A/N: Wow, it has been some time hasn't it? I haven't posted anything DP related in...well too long. But thanks to SummersSixEcho being an amazing friend and getting me back into the phandom and the DP Fanfiction Palace Discord and the Ectoberhaunt Discord filling me with the excitement of Ectober, I really wanted to participate.
For anyone who used to read my fics - it's great to see you again and thanks for following me over here! For anyone new, I hope you enjoy my attempt at coming out of retirement!
I also will be cross-posting new content over onto AO3 (my pen name is DarthFrodo) so feel free to look out for stuff over there too!
So here you are, Ectober 2021 Day 5 - Ouija Board.
Too Close to Home
"Let me get this straight," Danny interrupted. "I fight ghosts - real ghosts - on a nightly basis. And now that I actually have a free night you want to take up the time that I should be sleeping to fight fake ghosts?"
He shook his head as he looked at his computer screen, the only light in his entire bedroom aside from the digital clock that showed the hour: 11:45. From the first-person view of the computer game on his screen, he watched the avatars of both of his friends attempt to throw basketballs into a hoop.
"But this is way more fun," Tucker's voice said over Danny's headset. "And it hurts a lot less! Ah! Dang it Sam - you messed up my throw!"
Sam cackled triumphantly. "Better pay more attention to your timing then."
Tucker groaned as his avatar abandoned the basketball for spray paint cans, which he chucked at Sam. "Besides Danny, we're not fighting ghosts: we're hunting them."
"Fine, fight, hunt, whatever. I still do both of them," Danny argued.
"Not like this you don't," Tucker grinned. "God he's gonna get creamed."
"You know Danny, maybe we should let you go to bed. You're gonna ruin my perfect streak," Sam teased.
Danny rolled his eyes. "Or maybe you'll actually do better because you have a true ghost hunting professional on the team," he defended. He had no idea why he was bragging - he'd just been given an out and given the late hour he should take it, but now it felt like he needed to defend his pride as a ghost hunter. …That thought sounded a little too similar to something his parents would say and he quickly dismissed it. "Besides, I played the tutorial, I know what I'm doing. I'm just trying to figure out why we're doing this."
"Because it's spooky season," Tucker replied with a hint of sarcasm.
"We are only five days into October, Tucker, and if you're gonna keep doing this all month I am going to hit you with the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick," Sam threatened.
"I dunno, it might be worth it," Tucker teased. "What do you think Danny?"
Danny shook his head, even though none of them could see it. "As the only person in this group who has actually been hit by the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, I would back off," he advised.
"Listen to Danny Tucker," Sam chuckled as her avatar walked over to the white board to set up the hunt. "He's actually speaking wisdom for once. Now come over here and pick out your gear."
The playful teasing between best friends stopped as they actually got serious and picked out the gear they would need for their mission. Since Danny had no money, he couldn't really participate in the conversation, but it seemed like Tucker and Sam had played this enough to know what they needed to bring. Sam started the mission, and their avatars found themselves inside the trailer looking at another whiteboard.
"Alright, looks like our ghost is named Thomas Clark and he responds to all of us," Sam informed the group while Tucker's avatar walked over to the shelves to equip supplies.
"Well that's a dumb name for a ghost," Danny complained as he looked at the bulletin board next to the computer. He had to squint at his screen to read them, but the articles were fairly legible and contained ghost stories he remembered hearing his parents talk about. It also had a recent article that he actually remembered running in USA Today proclaiming Amity Park as the most haunted city in the world - he didn't know whether to feel proud or annoyed.
"Yeah, you're right," Sam agreed, though her voice was laced with sarcasm. "He should have gone with Thomas Phantom instead."
Danny rolled his eyes as Tucker burst out laughing. "Oh yeah, now that sounds like a proper ghost," Tucker added between laughs.
"I knew I was going to hate this," Danny groaned under his breath. "Can we just get this over with?"
