Danny marched up to the front door of his home. Sam and Tucker were nipping at his heels the entire way. He couldn't wait until one of them got their driver's license and they didn't have to walk everywhere. Danny used to have a skateboard, but ever since the accident Danny hadn't been comfortable riding on it.

He assumed that was a good decision, considering he had trouble with stairs now.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Sam begged, she alternated between reaching out as if to grab him, and chewing on her finger as they walked.

Danny chuckled. "Honestly? I'm actually feeling way better." He reached for his pocket, his hand missing by a mile before he frowned. He bit his lip and closed his eyes in concentration, managing to get his hand into his pocket. He pulled out his house key and started trying to unlock the door.

He winced as he over corrected, and practically punched the doorknob with his extended fingers.

"You don't seem fine," Sam muttered. She glanced at Tucker for help, who threw his hands up in the air to signal that he had no clue what to say either.

"Well, okay," Danny said, turning the key and opening the door. He turned and looked back at his two worried friends and sighed. He resisted the urge to run his hand down his face. With how he felt right now, he doubted he'd actually be able to do it correctly.

Instead, he looked up at the sky as he tried to think about what to say. "Yeah, no, I'm not fine." he admitted, he knew he wasn't. Something about him changed; something in a permanent way. He saw the way his friends' faces fell and he scrambled to continue to explain. "It's just the past several months I've been wondering what the hell has been going on with me, and I finally have an answer. It's… it's great. Really!"

"Dude…" Tucker said, standing outside the house even as Danny and Sam went in. "That… that looked like some kind of ghost form." Danny froze in the doorway, and Sam winced and closed her eyes. "Ghosts are dead. Johnny is dead."

Danny rubbed the back of his head, he tried to focus on the feeling of his fingers running through his hair and not the feeling of bone claws piercing his own neck. "Well, uh… the doctors and all looked me over, right? They didn't think anything was weird, and I had a heartbeat and everything… A ghost wouldn't have a heartbeat, right? Or want to eat?" Danny glanced over at Sam who was still standing there with her eyes closed, refusing to look at what was in front of her.

The three of them were silent for a minute, before Tucker asked. "That was months ago. And that one tried to eat Sam… You could have… Have you checked recently?"

"Do you check if you're alive?" Danny countered, but even to his own ears it sounded weak. Even so, he didn't move to check.

Neither did Tucker.

"Can… can I?" Sam whispered.

"Sam?"

"I don't… I…" Sam fumbled over her words. She reached up and wiped away a tear from her eye by pressing a finger against her eyeliner. "I don't want to know. I don't. But I need to. I need to know if I killed you."

"You didn't-"

"I pushed you. I wanted to know. You were always so secretive. It was a mystery. It was fun. When I'd mention something from one of my books and you'd always have a look on your face. It was like you knew more about what I was talking about than I did." Sam sniffed and hugged herself. "If I hadn't asked you about how you knew about all that, then this never would have happened. We'd be at school, right now, and Tucker would be eating his fourth crappy cheeseburger and our worst worry right now would be if Mr. Lancer was gonna give out another pop quiz.

"I… I might have gotten you killed, Danny," Sam looked up at him. "So, I need to know. If…"

Danny let out a breath. "I… okay. Go ahead." Danny held out a wrist, but Sam didn't take it.

Instead, she slowly reached up, her fingertips extending just out of the baggy sweater she was wearing. Danny shivered as they made contact just under his jaw. He tilted his head to the side to give her better access to the artery running up his neck. Her fingers were warm, with her wearing the sweater he had assumed that she'd be cold. Instead her finger felt like they left a trail of fire along his skin, burning her touch into a memory he'd never forget. It felt like if he were to look at his neck right now, he'd see blisters along where she touched.

Her fingers pressed against his neck, and Danny sucked in a breath. He could imagine red hot coals under the pads of her fingers. He tried to focus on where she was touching him. He tried to see if he could feel a pulse as she pressed against him.

A sob broke through the house, and Sam threw herself into Danny's chest. All her weight was against him, and it took some effort on Danny's part to keep them both upright. But after the shock at her action wore off, Danny's heart froze. That was assuming he had one to begin with at the moment.

"Is he…" Tucker asked.

Sam shook her head, burying her face into his shirt. "There's a- there's a- there's a pulse!" She gasped. "You're still alive."

Danny reached up to pat her back, but as his hand made contact with her, she gasped and stepped back through his hand. Danny blinked and he realized that what was touching her wasn't his flesh and blood hand, but the one of his ghost form.

"Sorry, I… I forget which is which sometimes."

