#ectober 2024

[noodlesstarghost]

2° day- Dinosaur

This was a really dumb idea lol I'm really behind on this, my iPad pencil just decided to die, anyway I'm just uploading sketches that I'll render later, @ectoberhaunt

[jupiterlandings]

Ectober Day 4: Came Back Wrong

[invaderlumen]

ECTOBERHAUNT DAY 9

FALL

(im posting out of order cause ive been super behind and wanna get the finished ones out)

[danis-artss]

Aaaaand the next ectober drawing !

Todays prompt: fall <3

Couldnt rlly decide between hurt danny and healthy danny~~~

So u get both lol

[murphy-kitt]

Ectober Day 4 - Came Back Wrong

Word Count: 1,645

Tags: Angst, Character Death

AO3

—

Jazz didn’t hate the ghosts at first.

But now she loathes them.

Back when her parents research was merely myth, Jazz hadn’t bothered to focus on the theories or speculation they spurred out. Why would she?

Every waking minute at Fentonworks was spent talking about ghosts. Ghost this, ghost that. What new weapons they had conjured up (to her, it’d seemed stupid. Why did you need defence against things that weren’t real?).

Her own mind didn’t need plagued by ghosts all hours. But now, admittedly, it’s all she thinks about. She doesn’t think of them in the way her parents do.

The hatred may be the same, but the science—that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to cut them up or learn what a core is.

All she wants is revenge.

Because it was the ghosts that killed Danny, in the end. That stupid, stupid portal.

And in a right mindset, she’d blame her parents, their negligence. The practicality of it was, that it had been her parents fault. She was aware enough to know logically that Jack and Maddie Fenton had been the reason.

But the reason for their portal? Was their obsession with ghosts. And so it became deliberate ignorance.

Directly it might’ve been her parents, but if their obsession with ghosts hadn’t happened then portal would’ve never existed and her baby brother wouldn’t be dead.

The night is dark as Jazz sits by her desk, blinds open as she watches for any sightings of ghosts outside. Her eyes are heavy, a mix of academic drag and grief. Which one prevails, she doesn’t know.

She knows Danny would want her to keep going academically. And although Danny was never spiteful, merely witty, it feels important to do this. To..get justice…closure?

Jazz picks up the ghost scanner with a trembling hand. It constantly buzzes, a malfunction that her parents never fixed, but she doesn’t care. It’s the one bit of tech she trusts to be reliant.

A rare moment of determination, she’d stolen it from the lab when they weren’t looking. Her dad would probably think he’d misplaced it.

“Come on, come on.” She narrows her eyes, feeling as frustrated as she had on her last exam. Her mind doesn’t work the same way anymore.

Once studying was done with a breeze, but now this plagues her. Danny’s death. The emptiness. Her parents are constantly working.

Of course, she still gets good grades, despite being told she’s relieved of all assignments for the year. But it feels more like an obligation, than something she used to enjoy.

Perhaps this is what the burnout Danny used to describe is. Danny was never as academically competent, always slower but eventually getting there.

Now justice is all she lives for. Any will do. Any target.

She just needs…violence? To rant? Anger? She doesn’t know.

Just something.

Something to feel anything but the deep dread weighing down on her, tethering her to an endless cycle of grief.

And then the scanner starts wailing, making Jazz tense slightly. She relaxes, before checking the small screen.

“A loud noise, so a powerful ghost surely?”

And she’s right.

Ghost: Phantom.

Power Level: 7.8

Current Core Usage: 80%

Jazz interprets, given the ghosts core usage, that it’s currently in a fight with another one. Plays hero, of sorts.

Phantom’s the worst one for her. He’s never done anything to her—but she hates him.

He’d appeared a few weeks after the portal had opened, whilst everyone was still reeling over Danny’s death. Yet, at that time Amity couldn’t ever have expected the paradigm shift Phantom was about to throw them into.

Ghosts everywhere. Constant fights. Damage. Already grieving and to blame parents wearing themselves down even more to defend the town.

Albeit, not very well, but she didn't dare say that. They’d already lost Danny, they didn’t need to lose the ghost hunting too.

Without another word, Jazz slips on her winter jacket, slipping open the door and down the stairs. Scanner in one hand, compact ectogun tucked into her belt.

She can hear her parents' snores echo from upstairs. Good. They won’t miss her for a while.

Cold air freezes her to her bones as she steps out into the street, instantly looking up at the sky. Dark blue and empty, only a few stars twinkling.

She’s sure if Danny was here he'd tell her what constellations they were.

“Where are you?” she grits out, watching as the small screen on the scanner shows a bright green dot, about two blocks ahead. There’s another dot too, smaller and weaker, before it disappears off the map. Jazz presumes Phantom has captured or weakened the ghost, whatever he does.

So she needs to be fast.

Within less than a minute, Jazz makes it to the street where the scanner showed, then shoves the scanner into her pocket. She doesn’t need to alert her presence.

And there he is.

Phantom is smaller up close than she’d initially thought, although no one at Amity has ever got a good glance. His back is facing towards her, the black of his jumpsuit glistening under a street lamp.

Something cylindrical in his hands has captured his attention, probably why he’s not noticed her yet. Jazz strains her neck to look, but can’t see.

Phantom. The ghost that’s put her parents through so much hell.

The ghost that’s, whilst Amity was still reeling from Danny, racked up the problems on their list by causing destruction to infrastructure and pointless money. All with a side of witty banter.

“You.” Jazz tries to steady her voice, feeling the grief trickle through. All this, for her brother.

She never got to grieve properly. No one did. How were they supposed too, with ghost fights all around?

Phantom’s reaction is immediate. His back stiffens and he swivels around.

The eyes. They’re a piercing lime green, just like the portal. The portal that killed Danny.

“What do you want?” Phantom’s asks, tone initially surprised but flattening. He’s younger than Jazz expected. Fifteen, at most.

Near the same age as Danny.

“What do you think?” Her eyes narrow, reaching for the ectogun attached to her belt. She doesn’t expect a logical answer.

Of course Phantom won’t know why she’s here, or what she’s after. He’s just a ghost with an obsession of being some copy-paste comic hero.

