#ectoberweek2022

[13thdoodle]

[ Ectoberweek 2022 Day 26 : Six Feet ]

Beneath the portal's glow, three things become apparent to Maddie. One, she was right about her kids not being alive anymore Two, that she was wrong about the number of kids. And three, that... she was wrong about which one it was.

--

Based of the obituary prompt on day 26 " Maddie had to face the facts: one of her kids was dead, now—a ghost, a monster—and it was her duty to destroy it before it killed the rest of her family. But first, she needed to figure out which one of the kids was dead. "

--

This is.. kind of AU with my OC, 31, who is a Danny clone and got adopted by the Fentons. The initial idea was that only 31 and Danny were the ghosts and Jazz is human. But then the idea discussion turns into "what if Maddie (and Jack) still dissect Danny but he's the only human one among the three of kids?" :3c

[sumiink]

Ectoberweek day 27 - Soul Shredder: "He looked human. But then, most monsters do."

[star-scroll]

Ectober Week Day 31- "They say there's no such thing as the monster under the bed, but are you sure? ...Did you check?"

[lexosaurus]

Ectoberweek 2022

(Art credit to @q-gorgeous/@k-beckerart)

Tragedy struck Amity Park. The last week of the spooky season, seven one-word prompts are to be buried, and their obituaries printed and distributed across the city.

Each grave marks a story, a piece of art, a video, a poem, something that needs to be shown, needs to be told. And we ask you—writers, artists, and creatives alike—to be the ones to tell those stories.

For this year's Ectoberweek, you are provided a list of a one-word prompts and a list of two sentence horror stories. You can choose to base your creation off of one or both of these prompts each day.

All content directly related to the Danny Phantom cartoon is acceptable for this challenge. Ships, non-ships, crossovers, angst, fluff, classic art, digital art—so long as it relates to the show, how you choose to represent these prompts is entirely up to you.

Tag your work with #ectoberweek2022 so @ecto-american and I can see it. We are so excited to see the different art, fics, and other creative endeavors that people will take, and we sincerely hope you all have fun with the prompts this year!

Update: We now have a @ectoberweekofficial blog! Be sure to give it a follow!

Happy Halloween! 👻🎃

(prompts are listed out under the cut)

25. Forest He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried

26. Six Feet Maddie had to face the facts: one of her kids was dead, now—a ghost, a monster—and it was her duty to destroy it before it killed the rest of her family. But first, she needed to figure out which one of the kids was dead.

27. Soul Shredder He looked human. But then, most monsters do.

28. Scream “Pssst, you’re dead. Pass it on.”

29. Lobotomy Amorpho really liked her face. So he took it.

30. Shiver She traced her fingers along the forgotten metal table. Despite the revelations that had come to light, she’d do it all again.

31. Folk Tales They say there's no such thing as the monster under the bed, but are you sure? ...Did you check?

---

Be sure to check out the @ectoberhaunt Month Long Calendar if you want more spooky prompts this month!

If you'd like a nifty way to keep track of your completion of both Ectoberhaunt and Ectoberweek, here's a handy dandy spreadsheet made by @ajitated!

[bongo-clash]

To Seem Like the Green Light (Burned Out)

Ectober week prompt: Soul Shredder

'The Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms sure is familiar with fear for someone who does not hold it within their domain. Fright Knight decides it’s time for a talk.'

(No content warnings || fic under cut!!)

-

Fright Knight, if he’s being honest, does not understand his new ward in the slightest. 

As the Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms, the boy is absurdly powerful. He had to be, to have defeated Pariah Dark- a ghost so fearsome it took an entire gathering of the Ancient Ghosts to seal him the first time- and to have beaten him with only his determination and a suit far too large for him, built by his human father. He’d heard of the boy’s abilities in extent amongst his allies in the Zone: his ice, his ectoblasts, his wail. Unbreakable, unstoppable, dimension-shaking. Yes, Prince Phantom was powerful indeed.

But it’s so hard to connect the image of him to this reputation that precedes him so. Because Phantom wears a too-big crown and a too-big cape and a ring that slips off his fingers, and if he looks anything it’s this: small, and skittish. 

And scared. 

Fright Knight knows a lot about that. 

Fear is his domain, after all; it calls to him like a siren song calls to sailors on the open ocean. The taste of it is all allure- dread like a sweet wine, terror strong and honeying- he lives beyond living for it, just as he lives beyond living to serve the Realms’ Keeper, sacred and gratifying as such a duty is. Fear is his greatest delight- but this fear is his liege’s, and it is… sour. Sour to be exposed to, sour against the reach of his senses, the boy’s extending aura. Sour, perhaps, because the boy is royalty won in combat and powerful beyond belief, but he is still a boy. Younger still as a ghost than he is as a human. 

Impossibly large shoes to fill, and an overflowing well of mistakes to rectify that he hasn’t even existed long enough to have witnessed in the first place. 

Fourteen. His core isn’t even a year old, he’s a child. 

Fright Knight may relish in the terror of his opposition, but this boy is not his enemy, and this fear should not have to exist. And if there’s something he can do to abate it- well, that’s only his duty, as the Crown Prince’s most loyal knight. 