Sam shook her head. "It's fine. It's… it's fine." she reached up and grabbed his hand in hers. She slowly shifted it until not only could he feel the burning touch of her skin with his human hand, but he could feel his ghostly hand pressing into her back. "I… Thank you. For saving me. The other day and today…"

"What on earth are you three doing?" Danny and Sam jumped apart like they had been burnt, as Jazz walked into the hallway. "Close the door, the house is cold enough with us letting all the air out."

"Jazz!" Danny shouted, as Tucker walked into the house and closed the door behind him. He coughed into his hand as Sam started working on getting her boots off. "I…" he trailed off as he noticed something, "Actually.. Where's mom and dad? Or the agents for that matter? I just realized that they aren't here…"

"They all left." Jazz said, stepping around Sam and Danny and grabbing her own shoes. "I'm leaving too. One of the football players is paying me to tutor him, well his dad is anyway."

"They left? Where'd they go?"

Jazz huffed. "I didn't ask. Danny, I've managed to go sixteen years without getting involved in this magic stuff. I was very much looking forward to trying to become a brain surgeon and leaving magic behind, and now I have government agents carving the Seal of Solomon into our living room floor." Jazz groaned and pulled at her hair. "I didn't even know what the Seal of Solomon was until this week!" She sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair. She straightened her hair in silence as she continued explaining, "So as far as I'm concerned, our parents are just weirdos, and Sam is right that the government is wasting our taxpayer dollars."

Sam folded her arms. "They are."

"On that, we agree," Jazz said, walking past Danny and Tucker. The three of them shuffled a bit as Tucker made room for Jazz to put her shoes on while he took his off. She stopped, made her back around and then dragged Danny's head down to kiss the crown of his head. "Bye Danny, be safe. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Ew… gross!" Danny groaned as Sam giggled. He rubbed the top of his head as if to wipe away cooties. Jazz went out the door and Danny sighed. "Well, I guess telling them their device worked is out of the question."

Tucker pointed at the thermos. "Shouldn't you drop it off somewhere? You know, in case it falls off and we got a 'curse of the thirteen ghosts' situation on our hands?"

Danny immediately turned toward the lab door. "You know what? Good idea." Danny speed walked toward the lab door. He tried to open the door but when the door didn't budge he groaned. "The door froze again."

Sam walked over and grabbed one of several ice picks that had been left by the door for this purpose. "Lemme help." Danny didn't even get a chance to tell her to take it easy before she started chipping away at the frost that had sealed the door shut. Danny opened his mouth to tell her that they could just leave the thermos in the kitchen but he hesitated. Instead, he watched her. Seeing her attack the ice on the door like it was the source of all her problems filled him with some kind of determination.

He grabbed another ice pick and started working on the other side. Chipping at the frost that was growing along the cracks of the door. By the time Danny had managed to clear his side, Sam had managed to chip away the entirety of her's, along with the top and bottom.

It wasn't like Tucker wasn't being helpful. He arguably took on the most important job; holding on to the thermos to make sure that Johnny didn't accidentally get out.

Honestly, Tucker had the harder job. It might have been less physically demanding, but it was much more stressful.

Before long, they managed to open the door to the lab. When the door opened, air rushed into the lab as the temperature differences equalized. The warm air of the home rushed into the lab. Danny could hear pages from dozens of tomes rustle from the sudden influx of air.

Danny moved to step down the stairs, but when he pressed his foot into the ground, he suddenly dropped as the ghostly foot of his dropped down before his human leg met the ground. Sam reached out and grabbed Danny. "I got you," she said. Danny smiled at her before the three of them made their way down the stairs.

There wasn't much light down there. The only source of lumination came from something just beyond the sight of the stairs. The ethereal green glow only gave a small glimpse into the room The desks and bookshelves were set up against the wall. Each of them were totally covered in books and tomes that held down tarps that kept the various papers and notes in place.

When they got to the bottom, there was a moment of hesitation. A beat of silence, before a hand reached out and turned on the lights. "Oh come on!" Tucker shouted. "Dude, can't you give a warning?"

"Sorry! Sorry!" Danny said, holding up his hands. "I thought with the portal…"

Sam grabbed Danny's wrist and held on tightly. "Is that what it is? A portal?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, it's… well, it was meant to see into other worlds that we couldn't see, right?" Danny lead them into the room. "It's… well… Okay, I'll admit, I'm not one hundred percent sure. The agents and my parents have been talking and the agents were calling it a gateway into an Elsewhere."

"An Elsewhere? What the hell is that?" Tucker asked, stepping into the lab.

