#ectober 2020

“Mooom, Daaad!” Danny shouted. His footsteps echoed through the lab as he descended.

“Jazz made dinner!” Danny skipped the last few steps and jumped onto the floor. He had to search for his parents for a moment, before finally finding them staring at an old CRT tv, which he recognized as the one that used to be in the living room.

“Guys?” He questioned. Danny’s voice echoed and shook. He didn’t know why he was suddenly so nervous. Hadn’t he just been looking forward to dinner?

“We know.” Said Mom. Or what should have been Mom, but when she turned around her face lent to anything but his mother. Danny wasn’t sure how he knew that, either. Her features were marred and ever-shifting. All he could make out was red. Danny couldn’t even see Dad’s face, too focused on the monster that seemed to be inching closer and closer.

Danny was frozen in fear. And yet he was unbearably hot at the same time. He tried to become intangible and sink through the floor, but nothing happened. His entire body felt like jello.

“We saw everything.” Said Dad. The tone was a whisper, almost like a threat. It was then that Danny’s gaze was torn from them, and back to the tv that was now forgotten on the table behind them. It was playing The Accident in a loop, and Danny was mesmerized by the sight of himself stumbling out of the portal. Smoke drifted from his limp body as he laid there on the lab floor. Except- where were Sam and Tucker?

Suddenly something collided with Danny’s back and he was thrown forward onto his feet. A net wrapped around his body, throwing him onto the ground. Immediately he felt a burning grid erupt all over his body. Danny shuddered in pain as he struggled against the net. But it held. The pain was only made worse when Dad hauled him into the air, and they both glared at him with their beady eyes.

“Scum.” They said in unison, glaring down at their sobbing child. How dare he pretend to be a hero.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny was gasping for air before he even realized he was awake. Before he could blink he was sitting up, grasping at the sheets as though they were about to strangle him. His heart was racing, every beat resounding through his skull. His core wasn’t silent, either, and frost crackled across Danny’s covers. It was a show of the pain that echoed through his body, tearing a whimper from his mutilated chest. It tore at Sam’s hasty stitches in his side but there was no stopping the tears as soon as they started to fall. The pain, so real and acute, was truly what brought him to consciousness.

‘Stupid Skulker, stupid ghosts, stupid parents.’ Danny thought. He tugged the icy blanket over his head, making the frost crack and break before sliding onto the floor. He hoped no one would hear him bawling his eyes out, he couldn’t handle trying to put on a facade right now. Just the thought made Danny cry harder. He hated that he was crying -heroes don’t cry- but at the same time, it was cathartic. Jazz always said that crying was a good thing.

Why did he have to live like this? Waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares of being torn apart. Of being destroyed by the very same people that slept down the hall. What’d he do to deserve it, what crime did he commit? Why couldn’t his subconscious mind understand that his parents loved him? That they wouldn’t hurt him, couldn’t hurt him. They loved him to pieces and would never truly bring him harm.

For a moment he’s weightless, lost in the feeling of falling. Then, his body jerks and he has just enough time to think, oh fuck—before he’s slammed to the ground hard.  His knees buckle under the unexpected weight and he goes down, clumsily, and trying not to throw up what little he’d managed to eat between homework packets.

“Ow,” Danny says.

He lies there, just for a moment, taking in the cool concrete underneath him. He tries to steady his breathing just enough so his mind can process what the hell just happened in the last thirty seconds. He’s still blinking stars from his eyes when he hears the hushed whispers echo around him and a heavy pair of footsteps approaching him. All in all, very bad signs when mysterious (and somewhat painful) things happen to you suddenly.

A gruff, questioning voice asks, “A child?”

“Oh, man,” Danny says, because that definitely does not sound good. Then he forces himself to his knees and looks up.

The first and foremost thing Danny notices is that he’s not alone. He’s on some sort of altar or platform, elevated a foot or so above the ground. A couple feet away, a group of no more than a dozen people surround him in a semi-circle, faces all covered by tattered cloaks. Another cloaked figure, dressed in much more formal robes with gold trimming, stands on the platform a mere couple feet from where Danny is. They all seem to be staring at him, waiting.

Danny hastily gets to his feet. He shifts a little into a sloppy fighting stance, just in case things were to get messy.