“I—I don’t know.” The ghost mumbles, eyes now averted down to his left hand. He tucks the cylindrical device under his shoulder before tracing a round shape on his left palm.

That’s…strange. Jazz thinks. Not the answer, but his behaviour. Is he thinking of something in the past? Better yet, he’s still here. Usually Phantom, at least to news reports, is enigmatic, and never likes being filmed.

So the fact he even turned in the first place is perplexing.

But then she thinks of Danny. Buried in the cemetery, grave stricken of flowers due to the quickness of their grief. Amity bombarded with attacks on the constant, never any peace.

All Phantom’s fault. At first, perhaps (the attacks) not. But over the months, he’s gotten quite a reputation. She’s sure he has some sort of control over Amity. That ghosts come to Amity now just for the sake of fighting him.

When he’s really just a five-foot nothing skinny teenager like her brother.

If Phantom is gone, she’ll finally get a break. Get to grieve for Danny. Danny can get the justice and tribute he deserves.

The ectogun is sleek in her hand, tucked under her coat. She knows what she’s doing, having received multiple lessons from her parents after Danny’s death. They didn’t want to lose her too.

Unlatch the safety trigger, quickly aim, shoot.

It’s that simple. She points.

”Please! Please—don’t do that!” Phantom pleads, “You don’t know what you’re doing—please, put it down!”

—

“Please, Danny! I need you!” She cries out. She’s in Danny’s room, the bed still unmade, clothes still strewn about.

Untouched from when Danny had last left it. He’d gone into the lab, and that was it. Electrocution, they told her.

He’d been barely hanging on at the hospital. And then his body couldn’t take it any longer.

Her brother is gone.

—

The next thing Jazz knows is the cold pavement underneath her body, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest on the curb. The ectogun is a few feet away, glittering in the lamplight.

”I can’t—“ she sniffles, not even realising it. Her cheeks are damp, eyes stinging.

”What’s wrong?” An echoey voice besides her. Phantom. His eyes are narrows in concern. He sits near her, but leaves a gap.

Why’s he still here? He should’ve gone long ago.

“What’s wrong? My brother is dead and his body was barely cold before you waltzed in with your stupid puns and caused damage everywhere!” The anger radiates through Jazz’s body as she scowls at him, “My brother’s death was cast aside because of you. My parents never got time to grieve, none of us did. Too busy expecting another ghost attack or repairing damages.”

“Your brother?” Is all Phantom responds. Wiping her eyes, Jazz takes a glance at him. He’s hunched over, grimacing with an expression she can’t quite read.

”I just want Danny back.” She chokes out, wiping her eyes again, feeling the tears fall.

He’s gone. Only fourteen. What sort of age is that to die? Killed at the invention of their own parents. She’ll never hear his (admittedly annoying) chatter about space, nor have their petty arguments again.

Even the times he got on her nerves meant something.

”Jazz, I—“ Phantom starts to say, but freezes.

As does Jazz.

”How do you know my name?” She tilts her head, voice sharp.

She wipes her eyes, again, blinking back the bleary vision.

Then looks right into Danny’s green eyes.

[squirrellysketches]

Ectoberhaunt Day 1: Past Present Future

Get in, loser

[ryntrinity]

DANlicious~ 👻🧛

I will absolutely NOT let October end without a Danny Phantom Fanart!

[five-rivers]

Hi, everyone! If you only follow me here, you might have wondered where I was during Ectoberhaunt. Well, I was here, it's just that there were some life things going on that made it hard for me to find the time (and willpower) to post on multiple sites. So, I'm putting together a list now! Here are the fics I wrote or updated during October!

Blue Butterfly (2 chapters, day 1 and 11)

Robot Dinosaur (1 chapter, day 2)

Pilgrimage aka Mortified-verse (added chapter 3, day 3)

Flipside (added chapter 2, day 4)

Cult Division (added chapter 5 and 6, day 7 and 14)

But... spaceship (1 chapter, day 8)

Take Me Higher (1 chapter, day 9)

Sea Silk, Siren Song, and Pearls (1 chapter, day 10)

Claws (1 chapter, day 12)

Winter in Wizard World collab with @jackdaw-sprite (1 chapter, day 13)

Projection (1 chapter, day 15)

For the Sake of a Single Bloom (1 chapter, day 16)

Hall of Mirrors (3 chapter, days 18, 21, and 28)

The Caterpillar Does Not Know (1 chapter, day 22)

Heat Death (1 chapter, day 23)

Time Loop (1 chapter, day 24)

Spelling (1 chapter, day 25)

Ancestral (added 4 chapters, days 26, 27, 29, and 31)

A Little Tarot (1 chapter, day 30)

Thank you for your patience! Happy reading!

[darthfrodophantom]

Death Is My Gift

Summary: When Danny becomes the personification of Death, his new powers are the least of his problems. Summoned as the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Danny tries to sabotage it from the inside while also contending with the other three horsemen, the one who summoned him, and the knowledge that if he fails, he may have to help bring about the end of the world.

AO3: Link

Chapter 1: Still Dead - Thanks for Checking

“What the hell is that on your phone?” Sam asked, her tone dripping with derision. 

Danny looked up from his screen and cocked his eyebrow. “What?” How could she see what was on his screen when she was on the other side of the table? Not that he had anything embarrassing on there, but look it wasn’t his fault that he messed up his Insta algorithm because he watched one video about large superheated copper balls melting through a telescope lens and now he couldn’t stop watching more of them. But still, how could she see it?

She gestured toward the back of his phone. “That sticker - what the hell is it?”

Understanding dawned on the usually clueless boy and his face brightened. “Oh, it’s my new sticker! Isn’t it great?” he preened as he moved his hand to the side so they could see the sticker in its full glory. He had been waiting for them to notice it, and somehow it took all the way until lunch for them to comment on it. 

Tucker craned his neck around to see the purple coffin-shaped sticker plastered onto the back of Danny’s phone case. In white letters it read: “Still Dead. Thanks for checking.” Tucker snorted before he devolved into cackles. “Dude, that’s great!”

Danny grinned even wider. “Right? I thought it was too funny.”

“No, it’s stupid,” Sam argued, and her harsh attitude completely ruined the mood. “Danny, the less people associate you with death, the better.”

