Cult Division

by Marsalias

Chapter 1

Cameron Daily ran Amity Park Police Department’s Cult Division.  

Phrasing it that way was, honestly, pretty generous.  Ninety percent of the time it was him and his computer monitoring Amity Park’s religious social media and the Amity of Amity Park community forums.  Most of the time, the cults were harmless splinters of more established religions.  Just people trying to come to terms with the whole ‘ghosts are real’ thing.

Hell, technically speaking, he was part of a cult.  An extra dimension full of super powered and extremely violent dead people of various moralities wasn’t part of standard Episcopalian cosmology.

Anyway, most of the time his job was fairly laid back.  Low effort, low responsibility.  He did, however, have the ability to rope other people in if it looked like something bad was about to go down.  

Something was about to go down.  

Now, whether it was bad or not, he didn’t know, but since it was happening at midnight in the graveyard, he was going to play this cautiously.  Especially since the cult in question was one of the Phantom cults.  

Not to be judgemental, but the Phantom cults caused at least half of the cult problems.  From kidnapping Danny Fenton that one time to starting a fight with the more established churches over putting a religious statue of Phantom in Amity Park… okay, that was at least half on the Christians, but still.  The kidnapping thing still stood.

Plus, and he was saying this as someone who looked into a lot of cults, some of the Phantom cults were just downright creepy.  

Okay, anyway.  Time to call in help.  

“Hey!” he shouted across the room.  “Paterson!  Collins!  McGee!  I need your help with something!”

“I’m not interviewing any more cultists!” said Paterson.  “I’m out!”

“Stakeout and I’ll buy you pizza!”

“Changed my mind.  I’m in!”

.

McGee thought he was okay with stakeouts.  He was a detective.  Undercover.  It was one of the tools in his box.  Part of the package.  A stereotype, even.  He’d gotten used to them long ago.  

But stakeouts in the backseat of Collins’s car were something awful.  There was never enough room.  Ever since the Fentons had come out with the ‘Fenton Freshener’ the vehicle had smelled perennially of limes and ozone, which went poorly with the oregano on the pizza.  There was always the chance that a ghost might come along.

Having Daily squeezed back there with him only made it worse.

“Having us stay out all night because a teenager called in a tip seems like overkill.”

“Not just any teenager,” said Daily, “Sophia LaMar.  She’s connected.  I’ve also got red flags on a bunch of social traffic and some of the Amity of Amity boards.  This is the real deal.”

“I thought you kept getting kicked from the Amity of Amity boards.”

“Yeah, that’s because I was accessing it from the police station.  Apparently they have something programmed to weed out the GIW.  I monitor the Amity boards from home, now."  He made a face.  “I still sometimes get kicked, those guys are really insistent on not being monitored by law enforcement, but–”

The door opened, making everyone jump.

“Move over,” said Danny Fenton, prompting Daily to scoot further into McGee’s space.  

“How do you do that?” demanded McGee.  “Do your parents know where you are?  It’s eleven.”

“Don’t you get tired of reacting that way?” asked Danny, sliding into the seat Daily had just vacated.  “Do you know what’s going on?”

“No.  You?”

“Just that some of the cult kids were really antsy about something, and the occult side of the Amity forums kept talking about how special the date is.”  He made a face.  “I don’t get it.  It isn’t like there’s a planetary alignment or a meteor shower or anything.  It isn’t even a new moon or a full moon.”

“Not all special dates have to do with astronomy,” said Paterson, playing with her binoculars.  “Any other messages?”

“Phantom he’s going to be out here tonight, in case whatever is going on is more magic ritual than graverobbing.  He’d like you not to shoot at him if he has to go fight the cultists over some kind of slavery spell or something.”

“And if it is graverobbing?” asked Collins, putting his coffee in the cup holder.  

“He’d rather you guys take care of it before they start digging.”

“Sure thing.”

“Great.  I can’t hang aroun– Oh, is that the new jalapeno and pepperoncini pizza from Spectral Slices?”

“Triple cheese,” said Daily, apologetically.  

“Ah, well.  You should try the ghost chili one, it’s to die for.”  Fenton climbed out of the car.  “Have a good night!”

McGee waited for him to be a good deal away.  “Why does no one else think a teenager hopping into a car in the middle of a stakeout at almost midnight weird?”

“We do think it’s weird,” said Paterson.  “But he is a Fenton.”

“Yeah,” said Collins.  “You have to make allowances.”  He leaned forward.  “I see something.”