The dimly-lit warehouse room and the head covers don’t give him much to work with in the facial feature department, but he’s pretty confident that none of them are ghosts. Mostly from the fact that none of them are glowing and/or ranting about how much of a pain in the ass he is, but it still pays to be wary. Especially when Danny’s situations tend to quickly dissolve from bad to oh my god there are ghosts lose in Amity Park and also he maybe-sort of-possibly died in the process.  

Which brings him back to his next brilliant deduction; he’s definitely in ghost form. He definitely was not in ghost form before this. His ghost form is rather obvious considering he sticks out like a glow stick in darkness of the warehouse. He doesn’t even feel the need to check his hair color, this time, but that’s more due to the fact that he doesn’t want to take his eyes off the weird people who managed to summon him from his bedroom and forced him to change into his ghost form.

(He desperately hopes that they hadn’t seen him change—weird warehouse people are not people that Danny generally associates with secret keeping.)

“Is this a cult thing?” Danny asks before any of them can speak. He takes in white line that surrounds him, and the red liquid (which he very much hopes is not blood) used to paint runes and symbols that circle him, and their weird cloak-like robes, and says, “This is definitely a cult thing. Oh my god, did you summon me? Seriously—”

Before this, he hadn't even known he could be summoned. It's just the little ghostly things learned via accident, sometimes, that truly take the icing on the cake.

There’s a tiny spark of anxiety in his gut, but honestly there’s a large difference between humans threatening him and ghosts threatening him. On one hand, he’d take weird cultist over Skulker’s lair any day. On the other hand, pure white walls and experimentation tables aren’t super high on his to visit list either. Worst comes to worst—before they sacrifice him to some ancient gods, more likely—he puts on his scary face (and maybe adds a couple of explosions) and slips out before they even notice he’s missing.

“Silence, creature,” the robed man snaps. Danny zeros in on him and immediately deduces him to be leader from vibes alone. Also the gold trimming on his robe, which very much screams leader of weird cult that summons ghost kids.

“I—okay, you know what? That was just rude,” Danny says. He points to the white line that surrounds him, “Is that cocaine?”

Danny has a feeling he doesn’t want to know the answer to the mysterious red liquid and painted symbols, so he doesn’t ask.

“It’s salt,” one of the other cloaked figures answers, like it should be obvious.

(It’s not actually obvious, and actually leaves Danny with more questions than he started with. Mostly in the realm of how did a group of cultists summon him with salt. He knows salt is supposedly an anti-ghost measure, but Danny is pretty convinced it has little to no effect on him considering the amount of Nasty Burger fries he’s consumed haven’t taken him out yet.)

“Salt,” Danny repeats. He pauses, then awkwardly tags on, “That’s good, I guess, because drugs are bad. Uh, don’t do drugs.”

A cultist quietly, and a little slowly, answers back, “We, uh, don’t.”

“Right,” Danny says. His eyes catch another section of weird in this already weird, cultist warehouse. At the base of the platform sits a variety of bones, so fresh that some of the muscle still clings to them. “Are those bones? Oh my god, did you sacrifice someone? That’s not cool! Murder isn’t cool!”

“Those are goat bones,” another follower says.

“Oh,” Danny says. “Well, I mean, that’s still fucked up on a variety of levels, but I guess that’s better than murder. Unless it's considered goat murder? Uh.”

For a second, there’s silence. The nature of the interaction is so awkward and oppressing that he almost goes invisible just to save himself the scrutiny of these random people and get the hell out of dodge. His curiosity is the only thing that holds him back—that, and the fact that he’s not quite sure if any of these people are secretly hiding ecto-weapons.

Danny very much does not want to be shot tonight.

He looks around the room, eyes taking in every inch of the sparsely decorated warehouse. There’s nothing that immediately grabs his attention, nor anything that really screams danger but it pays to be suspicious of his surroundings in his line of work. A few of the cultists notice this, and start shifting awkwardly as Danny looks over them as well.

Then, Danny’s eyes flicks back to the lead cultist and he says, “I’m going to be real honest here and say that I have no idea what the heck is going on.”

The leader makes no inclination that he acknowledges any word that comes from Danny’s mouth. Instead, he brings an old, wrinkled hand up to his face, like he’s thinking about some complex problem. The leader circles Danny once, then again, and Danny feels something inside him defensively coil like a spring.

