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Danny sneezed. He didn't know why; it was mid-spring. So, must it be allergies? But was it, though? He shrugged it off. He was glad to be enjoying his time with Sam and Tuck. Ghost sightings had been at an all-time low. Zero. Even the lower ghostly fauna, like blobs and spites, have been strangely absent. He knows he should be worried, but it's honestly pretty nice. This afternoon was in the low seventies. He kicked a rock down the road. He, Sam and Tucker were on the way from the local bowling alley.
Danny tuned back into their light-hearted conversation. His friends were laughing at a joke he’d missed. But he chuckled as well, not wanting to be left out. Sam smiled.
“I don’t get it, Danny. How is your aim with a bowling ball soo baaad.” Tuck teased. He scoffed, but Tucker continued, “I mean, you have perfectly good aim as Phantom. How does a bowling ball change things?” Danny kicked the rock with a little more force down the road. Danny shot Him an incredulous stare.
“You’re one to talk. Mister gutter balls. At least my rolls actually hit some pins.” Danny teased in turn. “And I have to pull my throws. It’s hard to gauge sometimes.” He grumbled under his breath. Tucker conceded, then turned to Sam, who was smirking at their exchange.
“Why are you so good at like every sport ever!” Tucker whined. Sam closed the distance. Sam laughed.
“You could be too, if you too if you didn’t have this aversion to touching grass.” Her tone was pretty condescending. Danny shoved his hands in his pockets.
He turned to them and cut in. “If you could be one of my rouge galleries for a day, who would it be and why?” Danny had succeeded because his friends’ argument ceased as they both contemplated.
“Technus, the way can manipulate tech is sick. It’s honestly wasted on him, with how he uses flawed software. His hardware is top-notch.” Tuck pumps his arm for emphasis.
“Hey, how do you think Technus could actually build or design hardware without possessing some base machine first? Like building something from scratch?” Danny thinks he’s only seen the tech ghost possess and modify. Was it just an innate thing? Or actual understanding?
Danny’s thoughts were cut off when he was hit with a strong sense of wrongness. He felt phantom hands brush along his limbs. Someone was touching him.
His tether.
They were moving him.
Defiling him.
Sam grabbed Danny’s shoulder. He barely felt it. His breaths were coming in greedy gulps now.
“Danny, what’s wrong?”
“So- Some-one’s found it. I need- ” Danny trailed off in heavy gasps. He broke out of Sam’s grasp. Danny stumbled down the sidewalk a few paces. Then he remember it he could shift.
He did, and God, it was soo much worse. Everywhere! It was fucking everywhere! He could feel it with his whole being. Their fucking hands! They were rubbing something all over him. It was also appearing on his skin, red and sticky.
It fucking burned!
He shot off in the direction his core was urging him to go with increasing franticness.
Earlier that day at Fenton Works.
Maddie was finishing folding and putting away clothes. She and Jack’s latest efforts to keep ghosts out of Amity had been working. They had been planting Sanguinem Germinabunt, more commonly knowns as Blood Blossoms. More so around their house because it housed the portal, and other places the ghosts most frequented.
Maddie wasn’t stupid she knew their anti-ecto blast doors weren’t perfect. No matter what changes they made, ghosts always slipped through. Though the blossoms seem to be the most effective method so far. They had seen neither hides nor hairs of any ghost, especially that dratted Phantom.
She put more socks in his drawer. Danny had been short of breath and sneezing quite a lot. She should book an appointment. That’s when she saw a small composition notebook, well worn. It looked like a diary of sorts. Curious, flipped it open. She immediately felt guilty and closed it again. But, this might give her a glimpse at what’s been wrong with Danny.
They’d been so close. It was only about 18 months that the changes presented themselves. No, she needed to do this! She flipped it open.
And started reading.
Maddie sat on the edge of her late son’s bed, shell-shocked.
That’s how her husband, Jack found her. He asked what’s her what was the matter, and she wordlessly handed him the notebook. He took it from her and began reading. He sat down next to her.
A tear rolled down Jack’s cheek. He hugged Maddie for comfort. Maddie broke down and cried in his shoulder.
They sat like that for a while. The silence was thick in the air.
Jack gently uncoupled from Maddie. He stood up. “Madds, we gotta make this right.” Maddie looked up at him, her face completely desolate.
“Too little too late, Jack.” Maddie’s voice was strained with the effort of holding off more ugly sobs.
Jack left her to retrieve something from the storage room just down the hall. She guessed this based on the rustling.
Her husband soon returned with one of his ancestors, much like the one detailing blood blossom use and cultivation.
Jack quickly started flipping to an entry he obviously remembers from a prior reading.
How to set a ghost free. A permanent exorcism. They knew the rough location. Now they just need to prepare.
Maddie would give her boy a proper send-off.
“It should be right around here,” Maddie grunted as she hacked through the foliage. They had to abandon the GAV to continue on foot. This neck of the woods was too tight for it. Jack was carrying most of the supplies they’d need.
They finally got to the edge of a clearing. It was just like the journal description. There at the other end, was the large oak tree. At the base was a large patch of grave bloom hugging its shade. A flower that only grows near corpses as they emit ecto-radiation as the body breaks down.
It was still an abnormally large patch. More akin to a mass grave than the single one they know is there.
“Jack fluid, I think we found it.” Jack unhooked the canister of fluid and began dousing the patch. It was a concoction that leached ectoplasm from the grave blooms and the ground purifying the area. The delicate blooms quickly wilted and blackened.
That was the first step.
Once the ectoplasm had been thoroughly cleaned, it was time to start digging. It didn’t take long. Maddie saw the melted glove first. She chokes at the sight and backs up into who catches her as her knees give out.
