Retrieval Saga:
A Chance of a Ghost
Chapter 4: The Tolling of the Bells
The next day was a Sunday, which meant that Danny and Jazz didn't have to go to school today. The four Fentons were sitting around the table eating breakfast. It was bacon, eggs, and pancakes, Jack Fenton-style. That mostly meant that pancakes were shaped like Jack's head. Morph and Jack had a short race to see who can finish their plate first. "I still think it's cheating to eat the plate," said Jack afterwards. Morph let out a sizable burp that brought up his fork, knife, and plate. "I hope he's not going to be like this at lunch," said Jazz.
Suddenly the football program on the TV changed and a voice said, "We interrupt this program to bring this special bulletin. We now go live to Harriet Chin." Harriet Chin appeared on the TV and said, "Last night, we experienced a freak electrical storm. The form was originally thought to be caused by the ghost Vortex, who was captured by the heroic Danny Phantom soon afterward." "Good to hear my work's appreciated," said Danny. "However, continuing activity afterwards showed that Vortex was not the cause of the thundercloud. We have two witnesses who visited the scene after the battle."
Suddenly Dash and Kwan appeared on the TV. "Oh boy, those two again?" said Danny, "like they could know anything about that thundercloud." "Shush," said Jack, "an experienced ghost-hunter takes information from any source." "Well," said Dash, "we were in the park to see what the battle was like and we saw this spaceship that crashed there. Then a couple of Ectopuses tried to scare us, but we beat them off." "We didn't beat them off, they ran away," said Kwan. "Quiet! I'm telling the story! But then something weird happened with the cloud." "Yeah," said Kwan, "it started glowing purple then this big purple meteorite came out of it and hit the ground." "And we looked into it, out it came, bigger that life, a zombie dragon! A living-dead zombie dragon with big fangs and long wings and it smelled bad too. Then there was purple lightning and then it ran off." "It didn't run off," said Kwan, "we did." "Will you be quiet?"
Harriet Chin appeared again on the TV. "Police have investigated the park and have found two craters that looked like something had impacted there. There was no spacecraft in one of them, but the second one had claw-marks at the bottom and piles of dirt at the sides that indicated something with unusually long claws had been digging there for some unknown reason. Citizens are advised to be cautious around the park and to report any unusual activity. For Channel 9 News, I'm Harriet Chin." Danny turned off the TV and grabbed the phone. He dialed in Sam's number and waited for it to ring. As soon as Sam answered, Danny said, "Hello? Sam? It's me, Danny. Get Tucker and those experiments over here. We saw something we need to talk about."
Pretty soon, they were all in the Fentons' living room. "So you're saying that there's a zombie dragon around here that might have something to do with that thundercloud last night?" asked Tucker. "I'm not sure," said Danny, "I didn't even know we had zombies. If anything, it's usually ghosts." "Oh, there are undead in this world alright," said Jack, "my family used to hunt them too generations ago, that is until ghosts became the major problem around here." "What about that thundercloud?" asked Jazz. "I believe I can answer that," said Chip, "when you go through a wormhole into another world, it causes a lot of energy to be released on either side of the wormhole. It takes a bit of a while to go through, so that zombie dragon could have come from the same wormhole that we did." "How's that possible?" asked Draco, "we were out in space; there couldn't have been anything, let alone a zombie dragon." "I don't know how it got here," said Maddie, "but I know where it's going: into the Ghost Zone!"
Since it was more likely the zombie dragon would turn up at night, the Fentons spent the day getting ready for the hunt. Jack managed to rebuild the Ecto-Converter so they'd have enough energy for their ghost weapons. He loaded it full of the ectoplasm that Danny collected from the park. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Maddie. "Sure, those ghosts won't need this anymore," said Jack, "let's see if this works. Hey Morph! Get in here!" Draco's voice answered, "Don't bother. He lost his mind in the video game. We're trying to get it back." "Well, at least I got the Fenton Bazooka working again," said Jack, "that way, we can send it straight to the Ghost Zone without having to come back home." "Doesn't that only work on ghosts?" asked Maddie. "Ghosts, zombies, along as it's not really alive, I'm throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it until something works. And then I'll throw the kitchen sink."