-

It’s not often that he finds himself in the human world, but the King’s Keep is thrumming with anxiety, and lairs are bound to their keepers in a way few things are, an indicator of the state of their hosts. The moment he takes stock of the shift, Fright Knight is making his way towards the artificial portal the Prince’s human parents created, looking for the disturbance in the Zone’s atmosphere and finding it soon enough. 

From there, all it takes is a few seconds of intangibility upwards, and he finds himself in the room of the Prince. The Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms, in his human form, hunched over in bed with a blanket curled around him, expression exhausted but equally sleepless. 

“I sensed trouble within your Keep, Prince Phantom.” He says simply. 

The boy startles slightly, as if he hadn’t even noticed Fright Knight was there. “Ah- I, uh, hey- hi? Wait, did you say trouble?”

“The Keep reflects its Keeper,” Fright Knight explains, not unkindly. “Your Keep is not in trouble; it seemed as if you were, my liege.”

“Oh,” Phantom breathes, shoulders unwinding from where they’d begun to climb towards his ears, less from a total relief and more from a weariness. As if to prove it, his shoulders do not stop once they’ve receded, drawing further and further into himself as if intending to disappear. “Oh, sorry. I’m not- I’m not in any trouble, or anything. Sorry if you thought something was going on.”

Fright Knight has not had a ward beyond Pariah for a long, long time, but even then, they were never so young- either when alive or dead. They tended to be well beyond childhood before their death (if they were ever alive at all), and their cores fully formed for decades, centuries prior to taking the mantle. Not for the first time, he wonders how it can possibly be seen reasonable, fair to push a responsibility meant for immortals who have tasted that immortality on a child who hasn’t even had his first death day. 

But Fright Knight doesn’t control what’s fair, and he doesn’t control how the Keep chooses its holder. He can only control what he does in this moment. “But there is something going on. You’re afraid.” 

Whatever thoughts had been turning over behind Phantom’s expression pause at the statement, face all at once becoming bewildered, overwhelmed with the unexpected. He looks like someone with a weapon pointed between their eyes; a realisation, and a cautiousness trying not to reveal a dread. 

“Right, yeah, you sense that stuff- you’re the Fright Knight- how did I forget? I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that; I’ll be better about it! I swear you won’t have to deal with this or anything, it was just…”

Oh. He looks like someone with a weapon pointed between their eyes because he thinks Fright Knight is going to draw his. He acted wildly and without a thought when he was freed by the boy some months ago, seeking his Soul Shredder, and likely cemented no assuring reputation when fighting under Pariah. He is not a spirit that tends to dwell on his regrets, but privately, he winces at the reminder. There are very few ways to apologise for such a dismal first encounter in any meaningful fashion; there may be very little point in apologising at all, at least not in this moment.

Instead, he simply lowers himself to the ground, feet meeting carpet from where they’d previously been floating. “I am a spirit who thrives upon fear, and upon summoning it within my enemies, but I am also a spirit who thrives upon the prosperity of my ward. You are in a place of rest, in your own domain, and you have the power to fell any who may cross you, and yet, it is not prosperous. This requires intervention, but it is not punishable.”

Phantom’s eyes turn downwards to avoid his gaze. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Fear is fear; it cannot be stupid.”

A moment passes before the boy’s reservations draw back, and he attempts to explain. 

“I keep getting these nightmares. I think it’s just ‘cause I’ve been stressed recently; I always used to get nightmares when I was stressed as a kid. But I keep getting these nightmares of just- I dunno, everything. Some ghost beating me into the ground and hurting the people in Amity; some ghost beating me into the ground and hurting the people in the Zone; being a monster, being a bad ruler, being a bad son. I wanna tell my parents about being half ghosts but they still hate ghosts- and they love me so much, but I can’t really be sure if it’s safe, can I? It feels like everything’s just wrong lately and- and I’m scared!” 

It had started subdued enough, but as he carried on speaking, the boy’s voice progresses from a mumble to a cry, ending with tears reflecting off the glow from Fright Knight’s figure. 

And Fright Knight is intimately familiar with fear, but he’s far too used to being the cause; he doesn’t know how to soothe it, is unused to wanting to. Slowly, making sure to leave enough time between steps that the Prince has the opportunity to tell him to recede, he makes his way towards the boy’s bed, and sits down at the edge. Slower, slower still, a cold hand makes its way to the boy’s back, motionless but steady once it’s taken its place. 

He waits until Phantom has calmed enough that the trembling abates even if the tears haven’t quite finished, and then speaks. “I am a spirit of fear,” He starts quietly. “And I have seen every manner of being afraid, regardless of how strong. Most much older than you, many more imposing- none of them, none of these beings, have I seen able to face the nightmares of your reality unshaken. You are afraid; I believe every time I have met you, you have been afraid- but you have never faltered for it. You are young, and you may be terrified, but there is something about that that perhaps makes you braver.”

