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Jack Fenton, professional ghost hunter, stared across the lab, looking the dead kid dead in his dead eyes.
"Dad!?" the ghost said, all 4ft of his evil ghostly form quivering in terror.
"I don't care what kind of unresolved father issues you have," Jack leapt across the room, clearing it in a single graceful bound. "There's only three people in this world that get to call me daddy."
Danny had just enough time to crinkle his nose at how gross that was, before his dad tackled him bodily.
Jack wrapped his python-like arm around the ghost, putting him in the headlock he’d been practicing for just such an occasion. The anti-sweat anti-ghost duel purpose deodorant he’d invented leaving the dangerous ghost at his mercy.
“I got you SPIRIT!” he laughed, so high with elation he felt like he was flying. “I finally caught my first ghost!”
Danny could, unfortunately, confirm that neither the anti-ghost or anti-sweat part of his father’s deodorant worked. Also Ew. “Let go!” he coughed out from inside his dad’s poorly executed wrestling move. “You need help.”
“Me? Help?” Jack laughed. “I don’t know what trick you’re trying to pull, ghost, but I’m not falling for it. Not today.”
Christ. Danny rubbed his forehead with a free hand. “Look down.”
The ghost was obviously playing games, but it’s like when someone says they wrote gullible on the ceiling, it’s hard not to look. Nobody had written gullible on the floor, but they’d done something almost as distressing.
Laying there, clutching a box of his homemade Fenton Fudge, was a beefy (and quite handsome) man and he wasn’t moving. Jack gasped, the man looked just like him!
“What are you playing at, ghost?!”
“Playing at? Da- dude, you’re dead!” Danny squirmed trying to get free, but his dad was annoyingly strong now that he couldn’t just be phased through. So instead, he reached for his phone. “We need to call for help, get you back in your body. Is anybody else home?”
“Ha, I knew it. You’re just fishing for information on my family!” He squeezed Danny’s head a little tighter, oblivious that the boy was shapeshifting a longer squishier neck. “I’ll never tell!”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Serious is my middle name.”
Danny didn’t actually know his dad’s middle name, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t true. “Dad did something sun's com2 quicj” he typed out the text quickly behind his back and pressed send. It was going to Jazz. Or maybe Sam, or Tucker, or dad, or his mom, or maybe Valarie, or the phone company.
It was going to somebody he’d texted recently.
He hit send a few more times to be safe.
“What are you doing there?” Jack had been in the middle of trying to make his spectral hand pick up a piece of fudge when he noticed Danny texting. “Where did you get that phone?”
Danny shoved it back in his pocket. “What phone?”
“That phone, it looks just-”
There was a crash from upstairs and the sound of feet running down stairs three at a time. A long and questioning “Daaaaaddddddd?” echoed down the stairs and around the steel clad basement.
They both turned to look as Jazz came barging into the lab, she looked between her father’s body and the two ghosts wrestling 5ft in the air. She shut her gaping mouth and sucked in a long breath.
“Tell. Me. What. Happened.” she asked in a way that made it clear it wasn’t a request.
Jack gave Danny a shake under his arm. “I caught a ghost!”
Danny pointed at the dead body on the floor. “Da- Di’s guy choked on fudge.”
Jazz sighed at pulled out her phone, “Did either of you call 911?”
“I don’t have a phone, how could a ghost have a phone?”
“Yes he does, the liar, I saw it. But don’t worry I stopped him from using it.”
She started dialing. “MOM!” Jazz yelled upstairs, “Dad’s hurt again!”
“Honey,” Jack said consolingly. “I really think you’re missing the big picture, I caught a ghost!”
“That’s really not important right now.”
“Not important!” Jack looked so offended he might die a second time today. “I spent my whole life trying to catch a ghost.”
Unable to contain himself Danny laughed. “Technically you didn’t catch me during your life.”
“Who caught what?” Maddie asked, walking into the room, concerningly unconcerned about her husband’s reported injury. It wasn’t the first time.
She came up short when she saw the full scene, her expression going through the same motions her daughter’s had moments ago.
“I told you not to eat that homemade fudge.”
“It was fine.”
“It was hard as rock and sticky as tar.”
“I was managing.”
“Can we not focus on the fudge?” Jazz interrupted. “We need to get Dad back in his body. How long has it been?”
“Two minutes, maybe three.” Danny offered from the armpit.
“See Maddie, that’s plenty of time for us to get this guy in the ghost trap and for the ambulance to get me back on my feet.” Jack gave his wife the pleading puppy dog eyes. “Brain damage doesn’t even start until minute 6.”
Maddie scratched her chin, “Well the normal response time for our house is two minutes…”
“NO!” Danny and Jazz yelled in harmony.
“Put down… the ghost-boy and get back in your body so the paramedics can wake you back up.” Jazz ordered her dad.
“We don’t even know if I can go back in my body. I should probably just stay here and keep this ghost from escaping.”
“You haven’t tried yet!?”
