Halfway across town, Danny clutched his head as a vague humming sensation began to take hold within his skull.

"You okay?" Shelly asked, snapping to attention.

"I'm…there's…there's…"

"There's what?"

"A voice," he replied. "And it feels like it's calling my name."

She blinked. "What sort of voice?"

"A woman's. Why?"

"Call it a hunch," she said. "Now, if it's all the same to you, follow me."

"Kinda hard to do when I've got no idea how to move," he replied through clenched teeth. "And no, 'just do it' isn't much for me to go on."

Shelly looked him square in the eye. "In that case, take my hand," she said before reaching out.

Danny shrugged and reciprocated the gesture. A moment later, he felt himself lurch as Shelly charged forward, the both of them going through the wall like it was air.

"This isn't happening this isn't happening this isn't happening!" a petrified Tucker screamed, gazing in sheer horror at Cindy as she suddenly began to levitate of the floor, writhing like an eel every inch of the way. As the coughing fit soon gave way to a choking sound, both he and Sam couldn't help but notice that the substance that she'd been previously hacking up like no tomorrow was beginning to, for lack of a better word, coalesce.

"Oy Gutt!" the Goth girl shouted as she watched the slime form into tentacles, prying her boss's mouth open as if something else was due to emerge. Off to the side, she heard a retching noise– Tucker, no doubt.

"So, what's this about a summoning?" Danny asked as he and Shelly traveled through Amity Park, his mind barely registering how the colors had muted and the lights had dimmed since he'd left the house.

"There're some people," his cohort began, "who're capable of communing with beings not of the mortal plane."

"Like you?" came the reply.

Shelly rolled her eyes. "Yes," she bluntly said. "While we may have once been part of this fleeting world, we no longer are. We are the Restless Dead, and when someone with true talent calls us, we answer."

"Good to know," Danny said, disinterest dripping from every word. "Now, you said you knew who was calling me, right?"

"We're there."

Before Danny could ask any further questions, his spectral guide came to a sudden halt in front of a brick building about two stories high, the words "WIERZBOWSKI'S OCCULT ESOTERICA AND DETECTIVE AGENCY" written on a sign above the front door.

"I know this is probably going to sound like a stupid question, but why's a de–"

Before he could finish his sentence, a bloodcurdling cry from inside pierced the air.

Sam fought back bile as she watched the scene play out– Cindy floating above the floor, her jaws held open by tendrils of green slime, and all while a larger, blob-like mass of the stuff emerged from of her mouth. Meanwhile, with each passing second, the blob began to absorb the slime that already been expelled into itself until it had changed from an amorphous mass to a being that vaguely resembled an octopus. As soon as it had (presumably) finished the process, Cindy stopped levitating and fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

What the hell is that? Sam thought, her heart beating like an orchestra drum as she tried to process the events of the past several minutes.

Just then, the entity turned around and looked directly at her, its infernal red eyes seemingly glaring into her soul. And in that moment, she let out a scream of primal terror.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Sorry for the long gap between updates, but with other projects getting in the way and this site's ongoing technical issues, this kind of fell by the wayside. In the time since then, this story's been uploaded to AO3, so feel free to check it out there too.