Sam's avatar turned to face the new whiteboard. "Alright, fine. Objective one: find out what kind of ghost we're dealing with - standard. Objective two: witness a ghost event."
"I am a ghost event," Danny smirked, causing Tucker to burst out laughing again.
"Objective three," Sam snapped, "capture a photo of the ghost."
Tucker's avatar grabbed a camera and snapped a picture of Danny's avatar. "Got one!" he proclaimed, which drove both boys into laughter.
"Objective four," Sam said louder, "get a ghost to walk through salt."
"What? That's dumb. Everyone knows that's an old wive's tale," Danny complained as he shook his head. Did the creators of this game actually do any real research before they made this game?
"Are you regretting this yet Sam?" Tucker asked as he finally stopped laughing.
"Let's just get in the house," she groaned. Danny smirked in triumph, and he could tell Tucker was sharing a similar smirk on his end.
They divided up equipment between the three of them, but not before Danny could comment on the inaccuracies of each of the pieces of equipment and how useless they'd be in an actual ghost fight. From faulty science to just being plain incorrect, Danny made sure to have pithy comments about all the equipment. He didn't know why it bothered him so much that it had to be accurate - he was not his parents - but as a ghost and a ghost hunter, it just felt a little more personal than he wanted to admit.
Because he was the newest one, Danny got stuck with the Spirit Book ("What? Are they trying to imply all ghosts can't write? That's alivist!") and the EMF Reader ("...Okay that one's actually accurate") because they were apparently the easiest to use. Laden down with their gear they walked up to the small house. Sam's avatar unlocked the door and they headed inside. Danny noticed the tonal shift immediately. Outside he could hear wind and crickets chirping, but once he stepped inside the doorway, an oppressive silence covered his headphones. It reminded him of the sensation on a pressurized airplane and it unnerved and unsettled him...a lot more than he planned to admit to his friends.
"Alright, spread out," Sam instructed. "See if you can find the ghost room."
Ghost room, right. He remembered that from the tutorial. It had been the garage in the tutorial, so he figured he should start there. He walked back through the dark house, turning lights on as he went. It wasn't because he was scared - absolutely not, he was a real ghost hunter! - it was just much easier to see. He pulled out the EMF reader and walked into the garage. It had an eerie quality to it, and he couldn't tell if it was because he remembered seeing the ghost there last time (a mean looking (and inaccurate) ghost covered in blood and holding an axe) or if it was because he was alone and the room was so large, but he did not like being in here.
"You know, in the tutorial, the ghost was a bloody axe-man," Danny remarked over the walkie talkie.
"Yeah, I think he's standard in the tutorial," Sam remarked offhand. He did not want to admit how good it felt to hear her voice in the oppressive silence of the house. They were clearly focused on their tasks, and that was a good thing, but it felt a lot better hearing their voices.
"Red blood," he continued, simply to trigger more conversation. He didn't get any EMF readings, so he gratefully left the garage. "Not ectoplasm. It's like they didn't even try."
"Ugh, Danny, they're going for a horror aesthetic, not something real," Sam sighed.
"What? Ectoplasm-stains are horrifying," he countered as he walked through the rest of the first story. Still no EMF readings.
"Only when it's yours," Sam said, and the weight of those words echoed in the silence of the house that made him stop moving for a moment. "No cold spots upstairs," Sam informed them to break the silence.
"Yeah, no EMF downstairs," Danny added. "I'm gonna check out the basement." That's where they loved to hang out in the real world, so it seemed the next best choice.
"Oh hang on, if you're going down there I'll go with you," Tucker spoke up.
Danny stopped halfway down the stairs. "It's fine, I'm pretty used to basements," he joked weakly.
"Yeah, well the last time you went into a basement alone with untested ghost equipment you died." Tucker said it light-heartedly as a joke, and it was one they'd said a bunch of times before, but somehow it just didn't feel the same in this tense environment. It felt too...personal.