“Oh come on Sam, if they haven’t figured out that Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton are the same person by now when they have the exact same hairstyle, then a sticker is not going to phase anyone,” Tucker argued, ever in defense of his friend.

“Exactly!” Danny seconded.

“Or it’s exactly the last piece that helps people make that connection because there’s already so little separating you!” Sam exclaimed, though she did try to keep her voice down so no one else would overhear.

“Or maybe they’ll just think I’m a moody Gen Z kid that says this kind of dramatic stuff all the time. Which is why you should have let me keep that shirt.” He still thought that “Dead Inside” shirt was ironic and iconic, but Sam conveniently spilled black ink from her fancy new quill set  on it and refused to give it back for this very same reason.

“Yeah, he could just make it his brand,” Tucker agreed. The two of them always seemed to be on the same page.

Sam reached out like she was about to rip the sticker off his phone, but decided against it and shook her head. “Fine. You want to keep the sticker on your phone? Fine, but don’t cry to me when people start putting the pieces together,” she huffed.

“Well since that’s not gonna happen, you’re gonna be waiting a long time,” Danny grinned. He struck an overly exaggerated victory pose with his neck cocked slightly to the side while he tilted his chin up to the sky. 

Sam jerked back as the color drained from her face. “Danny what the—“ she cried out, so loudly and so suddenly that it caught the attention of other people in the lunchroom. 

Danny immediately looked behind him, assuming that whatever caused Sam’s sudden reaction had to be behind him. His need to protect his friends from whatever threat caused such a startled response rose up and hammered in his throat as his mind spun with the possible horrors he would see behind him. 

But he saw…nothing. Well, not nothing. He saw other students eating their lunches at other tables throughout the room. Students drifted in and out of the cafeteria as they finished their lunches. No ghost. No threat. Nothing that should cause Sam to turn as white as she did.

He turned back to face Sam, concern etched deep into his brow as he studied her face. “Sam? What’s wrong?” he asked in quiet urgency. If she truly saw some danger that he couldn’t, then he needed to know.

Sam studied Danny for a long moment, far too long for Danny’s liking. She wasn’t looking past him, she was looking at…him. “...Nothing. Nothing. It’s nothing. I think I’m just seeing things. I thought I saw…nevermind. It’s nothing,” she assured them. 

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because something freaked you out.”

She shook her head and plastered a forced smile on her face. “Yeah, I’m sure. Too little sleep and too much caffeine has just got me jumpy. I’m fine, really. Besides, we need to act like we’re having a normal conversation: too many people are watching.”

“Well yeah, you practically jumped out of your seat,” Danny pointed out. 

She narrowed her eyes and gave him a half smile before she reached across the table and grabbed his abandoned phone. “It did let me get your phone though.”

“Wait hey!” Danny protested as he reached across the table to recover his phone from her clutches, but she deftly moved around his grasping hands. 

“Now let’s see about that sticker,” she teased. Danny immediately doubled his efforts to retrieve his phone. Not being able to rely on ghost powers made it a little more difficult than it should have been to win it back (was he maybe relying on those too much? That felt like too much of a Jazz question for him to think about it too long), but he did save the phone and his ironic sticker. He was so preoccupied saving his sticker that he didn’t notice that Tucker had gone quiet and regarded Sam with a very significant and curious stare.

Lunch wrapped up shortly after the scuffle over the phone, and the three of them rushed off to their lockers and then off to class. Just outside the door to the classroom, Tucker held a hand out to stop Sam and waited for Danny to get a few feet inside before he spoke up in a whisper.

“Did you see the skull?”

Sam blinked and her face grew pale again, just like it had in the lunchroom. “The what?” she asked with a slightly shaky voice.

“The skull? Over Danny’s face?”

“What? Yes! Yes I thought I was going insane!” she exclaimed, though still in a whisper to not catch any more attention. The briefest moment of relief washed over her, but it immediately washed away into even more worry.

“No, I saw it this morning,” Tucker admitted. “Thought it was just some trick of the light or something. It was there one moment and then–”

“--Gone the next,” Sam finished. “And when I saw it I just felt…off. Like this moment of dread. Like I was–”

“--Looking at something I shouldn’t have seen,” Tucker validated as he nodded his head. “Yeah, same here. It was a weird feeling to have looking at my best friend.”

“What does it mean?”

“No idea,” Tucker sighed as he looked towards Danny pouring over his textbook in the hope that he’d be able to at least pretend that he did the reading before class. “But knowing Danny, it’s probably nothing good.”

Danny noticed odd glances from his friends a few more times that day. He worried maybe he had something on his face, but then again Sam would have said something. Tucker would have stayed quiet to have a good laugh about it later, but he’d have clued him into the joke by now. Maybe he was doing something ghostly without knowing it? But if that was the case they would have definitely let him know. In the end, he chalked it up to his friends being weird and went about his strangely quiet day.

There weren’t any ghost attacks. He couldn’t remember the last time he went through a school day without being interrupted by ghosts. It felt…nice, but unnerving at the same time, like he missed something. Like he was supposed to clue into something happening in the Ghost Zone. But in the end he decided not to worry about that either, especially once school ended and he could just hang out with his best friends ghost free.

By the time they hit up the game store (Tucker was still trying to get them into tabletop games) and the record store (Sam wanted to browse the LPs), Danny had forgotten all about his previous warnings…until he hit the Boba shop. Second up to bat, he placed his order with the barista, a smiling young woman who wore fun earrings that looked like watermelon slices. He paid for his drink and left a decent tip, but when he looked back up from the pin pad, her haunted expression caught him by surprise.

No longer kind and smiling, her unfocused gaze stared beyond him with eyes opened so wide her eyelids disappeared. Her pale, gaunt face looked hollow and lifeless. Her mouth fell open unnaturally.

“Fifty-seven years, one hundred and thirteen days, seven hours.”

Her flat, emotionless voice echoed within the sudden silence of the rest of the room. Chills shot along his body as the hair on his arms stood on end. His gut twisted uncomfortably as the presence of something…wrong and haunting fell over him. The silence of the world pressed in around him and left him only with that eerie voice thrumming though the void.

“What?” he finally stammered out.

