Chapter Text
Danny led his friends through the living room and toward the stairs. He took a quick, guilty look around before descending into the basement. “My parents should be out late, and Jazz’s debate practice won’t be over til six.” He wasn’t sure if he was saying it to Tucker and Sam, or to himself.
Danny jumped as Tucker elbowed him, almost sending him headfirst into the stairwell. “What, Danny, are you afraid of getting caught in your own basement?”
“Wha- No!” Danny straightened up and tried to keep the nervousness out of his posture as he descended past the increasingly intricate series of crucifixes that lined the basement stairwell.
“Nah, Tuck,” Sam said as they followed Danny down, “he’s scared of getting caught with one of these.” She held up the cardboard box she’d brought from her place: A Hasbro brand Ouija set. Sam waved her free hand at the wall decorations. “Any parent with this taste in décor would be pissed as hell if they found their kid talking to the dead.”
Danny winced at the curse word. She was right. Jack and Maddie Fenton weren’t just religious, they were semi-professional exorcists. They’d dedicated their lives to protecting people from evil spirits. Danny couldn’t imagine how mad they’d be if they found out.
And yet, he’d agreed. Sam had been so excited when he’d told her about his parents’ basement lab. Half paranormal research laboratory, half demon-hunter’s arsenal, it was probably the spookiest place in Amity Park. That look of eager anticipation still hadn’t left Sam’s face.
“Uhhh… Danny?” Tucker’s voice startled Danny out of his nervous reverie, and he realized he was standing stock still, gripping the handle of the thick steel door.
“Oh, uh. Sorry.” Danny said. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
“Oh, wow.” The excitement in Sam’s voice was almost reverent as she pushed past Danny and rushed into the room. To Danny, it looked the same as it always had: high steel tables lined the room, bins of tools and half-assembled electronics shoved into every corner, racks of rosaries, medallions, the odd relic, and even some medieval weaponry lining the walls. The conflict between ancient religious artifacts and modern invention went as far as the room’s construction. The ceiling and door were new additions, reflecting electric light from polished steel surfaces, while the floor and walls were the original stone from when the house was first built.
The most obvious feature of the basement lab was a large steel ring that dominated the far wall. Half-finished circuit boards hung by wires from the framework. In the center of the ring, a section of the stone wall was visible, and on the wall was a ring of black arcane glyphs connected by seemingly random lines and arcs. Danny’s parents had found the sigil more or less intact when they excavated the basement, and while Danny didn’t know what it was supposed to do, he was pretty sure it was written in blood.
Sam turned in a slow circle, taking in the room with eyes wide. When she faced Danny and Tucker again, a look of mischief had crept onto her face. She held up the box.
“Would you like to play a game?”
Sam was in full-on séance mode. She sat hunched over the ouija board, her eyes nearly shut, hands unnaturally tense even as her fingers rested lightly on the planchette. She spoke in a low, strained monotone that gave Danny goosebumps.
“Spirits of the dead, spirits of the damned… Are you here with us?”
Danny’s heart leapt into his throat as he felt the planchette shift. He stared in barely-contained horror as the thin plastic token slid slowly toward the upper left-hand corner of the board, coming to a rest with “YES” showing clearly through the planchette’s transparent center. He glanced to his left and made eye contact with Tucker. His friend forced a small laugh, but he looked as nervous as Danny felt.
Sam’s face split into a grin and her eyelids fluttered. She spoke again.
“What message do you bring from the beyond?”
The planchette moved again, winding a path across the board. Sam solemnly intoned each letter as it was highlighted.
“D… E… A… T… H.”
“I- I think that train’s already left the station, hasn’t it? ‘Spirits of the dead’?” The humor in Tucker’s voice was strained nearly to the breaking point.
Danny felt the mood lighten a bit, and took the cue. “Y-yeah. While we’re at it, Sam can bring tidings of dollar store eyeliner.”
Tuck and Danny’s chuckles died as a growling laugh rose in Sam’s throat. The sound grated on Danny’s ears. When it faded, Danny barely had a moment to relax before Sam broke the silence with one more question.
“Oh spirits, whose demise do you foretell this night?”
The planchette moved again, and again Sam spoke each letter aloud.
“D… A… N…”
Danny lost his nerve. He shoved the planchette away from him, sending it and the board clattering across the cold stone floor as he scrambled backward. A panicked yell caught in his throat, coming out as a quiet, drawn-out “Aaaaahhhhhh…”
Tucker reached toward him. “Whoa, Danny, are you-”
Sam’s laughter cut him off- genuine, delighted laughter this time. “Oh my god, you should’ve seen your face!” She descended into another laughing fit, doubling over and wrapping her arms around her stomach. “Priceless!”
Danny glanced back and forth between Sam and Tucker. It was all a joke? Of course it was. Of course. He tried to force a smile. “Haha… yeah, you got me.”