Jack gave a sheepish shake of the dead teenager he’d had trapped in a headlock for a concerning amount of time. “I was busy.”
Jazz shot Danny a glare, as if it was somehow his fault for investigating a ghost suddenly appearing in their basement. It was basically the entire premise of his adolescence.
There was the sound of multiple feet charging through the living room and the gaggle of Fentons looked at each other. Only half of them knew the entire family was already present, and even then the sole “missing” member couldn’t account for that much noise.
“Danny texted us, what’s wrong?!” Sam shouted as she burst into the room with a first aid kit. Tucker followed at her heels, his backpack overflowing with every bit of technology that he thought might be useful for Danny’s unspecified emergency.
The other two thirds of the polly trio Danny didn’t know he was in stared in shock, their eyes darting between his dead dad, the ghost of said dead dad, his exasperated sister, and the mom still weighing the risk of her husbands voluntary brain damage against the scientific value of catching a ghost. “What happened?”
“Danny texted you?” Maddie asked. “Is he even home?”
Sam and Tucker looked at each other, trying to telepathically manifest a believable lie.
“He’s upstairs!” Jazz lied. “I yelled at him to stay in his room when I heard Dad fighting this ghost I’ve never seen before. He must have texted them because…”
“Moral Support!” said Sam.
“Yeah!” Tucker, tucked the ecto-tazer he was carrying behind his back. “He was scared so we brought um… video games?” He looked at Sam for support.
“And homework, to uh… keep his mind off the fight.” Sam put her first aid kid, suspicious green stains and all, under her arm and did her best to pretend it was a purse. “You know what they say: You can’t get traumatized by ghost if you’re doing math homework.”
“So uhh what is going on in here?” Tucker asked. “Just so we can reassure Danny there’s nothing to worry about.
Jazz sighed. “My Father, won’t let go of this ghost and climb back into his body. He thinks capturing a ghost is more important than not getting brain damage.”
Tucker nodded sagely. “Ghost powers are pretty awesome.”
Sam elbowed him in the ribs.
“In theory! Not that I’ve ever had them or spent long sleepless nights longing to have them back.”
“What I think Tucker meant to say is that being human is awesome and you should get back in your body.” She elbowed him a second time for good measure.
“YUP,” he said tightly, hand cradling his ribs. “ Words right out of my mouth. ”
“I’m so glad we all agree, now if you could just let go of the ghost” Jazz stabbed a finger in the direction of her father’s fudge laden body. “AND COME BACK TO LIFE!”
“Jazz is right, honey.” Maddie stepped up and lifted a hand up to her husband’s ghostly face. “There will be other chances, we need to choose our family over ghost hunting or what’s the point?”
“Easy choice, ghost hunting,” said a teenage girl with an ecto-blaster and a surfboard, right before she was tackled by Sam and Tucker, and dragged from the room. Her protest about how all ghosts needed to be stopped no matter what was drowned out by the other teens loudly thanking her for coming to help Danny feel better.
“Who was that?”
"That’s Danny’s girlfriend.” Jazz said as she watched her bother's friends disappear up stairs. “She’s a lot, I’ll introduce you later."
As they passed a tiny mass of glowing green fur phased through the floor and landed unsteadily in the stairwell; Cujo got to his paws, the cellphone clutched in his mouth nearly sending him toppling down the steps.
She slammed the door.
“Body. Now.” Jazz barked, she’d had her phone pressed to her ear the entire time and on the other side a very confused 911 operator let her know the ambulance was almost there. “We’re running out of time.”
Danny, who’d spent the last minute or so wondering exactly how many people he’d texted and if they should expect Mr. Lancer to burst into the room next, piped in. “What if I promise not to escape while they resuscitate you?”
Everyone looked at him in confusion.
“It’s a ghost thing; you beat me in a duel, you have the right to demand a reasonable cost or penalty from me, or to keep me prisoner. I have to swear by the ancients and breaking that oath is a huge deal,” he lied.
“Really?” said all the people in the room currently alive (and Jack).
“Totally.”
“Then swear by the Ancients you won’t run away,” Jack demanded, “and will let us capture you again after I’m better.”
“Sure thing.” Danny raised one hand in a boy scouts salute and gave the oath. “Now let me go and I’ll prove it.”
Hesitantly and reluctantly, Jack let him go.
And Danny didn't run. “See, I told you.”
Jack sighed in relief and with his business done, he began to drift towards his body. He was only vaguely aware as the paramedics burst in and a white light overtook him.
Jack woke up in a hospital bed with a ghost staring down at him.
The ghost smiled. “Hey big guy.”
“It worked!” he said groggily. “Maddie, get in here! It worked.”
“Well, of course it worked. I couldn’t go anywhere…” Danny floated down and whispered into his ear. “Not without telling you: I lied.”
The ghost zipped laughing though the wall and out of the room; his parting words echoing in his absence.
“And your fudge sucks!”
The End.