“Do you want a receipt?” she repeated in her normal voice. Suddenly the whole world came back around him. The noise and the commotion of the busy Boba shop almost felt overwhelming after the sheer absolute silence.

“Oh uh…no,” he answered lamely.

“He’s good,” Sam spoke up quickly from behind. She pushed him to the side and took over the situation, but concern etched deep lines into her forehead. “But I’ll have a…”

What Sam ordered was lost on him as Tucker pulled him over to the drink pick-up counter. “Dude, what happened?” he asked in an urgent whisper. “You just froze.”

“I don’t…I don’t know. I heard something totally different…” The eerie tone of her voice, the chill that shot like livewire up his spine (like the accident, but he really didn’t want to think about that), it all stuck with him and wouldn’t leave him. His memory was absolute trash at the best of times, but he could still remember every number she quoted to him like it had been etched into his very core.

“What did you hear?” Tucker asked as Sam joined them. Those concerned lines across her brow still made him feel like something more was going on here, because Sam usually only worried when there was actually something to worry about.

“Just…some numbers, like years and months,” he shrugged, trying to pass it off as normal, even if it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Like a countdown?” Sam pressed.

Danny’s eyes grew wide. Exactly like a countdown. Down to the hour.

He didn’t need to say anything for Sam to know she was on to something. “So what was she counting down to?”

“You think I know?” Danny rebuffed as he pointed at himself. “But you guys heard it right? How…creepy she sounded? How hollow?”

“No, we didn’t man,” Tucker responded, strangely serious. “We heard her ask if you wanted a receipt and then you just froze.”

He looked between both of his friends, hoping for some kind of alternate answer or for someone to say they were pulling his leg, but they weren’t. “So you…you didn’t hear it?” he implored, desperate for someone to agree with him.

“No Danny, we didn’t,” Sam confirmed. “But Danny, we need to–”

“Pomegranate boba,” another barista announced. Danny automatically turned towards her, only to see the same lifeless stare directed his way.

“Twenty years, two hundred and twelve days, two hours.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes as the pressure of the void threatened to swallow him again, but then like before, everything opened up and the noise of the world rushed back to him.

“Danny?” Sam fretted as she stepped closer to him. 

He opened his eyes and looked out on the brightly lit boba shop. “Sorry I…it happened again,” he admitted.

Tucker and Sam exchanged significant glances behind Danny’s back before making an executive decision. Tucker grabbed their drink orders while Sam gently placed a hand on Danny’s back. “I think we should get out of here,” Sam suggested.

Danny could see the sense in that. The last thing they needed was to make a scene, and he could feel the eyes of both the people behind the counter and the ones standing in line. Best to beat a hasty retreat and figure this out somewhere a little quieter.

He scooted around the line of customers, hoping he could make a quiet exit. He caught the gaze of a young boy in line, but he only saw the vacant stare on his young face.

“Eighty three years, three hundred and two days, eleven hours.”

Danny spun quickly away from the boy and placed his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help as he locked eyes with a college student at a table who happened to look up from her laptop.

“Three years, thirty days, seven hours.”

And then the gaze of a well-dressed woman striding through the door.

“Forty years, eighty-eight days, nineteen hours.”

And the older man sitting with his grandchildren at a table.

“Ten years, one hundred and fifty days, three hours.”

Macabre countdowns from various shop patrons echoed around him. Anyone who met his gaze morphed their faces into the gaunt masks and intoned their countdown in that same hollow voice.

“Stop! Stop!” Danny cried as he curled in on himself. Tucker and Sam immediately pushed him through the doors and outside of the shop full of curious onlookers, but if they thought ushering him outside of the shop would be better, they were terribly wrong as Danny confronted more people on the street. The constant chorus of lifeless laments descended upon him in a deafening whirlwind.

“Ninety-eight days, twenty hours.”

“Sixty-eight years, two days, one hour.”

“Seventeen years, two hundred and ninety days, eight hours.”

Until they finally culminated in a chilling “Thirteen seconds.”

A morbid curiosity came over him as his gaze lingered on the older man who intoned the foreboding knell, just before the man clutched at his chest and dropped to the ground. Everyone around him rushed to his side and barked out orders to call an ambulance, but Danny knew deep, deep down in his core that it wouldn’t do any good. 

The man was dead. 

Dead, exactly thirteen seconds later.

Realizing this area was about to get a lot more attention, Tucker and Sam pushed Danny into a nearby alley and shrouded him from view. “Danny what the hell is happening?” Sam practically yelled.

Danny dropped to the ground as he clutched at his core that ached with the pain of what he just witnessed, and the horror of what he’d come to realize. He didn’t want to admit it to himself or to the world as a whole, but he had a horrifying feeling he knew what the times meant.

They were a countdown to death.

“I don’t…I don’t know why, but people keep telling me how long…how long they have…left,” Danny squeaked out between shallow breaths. The world swam around him and he clenched his jaw to try not to be sick.

“Left to what?” Tucker asked.

“To live you idiot!” Sam chastised. “Danny, are you sure?”

“What else could it be?” he exclaimed as he gripped at the hair on the sides of his head. “Someone said thirteen seconds, and then thirteen seconds later he…he…” His breath quickened in his chest. His heart thrummed too fast against his ribs. Sweat beaded on his brow as he shivered. This…this was a panic attack. Oh god, he was having a panic attack. But could anyone really blame him? He heard a man was going to die and just…just…watched it happen and couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t do anything!

“Danny…Danny just look at me,” Sam pressed delicately as she knelt next to him and placed a gentle hand on his arm.

His eyes reached her chin before he remembered - as soon as he met someone’s gaze, even from afar, they told him how long they had. He couldn’t know that about his best friend. He couldn’t. What if it was a small number? What would he even consider to be a small number? Would any number ever be large enough?

He slapped her away in a panic and retreated into himself as he buried his head into his arms. “No!” he screamed. “No, any time I look at someone they tell me how much time they have left and I can’t…I don’t want to know that. I can’t know that!” he practically screeched.

Sam and Tucker exchanged worried but uncertain looks. They’d dealt with a lot since the accident, but this was certainly a new complication where their very presence seemed to add more stress. 

“Okay Danny, okay. We don’t know if that’s what’s happening.” She paused as she felt him tense beside her. “But if you think that’s what’s happening, then we won’t look at you.”