“Oh, they’re wearing robes.  That’s cute,” said Paterson.  McGee would have to take her word for it, because in the back he could see approximately nothing.  “Probably a bad sign, though.”

“You’re telling me,” said Daily.  “Robes mean rituals, ritual action, means they’re serious about this.”

“Aren’t all cults serious about what they do?” asked Paterson.

“Sure, but it raises the stakes.  Do you know how hard it is to get teenagers to stick to a dress code?  Mom couldn’t even stop my sister from going out in a crop top.  Did you know–”

“Cameron,” groaned Paterson, “we’re trying to focus on the cult.”

.

Danny watched the cultists from above.  He…  Okay, at first he’d thought that it was kind of fun, having cults.  Like a sort of fan club.  It was always nice to be appreciated.

Now, though?  Some, most, even, were still like fan clubs, but others were… pushy.  Always wanting things he couldn’t give them.  He tried to minimize interactions with them.  

He didn’t like the idea of one of those messing around with his grave.  Which.  You know.  Contained his dead body.  

Luckily, they didn’t seem to be breaking out any shovels or knives or weird books or chants.  Maybe they just wanted to say some prayers?

One of the cultists took out a large folded sheet from under their robe.  Were they having a picnic or something?  The cultists unfolded it.  

Danny had just enough time to see the circle sewn into it before he was suddenly in the midst of the cultists, floating above the circle.  

“Oh my gosh,” he said.  “Was I just summoned?  Was that what that was?”

The cultists start to celebrate.  

.

“Oh no,” said Collins as a very familiar dot of light appeared in the middle of the graveyard.  “Looks like things just went wrong.”

Paterson dropped her binoculars.  “Did he just get summoned?”

Chapter 2

Notes:

Written for Ectober Week 2022: Six Feet

"Uh," said Danny, having already decided that this was his least favorite cult.  "So.  You summoned me.  Congrats."

“Lord Phantom,” intoned one of the cultists, voice artificially deep.  

Danny pegged him as the leader.  He was also, incidentally, the tallest one there.  Did this cult pick their leadership based on height?  Not important.  

“Do not wonder at our call, oh you of unequaled power,” continued the cultist, “for it is an auspicious night, and though this place may be foreign to you, your lost bones lie six feet beneath our woven circle.”

"Believe it or not," said Danny, coolly, "I do know where I am, thanks."

He shifted his glare from the cultists (who were sort of hard to look at, because they were all carrying stupidly bright flashlights) to the cloth beneath him.  It was white, with black, silver, and, regrettably, Fenton ecto-line green.  Apart from the weird symbols, the pattern of stitches was reminiscent of the Fenton Ghost Catcher.  

Not a good sign.  Danny would appreciate it if his parents would run better background checks on the people who bought their stuff.  Not that cult membership was generally a matter of public record, and even if it was, not all cults were like this.  

Danny caught himself sinking towards the ground and yanked himself up.  Doing so was oddly difficult.  He felt himself straining, as if he was carrying something heavy.  Trying to go sideways was worse, like trying to move a particularly stubborn Ghost Zone door.  

Yeah.  Not a good sign.  

“What do you want?” asked Danny.  

“We, your servants, wish to reunite you with your flesh, oh wonderful one.  For this purpose we have crafted this circle, to marry the spiritual divine with the physical divine, so you may lead us in all ways and for all time, and grant us the blessings we deserve as proclaimers of your might.”

“That’s… kind of gross sounding.  Plus, I knew this was here.  I could come get my stuff at literally any time.”

“Of course, oh puissant one, your power is vast and unmatched.  But we, your faithful servants, have long gathered knowledge with which to aid you, and it is by this that we have found this night, and this ritual, that shall truly wed you to your once-discarded flesh.”

One of the other cultists muttered something like ‘We’ve only been around for a year,’ before being elbowed in the gut and pushed to the back of the group.  Well, that narrowed which cult this was exactly down a bit.  A very little bit.  

Whatever.  Who these people were wasn’t currently the problem.  Getting away before they somehow turned him into a zombie or forced him to possess his own corpse was the problem.  

“Okay, so what if I don’t want to be reunited with my flesh?”

This seemed to baffle the cultists.  

“But of course you do!” said one of them.  “Everyone wants to be alive again!”

Danny rather doubted that these guys had figured out how to resurrect people, and didn’t particularly want to be resurrected in the first place.  What would that even look like for him?

Speaking of looking, weren’t Collins, Paterson, McGee, and Daily still watching?  Why weren’t they here, doing something?  He could use the backup.  