“Y-yeah,” Tucker’s forced laugh was only slightly more convincing than Danny’s. “You’re really good at that stuff, Sam… You almost had me convinced.”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit, Tuck.” Sam stood and wiped a tear from one eye. “‘Almost.’ You looked like you were about to shit yourself.” She started gathering up the board and planchette from where they had scattered. “This thing’s basically a kid’s toy. It might be enough to scare you babies,” she turned and walked slowly toward the symbols scrawled on the far wall, “but I wanna try out the real thing.”
Danny mentally kicked himself as he stood and dusted off his jeans. Great going Danny, you got scared to death by a freakin’ board game. Keep it together, and maybe your friends won’t think you’re a total wimp.
Sam stood right in front of the wall, her hands hovering inches away from the mysterious runes on its surface. “What is that thing, anyway?” Tucker asked.
Danny came to stand on her right. “Some sort of door, I think. A portal.” He cringed at how stupid that sounded. Like something out of freakin’ Narnia.
“Where to?” Sam asked, that same almost-reverence in her voice again.
Danny shrugged. “Not sure. My parents think it’ll help them harvest ectoplasm, I think? It’s supposed to be really hard to get, but it helps with their work.”
“Their work, like, their inventions?” Tucker asked hopefully, glancing around at the machines scattered throughout the lab.
“That,” Danny replied, then reluctantly, “and the exorcism stuff.”
Sam was nearly vibrating with excitement. “How does it work?”
“It doesn’t,” Danny said. “My parents have been working on it for years, but it’s never done anything except give my dad a few electrical burns.”
Sam ran a hand lightly over the portal’s steel frame. “Maybe you just have to know how to turn it on.”
“What?” Danny wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was talking about.
Sam gestured to the ouija board, back in its box. “That thing might just be a toy, but I know some people who do the real thing, spirit talking and stuff. And they told me that the one thing you need to open a connection with the spirit realm,” she glanced back at Danny, “is virgin’s blood.”
Danny blinked, nonplussed. Tucker laughed and put his hands up, stepping back slightly. “Well, you two can figure that out then, cuz the house of Foley is fresh out of all things virgin.”
Sam rolled her eyes at him. “C’mon, Tuck. You’re fourteen years old, and you’ve got even less game than Danny.”
“That’s not true! I- I’ve totally had sex!”
“Oh yeah? With who?”
Tucker mumbled something about code camp. Sam rolled her eyes again. “Fine. Danny?”
“Wait, why me? What about you?”
Sam straightened up and took on a slightly formal tone. “Virginity is an out-dated concept invented by puritans to control women’s bodies.”
“Why does that apply to you but not me?”
Sam grinned. “Cuz you’re a Catholic, so you don’t believe that.”
Danny stammered. He was pretty sure that reasoning was wrong, but he couldn’t think of another objection. Sam pulled a small folding knife from her pocket and held it out.
“C’mon, Danny. Just a little cut. It doesn’t take a lot.”
He swallowed nervously and took the knife. Sam took two big steps back from the portal.
“What are you doing?” Danny asked.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t want the ghosts to get me. Duh.”
“Sam, stop messing with him,” Tucker said, before stepping even further back and hiding behind Sam’s back. His arm stuck out to the side, giving Danny a thumb’s up. “You got this, Danny!”
Danny turned back to the portal. Some of the symbols scrawled on the wall had faded with time. Where there were breaks in the original pattern, Danny’s parents had filled in the gaps with modern circuits. Bundles of wires ran from point to point along the ring, bolted directly to the stone wall and connected to the circuitry of the outer steel frame by thick power cords.
Come on Danny, don’t make yourself look like a coward twice in one night.
He took a shaky breath and flicked the knife open. He pressed it into the pad of his right thumb and pulled slightly. It cut easier than he expected, and he gasped, dropping the knife to the stone floor. Blood welled up in the cut, then ran down his thumb in a slow rivulet, dripping off the bony joint of his wrist. He glanced back at his friends, who were watching him with a mix of fear and anticipation.
“Where do I…” he gestured vaguely at the contraption in front of him.
Sam shrugged. “I’m not sure… Somewhere on the wall?”
Danny faced the wall again. He looked over the strange glyphs and circuits, trying to find a clear spot to smear his blood. He found one, a gap between two symbols on the right side that had been modified by a few wires each. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pressed his palm flat against the wall, feeling his bloody thumb slip slightly across the cool stone.
A moment passed. Danny opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. “I guess it really doesn’t wo-”
His hand slipped, slick with blood. His fingers brushed against a wire and-
Light. The stench of burning flesh. His muscles seizing up, tearing him apart beneath his skin. Pain.