Danny grabbed his hair tight in his hands as he shook in a huddle on the floor. How was he going to do this? Never look at anyone he ever cared about again? Make sure they never looked at him? What kind of life would that be? He couldn’t live like that, with that paranoia that some day one of them would mess up and they’d meet his gaze and then he would know how much longer he had left to spend with them. His breathing quickened again as he found himself spiraling further down into his panic, down into a depth of foreboding terror that he didn’t know if he could climb out of again.

“Okay but Danny, even if you aren’t looking at anyone, I need you to breathe okay?” Sam pleaded. “Just breathe with me. In and out slowly. In and out.”

He did as he was told because he didn’t really have it in him to argue. In and out, in and out. He took deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth like Jazz taught him. It probably didn’t help that he was still curled up in a ball and didn’t have great air circulation, but he didn’t dare uncurl.

“Okay, good,” Sam praised as she finished sending an urgent text. “Now let’s figure out what’s going on, because we will figure it out.”

“You mean figure out why I can tell when people are going to die?” Danny snapped.

“Yes,” Sam replied, voice calm despite Danny’s barbed tone. 

“...I don’t know if this is the right time, but there probably isn’t a right time so I’m just gonna say it,” Tucker sighed. “Danny, we noticed something weird earlier. It would only happen for a second, but it was like your face was covered by…like a translucent skull.”

Danny looked up but immediately thought better of it and ducked his head back down again. “A what?!”

“A skull. We didn’t know what it meant at the time–”

“We still don’t know what it means,” Sam added.

“--but it has to be related,” Tucker finished.

“This has to be more than a new ghost power,” Sam brainstormed. “This feels like something more significant.”

“More significant? What the hell does that mean?” Danny rebuked. He knew they were just trying to help, but honestly without an answer it was just making him feel more anxious and overwhelmed. He didn’t know if he could handle something more significant than being a half-dead, ghost-fighting freak.

“We don’t know,” Sam said, controlled and patient. “But we’ll figure this out Danny, we promise, just like we’ve figured out everything else.”

Everything else. Because there was always something. There was always some other side effect of the accident that all of them had to keep dealing with. Ghost powers, ghost fighting, his parents, new powers, a secret identity, ice powers, and now this. When was he done? When would he finally stop having more and more piled on top of his already overflowing mind? How much was a teenager expected to shoulder before he finally just buckled under the crushing weight of it all?

Apparently it would be one more thing.

He gasped as the cold breath escaped from his throat. He deflated a bit into his self hug. He knew the quiet afternoon was too good to be true. He knew it.

“Danny, you don’t have to go,” Sam mentioned, almost pleading.

“You know I have to,” he sighed with hollow defeat.

“No, you don’t. Let your parents get it, or Valerie. It doesn’t have to be you right now,” she begged.

“They never handle it well,” Danny argued as he stood but kept his gaze on the floor.

Sam shook her head, prepared to put her foot down. “But Danny, you literally just stopped having a panic attack, do you think now is the right time to do this? Maybe you just need to think about yourself for a bit!”

“When do I ever get to think about myself?” he barbed as he transformed. “Besides, a ghost can’t tell me how long they have to live, right? Sounds like I’m safer with one of them.”

Before they could argue with him he shot off into the sky, leaving a cloud of dread behind him. Tucker and Sam exchanged meaningful glances. 

“Follow him?” Tucker checked.

“Absolutely follow him.”

~*~

As yet another ectoblast grazed Danny’s side, he realized Tucker and Sam had maybe been right about letting someone else handle this. His head was not in the game. He couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that swirled around him and it made the fight against the ghostly crow that much harder to focus on. His newfound popularity also proved to be a complication as it led to more onlookers watching the fight. He couldn’t help but meet the eyes of people in the crowd, and every time he listened to their own voices toll their own death knell, he found himself wide open to a hit from the annoying ghost that honestly wouldn’t have been that much of a challenge otherwise. 

"Three hundred and twenty-one days, thirteen hours.”

He squeezed his eyes tight as he tried not to internalize how little time the concerned woman who looked his way had left, but closing his eyes during a fight was never a good idea.

“Danny!” he heard Sam yell, her voice distant but urgent.

He opened his eyes and saw the crow barreling in to charge with glowing talons ready to claw out his eyes. He immediately acted on instinct and threw out his hands to maybe summon a shield or take the talons to his arms or something.

He felt something cold and heavy fall into his hands, and he swung it without even looking at it too closely. A thin line of green slashed across the ghost and then it vanished. His overzealous slash continued through the brick of a nearby building that weathered and aged as decay seeped out from the fine line in the brick. When the arc of his swing stopped, he finally looked at what he held in his hands.

A scythe. Long and slender, the curved blade made a full crescent as it tapered into a neat, sharp point. The edge of the blade glowed with a faint green light, but it almost hurt to register: like its presence cut through the very existence of what his mind could accept as real. It looked so simple in his arms, and yet it felt dangerous. Deadly.

He stared dumbfounded at the blade in his hands. It felt heavy in his arms, but not because of its actual weight. It actually felt too easy and natural to swing. His fingers gripped around the shaft like he was meant to hold it. It felt so right and natural in his arms, and that scared him even more.

He immediately dropped it, but instead of hearing it clatter to the ground, it vanished into shadows as the absolute black swallowed it.

With panic etched all over his face, he looked desperately towards Sam’s voice, but only after he remembered that he didn’t dare look towards his friends. He dropped his gaze, but they understood his intent and rushed over to him.

“Danny, Danny are you okay?” Sam asked as she grabbed her friend’s arm.

“No…no I don’t think so,” he admitted. As hard as it felt to admit, he wasn’t well. He had no idea what the hell was happening, but he just knew none of this could be good. A sense of dread lingered around him that he couldn’t shake. A whisper of an answer tickled at the edges of his mind, but it was so cloaked in fear and terror that he didn’t dare even acknowledge its presence.

Sam nodded morosely and squeezed his arm. “That’s okay. We’ve got this Danny. C��mon, let’s get to my house. I think I know what’s going on.”