At sundown, the Fenton family plus Sam, Tucker, and the experiments piled into the Fenton RV. As they drove around town, Jack checked the Ghost Finder for any ghosts. "There's a slight trace of spectral activity, but it's very small and something's right next to it that's interfering with the Finder," said Jack. "But fortunately, I've had a look at the crater where the monster was sighted and had a look around," said Maddie. "According to the tracks I found, we're looking for something on two legs, with very long arms, arms long enough so that it can support itself on its knuckles. The claws are at least one and a half foot long. It's about 15 feet high and should weigh surprisingly light at 470 pounds." "And it has a mouth full of sharp fangs and a smaller mouth with regular fangs," said Tucker. "How do you know it has a second mouth?" asked Sam. "Cause it's heading right for us!" The others only had enough time to look where Tucker was pointing before something it the RV with enough force to flip it through the air and land on its back.
Fortunately, no one was hurt and they quickly opened the door and got out of the RV. "Can you believe this?" said Jack, "I just got it ecto-waxed." "I think that's the least of our problems," said Jazz pointing. Hovering towards them was probably one of the most horrific-looking creatures Danny had ever seen. Its body looked like a dragon's with its front limbs being both the wings and arms wrapped in bandages, but its skull-like face and the mouth-sporting horn growing from its forehead clearly revealed its undead nature. The monster narrowed its eyes and said a deep rasping voice, "I thought I'd find you here, experiments." Draco gasped and said, "Ghoulwyrm?" "You know this guy?" asked Danny. "Not very well," said Chip, "we fought him briefly inside Devil's Tower when the place collapsed. But I thought he was buried with the rubble." "You should never doubt a dracopyre," said Ghoulwyrm, "especially one that's also a lich with Ectonurite powers."
"Ectonurite? That means ghost! Eat Ghost Gloves, zombie!" Jack swung his fists, which were wearing the Ghost Gloves, at Ghoulwyrm. Ghoulwyrm simply became intangible and the Gloves went right through him without hurting him. Then he stuck his intangible claws through Jack's head, causing Jack to have an attack on his mind. "You underestimate me, mortal," said Ghoulwyrm, "I may have ghost powers, but your anti-ghost weaponry has no affect on me." "Then let's see how you do against a real ghost!" Ghoulwyrm turned around and got punched in the jaw by Danny Phantom. "Good boy, Danny," said Jack, "now it's ten against one. We can take him easy." Ghoulwyrm growled, half of his muzzle was out of skew because the punch. Suddenly the rest of Ghoulwyrm's muzzle opened up, revealing the hole to his throat. Then a purple wave of sonic energy was shot out in an unearthly howl. The entire gang was thrown back by the blast. "Ooh, forgot about that," said Chip.
Danny Phantom got back up and flew right at Ghoulwyrm. "That's a nice trick, but it'll take more than that to keep me down." "You mean like this?" Ghoulwyrm said and suddenly the markings on his chest spread apart and five black and white-striped tentacles came out. Each one of those tentacles was holding a glowing green stone. Danny fell to the ground and writhed in agony in the light of the stones. "What's going on?" asked Contrinus. "It's ectoranium," said Sam, "it's the kryptonite for ghosts. But ectoranium that powerful doesn't exist on Earth." "No," said Ghoulwyrm, "but there's plenty now, thanks to that ectoranium asteroid leaving chunks of it behind as it passed through this planet. In case you wonder how I know that, I've been looking you up since I got here. But I'm not here to get rid of you, just revenge on the ones who left me to die when the cavern collapsed." Then some bandages from his wings unwound themselves and reached out and wrapped up Morph. "Oh no, you don't," said Draco, "Chip, Spectrum Sword technique!" Then Draco grabbed his prism sword and he and Chip combined their powers to combine the seven differently-colored powers into white energy. Then Draco shot the white beam at Ghoulwyrm. The beam hit Ghoulwyrm's tentacles and it caused him to scream in pain. The tentacles withdrew and Ghoulwyrm flew off, turning invisible as he went.
"Huh," said Chip, "I guess his outside's more protected than his insides." "But that still doesn't change the fact that our weapons won't do anything to him now," said Jazz. "I think I could do something about that," said Jack, "I had designed the new Ecto-Converter to create ecto-energy that's locked onto a particular ghost's molecular signal. But we'll need a sample of Ghoulwyrm's DNA." "Will this do?" asked Draco, holding up a wrapped-up Morph by the loose ends of Ghoulwyrm's bandages. "Sure thing," said Jack, "I'll warm up the Ecto-Converter." He pressed a button on it, but the machine didn't respond. "Hmm, that's strange, might need some minor calibrating." He started banging on it with a monkey wrench.