He waited for Tucker's avatar to appear before they walked down the stairs together into the basement. Unlike Sam's basement or his own, this basement had a much creepier feel to it, with the foreboding worn brick walls and discolored cement flooring. Honestly he was glad Tucker went down there with him because it just felt better having another person there.
"Sam, maybe you should get down here with the thermometer," Tucker mentioned as they both walked through the basement. "Because we're not-"
Danny whirled around as he heard something thud hard against the ground behind him while he jumped in his chair. The EMF reader in his hand jumped up to three dots and blared at them while he stared at a box of tools now on the ground. The ghost was clearly in the room. Danny half-expected his ghost sense to go off, but he had to remind himself it was just a video game. There wasn't actually a ghost here.
"What happened?" Sam's urgent voice said over the walkies.
"Ghost knocked something off the shelf down here," Tucker said as his avatar walked over to the toolbox. "Ooh! We've got fingerprints!" he cheered as his avatar shined a light on a glowing handprint.
"Oh that's so not how that works," Danny complained, just to help lighten the mood. Honestly he felt a bit jumpy knowing that the ghost was in the room...and he couldn't sense him. He'd dealt with invisible ghosts before, but his ghost sense always gave him a vague idea of where they were...except for now. He turned in his chair to check the room behind him. No ghosts, no ghost sense. It's just in the computer game.
"Figures that the ghost would be in the basement," Sam remarked as her avatar walked down the stairs and opened her journal. Right! Journal. Danny opened his and placed their one piece of evidence inside. The sooner they got all of those the sooner they could leave, and he really liked that idea.
"I'm not seeing freezing temperatures, but it is a little cooler than the rest of the house," she continued. "So let's start setting stuff up in here. Tucker get the DOTS up and I'll place the camera. Danny place the spirit book."
Okay, this wasn't so bad with the three of them in the room. He could hear them moving around and he could see them, so it made him feel a bit better. And there was still no sign of the ghost. He put the spirit book down near the toolbox and looked away from it. Maybe the ghost wouldn't write in it while he was watching? He didn't know.
"Ooh!" Tucker cried excitedly.
"Did you see it in the DOTS?" Sam asked.
"No - Ouija board! Oh yeah!" Tucker cheered. "Now we're getting somewhere."
"Oh I love these," Sam agreed. Danny's brow furrowed as he looked at the screen. Why were they acting so happy - didn't they forget there was a ghost in this room with them?
"Hang on, let Danny try the Ouija board," Tucker suggested. "You know, because he's never seen it before."
"Ooh good idea," Sam agreed. Danny walked over to where they were and saw Sam's avatar set down a light brown board.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sus about your motives right now," Danny said. He had a bad feeling about this…
"No Danny, it's fine. These are actually pretty cool in this game," Sam assured him. She quickly explained how the Ouija boards worked in the game and what questions to ask, and against his better judgment, he walked over and activated the board. The numbers and letters glowed orange against the light color of the wood.
He decided to start with something easy, so he swallowed and forced his voice to come out clear. "How old are you?" He jumped in his chair and his avatar backed up quickly as the planchette moved across the letters.
"Y - O - U - N - G," Tucker read. "A young ghost."
"Oh God, I hope that doesn't mean it's the crawling baby ghost," Sam sighed. "I really hate that one."
"Ask it something else," Tucker encouraged.
"I don't know," Danny hedged. For some reason the Ouija board set him on edge. Something deep in his gut did not like this. Even if it wasn't real and he kept telling himself it wasn't real, he didn't like it.
"No dude, it's okay," he assured him. "You can ask two questions before a significant sanity drop. Just ask it one more and you can go back to the truck."
He very much wanted to go back to the truck. He just needed a chance to regroup. He was a ghost and fought ghosts for a living and he could not understand why this game unnerved him so much. But Danny Phantom wasn't scared of ghosts, any kind of ghosts, and he wasn't about to show it on a video game. "Fine," he groaned as he picked up the board again. "Who died?"