He tries not to be bothered when people treat him as something lesser—it’s not, exactly, uncommon for him to encounter. He dealt with being shoved into lockers long before he died, anyways. It doesn’t stop his shoulders from tensing just the barest amount.

Instead of showing this, he brings his feet up to his chest and crosses them mid-air, and fakes a yawn for good measure. A few of the other cultists gasp in wonder and fear. The leader simply stops his prowling and turns to face Danny.

“So this is the fabled Ghost King,” the man says, like he expected better.

Danny feels he should almost be offended if it isn’t for the tiny detail that these cultists—who summoned him by using salt and goat bones—assume he is the ghost king. “…Did you seriously confuse me with Pariah Dark?”

The man pauses, and asks, “Pariah Dark?”

“Yes! He’s like fifteen feet tall, has a huge sword, is a pain in the ass, and has, like, an entire ghost army. I have, I dunno, pre-calc homework in my bag. We are not the same.”

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. Danny bares his teeth in their direction, just to see them squirm. A couple take worried steps back and Danny fights off a satisfied grin.

Hey, poke a bull and get the horns. In this case, summon a ghost-teenager and get the ecto-powers.

(He’s slowly becoming more and more aware that these people have no idea what they’re doing.)

“I see,” the leader says. From his tone, he definitely does not see. “It doesn’t matter. Our book summoned the King of Ghosts and that is you, so you will do as we tell you and your pain will be lessened.”

“I am still not the Ghost King,” Danny tells him. “And no thanks. I’ve already used my yearly cult sign up and I can’t say I’m thrilled to join another. If you’re going to hold an initiation ceremony, at least decorate a bit first. Uh, not counting the goat bones and salt, of course.”

“You have no choice,” the leader snaps and steps a bit closer to him. Danny merely raises an eyebrow. “We are the Followers of Infernal. We have summoned you to serve us. You are bound to our will and bound to our grace, as the book foretold. Now bow, demon, for we are your new masters.”

There’s a very large portion of Danny Fenton that is convinced any good karma he held in life did not pass with him during his death a mere year ago. An even larger portion of him is convinced that these guys are no more serious than the GIW is. Danny does not tell the cultists this.

Instead, he squints and says, “Alright. I definitely failed US Government, but I’m pretty sure that’s not legal. Don’t you guys need like, a permit to summon undead beings of mass power?”

“It thinks it’s funny.” The leader’s face is mostly hidden by his robe, but Danny can imagine the sneer there from his tone alone.

“Trust me, I’m not the one who’s a joke right now,” Danny says. He looks back over at the dozen or so followers and grins at them. They don’t seem too keen that he’s not following their master’s orders and bending to their will. He turns back to the leader. “What’s in it for me?”

“What?”

“If I follow you and stuff, what’s in it for me?”

The leader pauses, then says, “You will be spared of punishment.”

“Hmm, that’s not good enough,” Danny says. He angles his body so he's once again looking at the followers and points at one in the middle. “Hey, you! With the cloak. No, not you, the other dude. To the left. Yeah! You. What do you have to offer me?”

The follower looks so startled that he cowers for a second. Then, seeing as he hadn’t been reduced to a pile of ashes from Danny’s gaze alone, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and silver. “Uh, I have a paper clip, your ghostliness.”

“A paper clip,” Danny repeats. “Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever. That sounds neat.”

“You’ll submit to us?” the man sounds so hopeful that Danny almost feels bad for being a jerk. Then, he remembers that they summoned him out of his nice, warm bedroom at ass-o’clock in the night and feels significantly less amounts of pity.

“No, dude, I’m not being your sack of potatoes for a paper clip. Man, you guys are stupid.” Danny rolls his eyes and floats just a bit higher. The other followers shuffle around again, uncomfortable. In front of him, the leader remains impassive as ever. “Where even am I?”

“The lair which you will spend the rest of your afterlife,” the leader says.

“Okay, this is definitely a warehouse, firstly. And secondly, dude, I meant what state.”

“…Wisconsin,” the man allows because of course everything terrible happens in Wisconsin.