“And you have friends. You have your human loved ones here, and your allies within the Realms- and if being a good knight to you means being a friend, then I am your friend as well. You are not alone, Prince Phantom, and I don’t believe you ever will be.”

There is a moment of silence thicker than the blizzards of the Far Frozen, and eventually, Phantom leans to his side, looks him in the face. The fear is not gone (Fright Knight wonders idly if it ever will be, and figures not), but it’s calmer, now. More willing to settle in lieu of raging against any other emotion. 

“Thanks, Fright Knight.”

“It is my duty, Prince Phantom.”

His eyes flicker with some kind of amusement. “Can you call me Danny, though? Prince Phantom’s still kind of weird.”

“…Very well, Prince Danny.”

Fright Knight is unsure whether he’s ever made another being smile before, but looking at the child grinning snidely at him between eyes rimmed red-green from past tears, he thinks he could tolerate doing it again. 

[papiliomame]

Comic: Reflections of Hearts Desire

Ectoberweek 2022

31. Folk Tales

Hey Paulina, have you heard about this rumor of how to summon Phantom? He will come to you and will fulfill your deepest desires! It goes like this…

Full comic under the cut. Contains face horror and mirror scare!

Longpost warning!

Was this all a dream after all? Or was it just a simple prank of one mischievous ghost of the many ghost who visits Amity Park? Or is it a completely different entity behind all this who is planning something more sinister…?

------------------------------------------------

Have you ever wondered what happened to Paulinas mother? Yeah, me neither… until two and a half weeks ago! After my horror video for ectoberhaunt this idea popped into my head and I was working on it until now. The folk tales which inspired this comic are the urban legend of " Bloody Mary" and the japanese ghost story about the Noppera-bō (faceless yokai). The japanese folk tales are collected in the "Kwaidan" by Lafcadio Hearn for the western audience, this is like the japanese version of the "Brothers Grimm" stories from european folk lore. The Noppera-bō are described as mischievous yokais who appear as ordinary humans before scare the humans by showing their faceless face head to get a good laugh. After reading this I thought thats like 100% Amorphos personality! I headcanon that Amorphos ghost lair is a room full of mask (with the appearance of his past victims) or full of mirrors to remind himself that he has no face and can be anyone or no one. This is where the "Bloody Mary" tale comes into play. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my little comic and happy Halloween!

[nat-a-nat]

25. Forest

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

It's October now. It's getting colder. The leaves are falling. They must be covering it by now.

They crunch under his steps as he walks. Something CRUSHES under his foot. His mind pictures bones. Ribs breaking in two.

It's just a branch.

He continues his walk.

The sky is bright, but the mood is gloom. The air is moist. 

It's been a while. It must have decomposed by now, with how much rain they get. Sometimes, he thinks he can feel the dirt on his bones.

He puts a finger on his pulse. Thump. A pause. A painfully long, long, pause. It shouldn't be this long. Thump. He is alive. But his skin is cold.

His hoodie is thick. It was always enough to keep him warm. Now, he is always cold.

The ice of his core. Slowly freezing him from the inside out. 

It's shallowly buried. His corpse. Barely a few centimetres underground. A lump in the dirt hastily covered with soil. Six feet, that's how it's supposed to be.

He strays from the path. Disappeares through the trees. Like a ghost.

There's a few hiker trails in the forests surrounding Amity, but he disregards them all.

He moves through the thick foliage. There are broken branches, broken saplings. He tries to not further disturb it all.

He crushes a flower about halfway through. The stem is mangled, his shoe sole imprinted in the bud.He picks it. He rolls it between his fingers the rest of the way.

He reaches a clearing. There's a big rock in the middle. 

His soul aches. A corpse with no grave, a ghost without rest. What a pity.

He goes up to the rock. The ground underneath it is uneven, disturbed from digging.

Is it still wrong to stand on a grave if it's yours?

He kneels on the forest floor and sets a candle down. Lights it. He lays the mangled flower beside it.

A single broken flower for a lonely corpse.

He feels sorry for it. It must be sad. All alone. In a dark, cold forest. With nobody to know you died, with nobody to mourn you.

Leaving his makeshift graveyard, he felt lighter. That single candle flame keeping him warmer than any blanket.

[this-is-z-art-blog]

[ID: digital drawing of Danny Fenton sitting on top of a gravestone with one foot resting against its face and the other drawn up to his chest with his arms hugged around it. His hair is black and his jumpsuit is white with black accents, but his eyes are glowing neon green, and there’s a faint glow around him, and he is slightly transparent. The gravestone reads ‘Daniel Fenton. He was just fourteen.’]

Six feet // Ectoberweek 2022

[phantombreadproject]

“she traced her fingers along the forgotten metal table. despite the revelations that had come to light, she’d do it all again.”

Speed ran this for the ectober week day 30 two sentence horror story prompt! If you notice it’s technically October 31st as I post this no you didn’t <3

[13thdoodle]

[ Ectoberweek 2022 Day 25 : Forest ]

"Looks like it's spring already~"

Based of day 25 prompt and the obituary™ " He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried "

It's the Phantasy AU trio having a bit of exploring around the forest, spotting a very familiar spot

[sumiink]

Ectoberweek day 26: "Maddie had to face the facts: one of her kids was dead, now—a ghost, a monster—and it was her duty to destroy it before it killed the rest of her family. But first, she needed to figure out which one of the kids was dead."

