crazybluephantom: And you rock for staying with it and reviewing!
AvidReader123: Thank ya kindly
TayloWolf: You're right, they have no idea…
IwuvMyKenshyPoo: Yes, poor Danny, not yay! (fake stearness)
Spiffy McFloogan: It's not going to be as easy as you think.
Inumaru12: Love the skit and thanks for the love of the story!
Mina-chan AMD: And now you will find out.
xheartkreuzx: Yes, I love the Box Ghost!
pottersparky: I'm glad Tucker is still Tucker!
queen rat gurl: That is one of my favorite words!
Riverfox237: Yay! Your review rocks and maybe there was something important in the cabinet…
Phantom Darkness: The best you ever read! Aww thanks!
the sleep warrior: Everyone loves the Box Ghost!
A/N: We're almost to 100 reviews! Can we make it!So now we're here, in the ghost zone at long last. It's not gonna be as easy as you thought. (Evil laughter) Beware…
Chapter Seven
Jazz closed her eyes as they stepped through the portal, bracing herself for some half-expected shock. It never came. Instead, she felt a firm surface under her feet and opened her blue-green eyes wide.
They were standing at one end of a huge stone walkway that seemed to go on indefinitely into the kaleidoscope of green haze. Below them was a bottomless pit full of suspicious-looking shadows swirling like contents in a cauldron. Instinctively, Jazz grabbed Sam's arm and squeezed it tight, like she was afraid of falling.
Jack and Maddie were also ill at ease, but they were examining their surroundings with interest rather than fear. They looked over at huge structures; castles and towers sitting atop their own private islands, floating in midair. There were also doors. Purple glowing doors of every shape, size and style, from fancy French doors to small round ones like you might find in Lord of the Rings hovered all along the path and far out over the pit.
"How are we supposed to know where to go?" Jack asked, starting to feel overwhelmed. As he spoke, Jazz reached for the nearest door, a tall one with Celtic designs carved into the wood.
"Jazz, don't!" Tucker warned, but too late. She had already grabbed the doorknob and pulled it open. They all peered inside. It looked to be a perfectly average room, aside from the fact that it was a ghost's lair. An elderly ghost women with her hair twisted up in a bun sat in a rocking chair in the middle of the room, with her back to them. Judging by the click-clack of metal on metal, she was knitting. Maddie gave Tucker an odd look.
"I know you've seen many evil ghosts." She said. "But not all ghosts are malevolent." She stepped into the room and Sam gave Tucker an exasperated look behind her back.
"Excuse me, but can you tell us where the Fright Knight's castle is?" With incredible speed, the ghost leapt over the chair and shot at her, its wild black hair whipping loose. She had sharp shark-like teeth and blood red eyes. She opened her mouth in a haunting wail that made hair stand on end; she was a banshee.
It would have been the end of Maddie, right then, if Tucker and Sam hadn't done some quick thinking. Sam grabbed her and yanked her back to the walkway, both of them falling down in the process. Tucker slammed the door before the banshee could escape.
"Most ghosts are, though."' Sam stated, matter-of-factly, helping her to her feet. They started down the path again, Jack and Jazz becoming more nervous than ever, Tucker and Sam staying fairly calm and Maddie still positively shaking from the encounter.
Sam pulled a slightly crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. It was the map she and Tucker had been helping Danny make of the ghost zone. At the sight of Danny's barely legible scrawl, she felt a twinge of sadness. Then she did a double take, stopping dead in her tracks. This area wasn't on the map! Where were they?
She swallowed and looked up again, to tell the others, only to discover they were gone. They hadn't realized she had stopped, she was all alone.
Tucker started looking at the landscape, if you could call it that, trying to find something he recognized. Nothing.
"Is this on the map?" he asked. No answer. "Sam?" He turned around and one thought registered in his mind: Sam was gone.
"Sam's gone!" he yelped, causing the other three to jump and run back to him.
"What did you say?" asked Jack, uneasily, knowing full well what he'd said.
"She's gone!"
"What do you mean gone?" demanded Maddie. Tucker let out a sigh of exasperation.
"I mean she's not with us!"
"We have to go find her!" Jazz exclaimed, dancing anxiously on the spot. They started to retrace their steps, but a figure in a spotless white suit materialized in front of them, holding up their progress. He was tall and intimidating, with cold green eyes. His eyes flickered to Tucker them back to the small black rule book in his hands. It was Walker, the ghost zone's sheriff, of sorts. Danny, Sam and Tucker had had run-ins with him before and he was one of the last people—ghosts—the only one of the three that remained wanted to see.
"Humans in the ghost zone." He muttered, flicking through the book then closing it with a snap. "That's against the rules. You're under arrest!" Four ghost guards appeared beside him, each wearing a pair of what looked like black Ghost Gauntlets. Jack, Maddie and Jazz all backed away, but Tucker stayed where he was.
"Where is your bag, Jazz?" hissed her mother. Jazz looked horrified.
"I must've left it in Vlad's house!" The ghosts started to advance on them, and still Tucker didn't move.
"They can't touch us." He explained. "We're the ghosts here."
"That's where you're wrong, punk!" sneered Walker. The nearest ghost snatched Tucker and a scared look crossed his face.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The others put up more of a fight, but eventually, they, too, were restrained. Yet another ghost appeared, this one with a prison van and they were thrown inside, roughly and the door slammed, locking them inside.
Tucker threw himself against the wall and kicked at it, all to no effect.
"They're…not supposed… to hold us!" he panted, pounding on the doors. The ghost in the front laughed, his voice floating through the small barred window that separated them from the cab.
"Ever since that halfa escaped, Walker's been obsessed with making sure, if he ever caught him again, he couldn't get away. Now the prison is ghost and human-proof." When they reached the prison, a good while later, they were jerked out, still struggling and taken and thrown in a small cell, reinforced with the same black metal as the gauntlets and the van. The door swung shut and Tucker slid down the wall and sat on the floor, defeated.
"So now what?" Jazz murmured.
A/N: Now Danny's rescuers are captives too! Told you it wouldn't be that simple! Please keep reviewing! You guys are the coolest! Next chapter will hopefully be up by the end of the week and it will be a little longer than this one. 'Till then, Ciao!
