Danny Phantom: Chapter Two
The Burial
When he got back to the top of the hill, he watched the sun poke over the horizon, turning the purple sky into a ombré of blues, oranges and pinks. On the cracked road ahead, a red car lay in wait, humming on the pavement and pumping small puffs of gas into the chilly air. His friends were in the front seats, Sam in the driver's side and Tucker next to her. He could hear Metallica slipping through the crevices of the machine, the loud Master of Puppets phasing through the car doors, probably tuning out his friends' emotions. When he opened the door, however, Sam turned the volume completely off, and the two looked back at their friend.
"Are you ready to go home?" Sam asked.
"No, but we have to," he replied grimly.
"No we don't. We-"
"We have to. We have to go back, and we have to keep this to ourselves. My parents can never know. We can't tell them about any of it."
The teens nodded, then turned away.
The drive back to the Fenton household was quiet. Danny spent the time looking out at the city illuminated by the steadily rising sun and thinking. He watched as the streetlights blinked off in unison, and light flooded through the windows of sleeping citizens' homes. It was strange how the world kept on turning- Not a single soul apart from the three teens in Sam's car would be bothered by last night's events apart from experiencing a brief blackout. Sam kept her eyes on the road, determined to drown out her disturbing memories and thoughts while Tucker stared into his lap in a trance.
Danny wondered if they'd left him in the backseat because they could have an excuse to look away from him- the twin of the corpse. Danny remembered the burn of the explosion, felt the ungodly shrieks of pain and anguish forced from his throat, felt his blood boiling in his veins, his bones disintegrating into horrid mush then partially graduating into vapor. He remembered the embrace of death, felt his soul ripped from his body only to wake up inside another, and knew how he had carried his own lifeless corpse under the cover of night to a harrowed rest.
Only Danny had to wrestle with the question as to whether he was really as alive as he seemed, but his friends- they had seen it all and would be forced to relive the accident each time they met the ghost's gaze or even thought of his name. It would be impossible for them to unhear the guttural screams of agony cutting through the arcing electricity of the ghost portal, to forget the melted mass of acid-filled flesh smoldering at their feet right where their friend had been… only to have him reemerge, glowing, from a buzzing burst of blinding light, an encore of the incurring disaster. Moreover, they couldn't know if he truly was Danny Fenton or a monster from the other side claiming to be him. All they had was a corpse and the reformed Danny's word. All they had was the hope that their friend was still among the living.
As they pulled into the driveway, he said what they had all been thinking but hadn't wanted to bring up, "We're going to lie. When my parents see the lab, they'll ask us if we know what happened." Danny took a breath. "We have to tell them that we didn't hear anything, that we were in my room most of the time."
"And- and we need to get rid of all the evidence," Tucker added, gesturing, shakily, to his muddy sweater.
The teens nodded in agreement.
"We have about four hours to shower and get rid of these clothes. And sleep."
The trio knew they wouldn't sleep anyway, but no one said anything, they simply moved into the house, careful to not dirty the floors, and completed the tasks that were set. They did things almost robotically to help them not think about the accident or the laboratory below them or the blazing portal lighting up the basement. Even as they showered and rid themselves of the graveyard mud and green, slimy ectoplasm, they didn't feel any more relieved. Covering up what had happened, if anything, made them feel even more unclean.