This time he knew what to expect, and didn't jump as much as the planchette started moving. First to the D, then to the A. Over to the N, then looping back to the N. It ended on a Y.
All three of them stopped moving. The silence became even more deafening around them. Danny dropped the Ouija board and backed up as far as the game would let him. He felt a cold sweat drip down his back. Danny. It spelled Danny. How did it know his name?
"...That has got to be a coincidence," Sam finally said after the silence that seemed to stretch on forever.
"The ghost's name must be Danny," Tucker suggested, voice full of forced bravado.
"...No it's Thomas," Sam said slowly. "It must just be reading your username to scare you," she decided.
"No my...my username is GhostBoy," Danny reminded them, finally feeling like he could speak.
"Is this game actually haunted? Danny, what did you do?" Tucker accused, voice bordering on hysterics.
"What? I didn't do anything!" Danny yelled back. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He put a hand up to feel his breath - still normal temperature. He looked around his room. There wasn't a ghost here. But how did it know his name? And that he did almost die in a basement? "You're the one that told me to use it!"
"Okay, let's just calm down," Sam interrupted. "It's gotta be a coincidence. Let me try it and see if it says the same thing or gives me my name. It could be a new update that checks the name on the Steam account or something."
Sam moved closer to the board, but before she could touch it all their flashlights flickered.
"Shit!" Tucker yelled.
"Run!" Sam cried in a panic.
Danny followed them up the stairs to the main level. The idea of running from a ghost, not fighting it, was so foreign to him, but he had no choice. He was powerless here. No ghost powers, no weapons, no thermos. He was completely helpless against this ghost.
He bolted for the garage, the one other room he knew how to get to. Sam's avatar was running next to him. He could hear footsteps behind him and he swore as he ran towards the garage. Sam diverted into another room, but he continued into the garage. He found a locker he'd opened before and rushed into it. He barely remembered to turn off his flashlight and he waited. Seconds passed and he realized he was holding his breath. No...not holding his breath. Not breathing. He looked down at his hands and saw the glowing white gloves. When...when did he change into his ghost form?
Sam's voice over the walkie startled him. "What the-? Oh my G-" The walkie feed cut to static and then nothing.
"I...I think it got Sam," Tucker's voice said over the walkie. Danny turned on his flashlight and saw that it was no longer blinking. He threw his head back in relief. The hunt was over. He climbed back out of his locker, keeping the door open again just in case.
"Dude, she was running right next to me. It must have followed her instead of me," Danny told him. "Ugh, well what are we going to do now? She's the only one who knew what she was doing!"
"Wait, I thought you would be a pro because you're a 'professional ghost hunter' - isn't that what you kept saying?" Tucker teased.
"Yeah, well I lied! This is nothing like ghost hunting!" he argued as he walked out of the garage. He was going back to the trailer. "Real ghost hunters would bring some kind of weapon and wouldn't just run around helpless! We should just call it."
"What? No! We've got two more pieces of evidence to collect. And we haven't done any of the objectives! Tucker retorted.
"Fine!" he snapped as he walked down the main hallway. "if you want to keep looking for clues you can, but I'm going back to the trailer to check-"
The front door slammed shut. His flashlight blinked again.
"Shit!" Tucker cried.
Danny could hear the footsteps behind him. He could feel a heart thumping in his headset. He started running off to a room but stopped. No, he was not running again. He was going to stare this ghost down and prove that Danny Phantom was not scared of some ghost. His image struck fear in the hearts of ghosts and his name carried respect in the Ghost Zone. He was not going to let some video game ghost get the better of him and spook him with some Ouija board trick
He turned around to face it, camera at the ready. If he was going down, he was getting a picture of it. The ghost blinked in the hallway and Danny saw the cause of his anxiety for the first time. The ghost floated down the hallway, with white hair and a black and white jumpsuit. It...it was him. The ghost was Phantom.
He completely forgot to take a picture as his own image rushed at him. He saw two gloved hands cover over the screen and then everything went dark. He heard the crash of breaking glass, saw a strange underground cavern for a second, and then he was back in a foggy blue version of the house.
