain that way," Hal grumbled. Janice frowned and elbowed him discreetly.

Jazz stared at the two of them, then back at the window. Somebody here had a screw loose, and she was forty percent certain that it wasn't her. "I'd like to sleep in the living room, if that's alright."

Of course it was alright, they said. Pillows and bedding were brought and arranged on the couch, along with water and a couple crackers in case she was hungry. Jazz assured them that if there was one thing she was not, it was hungry. The adults retreated to the kitchen where they spoke in hushed, accusatory tones, which was just fine with Jazz. The last thing she wanted to do at this point was get questioned, and she'd seen enough weird stuff in Amity to let her own questions wait for sunup. The adults let her alone, but Danny hung around as Jazz slumped down on the couch.

"You're sure you're okay?" Jazz said that she was. "Was it a ghost or something?"

She held his eyes. "The thing I saw was not a ghost. It was flesh and blood." And bloodied, she added silently. "But it wasn't natural either, it had an intelligent look…" Jazz tried to be as clear as she could, but she hadn't been able to study the thing. The deer in its jaws had pretty much compromised her powers of observation. With the mist and the terror, she hadn't even seen the color of its hide, only that bright orange iris. "I don't know what it was, but I hope you know that these people probably put it out there."

Danny chewed his lip. "Probably." He looked up at the roof. "I'm keeping my eye on Cord, that's for sure."

"I'd worry about Dad's college chum Hal before I'd worry about the squirt." She didn't even want to think about these people's ties with the military.

The adults filed back to the room from the kitchen, and Danny retreated to his loft while Jazz tried to get to sleep. As frightened as she'd been, it wasn't too hard for her to drop off. Her brother was Public Enemy No. One, also known as Public Defender No. One. Her parents were competent, and her mother never went anywhere without an arsenal of devices squirreled away in every conceivable pocket of her jumpsuit. Dad at least meant well, and in a fist fight, her parents would beat the crap out of those two Kalens. If that monster hadn't attacked her when she was most vulnerable, then it probably wouldn't attack at all. Besides, the thing had just killed, and animals didn't kill for fun.

Thus it was that Jazmine was able to talk herself into tranquility, and then into an even slumber.

A/N: Bwa ha ha ha ha. Review! (Today's virtual bribe is... Wonka Bars.)