[star-scroll]

Ectober Week Day 27- Soul Shredder

aka Ghost King Danny and his (very intimidating) Knight :)

[lexosaurus]

Ectoberweek 25: Forgotten Bones

Prompt: 1. Forest 2. He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

Characters: Johnny 13, Danny Phantom WC: 1145

———

“I don’t know if I should tell them,” Phantom said, his head hung low and his elbows resting on his knees. It was easy to forget how small the kid was when he trampled around his haunt like some tyrannical overlord, squashing any trespassers before they could say ‘hello.’

Johnny 13 blew the cigarette smoke from his throat and watched it fizzle into the crisp air.

“I feel bad because there’s supposed to be no more secrets, you know? They said they accepted me, so I don’t know why…”

“I never told anyone,” Johnny said. 

He might have felt amusement toward Phantom’s owlish reaction if he was in better humor. But then, Johnny was never one to talk about his past.

Most ghosts weren’t.

“Really?” Phantom asked.

“Yup.”

“Why?”

He mulled it over. “It was nobody’s business.”

It was unsurprising to see the kid’s unconvinced expression. Ghost intuition and all. 

Because even Phantom knew that unresolved deaths don’t just resolve after a few years of being a ghost. That even if the memories get altered during ghost-formation, the pain never goes away.

The moment never disappears.

It was just his luck he’d get trapped in this situation. Dragged to the forest by a group of faceless, fuzzy men—he couldn’t remember what they looked like—and surrounded with guns drawn and flashlights pointed in his eyes, casting long shadows behind him.

“Please,” Johnny begged. “You have the wrong guys.”

“That’s not what I heard,” the leader said. Beside him, his thug pressed his gun into Kitty’s temple.

“The money or the girl. Your choice.”

“Nobody’s business,” Johnny reiterated, tapping the fresh ash from his cigarette.

The Boy Scout beside him was too out of it to make an annoying remark about littering or whatever the hell dumb thing he’d usually say.

“But Kitty knows, right?”

“She was there, moron.”

“Right, but…” Phantom turned away, sheepish. “Not everyone remembers.”

“Well, you’d have to ask her then. Not everyone was insane enough to—what did you do again?”

If anything, Phantom looked even smaller as he spoke, “...I buried it in the woods.”

“Right, exactly. Most of us don’t bury our own fucking corpses in the woods.”

“And yet, you and I are both in the same place.”

Johnny looked out at the dark sky, noting the speckles of stars that danced around each other. And it occurred to him that, well shit, maybe they were in the same place. Maybe they were both stuck leading an afterlife based off of forgotten skin, forgotten bones.

Forgotten bodies.

But no, they weren’t the same. “Even if I wanted to change it now, I couldn’t. There’s nobody to tell.”

Kitty’s terrified eyes met his, and Johnny nearly collapsed on the spot. The flashlights suddenly seemed too bright, too blinding.

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t us.”

“Really? You weren’t at Tony’s last Tuesday?”

Johnny took a step back, nearly tripping over a root. “No! No, that’s not—”

“You’re calling Tony a liar?”

“—No, please!”

“You could always tell the police. Lead them to your…” 

Now that Johnny did chuckle at. “And what do you think would come out of that, kid? Surrender my bones over to the police—and for what, exactly? Justice? Revenge? Kid, I died forty years ago. Do you know what happens to bodies that stay in the dirt for forty years?”

“Well, I was going to say that it might give you some closure, but—”

“Then what’s stopping you?” Johnny said, stamping his cigarette out on the cement roof. “Maybe you should be less worried about me, a guy who’s living out his afterlife doing the thing he loves with the girl of his dreams, and more focused on yourself, who’s clearly so upset you had to come to me for advice.”

Phantom blushed green, and the brief spark of smug fire vanished from his eyes. “I didn’t come to you, you were just already here.”

“And? You’re still talking to me.”

Phantom grumbled but otherwise didn’t argue.

And thank goodness for that too, because Johnny hadn’t come to Earth for a therapy session. He didn’t want to relive that night. He didn’t want to think about what happened. He didn’t want to remember the feel of the brush scraping his legs, the dirt that stained his skin, the guns pressed against their backs as they were led further into the forest, closer and closer to The End.

The sound of Kitty’s voice. The tears on her face. The trembling in her voice.

“Please, sir, that’s not what he meant! We really don’t have anything, I promise!” Kitty cried. “Let us go, just let us go.”

The man pulled out his gun and pointed it at Johnny. Although Johnny couldn’t see—couldn’t remember—the man’s face, he would never forget the pure terror that races through his veins as the barrel pointed at his forehead. He would never forget his shaking limbs finally collapsing onto the dirt. He would never forget praying for one more day with Kitty so they could finally take that road trip they’d always talked about.

