46. Family
I closed the door to my apartment quietly and leaned against it, trying to make sense of my swirling thoughts. I considered just sliding down to the floor for a moment and simply sleep there, but then I remembered a previous time I had done that and the aches and kinks in my muscles when I had woken up, stiff and uncomfortable and as tired as I had been before I had fallen asleep, and I forced myself to move.
One step. Another. The apartment was swaying, and I stumbled to the worn out couch in the middle of my tiny living room, almost tripping over the pile of papers and magazines I had haphazardly stacked beside the couch. I have never been the most tidy of persons, but living on my own for the past two years, with nobody to tell me to clean up after myself – except for Sam, who wasn't exactly the tidiest person in the world either – had the place in a constant state of disarray. Seriously. It looked like a hurricane had gone through my apartment.
Which it had, now that I thought about it. The last ghost fight right before I had gotten arrested had been right here. With Vortex.
Somehow, while contemplating the state of disorder in my place, I had managed to land myself on the couch, face down. I groaned a little, then turned and laid on my back, staring at the ceiling. At least that was relatively clean. Except for a rusty brown spot in the corner. Blood. Mine.
I stared at the spot for a while. It was oddly shaped, and I had been trying to make out what it was for the past few months. My list was still growing. Dolphin. Wing of a bird. Garland. Some weird curly tail of an animal. A flame. An oil stain.
I closed my eyes and the stain started shifting, swirling, changing shape. Some clawed animal. A dead squirrel, splattered all over the road. Two horrified eyes in a strangely distorted face.
I opened my eyes again, annoyed. There was really no place to be absolutely free of these images that kept invading my dreams, but I strongly objected to them while being awake. And I was still awake, surprising enough. I hadn't slept in over two days, you'd say I'd be out as soon as I laid down, but no, my mind had decided that this was the time to reiterate my life, or lack thereof, my dreams – commonly called nightmares – and the mess I had found myself in. I felt wide awake. Tired beyond exhaustion, but still wide awake.
Grumbling a little, I pushed myself up and looked around. Yup, most definitely Vortex's work. But something else too. All drawers had been opened, their contents spread out on the table. All cupboards in the kitchen were cleared out, clean plates and cups stacked neatly next to the haphazard pile of dirty dishes on the counter. Bed in my bedroom – from what I could see of it – overturned and put against the wall, mattress cut open, wardrobe wide open. Clothes everywhere, but that wasn't unusual.
I sighed. The police clearly had searched my apartment, looking for...what, evidence? Vlad?
Smiling a little, I pushed myself further up, forcing my protesting limbs to carry me to the kitchen. I considered the amount of work to get it all cleaned up and then dismissed it as unimportant. Instead, I shuffled to the back of the kitchen, stuck my hand in the wall and retrieved the old thermos I had hidden there.
The perks of being a half ghost.
I held it for a moment, weighing it, still slightly amazed on how light it was, and then took it back to the living room. I pushed some of the papers and general clutter stacked on the table aside, causing it to clatter to the floor, and placed the thermos in the middle of the table. Then I sat down on the couch again and leaned my elbows on my knees.
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Cars drove by. Somebody was shouting, probably the man of the couple that lived three apartments down the hallway. I stared at the thermos.
"You know," I said, "If I had known you would cause me all this trouble, I would have found some other solution."
I tilted my head and watched the thermos for a while, not really expecting an answer, but completely prepared to make conversation for the two of us.
"They questioned me for days, did you know that? But they can't pin this on me. They have no proof. There is no way for them to know what I can do, nobody has ever heard of a half ghost. To them, I'm just Daniel Fenton, suspicious, but otherwise very, very lucky."
I sighed and looked away for a moment. Then I looked back at the thermos expectantly. "It'll take a while, of course," I continued, "All the formalities. The paperwork. I suppose some judge will have to declare you dead. And then it's all mine."
The thermos continued to be quiet. I knew he could hear me though, as I personally had spent a little too much time in the device. It's a weird sensation, being compressed into some sort of gaseous state, unable to take form, the constant feeling of falling apart. Messes with your head. I tapped the thermos and smiled.
"Maybe I should draw your face on it," I said, "It feels slightly weird, talking to a thermos."
I considered that thought. Yes, it was weird. But completely appropriate. I supposed anybody seeing me now would have a serious argument for locking me up though. I grinned, looked around and miraculously almost immediately spotted the black marker I was looking for. I reached, retrieved it from under the magazine and proceeded to draw a sketchy, but in my opinion completely accurate portrait of Vlad on the thermos.
"There," I said when I was done, "That's better." I put it down on the table again and capped the marker. "Now where were we?"
I thought for a moment. "Ah, yes. Your death. How long will that take, do you think? I mean, when there's no body? I don't really mind, you know, I'm prepared to wait. After all, I've been waiting for a long time for this."
I tilted my head and pretended to listen to the thermos.
"What?" I said, "They really do need a body for this thing, or it could take years?"
Sighing, I leaned back. "I could provide them with a body of course," I mused.