“You chose the worst state to have your crappy lair,” Danny tells them. Now he has to fly a couple hundred miles home and hope he gets there by morning, all the while avoiding his creepy, obsessed arch-nemesis. He wonders if Vlad is even aware there’s a ghost-obsessed cult in his home state. Probably not. “Nothing good ever comes from Wisconsin. You can take that as, like, ghostly wisdom or something.”

“Hey,” one of the cultists says, offended. “The Packers are in Wisconsin.”

“Nothing good,” Danny repeats, firmly.

“Enough of this nonsense,” the leader says. “It’s trying to distract you because it fears control. Briar, bring me the orb.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them says.

The followers mutter to themselves and teeter around in their positions. The woman who spoke, on the end, bows and scurries off. Danny watches as she runs through the darkness of the warehouse, footsteps echoing around them, until he can no longer see her among the darkness.  

“Hey, if they already listen to you then why do you need me?” Danny asks. The leader doesn’t answer, so Danny floats a bit on his side and puts his arms behind his head. “What kind of orb are we talking about, anyways? Like one of those Spirit Halloween ones? Or is it more like orbeeze? I can’t saw I’m super excited from your ominous it fears control statement, but—"

“Silence, beast,” the leader says.

Danny huffs. “I’m just asking. No need to be so snippy.”  

The man ignores him which, rude. Danny’s just about to see how far he can test this guy’s patience when Briar comes back, just as quickly as she had disappeared. She jogs through the warehouse and up the steps of the platform. Danny can’t see her face, but from the way her hood moves to glace at him every so often, he figures that she’s probably nervous. Specifically about him lounging around in a circle full of salt.

“Father Johnathan,” Briar says and bows. In her hands is a glowing, silver orb. It really did look like a generic orb one would find in a Spirit Halloween. “The orb.”

“Your name is Father Johnathan?” Danny asks. He eyes the orb for a second, but doesn’t feel the tingle of ghostly energy from it, so he ignores it. He turns right back to the leader, not able to keep the grin off his face. “Your name is really Father Johnathan?”

Father Johnathan gently takes the orb in his hands as Briar scurries off towards the rest of the followers. Then, he sighs and says, “Yes, creature, my name is Father Johnathan and I shall be your new master.”

“Oh my god,” Danny says, positively gleeful. “I meet real life Papa John and he summons me with salt and threatens me with a Spirit Halloween orb.”

“Laugh all you want,” Papa John says. The nervous air shifts into something a bit more predatory. “You will not be laughing much longer.”

The cultists break into applause and talk amongst themselves loudly. They shift forward, eagerly, as if they want to watch the spectacle up close. They’re only a foot or so away from the platform when Papa John waves at them to halt.

Papa John holds up the orb. It swirls, the silver fog inside consolidating and then dissipating. Something inside it starts to glow the barest amount.

Danny pauses, just for a second, and watches it. There's still no tingle of ghostly energy coming from it. If he hadn’t already thought these guys are a joke, he definitely would’ve been a tad more nervous. As it stands, he thinks nothing of it—no ghostly energy means no control over ghosts.

(Unfortunately, he knows the feeling of ghost-controlling objects quite well. It’s not an experience he’s eager to repeat.)

The orb glows brighter, and brighter, swirling more furiously. The chatter of the cultists picks up to the point where they’re almost shouting, jeering at him. Papa John draws closer and closer, orb outstretched. He holds it through the salt line and touches it to Danny’s chest. The shouting from his followers almost becomes unbearable.

And then….nothing. The orb stops glowing. The fog inside stops swirling. It simply dies in Papa John’s hand.

“Was that supposed to do something?” Danny asks.

Papa John touches him with the orb again, a tad more forceful, so Danny assumes it was supposed to do something. From the panicked whispers around him, it definitely was supposed to do something to him. Danny’s honestly not sure if the outcome is due to him being a halfa or these guys being a joke.

(He’s willing to bet it’s the latter.)

“I think your LED batteries died,” Danny tells him. “Or maybe you mixed up your Spirit Halloween orbs. Better luck next time.”

Papa John stops furiously pressing the orb to his chest and if Danny could see his face, he has no doubts that Papa John’s expression would be livid.

“You will obey us,” Papa John says.

“No,” Danny says. “I won’t.”