“You were there at Tony’s, and on your way out, you nicked from his cocaine supply. You either pay up the money you stole, or I’ll shoot you and your pretty lady myself.”

Johnny’s vision swam. “I—I don’t…”

The fuzzy form of the man stepped closer, casting his shadow over Johnny. “What’s that, princess?”

“I…don’t have it.”

“You should tell them, though,” Johnny said, breaking the silence between them.

Phantom gave him a quizzical look, and Johnny felt like a bug under a microscope. Damn, that kid could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Still, something compelled him to keep talking. So he turned his attention back to the sky and said in a detached voice, “You should tell them while you can. Because if you don’t do it now, you never will. You’ll keep putting it off, and putting it off until one day you’ll look around you and realize that there’s nobody left to tell. And you’ll spend the rest of your afterlife wondering if you should have told someone during any of those days you asked yourself and decided it wasn’t the right moment, it wasn’t the right day, that you would do it tomorrow. Because you only have tomorrow until you don’t. And you never know when that day will come, but it will, and it will come faster than you think.”

Phantom didn’t respond, but Johnny didn’t need him to. After all, they were both in the same place, and they weren’t. Johnny had no more tomorrows left, but Phantom still did.

He still had the chance to do what Johnny never could.

Johnny 13 thought about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

He heard Kitty let out a fresh sob in front of him.

“Well, that’s tough luck, kid.”

There was a crack.

Kitty screamed.

And then nothing.

[bongo-clash]

I Wonder if I Would Delete You

Ectober week prompts: Forest He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

'Valerie Gray finds out that the resident ghost kid was never buried beneath a grave. Valerie Gray finds out that there’s a body in the woods.'

(Content warnings in tags || fic under cut!!)

-

Valerie remembers, very vaguely, the look on Sam and Tucker’s face on the first day of highschool. 

They usually had a third kid with them, she knew. Danny. She’d seen the briefest glimpse of his face in the newspaper near the end of the holidays, the offhand worry of her father when he brought it up once and never again. Nothing substantial, just ‘You know the Fenton’s youngest? Danny, I think his name was, in your year. Apparently he went missing on Tuesday and they haven’t found a sign of him since.’. He slipped through the cracks of freshman year, and the ones who’d known him since elementary school noticed (Dash, in particular, had whined at the absence of his favourite punching bag, made a face at the news, and stopped talking about it when he didn’t show up after a few days), but very few others did. 

He was just one of those kids who’d never really made much of an effort to cross anyone’s radar beyond his limited social circle. He just wasn’t someone who’d made themselves all that memorable, after all, plenty of kids from middle school weren’t going to Casper High; for all that it felt weird not to see them anymore, there wasn’t much to dwell on. 

His parents (the only thing he’d really been known for), though they were unnaturally quiet for the first few weeks, soon fell back into their obsession. His sister was still hoping he’d turn up again, but she was also a budding psychologist, and it was clear she was trying not to let it impede her when there was nothing she could do. It was just… such a non-issue for everyone else, in the end, even if no one knew why he went missing. (Even if Sam and Tucker sometimes made faces at each other, like they had something to say but couldn’t share it.)

It was all the more easy to forget when ghosts started showing up in Amity Park. Many regularly, one constant: Phantom. 

Valerie hates his guts more than anything else, if she had to pick. Even if no one really got hurt in the fights, property damage skyrocketed, their day-to-day became chaos, and especially at first, everyone was scared. When the ghost kid ruined her life, hatred bloomed like hogweed in her chest, but the people in her class loved him. A mysterious superhero, with cool powers, flying around town every day and every night to fight off creatures from another dimension in a weird, glowing costume? It was like something out of a comic book, of course they loved it, but all she could think about was how much collateral was left in the wake, the image of that ghost and his stupid dog tearing through her life and leaving nothing but fragment pieces behind, spilt like a stain in her memory. Green, ugly, and hard to wash out. It was only natural that she took up the opportunity to get revenge when it found her, even if she didn’t trust Masters as far as she could throw him. 

This is all to say: the last two years of her life have been busy. It’s a hard wire to walk on- between staying afloat enough to pass her classes, keeping up with her job to help her dad, trying to keep violent ghosts from invading the town and desperately trying to get people to see that the worst one of them all is the one that keeps attempting to earn their trust- she barely has time for anything else. Sometimes, she even lets Phantom deal with the ghosts if they’re pathetic enough, because she’s sure he’s playing the long game with them but it’s been a long game, and she really does need to keep living her life. She’s a junior, now; she’ll be seventeen in the new year, and her dad’s so excited to teach her how to drive. She’s not going to let the world stop turning for a couple of ghosts. 

It’s one of those days, though, where she figures Phantom’s been flying around for a bit too long, and it’s time for an intervention. Can’t let him get too confident in his welcome. So, she’s suited up and following his signature with a tracker, listening as the thing ticks like a Geiger counter to signify the proximity, scanning the horizon for a familiar glowing silhouette and keeping her ectogun clasped in one hand, ready to shoot first and never ask. 