The ghost of Sam's avatar approached him, and he heard her laughing over the headset. It sounded like she'd been laughing for awhile. "Oh my god Danny, did you see the ghost?" she asked between laughs.
"It...that was...oh my God," he groaned. It all made sense. Spelling Danny was likely an Easter egg, a cute nod to his name of Danny Phantom. The fact that it happened in the basement was just a coincidence, because it's a creepy spot and a commonly haunted area. He hadn't summoned anything. He wasn't being targeted by some ghost in the computer. It was just an Easter egg paying homage to him.
Suddenly all the stress left him and he laughed. God, it felt so good to laugh after all that panic. This game had gotten him so worked up and over what? Over a ghost that looked like himself? Suddenly it all seemed so silly that it scared him that much. He had felt actual dread and fear, enough to trigger an unconscious transformation out of a need to protect himself, but there weren't actually any real consequences. Now he just got to walk around unhindered in this ghostly version of the house, but nothing else actually happened.
Sam laughed along with Danny. "So you did see it then?"
"It was...oh my god Sam it was me! It looked just like me!"
"I know!" she exclaimed. "As soon as I saw it I forgot to keep running and stared. So of course it killed me. I did get a picture though," she bragged.
"Oh man. I meant to, but I was just too stunned." Now that he felt much better, he decided to wander around the house following Tucker who, for some reason, was still trying to finish the level on his own.
Sam suspiciously stopped her laughing. "Wait...Danny, your voice sounds weird. Are you...are you in your ghost form?"
Danny bit his lip as a slight blush graced his cheeks. "I don't want to hear it." But the telltale whoosh of the glowing rings turning him back to his human form seemed to be all the confirmation she needed. Except, he didn't hear her laugh.
"...Danny, I wanted to apologize," she said, and that made Danny stop moving and look quizzically at the screen.
"What? Apologize for what?" he asked.
"For goading you into playing this game," she clarified, her voice surprisingly serious. "While I've been hanging out here in the spirit world, I realized why this game set you off so much."
"What do you mean? I never said it set me off," Danny defended. How could she possibly know that? He thought he was playing it pretty cool.
"Oh please," she scoffed. "You're in your ghost form and you were panicking after the Ouija board thing."
"Hey you would panic too if-"
"Danny I'm trying to say that I get it," she interrupted. "Being near a ghost without your powers? Without any weapons? Being powerless? It's one of your biggest nightmares, that your powers will fail when you need them. And this game, it's too close to home."
Danny stopped moving and stared at the screen, because she was absolutely right. This was too close to home. How many times did he have to check to make sure his ghost sense wasn't actually going off? How many times did he keep thinking about how similar everything felt to his own experiences? How unnerved he was about a ghost in the basement? It was too similar to his real life...except he had the tools he needed in his real life. Not a flashlight and some dumb spirit book, but actual real tools and powers and weapons, but here they were all taken away from him. Everything he relied on to fight ghosts had been stripped from him in the game and trapped him helpless in a house with his friends. Of course that bothered him. It was, as Sam said, one of his more recurring nightmares.
"...Yeah I think I'm good never playing this game again," Danny admitted, the closest he planned to get to acknowledging everything she said was true.
"Honestly? I don't blame you," Sam agreed softly. "I think it's easier for us because we're used to this role: when there's a ghost in the area, we help figure out what's going on and support you. It's not all that different from this game," she explained. Her ghostly avatar followed Tucker out of the house and he followed after them. "But when you're used to doing the fighting and defending and can't...I guess it's probably harder to separate yourself from the game."
He reached behind him and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah," he sighed. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. It was too similar to his daily life, and as he tried to argue at the beginning, he didn't need to hunt fake ghosts poorly when he knew how to fight real ghosts well. "You know you sound like Jazz," he pointed out, trying to lighten the mood and change the subject.