Suddenly a latch popped open and a large blob of ectoplasm came out. The blob floated upwards and started to twist and form. Then it became a large snarling creature with crocodile teeth and tentacles on its head. It roared once and then shrank down to a much smaller ghost. The odd thing about the ghost was that it was a complete doppelganger of Morph except with a ghost-themed color scheme. Draco, Chip, and Contrinus looked from both the original Morph and the ghostly Morph. "If this is a dream," said Chip, "it's just gone straight from a nightmare to a really weird one." "Jack," said Maddie, "you didn't do any experiment with Morph, have you?" "No," said Jack, "at least, not yet." "Well, Morph did land in the pile of ectoplasm left over from the battle," said Danny, "he must have accidentally left an imprint of his personality in it. And having his head sucked up the X-tractor couldn't have helped prevented this." "Great," said Draco sarcastically, "if there's anything more annoying than a goofy numbskull, it's the ghost of a goofy numbskull." The ghostly Morph responded by spitting a very large glob of ectoplasm on Draco. "Oh now that's just disgusting."
Despite this odd little mishap, the Ecto-Converter was still able to create anti-Ghoulwyrm ectoplasm. Oddly enough, the inclusion of Ghoulwyrm DNA caused the ectoplasmic energy to turn purple. "Now all we have to do is find that guy and he's lich meat." "Don't you mean lunch meat?" asked Jazz. "Trust me," said Chip, "that guy makes pretty lousy lunch meat." "Since we don't know where he went," said Jack, "we'll have to split up. Maddie and I will check the creepy woods over there. Danny, you and Sam head for downtown, that's where a lot of scum goes, especially supernatural scum, no offense. Tucker, you and Chip check out the museum in case he's after any artifacts. Draco, you and Contrinus look from the air. And Jazz, you'll take PlasMorph and EctoplasMorph with you when you check out the church graveyard." "EctoplasMorph?" asked Sam. "Well what were you going to call him, Slimer?" "Tempting offer," said Draco. "I'm not sure about this," said Jazz. "Don't worry dear," said Maddie, "you saw PlasMorph escape the box, I'm pretty sure he and his ghost will watch over you." "But…" Before Jazz could protest, the rest rushed off, leaving Jazz, PlasMorph, and EctoplasMorph behind. Jazz looked at the two blobs trying to see who can make the silliest face and said, "I have a bad feeling about this."
As Jazz walked through the graveyard, Morph and his doppelganger were playing Marco Polo among the gravestones. "Will you two knock it off?" she yelled. "Is something wrong?" asked PlasMorph. "It's just that I don't like hearing voices bounce around in the dark near me," said Jazz. "Is that all?" asked EctoplasMorph. "No, I mean, yes, I mean, I can't say it." "Black cat got your tongue?" asked EctoplasMorph. "No, it's just that I'm, well, a little bit jealous of you two," said Jazz. "Well, we are pretty handsome-looking fellows," said PlasMorph. "No, I mean that you have ghost powers, sort of. It seems like everyone's gets cool ghost powers except me," Jazz counted off of her fingers, "Danny has them, your clone has them, Vlad had them, even Tucker and Sam had ghost powers. They were being controlled by a ghost, but they still had them. And when that ghost virus was giving everyone ghost powers, all that happened to me was that I turned into an ectoplasmic mist that had to stay in a jar." "Don't worry," said EctoplasMorph, "I'm sure you'll get your breakthrough."
Suddenly, a tombstone nearby was smashed to pieces as a fist with three long claws for fingers broke through it. Jazz and the Morphs turned to see Ghoulwyrm advancing on them. "It appears you made a lucky guess about where I was going," said Ghoulwyrm, "but your luck's just run out." He breathed out purple flames at Jazz but PlasMorph turned into Slimy and threw a glob of slime into Ghoulwyrm's mouth. Ghoulwyrm gagged on the slime, but he was far from helpless. Bandages from his arms whipped out and started swiping at the trio. EctoplasMorph weaved through the bandages and fired a small Ecto-Blast at Ghoulwyrm's neck. Ghoulwyrm was more peeved then hurt and he released his ectoranium-carrying tentacles again. EctoplasMorph yelped in pain in the light of the radiation. Suddenly, his tail was hit by another ray. One of his eyes swiveled on the tracks on his neck and looked in the direction of the blast. Jazz had her Ghost Gun out, but now she was running away to get more shooting range. "You're not getting away that easily," hissed Ghoulwyrm and he glided after her.