"Anywhere that's not here, really." Danny said with a shrug. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Like I said, it's not like I know what I'm talking about… I'm just repeating the bits and pieces that my parents were talking about at the breakfast table. But… from what I got, it's a catch all term for alternate dimensions, or a different phase of ours. I'm guessing this one is a different alternate dimension 'cause they named it." Danny walked in front of the portal, and really looked at it. He hadn't stepped down here since the accident, although he knew everything that happened down here since then.

He couldn't tell you how he knew, but he knew. From everything his parents threw at the portal to try and destabilize it, to everything they took from it to try and understand it.

There was a thrum, a heavy pulse that vibrated deep in everyone's bones. The air was cold, every other breath was visible. If you asked Tucker, he'd have said the air was thick with ozone, if you asked Sam, she'd have said someone had burned too much incense. If you asked Danny, he'd have told you the air felt like it had weight.

The large opening that Danny had once stood in was now filled, it looked like green waters, swirling in the upright contraption. it towered over them, the waters inside the gaping maw cast a green light over all of them.

But worst of all, was the quiet singing that they all heard, though they all silently agreed not to ever mention.

Tucker huffed and put the thermos in the middle of several tomes on one of the desks. "You gonna tell us what they called it?"

"No," Danny scoffed, "'cause it's stupid."

"It can't be that stupid," Sam said, stepping around Danny, keeping herself between him and the portal.

"They're calling it the…" Danny froze as a stray thought jolted through him. He straightened up, before turning toward the portal. "The… Ghost… Zone…"

Sam and Tucker turned toward Danny. "Danny?" Sam called out, as she reached for him. "What's wrong?"

"Johnny said he couldn't reach his girlfriend…" He began slowly. Thoughts were slotting into place, and a puzzle he hadn't even been thinking about began to get put together. "And that the feds were keeping him from her."

"Uh… yeah?" Tucker began. "We were there."

"Johnny didn't go… uh… feral? At first?" Danny explained, waving his arm about as if he could gesture to the man next to him. "Like, I think he was trying to get to his girlfriend, and that was the problem. He couldn't. Because my parents placed wards in the house to keep things out." He paused and chewed his lip. "I don't think Johnny was lying about anything he said, it was just a matter of perspective…"

Tucker sucked in a deep breath. "Please. Please, please, please tell me you aren't about to do what I think you are."

"I think he wanted to be here, like, in front of this portal."

"God damn it."

Sam grabbed the back of Danny's shirt. "Danny… this doesn't sound like a good idea."

"The agents said when a ghost goes monstrous like that, there's no going back. Like, they become wild animals."

Tucker took a step towards the stairs. "That isn't making me feel any better, dude."

"But I did when you guys were safe again," Danny continued picking up the thermos. He looked at both of his friends and took a deep breath. "Can you guys trust me?"

"Always," Sam said immediately. She glanced back at Tucker who was looking between them and the stairs.

Tucker sighed. "I reserve the right to bravely run away and tell your family what happened."

"Fair," Danny said, popping off the top of the thermos. He pointed it at the ground. He ran his hand around the outside of the device and commented, "My parents probably made some way of depositing anything they found. Though I don't know if-"

Danny was cut off when suddenly a strong wind kicked up coming from the thermos. With a loud crashing of metal and breaking glass, the feral form of Johnny came tumbling out of the thermos, shortly followed by the smog that had also attacked them. The smog recovered first, turning to face the three of them. It rushed toward Danny, its screeches shaking not just the mortals in the lab, but the very foundations of the house.

Three feet away from Danny, it stopped suddenly. Falling flat on the ground like someone had yanked the floor out from underneath it. It whirled around to look at Johnny.

Johnny was holding up one hand palm facing outward and fingers raised to the sky, asking the smog to stop. He himself was facing the glowing green surface of the portal. The shadow underneath him was thin, and reddish, like rust or blood. It stretched out from underneath him, leading right into the portal.

The surface of the waters began to ripple then bubble as something began to breach. Johnny took several steps towards it, before something burst out. It was humanoid, and vaguely feminine, based off what clothing remained on it.

While a quarter of one leg still had fishnets on, the rest of the limbs had been completely destroyed. One foot still had a black high heeled shoe on it, but the other limb was nothing but burnt and melted flesh. One arm was barely still attached, with just a few ligaments holding it to an empty shoulder socket. The other arm was mostly metal, with a large hand that had a shard of metal coming out of the back of it.

Meanwhile at the waist of the new ghost, an exhaust pipe stretched out, and a sleeve of meat flowed out of it, shiny and wet with a fluid that Danny wasn't sure what it would be called. Part of her chest had been completely torn away, leaving a headlight coming out of her body, with broken bones encircling it.