Over the course of her flight, she finds herself much further from the centre of town than the ghost is usually spotted, but his signature is lit up green on her scanner, and it’s not moved once. By the time his figure comes into view, she’s barely in Amity’s borders at all, hovering on the cusp of thick woodlands and wild, uncut grass on its edges. 

She spots a complicated look on his face as she lands. Valerie doesn’t know who he’s pretending for. 

“What are you doing here, ghost?”

Phantom doesn’t dignify her with a face-to-face conversation. His head tilts like he’s trying to look at her without eyes, and his hands lift to protect his chest even though she’s facing his back; if she had to try and describe his posture, it would be ‘troubled’. Still, though, she can’t forget this is a ghost. Hard to with the glow and the slight transparency and the unnatural white shade of his hair, but still, the thing she’s talking to here isn’t a person no matter how much his figure suggests it. 

His shoulders keep making weird shrugging motions, half failing on the way down and sometimes jerking backwards, and she thinks he’s trying to figure out how people breathe. “Hi, Red.” He says, something imitating a sigh, and his behaviour is as unusual as it is fascinating, but he’s deflecting and she won’t have it. 

“Answer the question.”

“I- it’s nothing you’d find interesting. I’m not gonna do anything.”

Her eyes narrow with suspicion, hold on her ecto-gun tightening near the trigger. “And I’m supposed to just believe that? Let me guess: that dog ripping my house apart was you ‘doing nothing’ too.”

“No!” He retorts, finally turning around, eyes wide. His hands are twitching at his side, half-trembling, and the underneaths of his nuclear-waste eyes are oddly shadowed- as if ghosts can even sleep, let alone get tired. “No, that wasn’t nothing, and I’ve been sorry about that ever since it happened, but I- this isn’t about that. This isn’t about anything- it’s just… complicated. And not your business.”

Well, that’s not worrying at all. She doesn’t know what he’s trying to achieve by spouting such ridiculous crap, but she’s not picking it up regardless. “What are you doing, Phantom.” It’s not a question. 

“I just said-“

“That was not an answer.” Valerie snaps, lifting up the nozzle of the ectoweapon from the ghost’s torso to point right between his eyes. “You know I won’t hesitate to pull this trigger, Phantom; you know I’ll tear you apart. Tell me what you’re doing.”

The part of her that’s read all of the Fentons’ academic papers knows ghosts don’t feel real emotions, knows any features can be manipulated to their liking for whatever ridiculous goal they’ve set their sights on. The part of her that picks at her old bleeding heart twinges at the look on Phantom’s face, no matter how superficial. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises in this light. Tired, tired, tired.

He sighs: a thing he has no need for and probably only does to make himself seem more human. “You really want to know?” He responds, turning around once again so he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes. Stupid, too, considering he’s turning his back to the gun. “Fine. Follow me, then.”

She doesn’t deign to give him an answer, but he seems to interpret the silence as one either way. He goes forward into the thick, and before he can disappear, she follows. 

The ghost isn’t floating, is the first thing she notices. 

It’s their natural instinct, she’s sure; half of them probably don’t even remember how to walk, with all the time they spend up in the air or drifting about in whatever version of Hell they come from. But Phantom walks now like his feet are tethered to the ground, forced into it with something deeper than gravity. For all that he usually never shuts up, he doesn’t say a word. It seems he doesn’t even notice she’s still aiming a blaster at the back of his head, doesn’t even care. 

Time passes between steps. Slowly, as if the further they walk the deeper into space they go, the sunlight overhead is shut away by canopy cover. Oak and ashwood trees disperse themselves along a nonexistent path, roots hidden beneath the browns of old leaf litter and dirt, an imitation of tripwires as Valerie tries not to catch her feet on something. The forest is too dense for her hoverboard. She’d crash into all the low-branches if she tried. Grounded as he is, though, Phantom doesn’t trip once; there’s got to be a reason he has the route memorised, if he’s not just leading her in circles, but she’s never caught him around this area before. Is this where he goes after fights? 

An artificial night surrounds them by the time Phantom begins to slow down, stars in the form of microscopic sunspots and the vague shine of lichens. It comes through something silver in the place they’d stopped- just underneath an oak’s armspan. Old leaf litter covers what looks like a molehill. 

Phantom sits down, but she doesn’t bother to do the same, too wary. “What is this?” She questions. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll told you I wasn’t gonna do anything.” He says, posture hunched over. “I just wanted to… y’know, sit for a bit.”

Yeah, not buying it. She rounds his figure, not quite putting herself in his direct line of sight, but enough that they can both see each other’s front, and enough that she can gauge his expression, for as little as that counts for. 

…Maybe a little more than she bargained it counting for, if she’s being honest. His lips are pinched to a downward-curving line, like he’s trying to hide the shape by pursing them but failing. His knees are pressed to his chest, arms wrapped around and gripping each other like a lifeline, jumpsuit creasing oddly around them for all that it shouldn’t, with ghost fabrics not adhering to normal physics. The eyes are worst of all, though. Seeming duller, somehow- less green and more turquoise, maybe- shining with something Valerie can’t parse and doesn’t like. Something familiar on an unrecognisable face, settled onto the slight bump in the dirt. 