“You will—”

Danny swings his feet down so hard that he cracks the very ground he now stands on. Dust kicks up around him as he stands tall, even though Danny’s at least two feet shorter than the leader in front of him. His eyes burn a brilliant green and he crosses his hands over his chest in an effort to look intimidating. The cult thing is interesting and all, but it's late, he still has homework to do, and Jazz has definitely noticed him missing by now so it's probably better to end this before they can get another object from a Spirit Halloween and try that instead.

It works, if the half-step back from Papa John is anything to go by.

“Listen,” Danny says, flatly. “Get a hobby and leave me alone or else you won’t like what I’m going to do.”

He makes his form flicker and the temperature drop in the room, just for dramatic effect.

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. A couple take panicked steps back. More than a few look ready to bolt for the door and leave this cult business behind forever.

Danny takes notice and stares at them, smiling wide enough that they could see his slightly-toothy grin. He makes sure his eyes flare, just a touch, and says loudly, “Boo.”

To say the cultists are startled would be an understatement. More than a few stumble back, a couple falling onto their asses. One trips on their robe and is sent tumbling. Another one yells and cowers. Papa John has no time to reign in the situation before two scatter completely.

“Peace!” Papa John shouts over the chaos of a dozen panicking followers. Those that remain do settle down enough to hear his words. “Stand down, there is nothing to fear. It is only trying to scare you into letting it free. It is trapped whilst it remains in the circle.”

Danny snorts. “I can leave any time I want.”

“You cannot leave here, demon—”

Danny raises one single eyebrow and dutifully steps out of the summoning circle.

The warehouse erupts into chaos.

The cultists are yelling now, but this time there’s only because of fear. They scatter over each other, running and tripping over their obnoxiously long cloaks. A couple trample the goat bones to the point where several loud snaps are heard over the pandemonium. It only adds more fuel to the fire as less than a dozen people scramble to get as far away from the platform—and subsequently the ghost-kid—as possible.

“Do better than a paperclip, next time!” Danny calls out to them. They only seem to run faster at the sound of his voice.

Papa John is the only one who doesn’t run. He had stumbled off the platform and away from Danny the second that Danny made it over the salt line. However, in the disarray, he had been knocked to the ground, his orb lay broken at his feet, and his robe’s hood had been yanked off and left on the ground beside him. He sits, frozen, but Danny doesn’t know if it’s from shock or from fear.

Danny takes a step closer to him.

“How…?” Papa John whispers. He’s not looking at Danny—only his old, wrinkled hands. He’s bald, with brown eyes. He looks like nothing more than any generic old man that Danny would see at a grocery store on Sunday afternoon. “We followed the book. We…we took every precaution the book said. We were supposed to have the perfect slave, bound to our every word. We…”

“That didn’t work out too well for you, huh?” Danny says and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s ‘cause you forgot the dunce cap when you decided to be the class clown.”

“Please,” Papa John says. “Spare me.”

There’s something wrong about this—seeing a human beg for his life at Danny’s feet. Danny doesn’t want to be feared. He never has wanted to be feared.

He presses his lips together and takes a single step back. Some part of him, though, knows that he desperately needs to make his point clear to avoid another situation like this (likely with more weapons, next time).

“I warned you,” Danny says softly. His voice echoes around the warehouse. The man below him shivers in terror. “Do not summon me again, or I won’t be so nice next time.” He pauses, just for a second and can't help but tag on, "Papa John."

He lets his threat linger and hopes the man takes it seriously enough that he won’t get summoned again. Then, the cool strings of invisibility wrap around his body and he disappears from sight. Danny takes one look at the man left on the floor before he shakes his head and shoots up into the Wisconsin night sky. He doesn't hear the shouted response of it's Father Johnathan from several hundred feet below him on the warehouse floor.

Danny waits about all of thirty seconds before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

On the other hand… Didn’t they say that Daily person was in charge of cults?  Did Amity Park have a cult problem on top of everything else that was going on?  Was the cult the problem, the root problem?  If there even was an actual cult…

Cults were dangerous and took vicious advantage of legal loopholes.  Maybe he should call the FBI.  They were the ones that were supposed to deal with cults.  