~*~

Danny sat in his favorite chair in the Manson library. Most of the room felt like something out of a middle-aged woman’s Pinterest page: a million shades of beige accented by a few plants or vines. Some books even had their spines facing the wall because their binding was too colorful. Sam managed to carve out a corner for herself. She separated this corner out with deep red curtains and inside its sanctuary she kept all her books (spines proudly out, thank you very much) on black shelves. Gothic sconces of wrought iron glowed with just enough mood lighting to read by and plush wine red chairs provided the perfect getaway to crawl into with a book. 

One of those chairs sucked him up inside its cushions and he let the weight of the fabric surround him. Sitting here with the dark mood lighting while Sam read aloud some new book or poem always felt like a comfortable space. Maybe Sam hoped the familiarity would bring some comfort to him right now, but even its power couldn’t counteract the horrible twisting in the pit of his stomach.

His friends swore they wouldn’t look at his face and would focus on his chest instead, but he still didn’t feel comfortable looking anywhere but at his wringing hands in his lap, just in case. He’d heard about too much death already today: too many times that seemed far too short for the nice faces that seemed burned into his mind. He had no idea who these people were and probably would never see them again, but he would forever remember their faces and would never be free of the knowledge of their death.

Would it be quick? Slow? Painful? Could he stop it? Could he save them? If he remembered their faces could he hunt them down and try to save them? Maybe not the ones in decades, but the ones who would be dying in the next few months? Could he help them so they didn’t end up like the old man on the street who died before his eyes while he was powerless to stop it?

The thump of a large book on a table shook him out of his thoughts as Sam stood near the small round table. “You’re not gonna like this, but I think I found the answer.”

That certainly caught his attention and he looked towards the book. Whether he’d like the answer or not, he needed to know. The heavy old tome looked like every Victorian book that Sam loved to collect, with a dark binding, embossed edges, and thick block lettering for the title.

The Tome of Record for the Myths and Legends of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

No. 

No, that couldn’t be the right book. That was not the answer.

He shook his head and backed up in his chair as far away from the book as he could physically get. “No. That’s not the right book.”

Sam approached both Danny and the book gently, like any sudden movement would spook him. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I know I’m right about this.”

Tucker leaned in from his chair and his eyes grew wide. “Wait, apocalypse? Sam you’re serious?”

“No, she’s not serious because she’s wrong!” Danny insisted.

Sam slowly opened the book and turned to a page marked with a dark black ribbon. “Just look at it Danny. It explains a lot.”

Against his better judgment he peeked at the new chapter: “The Fourth Horseman: Death.” He didn’t let himself read any more, but the haunting image of a black-cloaked figure atop a skeletal horse with a skull for a face and a very familiar looking scythe froze him in his seat.

The death knells. The skull. The scythe. 

No, just because it made sense, that didn’t mean anything. Lots of things in this world made sense without actually being right, and this was just another one of those things. It didn’t mean that he– He couldn’t possibly be–

Tucker trailed a finger along the text of the book as he read, his mouth and eyes falling agape. “Wait Sam are you…are you trying to say that Danny is…Death? Like the Death?”

He felt an irrational anger towards Tucker for putting into physical words what his mind refused to acknowledge. Because it was crazy…right? Some crazy, wacky theory. This couldn’t be reality, it just…it couldn’t be.

Sam nodded solemnly. “I am. I don’t know why, but Danny has somehow become the personification of Death.”

For some reason the finality in Sam’s voice forced him to really hear it. As much as he wanted to deny it, the nagging whisper always there on the periphery of his mind had been trying to tell him the whole time. He knew it from the first countdown, but refused to see it. He knew what the symbolism of the scythe meant, but he refused to connect it. And he knew that all of these pieces only added up to one possible explanation. Just like Sam, he’d already reached the same conclusion, but he just refused to see it. He couldn’t avoid it anymore.

He was Death.

He needed to get away from the book, the picture, the proof. He didn’t want to see it anymore. He fell through the chair, momentarily grateful to have some kind of physical barrier between him and the book, but the piercing, empty eyes of the skull on the page followed him even through the chair. He scrambled back along the floor until he hit the bookcase behind him. 

“No no no I don’t want this! I don’t want this!” he screamed in ever increasing levels of panic. He looked at his shaking hands, almost expecting to see bony hands stretching out instead of his normal skin. He grabbed at his face, his arms, anything to make sure that he hadn’t turned into some skeleton. “I can’t–I don’t want to be Death!”

Sam and Tucker rushed over to his side and pulled his trembling body into a hug. They tried to bestow him with whatever comfort they could, but they knew it wouldn’t be enough. Just like they did when Danny first emerged from the portal, they were at a loss for what they could do and they just tried to be a physical support for him.

Danny grabbed onto his friends desperately as he shook in their arms. He didn’t know how much he needed their reassuring strength and strong hug until he found himself in their arms. Maybe he relied on them too much for emotional stability, but something about their presence served as a grounding force for him and he needed that now more than ever.

“We’ll figure it out Danny,” Sam tried to assure him. “We always do.”

They did always figure it out. The accident, the ghost powers, the ghost fighting, the secret identity, Pariah Dark, Vlad, his horrifying potential future - they’d found a way to make it through everything that his strange life had thrown at him. It stood to reason they could make it through this too, but for some reason this seemed so much more imposing than all those other obstacles.

The personification of death. What did that even mean? Did he have to reap souls? Was he actually the one responsible for killing people? Was he now to blame for everyone’s deaths? Did he have to help people cross over or find peace or meaning in their lives? Could he still live his normal human life? He’d already been neglecting it so much because of ghost fighting, but would this completely eclipse everything else? It felt like such a huge burden to throw onto his already overburdened shoulders, and he didn’t know if he had the strength to keep it all up.

But even more than a burden, being Death pushed him even closer to the dark stench of death that always seemed to swirl around him. He already straddled a very fine line between life and death, and while he didn’t always know where he found himself on either side of it, he cherished the balance. He liked being reminded that he was still alive. He died, and he was a ghost, but he was so much more than that too. His heart beat, he kept growing - he still had a life. He needed those reminders to stay sane. But being Death…it pushed him so much further towards that darker side. It disrupted that balance that he held onto so desperately. Those reminders of life seemed so much further away, like they could be snatched away from him at any moment, and he didn’t want to think where that constant focus on death and loss would take him.

