Old contest entry for cordria. A oneshot related to her amazing story "Pits". :D.
My Baby
The dream had been repeating over and over again.
"Danny, is that you?"
I'd run up to the lump on the floor, the lump wearing jeans and a white T-shirt.
"Danny, please wake up!"
Then the dreams would start to vary. The differences were slight, but the effects they had were always terrible. Like the night after he vanished.
His face was slashed, his eyes were gone. His hair was matted with blood, and his ears torn off. The ghost of my little boy appeared. "You let this happen to me, Mother. If you had been more caring, and less absorbed in your silly little career, I'd still be with you." I shouted back to him. "Go away! You're not my son! My son is not dead, not a ghost! He's coming back, I know he is!" The ghost smiled and said softly, "He may come back, but how can you be sure he won't be a ghost, won't be dead? He practically vanished." And on that note, the ghost vanished.
Just like Danny had.
Every time, my son would be dead. Every time, the ghost that looked like my son would remind me of how uncaring I had been of him, how I let him wander around town without adult supervision.
Lately, though, the dreams had been changing.
"I know it's not you," I shouted, not bothering to check the body. "YOU ARE NOT DEAD!" And next to me, Phantom appeared.
Phantom was one of the ghosts that terrorized the town, causing damage. But that was all he did. He'd also saved countless lives from other ghosts. I believed he was good, but...he could use a bit of aim practice. Just a bit.
He looked at me sadly. "How can you be sure?" he asked. For the first time, I noticed how much he looked like my son. He looked like the ghost from the other dreams, but with white hair and green eyes.
I took this in stride and looked him in the eyes. "I just know," I said defiantly, "like a mother's intuition." He just looked at me with those haunted, green eyes. I tried to keep from blinking, to stare him down. It had little to no effect on him. Finally he glanced in the direction of the body.
"Dying was painful," he said, "for him." He nodded in the body's direction. I was horrified by this statement, and grabbed Phantom by the neck of his jumpsuit. A jumpsuit that looked eerily like all of the Fenton suits. Again, I took it in stride.
"What do you mean, ghost? Did you kill him!?!"
He phased out of my grip, walked over to the body and sat down. I decided to let him talk. "It was like being torn apart from the inside, the way the ectoplasmic electricity affected him."
Ectoplasmic electricity? How could somebody die like that?
Phantom looked at me again. "Honestly, why did you put the on switch on the inside? And leave all the cords out, leaving little old human me easily susceptible to tripping on a cord, and hitting the button."
Oh my God.
"Dying was painful for him," Phantom repeated. "But it was like being released from jail for me. Don't worry, he enjoyed it, too. Just after the episode."
He vanished.
Just like that, I woke up.
I knew.
But I needed to be sure. Jack had fallen asleep in the lab, so bounding out of bed did little to nothing to him. I ran to the bookshelf and pulled out a notebook I had kept on observations of ghosts. Mostly Phantom. After leafing through it to be sure it was the right one, I grabbed Danny's freshman yearbook.
I jumped down the stairs three at a time (it's a miracle I didn't fall) and skidded to the kitchen table. There I slammed both books down on the table and flipped to the page Danny was on. A small arrow was pointed to him, with a note. 'In case I ever forget, that's me.' It was in the messy cursive handwriting that only my son could pull off. Then I opened the book and found a photo of Phantom. I placed it next to the photo of my son. They looked exactly the same.
Still, it was impossible to accept. Maybe the portal had just created an ectoplasmic copy of my son! Yes, that was likely. Until I took that into scientific evaluation.
How often was my son in the vicinity on Phantom? And yet, they were never seen together. Unless you count that one time both were acting like drunk monkeys. And Phantom had been around how long? One year. That amount was certain to have some affect on his personality, on the way he acted. But the same still applied to Danny.
I flipped to a blank page and drew a quick circle diagram. After staring at it for a minute or two, I flipped to another page and made the place in the center much larger.
Half-an-hour later, there wasn't any room left in the circles. I examined my chart.
Danny:
Clumsy
Black hair
Blue eyes
Alive
Phantom:
Coordinated
White hair
Green eyes
Dead
Both:
Secretive
Same facial features
Same voice
Strange knowledge of Fenton Equipment
Never seen together
First name is Danny
Confident
Ghost equipment goes off around them
Same handwriting
I'd discovered this when Phantom was trying to aggravate Skulker by not talking and using Post-Its to communicate. It worked. Later I found one of the Post-Its. It read 'Ember and Skulky sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!' The rest of it was burned off.