There’s a direction her brain his heading to in its conclusion, because this is a ghost looking far too intensely at raised ground, and really, there’s only so many conclusions she can reach, no matter how much she hates it. 

It’s rude to ask, she knows. She lets it slip anyway. “Phantom,” She starts, oddly absent of her usual barbs past the dread. “What’s under there?”

His gaze flicks briefly towards her, shoulders tightened and wary of the questioning. She’s never seen him this closed off before. “You don’t wanna know.”

“Tell me.”

“Idon’t want you to know.”

“Phantom.”

Phantom’s expression is awful, awful, awful. “I died two years ago.” He says, voice devoid. “No one’s found me yet.”

Oh. 

Oh. 

Oh God. 

This is still in Amity Park borders. It’s on the cusp, near the edge, but this is still Amity. This is about a thirty minute walk from the other end of Casper High; if you turned left from where she’s standing and kept going, you could probably come out the other side near the Nasty Burger, its back some distance to all the trees. This is Amity Park, and she’s been living in its vicinity all her life, and there’s a body in the woods and no one knows it’s here. 

Briefly, her mind brings forth the image of something beneath the soil, and she closes her mouth around the bile it sends careening up her throat. She doesn’t know what Phantom might have looked like before he died, but she’s certain that if she tried to look, all she’d find would be bones. It’s been more than long enough for the rot to set in and run its course, anything more than that melted away and chewed through by whatever insects buried themselves with him in the decay. She feels like the smell of something foul is caught in her nose now that she knows what she’s practically standing on. She wonders if he’s buried shallow. Guesses at the answer lying idle in the turned soil.

He takes in her speechlessness with a strange mix of fear and exhaustion. “Red? You still in there?”

“You- I- two years ago?” And it’s not like her, but she can’t help it. There’s nothing she can say in the face of this, nothing she can feel beyond the roiling wave of nausea and catatonic shock. They looked about the same age when she started out, and he died two years ago. He looks younger than her now.

“I’d be sixteen this year.” He says, helpfully, as if that makes anything easier. She got her provisional driver’s license in the mail a few months ago and she’ll be old enough to take lessons next year, and he’d be doing the same thing as she is around now but he’s dead. He’s dead and she’s not heard a thing about a kid dying in the last few years. He’s dead and buried shallow. 

There’s not many other conclusions to reach. She’s not sure how it’s never crossed her mind before now, but for the first time in two years, Valerie wonders who Phantom used to be. Wonders what he did to get murdered in secret. 

Wonders if who (or what) did it is still around. 

[eldritchsoupconsumer]

Ectober Day 28: Scream

“Pssst, you’re dead. Pass it on.”

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Ectober day three is here!

NOW I GET WHY IT’S CALLED THE SOUL SHREDDER

[Warnings for fear and loss and semi-graphic descriptions of death]

Somehow, no matter how many times Danny had fought Fright Knight, he'd always managed to avoid the sword. He had to, otherwise his terrifyingly mortal friends would have to fight the incarnation of fear without him, and he couldn't let that happen. To be hit by Fright Knight's sword simply wasn't an option.

Tucker had been cut by it once, and when he recounted it to Danny, the nightmares hadn't seemed all that bad, a hundred Paulinas in bathing suits running toward him on a beach turning into a hundred Dashes kicking sand in his face. Maybe it was just because Danny was bi, but given the horrors they faced on a daily basis, he felt like it could've been worse.

Two years later, on Halloween, Jazz and Sam were both nicked by the sword, and while Sam vocally and dramatically described the horrors of being forced to wear pastels and eat veal by her parents, Jazz was quiet. Danny was afraid to ask, but that night, Jazz knocked on his bedroom door, and as soon as he opened it, she wrapped him in a hug.

"I'm so sorry, Danny," she said, her voice choked with tears.

"Woah... what are you sorry for?" he asked, hugging her back, awkwardly stroking her hair. "Is this... about what the Soul Shredder made you see? It was only a nightmare; none of it was real."

"It wasn't real for me, but Danny," her voice cracked and the rest came out in a whisper, "my greatest fear was having to go through what you've gone through."

He blinked in surprise, pulling them both out of the doorway and pushing the door closed behind them. "What do you mean?"

"The Soul Shredder, it showed me  a life where, instead of you, it was me in the portal when it turned on," she explained. "In the fear dimension, I had to go through all the things you've gone through. Mom and Dad were shooting at me, threatening to dissect me. And you didn't know anything about it. Right before you beat Fright Knight and we all got let out of the fear dimension, I was fighting a nightmare version of Spectra. And she... she..."

"It was Spectra," Danny cut her off. "Enough said."

He'd never had to comfort his sister while she cried like that before. All his life, she'd been the protective older sister, the one who covered for him with their parents, the one who fought the Christmas turkey, the one who patched him up when he scraped his knees at school. She was his rock, whenever he was scared. He'd never had to do that for her before.

"I don't know how you do it," she said between sobs. "I don't know how you can walk a tightrope between life and death like it's nothing. I don't know how you haven't been traumatized a dozen times over just by the ongoing existential crisis of your nature."