“I guess I was holding out some hope. But seeing it now…” She breaks down in a fit of sobs again. Jack sets them both and gives Maddie a few minutes.
“Come on, we need to finish this.” He helps her up to her feet.
Soon they unearth the rest of him.
The body was very well preserved despite the damage from the cause of death. Most of the skin was charred black. There were green Lichtenberg figures all over the corpse, even after all this time, still positively radiating ecto energy, looking recent. It explained that large patch of grave blooms.
They set him down and prepare the paste. It was a special blood blossom mixture, highly flammable. They soon coated the body with the blood blossom paste. It was meant to weaken the ghost’s foothold over the corpse.
Now it was time for the final step.
That’s when they feel static and cold. Phantom arrived. Their son’s remnant. But he was wrong. His eyes were solid green. His skin and suit were fracturing. He was covered in the paste as well, a red vapour wafting off of him.
“What the fuck did you do to my body?!” The scream was layered with shifting, creaking, groaning, and shattering ice.
A tear rolled down Maddie’s cheek as she dropped the lit match.
Danny saw as the match landed on his corpse. He could do nothing as it ignited. It burned hot with a blue flame. He felt his outer shell fracture further before mimicking his body by erupting into a ghostly green fire.
He was too weak to fly, let alone walk, so he crawled. He needed… need to get… to get to his body.
He crawled at an agonizingly slow pace. He didn’t know why.
Danny couldn’t move. He had too little energy. Even just simply existing now was taxing.
Crack
He whimpered and keened it was all too much. His mom walked over and gather him up in her lap. He renewed weakened struggles trying to get away, back to his body. He needed… needed-
Dark started to encroach on the edges of his vision. He felt his mom cart her finger through his hair like when he was small. It was comforting. But there was something he needed to do, right? He thinks it was important. Why had he been so angry before?
He was scared, confused, and in so much pain. Why was Mom’s smile so soft? His Dad sat beside him, squeezing his hand.
The pain was fading. He was pretty sure that was probably a bad thing.
“It’s all right, Danny-boy. Now you can find peace now.” His Dad’s voice was unnaturally quiet, it carried a soft, somber quality to it.
“We’re so sorry we hadn’t noticed the extent of your suffering sooner.” Mom choked on the start of more sobs. “Oh God, we did this to you! Our invention did this!”
Dad wrapped his arm around Mom, holding her and Danny closer to himself. He didn’t understand. What was going on?
“But we’re making it right now.” Danny tried to ask what was happening, but his voice was too weak, and they couldn’t pick up what he said.
Mom shushed him, “It will be all over soon.” It clicked into place slower than he wanted, the thick brain fog nearly stopping his thoughts.
He was dying.
For real this time.
Crack
His vision faded, but he could still hear and feel his parents. This was not what he expected when they found out. At least this was a mostly peaceful end. He was not fading on an exam table. He saw no hatred in their eyes before his vision left him. They loved him. He smiled.
Crack
Another crack filled with love.
There was an odd tingling warmth that was comfy. But it was fading like the rest of his senses. Danny was really tired. Maybe, he’d take a nice nap. Yeah, one of those sounded nice.
Danny’s core soon couldn’t support the ectoplasmic matrix it was housed in. Danny was losing the feeling of his parents, but he knew they were still there. It started with his fingers and toes working up to his wrists and ankles. It accelerated once it passed his elbows and knees. Soon he was nothing but his core, tiny and fragile.
Then there was the final crack, and with it, the tether snapped.
The elder Fenton’s sat and held each other. They had done it. Their boy was now at peace. The clearing was mostly intact, sans the scorched and overturned soil.
Maddie had taken it upon herself to plant more blood blossoms to leach any remaining ectoplasm from the soil.
They gathered Danny’s ashes and the dust of his crystallized matrix, placing it in a nice urn they’d gotten on the way here. Black with silver etching. Simple and elegant. The two parents left the former grave site of their son with no fanfare.
They had to get their story straight. There were funeral arrangements to be set. Now Danny would get the funeral he deserved. No longer a tortured soul left to linger. He was at peace at least they could give him this final kindness.
He groans, he tried to hang on to the last dregs of unconsciousness. But it’s futile. He cracks one eye open. All he was met with were green swirls and floating purple doors.
Where was this? Who was he? He hyperventilated. What was his name?! He didn’t know own his name!
“Your name is Janus.” Janus? whirled around. There was a strange new blue-skinned ghost in purple hooded purple robes.
“That’s my name? I know you?” Janus (?) took a hesitant step toward the ghost. The ghost nodded.
“Yes, quite. I am Clockwork, Elder Spirit of time. And you, young Janus, are my charge, the current Spirit of Space. You and I will be working together for the foreseeable future.” They smiled warmly, and it was familiar. Janus approached Clockwork less apprehensive. Now that he had a name for both the ghost and for himself.
Janus felt it in his core, it told him the ghost was honest. This ghost was family, his parent.
He winced.
“Why does my core hurt so much?” Janus rubbed at his sternum.
Clockworks hummed, “A tether violently shredded, a core shattered. It left its mark, leaving you as you are now. Fractured, a blank slate.” Clockwork held out their hand. “You need rest, then you must train. Come.”
Janus frowned as Clockwork didn’t elaborate. He took Clockwork’s hand anyway. Janus felt something slot into place in his core.
His body shifted and changed, endless boneless limbs spouted and sinking. Heads countless with everchanging features rolled in and out of the galaxies dancing across his inky skin. Countless eyes blinked all around his form, swimming soothingly along the constantly altering maws along his skin.
Janus felt the loving ticks of his father ripple through his liquid from the contact.
He was beautiful, perfect.
Right.
He trusted and loved Clockwork with everything he was.
What came before didn’t matter. All that mattered was the path he and his father forged forward.