"Wow, you're going to insult me after I tried to help you?" Sam scoffed. "See if I ever help you again!"
Danny smiled at the screen, glad to be back to the teasing. He definitely felt more relaxed and more like himself. "Oh look, Tucker's finally calling it quits," Danny observed as Tucker closed the door to the trailer.
"God, I can't wait to find out if he saw you." He could hear her grinning through the headset and honestly he felt the same. Out of all of them, Tucker would be the most excited about this addition.
The screen changed over to the menu screen, showing all their accomplished objectives. It also meant that all three party members could talk to each other again. "I can't believe you left me!" Tucker complained. "It's even worse when you're in there on your own! Do you know how much more evidence we needed to collect? Um, a ton!"
Sam laughed, and Danny had to join in. "Okay so we are sorry about that, but Tucker did you ever see the ghost?"
"No, which is probably why I'm the only one that survived!" he complained.
"Oh my god Sam, he didn't see it," Danny groaned.
"Oh my god."
"No wait, didn't see what?" Tucker asked. His voice had calmed down a bit and was colored with curiosity.
"Tucker...the ghost was Danny," Sam told him.
"Uh no, we clarified his name was Thomas," Tucker corrected.
Sam and Danny both groaned. "No Tucker, the ghost was Danny Phantom. It was skinned to look like Phantom," she clarified.
Tucker's line sat silent for a long time before he finally exploded in a shower of shock, excitement, and regret. "NO WAY! No! That is so cool! I mean I knew the developers were fans, but this is so cool! Like literally the best tribute ever. Oh my god I can't believe I missed it! No!" he cried. He was so loud into the microphone that Danny had a hard time believing Tucker didn't wake his parents.
"It's why both of us died," Danny explained. "We were just too shocked seeing it."
"We're going back in. I need to see this," Tucker demanded.
Danny bit his lip. He was not going back in. He meant it when he said he was done. He almost had his explanation on his lips before Sam spoke up first. "I doubt it'll show up two times in a row. I Googled it and the skin will be here for the whole month of Halloween as a random draw, so you've got time to see it. But if you want to try again tonight, I'll keep playing if you want. Danny...he needs to get some sleep."
"What? No, it's so much easier with three people. Come on Danny," Tucker pleaded.
"Nah, Sam's right, I should go to bed. Gotta be rested for those real ghosts tomorrow," Danny chuckled. "Besides, being killed by my own image was a little weird." And also a little too close to home, considering some of his memories of Dan.
"Yeah, this game isn't Danny's jam," Sam explained simply. He had a feeling Sam would talk to Tucker more about what they discussed while their avatars were dead, and honestly he didn't mind. He didn't want to keep secrets from Tucker, he just really didn't want to talk about it any more tonight.
Tucker sighed. "Alright, fine, you're off the hook. At least you gave it a try though."
"I did, and you're both gonna owe me one for doing it too," Danny reminded them.
"Dude, pretty sure you're in the negatives when it comes to IOUs from us," Tucker pointed out with a good-natured laugh. "Testing out inventions, excuses at school, doing your homework, remembering the thermos when you forget it, distracting your parents…"
"Okay okay, I get it," Danny groaned as he left the screen and exited out of the game. "Well fine, then I'm less in the negative now. And on that happy subject, I'm going to bed. Good night guys."
"Good night Danny," Sam replied. "We'll see you tomorrow."
Danny almost hung up on their private Discord server when he heard Tucker speak up. "Hey Danny, wait."
"What?" he asked curiously, his mouse still hovering over the disconnect sign.
"The type of ghost...was a Phantom."
A/N: This was actually really fun to write. After watching people play Phasmophobia on youtube, I finally buckled down to play it with my friends, so that inspired a lot of this. I hope you enjoyed it!
...I know what you actually want to ask me about. A certain unfinished fic. All I'm going to say is I'm working on getting back into writing more Danny Phantom, I'm gonna start posting more on AO3, and that you should follow updates on the Half-Deadfic Project...