Chapter 4

I shut down the Thermos and twisted the cap back into place, plunging the picnic area back into semi-darkness, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the trees. In the dim light I was barely able to make out Valerie's face, gazing back at me with mild curiosity, waiting patiently for me to deliver on what I had promised.

Although I had planned this conversation carefully, I didn't want to sound scripted–so I paused, let my eyes wander a bit, cleared my throat as though I were trying to figure out where to start.

"So. . . what do you get out of it?"

She continued to stare at me for a few seconds, puzzled. "Get out of what?"

"Out of hunting ghosts. Like, what does it do for you? What's the payback, the reward? You can't be doing it for the money, because there isn't any. The city doesn't even pay my folks any more for the consulting work they do. And since nobody knows it's you, it can't very well be for fame or even gratitude."

"Revenge," she said. "At least, that's what it was at first. I wanted to get back at the ghost who wrecked– hell, I've told you all this before. It's ancient history."

"Yeah, I remember that story. But that's what got you started. What's in it for you now?"

"I don't know. Responsibility. . . anger. . . justice. . . ." She struggled to come up with each word. "I'm still pretty pissed off at the ghost boy, so I guess that still belongs in there. Uh, personal satisfaction? A chance to put my karate training to good use. And. . . oh God, this is going to sound dumb. And selfish– "

"Probably not. I was thinking maybe you would say that it's fun."

"Well, it is!" She seemed relieved to admit it. "When my ghost alarm goes off, I feel like. . . like I come alive. Like the whole rest of my life is just drudgery– I can't wait to get back into the action. And then there's this massive, wicked adrenaline rush, when the tables turn and I've got the damn ghost on the run. . . ." She closed her eyes as her voice faded away, her head tipped back as though she were basking in strong sunlight, a secretive smile on her face.

"That's the really awesome part, isn't it?" I asked, caught up in her reverie. Her eyes snapped open, startled. "I mean, I've seen you in action. You're. . . really incredible, do you know that?"

She blushed.

"You're so graceful in the air," I added– and I meant it. For me, flying comes naturally. How she does it is a mystery to me. "How fast can that flying thing of yours go, anyway?"

"It's called a rocket sled. And I'm not really sure how fast it can go. I've never had anybody clock me."

That surprised me– but of course, she didn't have Sam and Tucker to train with. "I could get my hands on a radar gun, if you're interested."

"Yeah, that would be cool. The thing is, the problem gets to be maneuverability at high speeds, so I'm better off with short bursts of speed and the element of surprise." She demonstrated with her hands, banking and rolling around imaginary obstacles. "If it came down to a race, I'd probably lose because the damn ghost can fly through stuff, and I can't."

"Chalk up a big advantage for the ghosts," I commiserated.

"Yeah, so I just gotta focus on sneaking up on him."

"I bet you're real good at that." She was real good at that, as I was painfully aware. But I had never before thought about our battles from her perspective. Since my strategy was always to put as much distance between us as possible, and escape as quickly as possible, it made sense that she would always make a point of sneaking up on me from behind– and that she would always shoot first.

I glanced down at my watch; as much fun as this was, time was slipping away and I had a lot more ground to cover.

"What would you do with a ghost when you catch one?" I was very careful to say 'when' rather than 'if.' She may not have been successful with her hunting so far, but I wanted to keep her in a good mood.

"Why in the hell would I want to catch a ghost? I don't want to catch him, I want to destroy him."

"And. . . how's that working for you?" A little too snarky, perhaps, but I was getting a little frustrated at how she kept saying 'him' instead of 'them.' "The thing is, I. . . I don't think you can actually destroy ghosts. Hurt them, yeah. Ghosts can absolutely feel pain. Shoot them, shock them, pummel them into a pulp, make them wish they'd never set foot within a hundred miles of you, yeah. But you can't destroy them. It would be like. . . killing something that's already dead."

"Well, that sucks. Are ghosts immortal, then?"

"Immortal? No. More like. . . uh, post-mortal, I guess. Eventually, most ghosts work through whatever it is that's keeping them here, and they fade away, or move on. That part's not altogether clear."

"I never thought about it that way before."

