Work Text:
A Flicker of Doubt
A "Mystery Meat" Fanfiction
Long after Jack had fallen asleep beside her, his snores ringing through the house, Maddie continued to lie awake.
She stared at the ceiling, a mixture of ghosts and guilt on her mind. Even now, with the day drawing to an end, she couldn't shake the doubt that was rising in her mind.
"I! Am not! A GHOST!" Jazz's words rang in her ears, making her grimace. She and Jack had completely stepped over the line. Hunting ghosts, that was one thing. But attacking their only daughter with ghost hunting equipment? What had they been thinking? She could've been hurt!
And how had they drawn the conclusion that Jazz was a ghost? Jazz was a living, breathing human. Sure, she'd been snappish lately, but just because she didn't support her parents' ghost hunting endeavors didn't mean she was a ghost. Her heart was still beating in her chest—and it was impossible to be both alive and a ghost at the same time.
How had that absurd idea even worked its way into Maddie's brain?
She closed her eyes, grabbing a fistful of her bedsheets. No—she knew where that idea came from. Ever since the ghost portal had sprung to life, all the Fenton ghost hunting equipment had been going haywire. Especially when the children were around. There was a ghost in the house, but where? After their inventions had gone off one too many times around the children, they'd asked themselves—why? Evidence pointed, time and time again, that strong amounts of ectoplasm was lingering around her children.
It made sense for Danny. Ever since he'd been zapped by the portal, he'd been surrounded by residual ectoplasm. Of course the inventions would go off around him. But Jazz? The only explanation was: she was a ghost.
They were wrong. Jazz wasn't a ghost, and had soundly berated them for attacking her. It was absurd, too. Ghost and human? Dead and alive? It wasn't possible. That would make a person, what, half-ghost? Some kind of bizarre hybrid? Goodbye sanity, hello Science-Fiction.
No. Ghosts existed—she'd seen her first ghost this afternoon, even—but there was no way she could accept that someone could be dead and alive at the same time. No matter how many times her equipment went off around them, Jazz was not a ghost, and neither was Danny.
(Something niggled in the back of her mind; a nagging doubt; something significant that she'd missed…)
Maddie shook her head and rolled on her side, closing her eyes at last. She vowed, just as she fell asleep, that no matter how much scientific evidence there was, no matter how many times her inventions insisted a ghost had replaced one of her family, no matter how great her suspicions grew…
She would never accuse any of them—Jack, Jazz, or Danny—of being a ghost again.