He took a deep breath, pulling himself together. No.  This was his case.  His job. He didn’t know that there was a cult involved, not yet.  Besides, it didn’t matter if they were religious so long as they were breaking the law.  Yeah.  

“Are you okay?”

McGee almost jumped out of his skin, his hand twitching towards his firearm before he realized that the person who snuck up on him was a kid.  The kid from earlier, to be precise.

The boy’s eyes narrowed.  “Were you about to pull a gun on me?” he asked.  

“No,” said McGee.  

The boy blinked, suspicion still evident on his face. “You’ve got to be more careful with guns,” he said.  “There’s no reason to go for one just because someone surprised you.”

McGee didn’t grace that with a response.  “What are you doing here, anyway?  Weren’t you across town, earlier?”

“Yeah.  So were you,” said the boy.  Danny. His name was Danny Fenton.  “Why are you here?”

“I asked first.”

“You shouldn’t ask questions you aren’t willing to answer yourself.”

What the hell was up with this kid?  “I’m just trying to get a better feel for the town.”

“Hm,” said Danny.  “I help out here at the cemetery, sometimes.  Got to lay all those ghosts to rest, you know?”

“Don’t you think that’s a little much?” snapped McGee. “Death isn’t supposed to be a roadside attraction.”

“Oh, don’t worry.  We take death very seriously around here,” assured Danny.  “But seriously.  I do help out.  The caretaker lets me take that stuff away when it gets to be too much.”  He nodded at the blank headstone and all the offerings around it.  “Mom likes the flowers.  Jazz is making a collage of some of the cards.  You know.  Stuff like that.”  He shrugged, angling himself away from McGee.  “Someone left a tiny copy of the Tempest once.  In one of those teeny tiny books.  Post.  It had that one passage from Ariel’s Song decorated.  It was nice.  I liked it.”

“What?”

“Ariel’s Song.  Full fathom five thy father lies;/Of his bones are coral made;/Those are pearls that were his eyes;/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange. Shakespeare.  I think it’s supposed to be a commentary on ghosts, but the guy in the play isn’t actually dead, people just think he is.  So, I’m not really sure how to take it.  You’re a detective, right?  What do you think?”

McGee stared at the teenager. The kid who was buried there was his age.  “This isn’t a joke,” said McGee.  “A person is dead.”

Danny tilted his head. “I’m not joking?”

“How are you even connected to all of this?”  McGee waved his hand, frustrated.  

“I just told you how I’m connected to the cemetery.  If you mean the town…  Well, I do live here.”

“Why do Patterson and Collins know you?”

“I know everyone,” said Danny.  He started backing away.  “You should go get something to eat soon, if you don’t want to be late.”  He turned and disappeared in the crowd.  

What the hell.

.

McGee did not go to get food. He went back to the station.  He had some questions to ask Cameron Daily, and he got the impression that the man was the kind of person to practically live at work.  

When he opened the door, though, he had to stop.

“What is this?” he asked, loudly.  

“Glowsticks,” said one of the secretaries.  “You have seen them before, right?”

“Yes, but why?”

As much as the police department had been infested with Christmas decorations before, it was now covered with glowsticks of all varieties.  

The secretary shrugged. “You’ll find out.  And, no, this isn’t hazing.”  She broke a new glowstick with a snap.

“Right,” said McGee.  “Where’s Daily?”

“Cameron Daily is in the computer bay,” said the secretary, pointing.

“Thanks,” grunted McGee, once again wondering why there was a separate computer bay when everyone had their own desks, computers, and, in some cases, additional laptops.  

Screw it, he might as well ask.  

“Hey, Daily.”

“Mm?”

“Why’s there a separate computer bay?”

“Oh, it’s shielded,” said Daily.  

“Shielded.”

“Yep.  No signals, and the Fentons did some pretty neat stuff to the walls.  Bunch of, ehm, nasty hackers.  We learned our lesson, eventually.”

“The Fentons.”

“Yeah.  And Foley did the firewalls.”

“They’re the ones who did the computer filing system.”

“Uhuh.  Kids are geniuses.  The parents aren’t too shoddy, either.”

“The—” No.  There was no way.  “Are they the same Fentons that hunt ghosts?”