As Ghoulwyrm moved away from EctoplasMorph, the ectoranium lost its affect on him and he was able to move again. He quickly flew towards the nearby church. Meanwhile, Ghoulwyrm had cornered Jazz between a mausoleum and a dead tree. "You don't scare me," said Jazz, "I'm Ghost Getter #1." Ghoulwyrm snorted and said, "Please, don't give me that prattle. You can't conceal your Ghost Envy, no matter how much say." "How do you know I have Ghost Envy?" asked Jazz. Ghoulwyrm pointed to his long bat-like ears and said, "These do more than just frame my face. They give exquisite, if delicate, hearing. I heard you complaining how unfair it was that you never had the same level of power as your brother or his friends. I guess it's true what they say, the runt of the litter always squeals the loudest." "Who are you calling runt?" "Don't try to deny it. You've come from a long line of ghost-hunters, but you couldn't catch a will-o'-the-wisp." Jazz was slightly shaking with anger when she said, "If you're going to kill me, you shouldn't waste your time taunting me." "Kill you? I wouldn't do that my dear," Ghoulwyrm licked his fangs, "I haven't had virgin blood in ages."
Suddenly there was a loud clangor from the church's bell towers. EctoplasMorph was ringing the bells as loudly as he could. Ghoulwyrm shrieked and covered his ears, "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's the sound of church bells." Unfortunately, he had forgotten to withdraw his tentacles and PlasMorph used Thresher's tentacles to snatch away the ectoranium chunks. As the last of the bells' ringing died away, Ghoulwyrm noticed two other things had happened: first, EctoplasMorph was flying back from the bell tower; second, Jazz was pointing a Fenton Bazooka right at him. Then three things seemed to happen simultaneously. Jazz fired the Bazooka, Ghoulwyrm's neck lunged forward with his primary mouth open, and EctoplasMorph was heading for Jazz. EctoplasMorph turned out to be the fastest right then as he was able to wrap himself around Jazz's neck a second before Ghoulwyrm sank his four canine fangs into it. Then a purple portal opened where the Bazooka fired and Ghoulwyrm was being sucked into it. Ghoulwyrm was able to shout, "I will return!" before he sucked into the Ghost Zone and the portal closed. However, Jazz didn't escape unscathed and she collapsed onto the ground. EctoplasMorph created a face on his body and said, "Get the others, I'll stay here and stop her from loosing more blood." As PlasMorph became Zap and zipped off, he thought, "Wow, my doppelganger's really smart, but what does that make me?"
Some time later, Jazz was resting in her bead, medical equipment were monitoring her situation. Her neck was wrapped up in bandages to prevent further blood loss. The Fenton family was watching her sleep. "You sure she'll be alright?" asked Maddie. "Of course," said Jack, "I didn't take CPR classes just to impress the ladies at high school. All of this tech will make sure that Jazz's life is safe and secure." "Will she be alright Dad?" asked Danny. "We'll see in the morning," said Jack. He turned off the lights and he said to the two Morphs, "You two really pulled through for her." "Actually, she pulled in for us," said PlasMorph. "Not just anyone can stare a dracolich in the eye and not run," said EctoplasMorph. "Of course," said Maddie, "she's a Fenton." Then they all five of them left to let Jazz rest.
But let's take a closer look at Jazz's wound, from the inside. Inside her jugular vein, the wound was clotted with ectoplasm from EctoplasMorph. Suddenly some of it bulged slightly. Then a few small pieces of it disattached and took on tiny shapes that looked like a cross between a wolf and a bat. Then these pieces of ectoplasm started going through Jazz's bloodstream, passing through blood cells on their way. Every time they passed through a blood cell, it would glow green and turn back to normal. And on the outside part of her skin, the four puncture wounds glowed green and disappeared.
There's another chapter, and boy was this suspenseful. And it still is. What's going to happen to Jazz now? We'll just have to wait and sea. In case you don't understand the title of this chapter, it's from the fourth stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells". If you read it, you'll get the reference. There's going to be more surprises in the next chapter. Watch out for it and please review.