Author's Note: I own nothing! This is story number two in my Dani Phantom series, the first one being The World Might Do Me In.
Heart of A Ghost Town
1 Technically
Two months of school passed before anyone could blink and October hit with a vengeance. The leaves turned red and gold and the ghosts remained a steady flow. Dani had never really understood the term sucked into a video game until she had to literally dive into her computer, and into her new copy of Doom to stop Technus from getting to the Internet and taking over the world wide web. She also managed to ace her makeup test and between her, Tanya and Sam, they trapped Technus in a glitch in the programming. So as Halloween neared Dani was getting excited. The three of them had planned to do a little trick or treating then head to the Zombie Teacher movie marathon, since Halloween fell on a Saturday that year they had planned to stay the whole night.
At least that was until Dani, as Phantom, was tossed through the school and sent a bucket of paint splashing onto Dash's letterman jacket. Having smacked her head she'd turned back into Dani Fenton by the time he'd turned around, lucky for her he'd always been a bit dim and hadn't noticed the transformation. He snagged her by the front of her shirt and pulled back a fist when Lancer stepped into the hallway.
"Baxter! Put her down." Dash dropped her, glancing at Lancer before turning to Dani accusingly.
"Sir! She ruined my letterman jacket!" He accused pulling off the now purple stained jacket.
"It was an accident!" Dani insisted and Lancer raised his hands.
"I don't care who started what! You've both now volunteered yourselves to help with the schools annual haunted house. If the two of you manage to make a better one than Tetslaff's from last year I'll reconsider giving you both detention for fighting in the halls." Dash practically growled at her as Lancer stepped away from them.
"If I get detention for this you are so getting beat Fen-turd." Dani rolled her eyes at him as he stomped away down the hall. Sam frowned as she shuffled up to him and Tanya where they were waiting at her locker.
"You good?" Dani shook her head slamming open her locker.
"No! Thanks to that stupid ghost eel I was fighting I'm gonna be spending my Halloween making a lame school made haunted house, then getting my ass kicked by Dash." She lamented and Sam frowned. Tanya groaned.
"Dude that means you're gonna miss Zombie Teacher Four!" She lamented and Dani nodded.
"Yeah and my costume this year was great! I was gonna be Zara the hunter from Zombie Teacher! I even already got it ordered!" Sam raised an eyebrow.
"Isn't Zara the senior who got bit when the history teacher turned but didn't tell anyone until she knew she was about to turn and made her best friend shoot her in the head?" He asked and Dani nodded.
"Yeah! I even have the makeup for it already!" Tanya sighed.
"Well maybe you could do a zombie teacher theme?" She suggested and Dani paused as she reached for her textbook.
"Oh, that could work!" Dani said and Sam shrugged.
"Sounds fun, need help with it?" Sam asked and Dani nodded.
"Yes please!" They turned to Tanya who shook her head.
"Nah, I already bought my ticket for the Zombie Teacher marathon. Non refundable. Good luck though." Dani nodded.
"Fair enough."
Dani and Sam had some problems getting a hold of zombie decorations though. Halloween was in a week and it seemed that with the marathon happening and Zombie Teacher Four's premier everyone had decided that Zombie was the theme of the hour. Sam shook his head flicking through one of his many books on the occult and scary stories. They had decided to go back to the drawing board.
"Oh! Here's something!" He said tapping the page in front of him. Dani floated over to him. Stress sometimes made her powers manifest even in human form, none of them were quite sure why that was but Sam was finally starting to get used to it.
"The Fright Knight?" Dani asked looking down on the page. Sam nodded.
"Believed to be the spirit of Halloween, legend holds that the Fright Knight is the right hand of death himself. It is said that he resides in a castle in a void of fear and that if one is struck with his sword, the Soul Shredder, one is transported to a dimension where you live out your worst fear. Those tormented by the curse of the Soul Shredder can only be freed when the knight is defeated." Sam made to turn the page but Dani reached out and stopped him.
"Wait, I've seen this place!" She said pointing to the castle depicted in the book. Sam frowned as Dani landed and stepped over to her nightstand. She fished out a folder and pulled out the map they'd been making of the Ghost Zone. She turned it to Sam who was practically kicking himself, he was drawing the map how could he have forgotten. "Whoever drew for this book may have had a bit of a ghostly encounter." Dani pointed out. She was right, the illustration in the book matched Sam's drawing of the castle they'd found in the Ghost Zone.
"Holy shit. Do you think the Fright Knight is real?" Sam asked and Dani shrugged.
"I mean maybe, isn't there a saying about a grain of truth in every legend? Maybe there's more than a grain." She tucked away the map of the Ghost Zone and stepped back over to Sam and the book.
"I mean yeah. So ghost knight theme?" Sam asked and Dani nodded.
"Yep! That sounds like an original idea, let's do it." They headed to the nearest Halloween store and loaded up before heading to the haunted house the school rented every year. Amity Park legend said it had been the host to a grizzly murder but Dani had done some research. There was no murder attached to this house, just a long history of disrepair. It looked like Dash hadn't even started to set up in his room so Sam and Dani headed to the room she'd been assigned and began to set up the haunted castle. It took them most of the week to finish it. The day of Halloween arrived and Dani showed up to the house, decked out in her costume from Zombie Teacher. Tanya met her there, decked out as one of the Zombie teachers and grinned at Dani.
"Looking good!" Tanya said and Dani spun to show her the full costume. It was a red sleeveless top, black shorts and holster for the fake pistols currently resting at her hips. She wore black boots that came up nearly to her knee and black wrapped gloves. On her bare bicep was a bite mark, it was done in makeup to make it look like the wound was festering and that the rot was spreading out from the bite in black veins. Tanya whistled. "I love the Zombie bite." Dani grinned.
"Jazz helped me with the makeup. She's going out to some old movie showing tonight some old Halloween musical I think. Sam should be here soon, come on I'll show you my haunted house room!" Dani dragged Tanya inside.
Sam arrived at the haunted house thirty minutes before midnight. But the odd thing was that Dani was nowhere to be found. Tanya waited for him instead.
"Where's Dani?" Sam asked, pulling his hood back. He'd decided on a ranger from an old fantasy movie Dani had introduced him to ages back. Tanya grinned.
"Well Dash's room, which looks like it got put together by most of the AV and robotics club, is way cooler than Dani's. But she said she's seen the Fright Knight's castle, in the Zone. So she's gone to borrow his sword." Sam's eyes bugged.
"And if she ends up unleashing the spirit of Halloween himself? How well do we think that's gonna go?" Sam asked incredulously.
"Oh come on what are the odds of that?" Tanya asked itching lightly at the zombie makeup on her face before checking her watch. "I gotta run, have a few houses to hit up before I head to the movies! Have fun and don't worry so much!" Sam rolled his eyes and sat down in the vacant throne of the Dani's haunted castle room to wait for her, hoping against hope that the Fright Knight was just a legend.