He couldn’t keep dwelling on this. He was a boy of action, and he never did well just thinking through things. Maybe that helped Jazz, but he needed to do something. Figure this out, get rid of it, something. So he pulled away from the hug slightly, enough of a signal for his friends to release the warm group hug. He missed that comfort immediately, but he couldn’t stay huddled up against the bookshelf forever.

“How did this happen?” he croaked. Trying to find a reason meant that he had to accept it as the truth, and that hurt, but he’d already accepted it. Now he just had to get rid of it.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But Danny, we have a much more pressing issue than how.”

“More pressing than this?” Danny questioned, almost hurt that his internal turmoil and need to solve this wasn’t considered a pressing issue.

“Yeah, because it gets worse.”

Panic clenched around his heart again. How could it possibly get worse? This already seemed like a destitute situation with no possible solution on the horizon.

“Worse than Danny having death powers?” Tucker inquired. Well at least Tucker was on the same wavelength.

She nodded morosely. She took a deep breath, but as she slowly breathed out she straightened up, her brow resolute. “The summoning of the fourth horseman…it’s the final sign. The apocalypse is coming, and Danny’s going to be forced to make it happen.”

~*~

I hope you all enjoyed this! It's a little late of a submission for Ectober's Day 17 Gothic Horror prompt, but apparently world-building a multi-chapter longfic took a lot longer than I expected. But I'm excited to share some of my lore behind this ghostly version of the four horsemen over the next two chapters!

[hugrsstuff]

[meta28050]

Ectober day 4 : Escape of Salmhofer the Witch

[noodlesstarghost]

3° day- Meteorology

This would be the third one, it's not really one of my favorites but it's hot as hell in here and it's just a sketch so I'm satisfied, @ectoberhaunt

[jupiterlandings]

Ectober Day 13:

Isekai: Old Hero, New World

[suretkerim]

ectober day 10 - creepy/wet

[murphy-kitt]

Ectoberhaunt Day 1 - Past

Word Count: 1822

AO3

When Jack and Maddie unexpectedly request Alicia take in Danny, she can’t help but worry that there are deeper problems at hand.

Tags: Angst, Slight Injury

—

It was an intervention, they had said. Some time away for him to deal with what had happened. The quiet din of the farm would be better for Danny than the constant clamour of Amity Park.

What has happened, Alicia still doesn’t know.

She sits at the kitchen table, the dogs circling around her feet. It’s only ever been her, Jip and Alec for a while now, at least since her last divorce.

And now Danny should be arriving soon. Of course, she loves her niece and nephew, even if it has been sometime since she’s seen them. The boy, she thinks, was obsessed with space. The girl, intuitive and a bit too in tune with the human psyche.

Alicia sips her coffee, pondering over what could be so bad it forced Maddie to take such a drastic decision. Amity Park and Spittoon aren’t exactly a stones throw away from one another.

There had been an accident of sorts, she remembers. Something to do with that ridiculous laboratory. An electric shock, was it?

But that was nearly a year ago. And Maddie hadn’t sounded half as concerned on the phone about that incident than the current predicament.

Then, she’s taken out of her thoughts by Jip whining, a high pitch that makes her ears ring.

‘Shush, you.’ Alicia scolds, chair scraping the tiled floor as she gets up. The collie dog paces to the door, the sputtering of an engine dying outside.

They’re here. Alicia’s not sure what to expect as she grabs the door handle, yanking it down with extra strength. She’s been too busy to fix that—but now it’ll be backlogged even more with Danny’s arrival.

It’s hard to miss the large tank currently imposing over her tiny house, gadgets arraying green and silver on the roof that she has no clue of.

“Alicia!” That’s the sound of one Jack Fenton leaping out the side of the..thing. Alicia doesn’t miss the clear bags under his eyes, the strain to his voice.

“Do I have to be here?” A sarcastic tone.

Danny is tiny. Alicia nearly topples over in shock, her hand finding the doorframe and feet cementing to the porch stairs. Jip whines, perceptive to the change.

Last time she saw him, a good few years, her nephew had been chatty and incessant about space. He’d always been small, a given since he was born six weeks premature. But this..it’s different.

He’s sickly. Frail. There’s a gauntness to his cheeks, a sharp edge where he was once rounded out with baby fat. His limbs are toothpicks, white needles marred with blemishes and blotches. A bandage twines around Danny’s left arm, clinging on as if it’s holding him together.

His clothes are filthy, torn and stained with green. She remembers Maddie mentioning...ectoplasm, perhaps? But after the accident, she thought Danny would have avoided the lab. At least that’s where she assumes it came from.

“Come in.” Alicia barely stutters through, shoving the door open. “Maddie not with you?”

“No.” Jack's demeanour instantly darkens. He turns to Danny, “I’ll get your things out the car, son. You go in.”

“Fine.” Danny folds his arms, scowling.

Great. Seemingly Danny’s sarcastic phase has set in, just another thing to deal with during this enigmatic stay. How long he’s staying for, Alicia doesn’t actually know. The weekend? Weeks? The whole summer?

They both enter the house, Danny begrudgingly following behind her like a lost puppy. As does Jack, two small duffel bags in his hands.

“Right son, I’ll leave you to it then?” Jack says, moving forward towards Danny, arms outstretched.

“Yeah, dad.” Danny takes a step back, hands in his pockets. Jack falters, the smile disappearing from his face.

“Oh—sorry, Danny. Your arm. I’ll—“

And with that, Jack vacates her small cabin, leaving only her and Danny standing around the table. He’s hunched over, like he’s being scrutinised. Or would rather be anywhere else.

What the hell happened?

—

“You’re in on it, aren’t you?” Is the first thing Danny says to her the next morning.

“What?” Is the only way she can respond as she pours milk into her cereal. Danny regards her, his glare icy.

She’d barely slept last night, ruminating over what could’ve happened. A fall out between Danny and his parents? Had he broken something in the lab, gotten injured?

“Why else would Mom and Dad send me here?” Danny folds his arms, looking down into his bowl of uneaten cereal.

“I don’t know. They thought you needed a break? They’re concerned about you.” An honest answer.