Danny’s vision went white as searing, incandescent pain flashed through his body, arcing from his hand, held in place by some immovable force, up his arm, and into every nerve across his body. He felt himself being flayed, stripped of skin and flesh and bone, reduced to nothing but a seething ball of agony where his mind had been. He tried to scream, but his diaphragm only spasmed, locked in this moment of mind-killing pain like the rest of his body. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only hang on the thousand-volt scaffold holding him in place and silently, wordlessly, beg anyone or anything that could hear him to please please please end it please let me die please please please please please
His vision faded from blinding white to dull grey, and further to profound blackness. The pain was gone. Everything was gone. He was…
Danny sat straight up, looking around wildly. His vision swam, and an ear-splitting sound reverberated all around him.
Where am I? What happened?
Danny’s lungs ached as his breath ran out, and the sound stopped. He realized belatedly that he had been screaming. He took a deep shuddering breath and squinted his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he could make some sense of his surroundings.
He was sitting in the middle of the floor in his parents’ lab. Tucker stood by the wall, hands hovering over the breaker box. Sam was kneeling by Danny’s side. Both of them were staring at him with identical, horrified expressions. And on the wall in front of him…
The portal was open.
A swirling opaque disc of green vapor filled the frame, completely hiding the bloody symbols on the wall.
That’s good, Danny thought dully. I’d be dead if Mom and Dad saw my blood on the wall.
His blood. He looked down at his hand as his memory slowly caught up with him. He expected to see a bleeding cut- No, a burn. He’d been shocked, hadn’t he? A loose wire? Instead, he saw… nothing. Where his wrist ended, where he was sure he could feel his hand, he saw empty space. Before he could begin to process what he was seeing, his vision flickered, and suddenly his hand was back, unharmed, looking completely normal.
Well, not completely normal. A strange greenish-white light illuminated his skin. It didn’t seem to be shining on anything else around him.
Danny looked up, glancing back and forth between his friends. “What just happened?”
Tucker was silent. His face stayed locked in the exact same horrified expression. Sam moved to lay a hand on Danny’s shoulder, but she must’ve been real shaken up, because her fingers just fell to the floor. She looked even more afraid at that, but she spoke.
“You… you died, Danny.”
A quiet, haunted laugh scraped its way out of Tucker’s throat. He still didn’t move.
“Wha- I died?” Danny’s mind was still running two steps behind. “But I’m… Did you do CPR?”
Sam looked over her shoulder at Tucker, then faced Danny again. “I was about to. We just managed to turn off the power and drag you away from the… the portal. You didn’t have a pulse. And then you just… woke up.”
Danny looked down at himself again. That weird light was still there, and his clothes looked different. Burnt, maybe? He patted himself experimentally with both hands. He felt as solid as ever.
For some reason, he laughed. “Well, it looks like I’m okay now. So why are you both still…”
Danny looked up to see Tucker pointing a trembling finger right at him. “You- you look…”
When Tucker didn’t finish the sentence, Danny shot Sam a curious look, then stood and stumbled to the mirror hanging over the lab’s industrial sink. The face that looked back at him was barely recognizable. That same green-white light lit his whole body, casting shadows at strange angles, rendering the familiar topography of his face disturbingly alien. His skin was even more pale than usual, his hair had turned from coal black to pure, shocking white, and his eyes shone bright, toxic green. The same green as the portal, the same green as the realm of the damned…
His mother’s words came to him, memories from years of lectures about the details of an exorcist’s work. Possessio. Physical possession of a human body by an evil spirit. Energumenus. A possessed person manifesting the powers of the possessing entity.
Staring back at Danny from the mirror with a look of abject horror were the eyes of a demon.
Danny sat on his bed, back pressed against the wall, knees drawn tight against his chest. Night had fallen and the lights were out, but he could see, couldn’t stop seeing, by the eerie green glow of his eyes.
Somewhere in his mind he had heard Sam and Tucker banging on his door, begging him to let them in. Then, later, greeting Jazz when she got home. Explaining that Danny wasn’t feeling well, that he’d gone to bed early, and they were just leaving. That he probably shouldn’t be disturbed. He’d heard his parents return home from a long day in the field, their heavy footfalls as they went straight to bed.
The sounds had been carried to his room, but failed to penetrate the silent scream in his mind. The only thing he could really hear was his own voice, quietly repeating the same words he’d been chanting for an eternity.
The rosary clenched in his right hand burned like molten iron. His skin was scorched where it touched the wooden beads, weeping a glowing green fluid from open burns.
The same pain built up in his tongue and behind his eyes as he continued chanting. With every line, a horrible ripping pain tore at his heart, then receded, only to resurge as he forced himself to speak the next phrase.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux.
Non draco sit mihi dux.
Vade retro satana.
Numquam suade mihi vana.
Sunt mala quae libas.
Ipse venena bibas.”
The pain built to a crescendo, and Danny had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. His mouth filled with blood, and he nearly choked, coughing up green plasma. He cleared his throat and tightened his grip on his rosary, the beads digging into his weeping flesh and burning all the more.
He began again.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux.
Non draco sit mihi dux.
Vade retro satana…"