Steps in the Dark

At the request of Vlad, Maddie Fenton goes hunting the Wisconsin Ghost in his mansion. Alone. At Night.

This is fanfiction. Probably helps to be at least passingly familiar with Danny Phantom before reading, but hey, I'm not the boss of you.

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Chapter: 1,061 words | Story: 2,196 words

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Steps in the Dark
Written by Sudo (Pseudinymous)

~ 2 ~

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Icy cold breath curled around her neck, a chilling and predatory miasma that took her within her soul and tried to suck it right out, just like the vampire this ghost appeared to be. Panic and instinct had her struggle and squirm, flail and twist, until she managed to get her free arm to swing around and smack the ghost's face.

A momentary reprieve. It seemed to startle at being so rudely violated, and for a second there she thought she might have an opportunity for escape from this monster, but it quickly redoubled it's grip.

Her feet left the ground. It was lifting her into the air.

"Always fighting. Always struggling," it tut-tutted her. "What on earth's the bother when you already belong to me?"

"I belong to no one," Maddie blazed back. A hand was still free - she dove into her belt and clutched the Fenton Lipstick, just in time for the ghost to get a handle on her arm and stop it from going any further. "No one except my family!"

Straining without any solid footing, she thrashed her body, bent her elbow back, and fired. Straight into it's stupid, vampiric face.

The ghost howled in pain and released her, and she was ready for it. She landed on all fours and made a solid dash to the other side of the room - the more distance that could be put between herself and this menace, the better. And then Maddie clenched the Fenton Lipstick between her teeth, twisted around while the ghost was still holding it's face, and fired the Fenton Bazooka right between it's eyes.

Boom, headshot.

Maddie whooped and cheered within her head. "And that's why you don't underestimate Maddie Fenton, ghost-"

Her gloating was cut short. It was suddenly in front of her. All blue skin and red eyes and bright, fanged teeth, not just there but also to her side, and her other side, and behind her too. Four Wisconsin Ghosts all grinning and merciless and reaching for her, the hunger oozing out of them. Hunger for what she didn't know, but for one of the first times in her life, she froze.

If only she hadn't been so still, she might have stood a chance.

The first hand took her by the shoulder, the second by her waist. And, while in an odd kind of dance, the clones had her weapons removed from her. This time the ghost wasn't allowing any chances.

"Oh, you are so full of life, my dear," said the ghost. He twirled with her in the air as if in full ballroom dance, even as he had her so well held that all of the important parts of her body were immobilised. "That's the Maddie I always knew. So intelligent. So proactive. And so very, very beautiful. How on earth was it that you married such a fool as Jack, of all people?"

"Is that what you want?" asked Maddie, spitting. "Me?"

"If by 'you' you mean 'your affections', then but of course," said the ghost, turning them both around again. It's copies vanished as she struggled against the remaining one's cold frozen grip, but it was far too strong. "You are the apple of my eye, no person could even hope to stand up next to you! For years I filled my life with all manner of luxuries, but Maddie, my dear, you are the greatest luxury of all."

A stomach churning shiver of sick revulsion ran straight through her. In her current helpless dance, she begged one question: "Why?"

"That," he said, showing his fangs. "Is something you don't need to know."

And that was when stoic Maddie Fenton, prominently featured in premier ghost hunting magazines, special guest on exclusive panels, started to panic.

She had to get out of this. Surely there was something, some weakness she could use to escape. Ghosts weren't perfect in the same way that humans weren't perfect - it was, after all, about the only thing the two had in common. Struggling wasn't working, so what she really needed was a lapse in the ghost's better judgement, to outsmart it.

But it wasn't a stupid ghost either. This one had become well known to her for its high-scale heists and cunning plans, to a point where she knew her wits would most certainly be put to the test.

And that was something that wouldn't go well if she couldn't get her brain out of panic mode.

"Frozen in fear? Thoughts racing all over I see." He held her by the shoulders out at arm's length, and suddenly she got the sense the copies might not have ceased to exist after all, but were, in fact, invisible to her sensors and actually holding her back. "Well my dear, we have to put that right."

"I would never choose to be with you!" Maddie suddenly blurted out in anger. She twisted some more against the invisible binds. "Why would I ever want to be with some filthy, disgusting, worthless ghost!"

...

It stared at her with it's bottomless red pits. At first she couldn't tell what it was feeling; there seemed to be a certain shock there, almost as if it hadn't been expecting a response like that. That shock seemed to morph impossibly into emotions ghosts - to her knowledge and her prejudice - weren't supposed to feel. Emptiness, horror, regret. Finally it settled on something she was all too familiar with.

Anger.

"You will learn otherwise," the ghost's voice burned. And before she could say or do anything, it had turned them both intangible and dived, with the speed and force of a rollercoaster, straight through the floor.

Floorboards and storage areas and huge sweeping rooms flashed past. Her fingers splayed, almost as if with some half-hearted hope to somehow catch one of them, hook her hand around a chandelier and stop their descent, but of course there was no hope for any of that. The ghost landed in a strange sealed chamber far below Vlad's house, all dank ancient brick and sickly green glow. There was no entrance. There was no exit.

Only a ghost portal, at the very end.

"I spent years of my life searching the endless seas of the Ghost Zone for a solution to this," said the ghost. "And now, I've finally found it."

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