“They haven’t been concerned about me. Care more about the ghosts.” He shoves his chin into his hands, voice muffled so Alicia can barely hear.

She won’t deny Jack and Maddie are…absent as best. But she knows they do care deeply about Danny.

“Is this what it’s about? They’re focused more on their work than caring for you and Jazz?” Alicia asks, feeling the dread pool in her stomach. “Something happened to you and you wished they’d notice?”

Suddenly, the kitchen drops a few degrees.

Although the fire is blasting in the next room over, Jip curled beside, the hairs prick on Alicia’s neck. Tension curdles in her stomach as she watches Danny tense his fists into his hair. Toothpick arms, trembling.

He’s not the same as he was a few years ago. Sure, teenagers are meant to grow, become snappy, but this isn’t sarcasm or wit.

It’s fear.

“Danny,” she reaches forward, despite the trembling in her hands.

His eyes snap up. Icy. Once kind, sweet. Now filled with terror.

“Nothing—nothing happened to me!” He stammers out.

Which means something did.

“I don’t. It wasn’t meant to come out like this. Mom and Dad, they saw me, and I didn’t think. Not all of it, but they saw something. And now Mom won’t talk to me, and now they’re suspicious.”

“Suspicious?” Alicia hesitates. Danny has a secret of sorts? That he’s scared of Jack and Maddie knowing. That Maddie refuses to talk to him.

“It was this.” Danny gives her a fleeting look before gesturing to his shoulder, where the bloody bandage is still wrapped. On closer inspection she sees that there’s flecks of green in the bandage. Ectoplasm?

“You got into the lab? That ectoplasm stuff?”

“No, Aunt Alicia.I—I bleed it.”

What. Alicia’s ears ring as she shoves her chair back, the shrill noise echoing throughout the room. Rounding the table, she goes to Danny’s left.

“Can I?” She asks cautiously, gesturing to his arm.

The hesitance is clear in his posture, shoulders hunched by his ears, eyes wide, unblinking (were they always that blue?).

“You really don’t know, do you?” Danny mumbles, realisation seeping into his gaze. “They didn’t bring me here because they wanted you to get info.”

“You think they’d do that?” Alicia responds, trying to repress how appalled she is, both at his parents and his arm. The injury is far unlike anything she’s even seen, and living on a farm brings a range of afflictions.

Green bruises mottle most of the skin, from dark to lighter patches. It’s a burn of sorts, a mixture of green and red like a dated Christmas store.

“How’d you get this?” Alicia asks, as Danny tenses uncomfortably.

“Does it matter?” he deflects. “I’ve been like this for ages now.”

Ah. The green blood. Bleeding ectoplasm. What was a while back?

“Was it..was it your lab accident?” Alicia tenses. Now that she thinks, she can remember the phone call from Maddie, excitedly telling her about their ‘portal’, their life’s work. And then an extra tidbit about Danny having an electric shock, but that he was okay and seemed fine.

What if it had been worse, and Danny hadn’t told his parents?

“What if it was? What if it..changed me?”

”Look, kid. Trauma from that accident doesn’t mean you’ve changed, you’re still the sa—“

”It’s not like that, okay?! Sure, with the amount of psychoanalysis Jazz does on me, we know the accident traumatised me. But it’s not that.” Danny interrupts, twisting on his chair to face her.

Alicia pauses. Lets herself take a step back from Danny and sit back down, breakfast forgotten.

It’s clear this is serious. Alicia hates to think of the implications. Danny was in an accident much more serious than first thought. And not only he his hid it from his parents in fear of them finding out whatever it’s done, but they’ve never noticed.

How long ago was that accident? A year? And her sister and Jack had never noticed anything wrong until whatever had injured Danny had come to their attention?

”Okay, kid. I get it.” She puts her hands up in a placating gesture. If the accident was seriously altering, then it’s not something she wants to go interrogating him about. “How’d you get your wound?”

“What?!” The switch of topic has Danny sputtering, looking down at his arm. He regards her with narrowed eyes. “Why’d you want to know?”

”So I can re-bandage it. Is it a burn?” She gets up from the chair, opening the drawer besides the sink. Suddenly, Jip and Alec burst through the kitchen door, tails wagging.

”It’s not treats, you silly pair!” The dogs curiously nudge at Alicia’s legs as she approaches back to Danny, bandages and burn cream at hand.

”Yeah, a burn. Ectogun.”

”An ectogun. Isn’t that your pa—?”

”Yup.” Danny licks his lips, looking away, as if he’s considering something. “They didn’t know it was me.”

What?

”They shot you?!” This time, there’s no hiding the horror in her voice. This has to be a mistake. An awful, horrible accident. Maddie and Jack wouldn’t shoot Danny deliberately, they couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Maybe they hadn’t seen him? Out ghost hunting and he’d got caught in the fray?

”Yeah…” Danny replies. “The accident, when I say it changed me..I look different?”

”What, you’re a ghost?” Alicia scoffs. Maybe it’s her mind trying to find reprieve in the absolute bombshell, to try and find humour.

Then she sees the trembling hands, the frozen posture. Temperature of the room dropped. Jip and Alec pacing, ears pinned back, needle-focused on Danny.

”You—y’know that one Mom goes on about?” Danny’s breath hitches, his eyes bleary, “The one she’s got a real hatred for, the one she wants to dissect?”

She can’t forget. Phantom. News channels have never reached Spittoon with ghost news, but there’s no need, since Maddie likes to update her.

How Phantom is evil, the terror of Amity Park. Yet how he’s different, somehow more complex and never sticks to a routine like the others—how she’d love to capture him.

’That ghost terrorises us, Lise. The day me and Jack capture it, imagine the breakthroughs we’d have. The research potential!”

Phantom, the ghost Maddie wants to experiment on.

Phantom, the ghost that is Danny.

Alicia feels sick.

[jhdanes]

ILLUSTRATION UPDATE! || Friday , 1. November || 2024 Ectober week 2024!

Happy Halloween! Ectober week day 7. @ectoberweekofficial The the dulier marjetice, a rare species of flora, sadly the only way they can grow, is by feasting on dead human tissue. Poor Danny didn’t know what he was getting himself into. #ectoberweek #ectober