"I don't think about it that much."

"No... you just don't talk about it," she disagreed, and she was right, although he wasn't going to admit that. He thought about it a lot more than he would like to.

"I have you," he said instead. "And I have Sam and Tucker, and the occasional ghost ally who help me out. I can handle it because I'm not alone." He ignored the little voice in his head that said, you are alone. That's what it means to be one-of-a-kind…

"I'm never gonna let you face anything alone," she told him. "Even if I die, I'm gonna become a ghost, and I'll always support you so you never have to be alone."

"Thanks, Jazz."

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

Before that night, Danny had never given much thought to what he himself might see in the fear dimension. As much as possible, he tried not to entertain his fears. He couldn't afford to.

Even so, he knew what he was afraid of, and his conversation with Jazz made it all the more real.

The next time he faced Fright Knight, the unthinkable happened.

The Soul Shredder plunged into Danny's abdomen and his world faded into darkness.

The next thing he knew, he was laying on his back on the sidewalk, surrounded by a hoard of people staring down at him with disgust. Jazz was there, backing away from him with wide eyes. Tucker's knees were shaking so badly they buckled under him, and he scrambled away through the crowd on his hands and knees. Sam was there, looking like she might throw up, her eyes looking at anything but him.

"He's a ghost and a boy?" Star's voice whispered. "What's with that? How creepy?"

"What a freak," Kwan said. "He shouldn't even be around us regular people."

I'm not! he tried to say, but when he opened his mouth, the words didn't come out.

"Isn't he, like, an abomination against nature or something?" asked Paulina.

"He looks human, now..."

"But then... most monsters do, don't they?"

"Everyone back up!" an authoritative voice cut through the crowd.

Mom! he realized. Dad! Please help me!

"Leave this to the professionals!" his dad's voice boomed. "We'll take care of this no-good, dirty, creepy, deranged little thing!"

"Now honey," his mother said, "don't forget that it's also an affront to human kind, and and blight on the earth, unfit to be seen by society, it's existence worth less to the world than gum on the sidewalk."

No...

On instinct, he transformed and flew away, dodging the net launchers and ecto-blasts that were shot after him. He flew home as fast as he could. If there was no place for him in the real world, at least he could escape to the Ghost Zone.

But when he got there, he was just as unwelcome by the dead.

"Get out of here, you wannabe!" Ember yelled at him. "You're not a real ghost, you're just a kid in a costume."

"Why would we want a creature like you here?" Frostbite sneered. "You're not one of us. You're not fit to reside with us."

"Human things don't belong in the Realms..." Walker drawled, his already towering form growing taller and taller until he looked about to squash Danny between his hands. "That's against the rules."

Danny dodge Walker's blow, leaving through the portal and crossing the Atlantic. Last he heard, Dani was in France. She'd sent him a postcard. Even if the whole world was against him, she was with him. She was like him. he wasn't one-of-a-kind, as long as she was around.

He found her below the Eiffel Tower, took her hands, and she smiled. She opened her mouth to speak. Her skin started to droop, green bubbles forming on her face, eyes melting into her skull as she destabilized where she stood, dissolved into a glowing green puddle without so much as a word.

Shaking, Danny floated up into the sky. Hated by his friends and family, rejected by the ghosts, having lost his clone, he turned to the very last person in the world he would ever turn to.

"Ha!" Vlad laughed in his face. "Foolish boy, you've missed your chance, hurled one too many insults. I'm not interested in you anymore. You're a weak, stupid little boy, full of hubris, and I want nothing more to do with you. How does it feel to have alienated the only other person on the planet who knows what you've gone through? Pretty wretched, I'd imagine. But unlike you, I don't need anyone. I’m strong on my own. I don't rely on the help of others.

"You? You're useless on your own. A freak. A loser!" Vlad laughed again, and Danny got the wind knocked out of him when he took a pink ghost ray to the chest. "Get out of my sight!"

Freak.

Loser.

Monster.

The words all echoed in his head, swirling around like a tornado of hatred.

Alone

Alone

Alone.

"Danny! Are you okay?!" Danny gasped, eyed flying open at the sound of Sam's voice.

"What happened?" he asked.

"You got hit by the Soul Shredder," Tucker explained. "Don't worry though. We took care of Fright Knight."

"He won't be bothering us again," Sam said, helping him sit up. "At least, not until next Halloween."

"Sorry it took us so long," Jazz apologized. "Are you alright? Do you wanna talk about it?"

"It was horrible!" Danny said. "Aliens finally made contact with Earth, but all they wanted was to buy bagpipe music CDs! They wouldn't even talk to us about anything else but bagpipe music. It was awful!"

"You've literally died before, and you greatest fear is that aliens will come to Earth and all they'll care about is bagpipes?" Sam asked, deadpan. 

"I've wanted to meet aliens my whole life! I don't want it to be disappointing!" he said. Tucker laughed, and Sam sighed, and Jazz shook her head in disbelief.

It was all right if they thought a little less of him for this. As long as they never found out what really scared him.