“Yeah.  You wouldn’t think it to look at them, but apparently they live off of their patents.  Made a bunch of fiddly little things that every other mass production factory in the country uses.  Also, they own a toilet paper company.  Not my favorite brand, but it isn’t the worst, honestly.  Kind of wish we’d buy it here, but, no, we get that gross single ply. I swear, that stuff should be classified as a crime against humanity.”

“You let the ghost hunters deal with your computer security.”

“Oh, I know that tone. You met them, huh?”

“Just the kid.”

Daily looked up at McGee over the computer.  “What?”

“I only met the kid. Danny.”

Slowly, Daily uncurled from his hunch in front of the computer.  The man was taller than McGee thought.

“Then what’s your issue? Danny’s a good kid.”

A good kid whose parents were allowed to run roughshod over the town, who was allowed to steal from graveyards, and knew all of the police officers.  For some reason.  

“I heard you’re in charge of monitoring the cult?”

Daily snorted.  “You make it sound like there’s just one.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, after all the ghosts, most religions had to modernize, you know?”

Oh, god, this was part of the tourist trap.  Or the tourist trap was part of this.  Did they recruit from people who actually believed this nonsense?

“There’s more than one cult?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds like quite a job.”

“Eh.  I’m mostly just keeping track of their online activity.”

“So, how are the Fentons involved?”

“They aren’t.  They’re pretty areligious, overall.  Danny’s been almost kidnapped a few times, though.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Kidnapped.  By a cult.”

“Cults.  Gotta remember the plural, man.  Cults.”  Daily was hunching again.  “But, hey, if you’re interested in the subject, I can give you a thorough run-through of this new group that started up last week.  Their philosophy is wild.  I can’t even tell you—”

“Hey.  You’re early,” said Patterson, leaning through the door, her braid swinging.  “Great. Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” lied McGee.  

“Get better at lying,” said Patterson.  “Come on, let’s go.”

.

Patterson and Collins weren’t the only ones there.  In fact, there were more people in the station than there had been that morning. All with glowsticks.  Said glowsticks were being loaded into unmarked cars while office staff and police officers whispered back and forth.

“Did you get the green stuff?”

“Yeah, don’t worry. Gave me more than enough.” Glowing green milk jugs were loaded into a car.  The car McGee would be riding in with Collins and Patterson.

‘Green stuff.’  Was this some kind of bizarre drug smuggling ring? McGee had fallen behind in drug slang, if so.  ‘Green stuff.’  Were they lacing it with glowstick fluid?

Never before had he felt so lost on a case.  Amity Park was messed up.  

“You’ve got the howlers hooked up?” asked Collins.

“I asked Daily to do it this morning.”

“But did he do it?”

“I mean, it looks like it. Are the howlers really that important?”

McGee had no idea what was going on.  

The cars all started off in a group.  Their car was the last to leave and soon peeled off to trundle slowly down back roads.  

“You probably have questions,” said Collins.

“You could say that,” said McGee.  

“You’ve been a good sport about them,” observed Collins.  

“So,” said McGee, drawing out the word.  “What is this about?”

Patterson swallowed a laugh. “Ever hear of the Men in Black?”

“Look, I’m humoring the ghosts.  Conspiracy theories are where I draw the line.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Maybe it’ll stick.  Anyway, here in Amity Park, we deal with their less intelligent cousins.  The Guys in White!”

“That’s not their actual name,” said Collins, glancing back over his shoulder.  “But, well, their appearance fits.”

“Alright, let’s say I believe you.  What does this have to do with the jugs of glowstick fluid in the trunk?”

“Oh, that’s not glowstick fluid,” said Patterson.  “It’s waste from the reactor that powers the town.”

“Don’t worry,” said Collins, hastily, the car swerving somewhat.  “It’s completely harmless!  Not radioactive at all!”

“That’s not what—” started Patterson.  

“You absolutely will not get cancer from it!”

McGee raised a hand.  “You have nuclear reactor fluid in the trunk?”

“It isn’t nuclear reaction fluid,” protested Patterson.  “It’s—"

“Back on track,” interrupted Collins.  

“Yeah.  Anyway.  It’ll trip the Guys in White’s sensors—”

“Eventually,” Collins grumbled.  

“—so we can lead them on a chase.”

“And…  why do we want to do this?”

