Dani cried.
One of her favorite hideouts lied in ruins.
Her favorite couch was nothing more than a pile of fluffy white ash in the living room and reluctantly she curled atop the disgusting crumbling remains.
'And it's all my fault. If- if I hadn't screamed like that, Vlad would still be here...and the ceiling.' She coyly added, as a woodchip fell into her hair like some caveman barrette - adding the finishing touch to her oily debris-laden hair. Half-heartedly she brushed it away, wondering when the last time her hair had been really clean.
'Desiree.' She thought, almost expecting the ghost to come phasing into what little remained of the living room. 'It's like her all over again. She helped me...' And Dani paused, looking into the palm of her hands - the deep cuts of blood Desiree had left once-upon-a-time with a knife would forever be seared into her mind - but the scars remained, paler than her stark-white skin. She flexed her hands as if the palms still hurt, but the pain was only a memory.
Just a memory.
She thought of leaving Maple Street altogether, seeing the sunset in the distance. 'Vlad's not coming back, is he?' Her undead-heart seized, with some measure of life - at the thought, of being alone again...
And then she saw him.
That lunatic.
"Vlad, you're back!" She flew up to the roof of the destroyed house, looking down in phantom-form, her tail coiled behind her like a nervous spring. "Where's the fire?" she asked, looking Vlad up and down. "You look...not good." She was still uncertain how much honest criticism to his appearance her "New-Dad-Vlad" could handle - er tolerate, before he'd snap into a narcissistic-rage - the last thing she wanted to do was to offend the only person she could really consider family.
She'd wished for him after all.
Desiree had told her he would be perfect.
But Dani also wasn't dumb enough to believe her.
"What happened?" She asked again, more directly. Vlad looked up at her like a kicked puppy and his expression was so impossibly icky that she had to blink a few times to be sure she'd seen correctly.
"Well...I-"He began, before pretending to be interested in the gum wads which lined the cracked sidewalk.
"Well?" Dani leaned closer to the edge of the rooftop, impossibly curious now.
"I couldn't find her."
"Who?" Now she was just confused.
"Danny!" Vlad snapped, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I need her. And I mean her. Not the weirdo boy that came by that one time."
"Also..." Vlad added, looking sheepish at he patted his own hands, shuffling in his dirty-greasy tennis shoes.
"I think I botched meeting the neighbors? That wasn't supposed to happen..." He mumbled, "I'm entirely off kilter now."
"What was that?"
"Oooh, nothing." And he waved his hand in a way which clearly meant, "Yes, not-nothing."
"It's still daylight out." He said , and Dani could only look at him as the clearly unhinged man he was.
"Want to go grocery shopping with me?" he asked.
Dani blinked, her brain resetting. "What?"
"We need marshmallows for the campfire!" Vlad sing-songed as he turned around, much too stiffly and quickly - his bleached-white deer pelt had become an unsettling asphalt-stained grey. Quickly, Dani launched off the rooftop to follow him: curiosity, delight, and anxiety all-twinkled within her eyes.
They arrived at Amity's Super-Rude Foods without issue.
The walk over had been fun even, when Vlad had stopped to pee pink-ectoplasm all over a fire hydrant alongside the sidewalk.
And of course, Dani hadn't stayed to watch, instead she'd opted to run away - screaming in overwhelmed disgust - in the screechy manner only a little girl could.
It had taken Vlad fifteen minutes to find her again, and she refused to be anywhere near him, until he detoured into a Flapjack House to wash his hands.
And that's why Dani was currently eating a stack of pancakes out of a styrofoam to-go box as she walked - her fork was sticky with cheap, artificial buttery-syrup.
It was horrible. And good.
She finished up just in time to throw out the to-go box, as she walked into the grocery store, only to be stopped by a tisk-tisking karate-chopping hand of Vlad.
"Go wash your face." He said, pointing to a bathroom sign, and then to her - caked head to chest in maple syrup.
She laughed - they had gone full circle.
Though her good humor deserted her, quickly, when she came out of the bathroom.
Vlad was still there - looking oddly...guilty. Again, he had that impossibly icky, kicked puppy, old man look.
"Well, I'm done with the groceries." But Vlad wasn't holding any bags. And he was...
And he was...
"Um, how?" Dani asked, before she saw...
All the blood.
Dani bit her lip. 'Oh. Oh. No.'
"What about the marshmallows?" she asked, to quell her fear and budding horror.
Vlad blinked, strangely fast, lizard-like. "Oh right. Those! Of course. Of course!"
Then he smiled, slowly with red-slathered teeth. "How about you go grab them? I'll just...stay here...Dani."
"Heeeey, Damon! Good of you to pick up!"
"Who is this?" Damon Gray sleepily rose from his sleeping bag, one colored an impossibly tacky unripe-fruit green and neon-disco orange. He held the phone away from his sensitive ears, clicking the call onto speaker-mode.
"Jack Fenton here! Mister Gray, who else?"
At the mention of the fat man's name Damon sprung to life, finally snapping awake as he remembered where he was.
"Yes, Jack! Where are you? I've been here at the campsite, waiting in your ghost hunting truck ALL DAY." He peeked out a window, sighing. "It's pitch-black out. Where are you? You left all you ghost hunting gear everywhere!" And frankly, Damon was afraid to touch most of the inventions left scattered about, some oblong-shaped ones had been left to lean outside on a tree trunk, nearby stuffed target-dummies Jack Fenton had set up earlier for a "practice ghost hunting session," and each had sat unused and intact.
"Yesss...about that..." Jack sounded embarrassed, and Damon knew he wouldn't like what Jack said next.
"I got arrested. I guess I made my old pal Vlad a bit too angry today, heh hah...so...so..."
Damon could only stare dumbly at his phone. "So...?" He mimicked Jack, perhaps due to some misplaced sympathy for the fat man's surprising and precarious situation.
"Feel free to use my ghost hunting truck as long as you want! I know you paid a lot of money for ghost hunting lessons and I feel so bad about skipping out! Just do me a favor and tell Maddie about me in the morning - I only get one phone call-"
There was a squelch of static on the other side of the call, as if someone was pulling Jack away from the speaker. "Oh, uh, and looks like times up for me Damon. Please talk to Maddie for me, the cops here haven't told me how much the bail is, and, and -" And then Jack's voice cut out suddenly and Damon pinched his noise in frustration.
Why did Jack call him instead of his wife?
'Maybe he'd thought it'd make him look more professional?' And Damon laughed, a bitter-misery; Now, he'd have to inform Maddie about her husband's unfortunate situation before morning came.
He couldn't exactly fall back asleep, knowing what he did about Jack.
Damon sighed, wanting to cry.
'Oh Valerie, why?'
He'd wasted all of his savings for the little outing Jack promised him - but Damon wasn't mad - he was eerily cold as he brushed a hand across one of the guns Jack had insisted was perfect for him.
Damon sighed as he peeled himself out of his cozy sleeping bag and put on a coat, cracking his back - finally awake, for real, this time.
Mister Gray seated himself into the driver's seat of the truck, which was technically a tank with threads instead of tires...
'I'll give Jack credit. He knows how to make his inventions memorable.' He thought, bobbing his head side to side on autopilot.
The keys had been left inside, and he turned the "truck" on, only to get a face-full of confetti and a spraying liquid he hoped was just water.
'This is going to take a while.' And Damon turned the ignition again, getting another splash of water.