The next morning, Danny pulled his eyes open slowly as the sun that streamed in through the window shone on his face, protruding into the darkness of sleep. His sleep had been deep and restful, forgiving. There had been no dreams, no nightmares. Complete blackness, emptiness. But now, his mind felt equally as empty. Still easing into consciousness, he could not recall reality. The past day did not exist. His mother was downstairs cooking breakfast, his father working on some strange invention with which to hunt ghosts, his sister studying monotonously, his best friends sauntering over to Fenton Works to wake him up for school. It was as if nothing had changed.
He sat up on his bed and groaned quietly. He was extremely dizzy and his head was throbbing. He rubbed the side of his head with his hand, feeling the slick grease of his unkempt hair on his fingertips. It was then that he noticed that the house was completely silent. Between his father's ghost hunting inventions going haywire and the usual chaos these caused, the house was never silent. He wondered if everyone had left the house already and he had woken up later than usual. But his mother was usually home, and his father never left the house. So why was it so quiet?
Wondering if Jazz's car would be absent from the street where it was usually parked, he glanced at his window, then realized that he could not see the street below his second-story bedroom from where he sat on the bed, and stood. He stumbled immediately and gripped his nightstand for balance. His eyes traveled to his alarm clock, which read the time '9:15' in bright red digits.
"Oh, God," he sighed. He began to wonder how he could have slept in so late, and why no one had woken him up. On days when he didn't wake up when he was supposed to, occasionally his mother but more often Jazz would take it upon themself to extract him from the bed, something he always knew he could count on. So why not today, he wondered?
Suddenly, a horrid idea came to him. What if something had happened while he'd been asleep? What if a ghost had attacked the town and taken them, or worse? He didn't think very many ghosts would want his parents for any reason. He could think of only one, and he became sickened with fear when he did. What if Vlad had kidnapped his mother and father while he'd been asleep, and now they were at his mercy? Vlad might do God knew what with his mother, but he wouldn't kill her, and Danny knew that clearly. But his father…
Danny steadied himself and fled to the window, his eyes searching for something, anything, that might prove his family and friends had gone about their days without any ghostly interruptions. He hoped Jazz's car would be gone, parked at the lot at school, hoped that his father had fallen into a good luck spell and was inventing something that would change his career and his status in the town, thus the quiet, hoped his mother had gone out shopping for food, hoped Tucker and Sam went to school without him, assuming he'd be there. But what he found did not confirm any of these things.
Instead, when he saw the Amity Park news vans parked in front of his house and reporters and journalists swarming at the door below, reality came flooding back to him.
He went downstairs quickly, his face twisted with rage. He went to the front door and jerked it open abruptly, briefly startling the awaiting men and women in expensive looking suits and short cut dresses. Then, he was met with the thunder of a thousand prodding voices, questioning all at once, the blinding flashes of cameras sounding, again and again, without cease.
Danny stared at them for a moment in disbelief. He could not believe that these people were questioning him about the death of his family the day after it happened, uncaringly and curtly, as if their deaths themselves did not matter but rather who received what information first and who got the most of it out of the nameless kid. Hatred filled him, and for the first time in his career as a ghost, there came an urge to destroy them all, these people who were mortal. He had never even dreamed of such a thing before this morning. He struggled to suppress this urge.
"Get out of here!" he screamed hotly. The voices amplified, the reporters and journalists intent on exploiting his anger. The flashes heightened, the photographers hell-bent on capturing his rage. Danny slammed the door shut hurriedly and fastened the locks. When he had finished, he stepped back and stared at the door. They had begun to pound on it. He went into the living room and sat on the floor in the far corner, curled into himself in fetal position. It was then that he allowed himself to finally cry.
He wept and listened to the reporters and journalists mumble amongst each other, though he could not make out what they were saying. They had stopped pounding on the door, for which he was glad, but they would not leave. They continued to murmur in hushed whispers for some time, and Danny sat, listening helplessly.
At some point, all conversation outside stopped abruptly. Danny jerked his head up from his knees and listened intently as the sound of car engines revving reverberated then faded. When all was silent, Danny sighed gratefully and dropped his head back onto his knees, wrapping his arms around himself. Only a moment later, however, a prominent knock on the wood door sounded. Danny looked up again, his forehead creased in confusion, frowning.
"I thought I told you all to leave," he called.
"Danny, it's me," called Vlad. "Little badger, I'm here now and they're gone. Can you unlock the door?"
Danny stood, his mouth slightly agape, his heart pounding, as he stared at the door.