“Because it’s a quiet month,” said Patterson.  “Don’t want the Guys to get antsy.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means what it means. You’ll see in January.”

McGee looked between his two ‘partners.’  “Are you trying to get me to quit?”

“Because you’re a spy for the county?” asked Patterson.  “Oh, no, never.”

Before McGee could process that statement, the car’s radio crackled to life.  

“We’ve got a class-3 northbound on Orion at 35 miles per hour.  Ectosignature suggests an amorphiform ghost—”

“Hah!” shouted Patterson. “That’s us!  Punch it!”  She twisted the dial on the radio as Collins slammed his foot into the accelerator.  “Bogey to Redrum!  We’ve got followers!”

“Copy, Bogey, this is Redrum. We need a few more minutes to set up. Can you stay out of sight?”

“The hell?”

The radio crackled.  “Forgot you had the new guy!  Don’t shake him up too much, okay?  Over.”

“Copy.  Collins you catch that?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m taking Pan and Laurel.  The holiday tour.”

“Ooh, good choice.” Patterson held up the radio again. “Yeah, we can manage.  Over.”

Collins went faster. For the next several minutes McGee occupied himself with not throwing up.  He succeeded.  Barely.

“Bogey, this Cam,” said the voice of Daily, “followers are gaining.  They’re on Brassica, just passing High Street.  Triggered the speed cameras.  Over.”

“How many and what type? Over.”

“Three gliders.  Don’t think they’ve spotted you yet, though. Over.”

Gliders?  Who did these people think they were kidding?

“Copy, over,” said Patterson. “Not like those guys care about speeders, though,” she muttered.  McGee could barely hear her over the beating of his own heart.

“Sharp right, brace yourselves,” said Collins, split seconds before matching action to words.

“Redrum to bogey, we’re moving out now, over.”

“Copy.  We’re on our way.  Over.  Head to the park, Collins.”

“Gotcha.”

It didn’t seem possible, but Collins somehow pushed the car to go even faster.  Then, just as quickly as the whole ridiculous thing had begun, the car skidded to a halt in a parking lot.  Seeing his chance, McGee clawed at the door handle and dragged himself out onto the pavement.  

Collins and Patterson, meanwhile, were pulling the almost-certainly-toxic waste out of the trunk and launching it into the glowstick-filled woods with—

“Is that a bazooka?” demanded McGee, so far past his wit’s end that he couldn’t even see it anymore.

“Nah, just a modified T-shirt canon,” said Patterson, stowing the object away again.  “Fentonworks special.”

“I don’t believe you,” said McGee.  

Three – Three things – McGee did not want to call them gliders – raced overhead, jets roaring and wind whistling.  They came to a stop approximately where the ‘reactor waste’ had fallen.  

“What the hell?” whispered McGee, passionately.  

“Come on,” said Collins.  “Time for us to go.”

“Yeah, better to spectate from afar,” agreed Patterson.

“I agree,” said a third voice.

“Oh, Danny,” said Patterson.  “Didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

The boy walked into McGee’s field of view and glanced down at him before shrugging.  “Couldn’t sleep.”  He looked up, at the park.  “Thanks for this.”

“Had to get them to blow this month’s budget somehow,” said Collins.  “But, really, we should all go before the fireworks start.”

Danny sighed.  “Hope they don’t blow up the fountain again.  It just got fixed.”

“Same,” said Patterson.

“Well, see you later.”

“Yep, we’ve got that wellness check tomorrow,” said Collins. “You don’t have any excuse to forget, this time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the teen, waving over his shoulder as he walked straight into the dark.

“What,” said McGee.  

“That’s just Danny for you,” said Collins.  “Great kid.  Super creepy.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d he even know we’re here?” asked McGee, trying to keep his voice even.  

“He did give us that eeeeehhhhhhh—reactor waste,” said Patterson.  “Come on, get up, we’ve got to—”

A small explosion sounded from the park.  

“Seriously.  I don’t want to have to pick you up.”

“I’d wind up doing most of the lifting,” grumbled Collins, who was sliding into the driver’s seat.

Patterson put her hands on her hips.  “Excuse you?”

There was another, larger explosion.  McGee climbed back into the car.

As they drove, he realized that no one had made fun of his name. Not even once.