She screeched, letting out a sound of metal scraping metal and the sound of tires squealing. Her giant and destroyed hands went to her head and covered her face. Johnny rushed forward, letting out the same kind of calls. He pulled her hands gently away from her face, and his melted face morphed into the best approximation of a smile it could possibly give.

The ghostly woman blinked – less the closing of eyelids and a dimming of the light behind empty eye sockets – before she threw her arms around Johnny.

Almost immediately, their mutilated forms began to change. Johnny returned to the biker look that Danny had originally known him as, and the woman began to change as well. Her feet gained leather heeled boots. Slowly a jacket formed around her shoulders and covered up the damage to her chest, as her flesh began to reform a black crop top.

She shook her head, and a set of dreads formed while her organs returned back into her body. She looked at Danny and the others and gave them a wide smile. "Thank you. I hope my idiot of a boyfriend didn't give you too much trouble?"

Johnny pressed a hand to his chest and leaned back, even as he pulled her closer. "Aw, come on babe, you think I-"

"He turned into a feral monster and attacked all of us," Sam interrupted.

The woman turned and slapped his chest. "Johnny!"

"Aw, come on, babe! You know how it is!" The woman sighed and placed her head against his chest. "You know how it is…" he repeated again, this time more quietly.

"Yeah… Yeah, I do."

Johnny looked over her head and at Danny. "Thank man, I… I really owe you."

Danny nodded, glancing at the others. He hadn't quite thought this far ahead. Sam stepped forward. "I… I have a question. And, I know this might seem insensitive. But you two are…"

"Dead?" Johnny finished for her. "As doornails…"

Sam nodded. "Do… do you have heart beats? Like this?'

"No." The woman said, turning her head to look at Sam, not even letting an inch of her move away from Johnny if possible. "I don't know of any ghost that does."

Johnny patted her on the back. "I mean, not like we know many… I think I count three? Right, Kitty? Em, Boxy, Skulker…"

Kitty hummed. "I suppose that's it isn't it?"

"Is Em that meat blob that's been running around?" Tucker asked. "I think I can guess who Boxy is."

"Yeah, I don't think he even remembers how to say anything other than box," Johnny said as he ran his hand up and down Kitty's back."But yeah, good point, that's four. The old Lunch Lady."

"Lunch Lady?" Danny repeated, looking at Sam and Tucker.

Johnny shrugged. "Yeah, I don't know exactly what her deal is. But like… that's the feeling I get from her. I just see her and think, 'She's a lunch lady.'"

Danny leaned forward. "Do you know what's making her feral? Like…" Danny said, waving at both of them. "Ya know?"

Johnny shook his head. "Nah, I don't. I haven't interacted with her much. I just know she just keeps going back to Casper High."

Kitty frowned. "Ugh, poor lady."

"It's worse than you think, Kitten, that school sucks more than ours did.."

Sam scoffed. "I'd believe that…"

"Wait…" Danny interrupted. "Keep going back? I thought she was trapped there."

Johnny scoffed. "Nah, we aren't trapped where we die. It's just… comforting to go back there. If that was the case, we'd still be in Seattle." Johnny shrugged. Johnny shoved a thumb back at the portal. "It's just easier to find each other with things like this. Like, Hell is a pretty large place you know?"

The mortals all paled as one. "That's a portal to Hell?" Tucker muttered aloud.

"Probably," Kitty said, shrugging. "Sure feels like it." She turned and slapped Johnny on his chest. "And you left me in there!"

Johnny pulled her tightly into a hug, she gasped as he crushed the air out of her. "I know, babe, I'm sorry. Believe me, I tried to get back… I… I saw an escape, and I wanted to scout it, but it closed behind me."

Kitty sighed and pushed herself away from Johnny. She reached up and pulled Johnny's head down and pulled him down into a kiss. She bit at his lip and pulled away and breathed for a moment. "I don't blame you. That place is…" She shivered, and began to cry.

Danny opened his mouth to ask another question, but Kitty reached up and placed a kiss on Johnny's cheek. "Babe, can we go? It's… it's been a long time."

"That it has, babe, that it has," Johnny said. He turned and looked at the smog that was still floating in the air. "Come on, Shadow, we gotta show a lady a good time."

Shadow quite obviously rolled its eyes, but threw itself into the ground, before melting itself into the shadow the two of them cast. Johnny gave Danny a salute. "Thanks man, I know I lost it at the end there but… thanks for pulling me back."

And then they were gone. Like they had never really been there.

Tucker let out a slow breath. "Wow, okay, so uh… that worked out really well. We're not gonna do anything like that again, right?" He turned and saw the look Danny was giving Sam, and though he couldn't see Sam, he knew she was returning that look. "We aren't doing anything like that again, right?"