Vlad on the thermos shook his head, a little vehemently. Of course he would disagree, after all, I was talking about his body. But in order for it to show up, I would have to kill him, and I wasn't sure if I could pull that off. At the moment, they had nothing. No body, no crime.
No body, no inheritance.
"Why on earth did you leave me everything?" I asked him.
Vlad shrugged. "There was no one else," he said, "I still had hopes."
I nodded, seeing his point. "I hate your guts," I informed him.
It was Vlad's turn to sigh. "But you'll take my money," he said.
"Of course." I leaned forward again, feeling restless. "Compensation," I said, "For all the pain you've caused me."
"Education, my son," Vlad corrected me, "I was educating you. And you have to admit, you wouldn't be where you are today if it wasn't for me."
I looked pointedly around my shabby apartment and Vlad rolled his eyes. "I meant your powers. I forced you to learn. To live up to your potential. You're the strongest ghost alive... if you'll forgive me the pun. Nobody rivals you."
"Not even you," I said.
Vlad shook his head, looking sad. I smiled at him, suddenly feeling forgiving.
"Don't worry, Vlad," I said, "I won't kill you. How could I? I'll just have to wait for the whole thing to sort itself out. Like I said, I can wait."
The light coming through the dirty windows started to diminish, signaling the end of yet another day. I had to think for a bit to come up with the fact that it was a Friday. Probably. I rubbed my eyes, and spent some moments thinking up particularly cruel ways to torment the detectives that had questioned me for three days straight. I didn't crack though, and there was no way they could prove I had anything to do with Vlad's disappearance. In the end, they had to let me go.
Sam had been unamused.
I flinched as I thought about her reaction to my vehement denial of having seen Vlad the night he had disappeared. It wasn't that she had outright said that she didn't believe me. It was the look in her eyes when she looked at me, the same look she had given me when Dash had his little 'accident' two years ago, or when the annoying Box Ghost suddenly had stopped showing up. But for the most part, I managed to get things past her. My acting skills had improved dramatically the past six years.
I must have dozed for a while, although I don't remember my eyes closing, but when I looked at the thermos again, it had gone almost completely dark. I shifted a little and rubbed my neck.
"Hey, Vlad," I said.
In the darkness, I could hardly discern the face I had drawn on the thermos. Still, he looked up at me.
"Hmmm?" he asked.
I pushed myself up and leaned forward again. Vlad's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, a menacing red glow, both intimidating and oddly comforting. Vlad was still Vlad. Everybody else around me changed, became more distant as I became... what? What was I becoming?
I pondered that for a while. My parents... well. They visited. They commented on my lack of stability, wandering from one job to the next, never staying long enough to get fired because I always ran off. Tucker... was somewhere off to UCLA, studying... computers. Sam was still around, attending Amity Park Community College, ignoring her parents' demands she attend a more prestigious university. She was here because of me, I knew that. She still felt a deep responsibility for my half ghost status, as she was the one who had urged me to go inside the portal that fateful day.
"I'm gonna inherit your money, you know," I said.
"Yes," he answered, "You are. Once they've declared me dead and you managed to convince them you don't have anything to do with my disappearance."
"You already said that," I scowled.
"That's because your mind is currently going around in circles," Vlad said snidely.
I reached, grabbed the thermos and let myself fall back on the couch. I placed it on my lap.
"Talk all you want," I said to him, "But I'm out here and you're in that thermos."
"Which only goes to show how completely insane you are," Vlad said, "Given the fact that you're talking to an inanimate object."
I shook the thermos, but had to concede to his point. I was talking to an inanimate object. I looked up and glanced at the kitchen for a moment, wondering if the vultures had left anything for me to eat in the refrigerator. I was hungry, but too tired to get up and check. I shook my head and sighed.
"You know," I said, ignoring the fact that it wasn't really Vlad that I was talking to, "You told me once that we were the same, that we should stick together, that together we would rule the world."
Vlad raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything, obviously curious as to where I was going. I frowned, trying to order my thoughts and sublimate them into coherent sentences.
"I don't want to rule the world," I informed him, "All I ever wanted was to fit in, to be normal, to be popular. But this whole ghost power business screwed that all up."
Still, Vlad didn't say anything, and it made me nervous. The silence in my apartment was oppressive.
"Don't get me wrong," I continued, "I like being what I am. It's the 'what I am' part that has me confused. What am I? What are we? We're unique, two of a kind... well, technically there's three of us but Danielle... she... I'm not sure what happened to her. Haven't seen her in a while. You didn't have anything to do with that, did you?"
I looked intently at Vlad, but he kept his face expressionless. I shrugged, brushing it off because Danielle, nice though she was, also crept me out a little. She was my clone. She was a female version of me. Whenever I saw her, I kept comparing myself to her, trying to see what she did differently than me, and how very much alike we were. Still, I somewhat appreciated Vlad's efforts of trying to expand our species.
"You and I," I said, "You were right, you know. I see that now. You don't have to worry about me trying to kill you, you know. I would never do that. Because you see..."
I grinned. My eyes lit up, reflecting in the thermos and giving the room a ghostly green hue.
"You're the only family I've got."