"You see? This is exactly the sort of stuff a Fenton would think about." (Actually, this is exactly the sort of stuff Jazz would think about, now that she's been dragged kicking and screaming into the family business. I do a little light reading on the subject when I can, but she's plowing through the Fenton rare book collection as if my life depended on it–her contribution to 'Team Phantom.')

"But, wait a minute! What about your parents, with all their weapons– aren't they trying to destroy the ghosts?"

"They've invented a lot of weapons, sure, but their ultimate goal is to capture a ghost so they can study it. That's why they got into the ghost hunting business in the first place, for the science. Only, when there are lives at risk, they'd rather send a ghost back to the Ghost Zone than let anybody get hurt."

"The Ghost Zone. . ." she echoed, thoughtfully. She had some first-hand memories of the Ghost Zone, and the fact that I knew about it and called it by its proper name probably improved my cred.

"Mom has this weapon, she calls it the Fenton Bazooka. Great big monster gun, shoulder mounted–" I hefted an imaginary weapon up onto my shoulder by way of illustration. Valerie was practically drooling. "I can barely lift it, myself. Anyway, Mom used it to send about a dozen ghosts back to the Ghost Zone when they tried to take over City Hall last year. It's not as easy to use as a Thermos, but you don't have to be quite so accurate, which makes it a good choice when you're dealing with a lot of ghosts in one place. It projects a temporary Portal that'll send any ghost within a one-meter radius back to the Ghost Zone."

"Wait a minute. Why don't they use that Thermos thing? If it's good enough to trap a ghost, then what's to stop them from doing their research?"

Oh, great. The last thing I needed was to get Valerie all enthusiastic about dissection. "Uh. . . well. . . the Thermos will hold a ghost, but you can't exactly study it while it's in there. You'd have to let it out first, and once you do that you'd have one seriously pissed off ghost on your hands."

"So, what they need is some kind of. . . like, containment field or something."

"Yeah, pretty much. A really powerful one." And me, a thousand miles away when they test it. "You know, I'm not entirely sure I want them to succeed at this. I mean, the thought of them doing experiments on a ghost, even one of the nasty ones. . . it's kind of. . . well, gross. I get queasy even thinking about my Mom and Dad doing that stuff down in our basement." I stared down at my hands. This was pretty personal, but I was actually starting to feel comfortable talking to Valerie. "I know they're geniuses, that they are experts in the field, that nobody's more qualified to do this kind of work, it just. . . ."

"You kind of wish they wouldn't do this kind of work."

I looked up at her, stunned. "I didn't think you'd understand."

She grimaced. "I'd probably volunteer to help them with the experiments, but then, they're not my parents. They've loved you and taken care of you your whole life, and you don't want to think about them doing anything that would cause pain–even to a ghost."

I sighed. In a weird sort of way, she did understand.

She reached across the table, touched my shoulder. "Would it help," she asked tenderly, "if you knew the ghost was really evil? That it really deserved it?"

This was a surprise. I'd been hoping to steer the conversation in this direction, but Valerie drove us right there. "Do you. . . do you not think that all ghosts are evil?"

"I think" she said, pausing to frame her answer, "I believe that all ghosts are. . . wrong. They don't belong here. They should be. . . forced to stay on their side of the Ghost Zone. Portal. Whatever. They shouldn't be here." She twisted one of her bangles, as if she were adjusting a wrist-mounted weapon. "But I do think that some ghosts are. . . more evil. More evil than others. Some ghosts deserve to be punished, to be destroyed–"

"And some ghosts don't?"

"I guess not. But some ghosts do."

"You got that right." It was all I could do not to jump up on the table and do a happy dance. Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved a breakthrough!

"Okay," she said, pointing at the Thermos on the table. "So, let's say one of these days I do manage to catch a ghost in that thing. What happens to him?"

I shrugged. "Simple. You bring the Thermos to me, and I'll release the ghost back into the Ghost Zone through the Portal in the lab at FentonWorks."

"You just let him go? What the hell kind of solution is that? He's still free, and he'll just come back, right? And I'll have to catch him again, and you're release him again, and he'll keep coming back, and coming back, and coming back. . . ."