Misc. Stuff:
Danny runs off whenever there's a ghost fight. Phantom usually shows up shortly afterward.
Danny is always tired and stressed. Phantom is constantly seen around town, in varying states of stress and usually getting beat on. (I had to feel some remorse for him, the poor boy.)
Phantom showed up less than a moth after Danny had his accident.
Danny's eyes sometimes turn green when he's aggravated or upset, and he gets hostile. (I'd always passed the eye thing off as a trick of the light.) Phantom is normally hostile, but he seems to get more violent the brighter his eyes are.
Danny once vanished into thin air. No need to explain. (I saw this, and assumed he ran away. Now...I don't believe myself.)
It was overwhelming. Danny had to be Phantom. That was the only explanation. They couldn't be separate if Danny always an away before Phantom showed up...especially if there was no sign of an attack.
I threw the papers away sadly and continued my project. It was too early in the morning to ponder this situation. I picked up the most recent thing I had found. A reward poster featuring Phantom. If Danny was Phantom, wherever Phantom was taken, that's where he would be. Both of them. At last, a clue.
Jazz came in, yawning and stretching. I flipped the paper over so she couldn't see it. She stopped dead at the sight of me and her tired look suddenly turned to one of guilt. She looked down.
"Mom, I...I need to talk to you."
I glanced up. "About what, sweetie?" I asked in a falsely cheery voice.
"About Danny."
I picked up some of the news articles and moved them around, categorizing them by date.This seemed to invite Jazz to go on.
"Danny had a secret. I wasn't supposed to tell you unless you not knowing would threaten his life. And now...it might...but I was afraid of telling you, that he would get angry. And I was afraid that it would make you more afraid. I need to tell you."
"Do you know where he is, Jazz?" I asked. Jazz shook her head.
"No, not for sure. His secret...what I'm going to tell you...this may help."
I shook my head. "It's his secret. He'll tell us when he gets home."
Jazz stormed up to me and slammed her hands on the table to get my attention. "Mom, he's not coming not on his own! He would have by now. Stop that."
"He'll come home," I said, more to myself than to her. I looked down and picked at the reward poster. "He's coming home."
Jazz sighed and sat in the chair."Mom," she took a deep breath, "you remember that accident Danny got into in the lab?"
I flinched. Hearing the words out of my own daughter's mouth would confirm my suspicion. Nervously I tore a piece of he paper off. "Of course I do," I said lamely.
"What is that?" Jazz snapped as she grabbed the poster. I almost heard something click in her head as she put the tears running down my cheeks together with the large words printed at the top of the poster. "REWARD".
"You knew?" she asked.
It was true. My son was a ghost. I decided to tell the truth. "Not for sure, not until just now. But he way you asked that...it confirms everything." I stood up and began pacing. Tears were still running down my cheeks. "It's kind of funny, how it was obvious in a scary kind of way. They look so much alike – I noticed that right off the bat. I just figured he was some kind of throw-off or manifestation due to the accident. Humans can't have ghost powers. They just can't. My baby boy...he just can't be dead."
"He's not dead," Jazz said softly. "Only half dead." She took a deep breath and started again. "How did you figure it out?"
Now how was I to explain that? That a little birdie came to me in a dream? "I'm not sure," I said softly. "I just woke up this morning and I knew. It was almost like remembering something I had forgotten." I looked at her, and could feel fresh tears trying to break through. "Where is my son?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," she said quietly. The words shattered my heart. She was silent for a long time after that, as he fresh tears broke through and dribbled down my cheek. "There's no sign of him in the human world… maybe we need to check the Ghost Zone...humans don't make reward posters like this anymore. And there are more of them, too. It can't be a one-time thing."
"More?" I asked. "What do you mean by more?"
She didn't answer my question, but she did continue talking. "Tucker, Sam, and I have been looking, and we can't find him. But you're a ghost expert."
I sneered sourly and continued pacing. "I hunted my own son, how does that make me an expert on anything?" I snapped.
Jazz was in full-psychologist mode, and let me think. Plans formed and dissipated in my head, to be replaced by new ones. I wanted my baby back so much, I could barely think straight. I drove the longing out of my head, and focused on the plans. Only a good plan could get my baby back in my arms.
"We're going to need some kind of probe," I said finally. "Maybe by modifying that new ectoglider…"
Thus began the plan to get my little boy back.