It came when Danny was too tired to keep looking over his shoulder.
In the dissociative fog of too little sleep and too many secrets, he didn't question his mother's cooed concern.
It wasn't, after all, the first time she'd taken one look at him and ushered him off to bed, insisting he get some sleep before supper, maybe then he would feel better, and he wasn't running a fever, was he?
He'd obediently stumbled along right up until she'd turned around with a washcloth instead of a thermometer and held it over his mouth and nose while he struggled.
When he woke with a pounding headache and something that was probably blood crusting his left eye shut, he was handcuffed to some heavy metal shelving by a pair of Fenton Cuffs. Despite practice, he still couldn't get out of those without a key. He knew dislocating his thumb was a likely necessity, but he had no idea how to do that and cause minimal damage.
The room was dark, but he didn't need light or two good eyes to see the ghost fiddling with…something…nearby.
It still looked like his mom.
"You were out longer than I expected," it laughed without even looking over at him. "I thought you were supposed to be more resilient. Isn't it thrilling when stories like that are exaggerated?"
"What…what do you want?" Danny rasped, forcing the words past his thick tongue.
"Oh, you know exactly what I want." It glanced over at him now, and its smile looked wrong on Maddie's face. "And you know exactly what will happen if you try to escape."
"You can't keep me here." His voice was more weak than defiant, even to his ears. "They'll know I'm missing. They'll find me."
"They'll never know to look for you," it reminded him, "and you can scream all you like, but you'll never be heard here. Not through concrete that thick." It nodded at the walls, or at least Danny assumed it did; he couldn't see much past its ghostly glow. He couldn't even really see what it had been working on.
"I'll go find you some food, sweetie," it said, and this time the inflections of his mother's mimicked voice were heartbreakingly perfect. "Try to get some rest."
It strode past him, illuminating more empty shelving units far too heavy for him to hope to move, and vanished through a blank wall.
He was alone in the darkness.
Danny tried to shift to find a more comfortable position, even to have something to lean against that was more solid than the crisscrossing metal bars, but there was nothing but that or open air. The concrete beneath him wasn't warming to his body heat, either, and he wasn't sure if he was shaking or shivering. Either way, the crick in his neck was hurting even more now, but he couldn't even manoeuvre a hand around to rub it.
He needed help.
He had no way of getting help.
Even if he did, he had no one he could ask without endangering them. Without giving the ghost reason to kill them. He was all alone, no one knew where he was, no one would know he was missing, and this ghost was going to keep him alive long enough to get its friends out and then it was going to kill him, and no one was ever going to know what had happened to him.
The salt in Danny's tears stung wounds he didn't realize he'd had on his face, but they were enough to allow him to open his left eye. Not much—it was still mostly swollen shut—but a little bit, and a little bit would be enough. Not that he could see anything, anyway, but it felt better, as much as anything that still hurt could feel better.
"Please." Danny knew no one would hear his whispers. "Please, I need…. I need someone." He didn't know if it was a prayer. "I can't do this by myself. I need help."
He groaned and leaned his head on his arms, slumping forward as best he could. He could shift his legs into different positions, and he did, carefully stretching them out when they started to fall asleep, but he could do nothing for his arms, which were bound to the top half of the lowest shelf, stopped from dropping farther by a diagonal bar.
He didn't think things could get any worse, but then his stomach turned.
"No," Danny moaned. "No, please, not now."
But the sickening coldness inside of him only grew stronger, and he couldn't will it away.
He began to cough.
Something was lodged in his throat, and he couldn't get it out, couldn't breathe, but he managed to climb to his feet and lean over, trying to draw air.
It seemed like an eternity before something hit the floor and skittered a short distance away. He didn't have a chance to find it and see what it was; he only had a moment to gasp in air before something else blocked the airway, pressing it closed as it began to slither its way up his throat. He gagged. Retched. Thought his jaw might break as it pulled itself free, rolling over his arms and away.
He'd collapsed back onto his knees at some point and sagged against the cold metal bars of the shelving unit with his eyes closed, not having any energy to fight whichever of the ghost's friends had just come through.
"Have you seen my peepers?"
Danny forced open his good eye. "What?" The ghost facing him certainly didn't look like anyone special; he just looked like a teenager. A teenager who would've lived decades ago, but still a teenager, probably around Danny's own age. And more nerd than someone who'd roll with the ghost who was keeping him here.
The ghost pointed to his eyes and repeated himself before adding, "I can't see without them."
"Your glasses?" He thought of what had come first and turned his head in the direction of where he'd heard something fall. "Look over there. Your left."
A sharp cry of delight a moment later told him the ghost had found them. He turned back to Danny, straightening his glasses, and then frowned and walked closer. "Someone think you were cruisin' for a bruisin'? You're going to have a real shiner there."
Danny just shook his head.
"I don't like bullies," the ghost remarked.
"Neither do I," mumbled Danny.
The ghost paused. Leaned closer and squinted at him. And then he drew back in surprise. "It really is you!"
Danny had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so he just ignored it and closed his eyes, hoping the ghost would go away.
He didn't. "Why take the pounding? Why didn't ya just beat feet? Or fight back?"
Danny opened his eyes and let out something that could only generously be described as a laugh. "How could I fight back?" he asked. "I'm just me, up against someone like you, someone probably stronger than you. I can't do anything, and even if I'd tried, they would just…carry out their threats."
The ghost stared at him. "You…. That's bogus."
Danny rattled the handcuffs against the support bar. "You think I wanted this? Any of this?"
"Nobody wants a knuckle sandwich," the ghost replied, "but that doesn't mean you didn't let the other guy do that to you."
"Why the heck would I do that?"
"So he thinks he can. So he doesn't know what you can do."
"But I can't do anything. That's my problem!"
The ghost furrowed his brow. "But you're the young gatekeeper."
"The what?" Danny didn't really need the clarification. He already knew what the ghost meant. He was talking about this thing inside of him, the passageway he couldn't seem to keep closed. He just didn't understand why the ghost had said it like that was important. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"You really don't know. How can you not know?"
"Not know what?" Danny pressed, but the other ghost wasn't paying attention to him anymore. He was looking somewhere else, at something Danny couldn't see in the dark. And then he vanished. "Not know what?" Danny whispered again, just in case the ghost was still around and simply not visible.
He waited.
He didn't get an answer.
A moment later, his captor breezed in, masked as one of the delivery workers at the Nasty Burger. It tossed a bag at Danny's feet and went back to whatever it had been working on.
It didn't seem to care that Danny couldn't have reached the food even if he'd been hungry enough to eat it.