Welcome to my life. And there she was, talking about 'him' again– and I was pretty sure that 'he' wasn't the Box Ghost. Damn. I reminded myself to stay focused, don't let on that you noticed, steer the conversation back to ghosts in general. "But normally a ghost will need to rest and replenish its strength for a while, especially if it used a lot of power or was weakened in some way while it was here. That's one reason why my parents build weapons that can hurt ghosts– to weaken them so they can't come back so quickly." That earned me a bloodthirsty smile of approval. "Theoretically, if you hurt it badly enough, it might not come back at all. It might stay in the Ghost Zone, or pick some other place to haunt."

"You guys have much luck with that?"

"No, not really." I said, with a sigh of resignation. "They just keep coming back."

"Yeah. I figured as much. Tell you what: why don't I just catch the ghost, take the Thermos, and let it just. . . disappear? Stick it in a closet or something like that."

"Well, first of all, you'd have to make absolutely sure that the ghost is never, never, ever going to get out. Ever. Because if and when it does, it's going to be furious and it's going to want revenge. And second. . . ."

I checked my watch again. The stress of keeping up my side of the conversation was starting to take its toll on me. But this was all part of the plan, so I kept going.

"Let me put it this way. . . think about the most evil person who has ever lived: Hitler, bin Laden, whoever. If you were a judge, and you had the power to sentence that person to an eternity in solitary confinement, held immobile in a prison cell smaller than a coffin, with no light, no sound, no sensation of any kind, could you do it? Would you do it?" I popped the lid off the Thermos. "Look inside this thing. Stick your hand in there, if you can. My hand won't fit."

She didn't try to put her whole hand inside, but she did take a look and stuck her index finger inside far enough to feel the inner surface. The inside of a Fenton Thermos is a smooth, pale grey cylinder, a little less than five inches across and about a foot long, made of an alloy that was developed by NASA. The bottom is gently curved, to eliminate weak spots, and the inside of the lid has a similar curve of the same material, and a thin neoprene gasket on the lip to form a tight seal.

"Is it. . . painful?"

"No," I said, then stopped myself. How would Danny Fenton know what a ghost would experience inside a Fenton Thermos? I quickly rephrased my answer. "It shouldn't be. Uncomfortable, yes, but it's not designed to cause pain. But try to imagine spending a whole day inside there. A week. A month, a year. Ghosts don't age, they can't die. They may not be alive, by our definition, but they are sentient. They're aware, they think, they feel. What kind of crime would it take, to sentence someone to exist in there forever, alone in the dark?"

She stared at the open Thermos, but said nothing. I wished I could know what was going through her head. I wished knew whether she was weighing my own "crimes" as a ghost.

I pushed forward. "Would you do that to a ghost if you could? Does the fact that the Box Ghost broke somebody's best china mean that he deserves that kind of punishment? How about the ghost dog that wrecked Axion Labs and got your dad fired—would you shove a dog inside a Thermos and leave it in there forever? It was just a dumb animal, and it died, and it couldn't rest until it found its squeaky toy."

I let that hang in the air for a moment, wondering whether she would notice.

"Wait a minute. . . ."

Look out, the excrement's about to hit the air circulation device.

". . . how do you know so much about the ghost dog?"

Author's Note:

This chapter was very difficult to write–and I should know, because I had to write it twice!

In the original rough draft of "A Thermos for Valerie," chapter four was just a one-sentence placeholder: "Insert conversation about ghosts, ghost hunting, ethics, etc." I gradually fleshed it out in between efforts to complete other chapters, and I promised myself that I wouldn't post chapter three until chapter four was finished (except for the sort of polishing that I refer to as 'rearranging the deck chairs").

By last Friday I had a complete draft of chapter four, five pages long, that flowed smoothly from the end of chapter three to the beginning of chapter five, hitting all the plot points I needed it to hit. I was giving it a touch-up on Sunday evening when it suddenly hit me: although the chapter was complete, logical, organized and even intriguing, it was totally out of character. I had lost Danny's voice.

So I did something I've never done before: I discarded the entire chapter and started over from scratch, the result of which you have just read. I apologize for the long delay between chapters; the problem should not recur because the rest of the story is already pretty close to being finished.

I believe I have managed to respond privately to all my reviewers to date, but I also want to thank you publically. The thrill of battle may be what brings Valerie to life, but feedback is my drug of choice. And if anybody is interested in a more give-and-take discussion of issues raised by the story, I've been hanging out in the "Theories and Musings" forum.