Almost as if summoned (ha) by his thoughts, Collins, Paterson, and McGee emerged from the decorative shrubbery.  

… Actually, if Danny squinted past the cultists (and their flashlights) he could see Daily making a slow jog towards the group as well, still carrying his computer.

“Freeze!” shouted Collins.  He did not have his gun out.  Danny wasn’t sure if cops in Amity Park even had traditional firearms, to be honest.  Several of the cultists raised their hands anyway.  “You’re under arrest!”

“For what?” demanded the leader.  

There was a beat of silence.  Danny dragged his palm over his face, exasperated.  Not only were they kind of late getting here, but they clearly hadn’t thought this through.  

“Trespassing?” suggested Paterson.  

“This is public property,” said one of the cultists.  The others nodded in agreement.  

“The park is closed,” tried Paterson.

“Mayor Masters passed a new ordinance to keep the park open all day to accommodate our undead and night owl citizenry!” 

“Wait, really?” asked Paterson, glancing at Collins.  

“Oh, yeah, he did do that,” said Collins, his face scrunched up as if he’d bitten into a lemon unexpectedly.  “Defacing public property?”

“With a blanket?”  

“Come on,” said Danny, “you guys have to do better than that!”

The cultists jeered.  The ones who had put their hands up had, for the most part, put them down.  

“Whose side are you on?” asked Paterson, crossly.

“The side of the faithful, of course!” proclaimed the lead cultist, waving his arms.  

“The side I’m on is the inside of this circle, that’s the problem,” said Danny.  “Maybe you could get them for, I don’t know, kidnapping?”

“Kidnapping only applies to people!” asserted a cultist.

“Oh, I see how it is.  At first, I’m the great and powerful Phantom, and now I’m not even a person.”

“Er,” said the head cultist.  “We’re only using the unjust law as our shield, great and powerful Phantom.”

Danny closed his eyes, feeling the strain of both the ludicrous conversation and staying afloat.  “Okay, look, I meant that title sarcastically, I don’t want you to actually use it.  What I want is for you to let me go.”

“Oh, most gracious and humble Lord Phantom, we wish only to free you from ignorance and the horror that is the division of soul and body!”

“Can we get them on conspiracy to commit a crime?” asked McGee, who looked almost as done with the situation as Danny.  

“ What crime?” demanded the lead cultist.  “We are only exercising our right to practice our religion as we see fit!”

“Uh,” said McGee.  “Grave robbing?  Desecrating a corpse?  This reunion thing has to be one of those two, right?”

“We are not grave robbers!  We are merely returning what has been stolen!”

If only Danny had access to this kind of enthusiasm when his body had actually been stolen.  

Cameron Daily finally arrived, panting.  He doubled over, clutching his computer to his stomach, and raised one finger.  “I’ve got it,” he said finally.  “You’re in violation of Amity Park Municipal Ordinance 11042.”

“What.”

“Passed in nineteen eighty-four, APMO 11042 states that no spirits, demons, ghosts, or other similar beings are to be summoned on public property, on the penalty of fines, and confiscation of all related ritual paraphernalia.”

The cultists exchanged nervous glances.  

“You’ll never take us alive!” declared the leader, before absolutely booking it.  

The other cultists were flustered at first, but then they ran, too, scattering into the night.  

“Well,” said Daily, gesturing at his flabby and sweaty body, “ I’m not going to be able to catch them.”

McGee swore and took off.

“Hey, wait!” shouted Paterson following.  Collins gave Danny an apologetic look before running as well.  

“Great,” said Danny.  “So, could you maybe get me out of this?”  It was becoming harder to keep his distance from the ground.

“I can try,” said Daily, starting to dither around the circle.  

“Maybe you can just–” The sharp party-popper sound of a taser being fired somewhere in the park made Danny flinch.  

His control slipped.  His foot hit the embroidered cloth.  

The symbols and lines sewn into the cloth flared and spasmed, swarming up Danny’s leg, crawling over the fabric of his suit as if they belonged there until they twined around his torso and arms as well.  

There was a flash of light.  Danny was human again, but the symbols were still there, stitched into his clothes and apparently inked into his skin, still glowing.  

“Oh,” said Daily, wide-eyed.  “I don’t, um.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually do that.”

Danny grunted in reply and turned his hands over, looking at the symbols that circled his wrists.  They tingled, both on his skin and in his eyes.  

“Yeah, well, I didn’t mean to,” said Danny.  He folded his hands into fists and looked up.  “I can’t turn back.”

Chapter 3

“What do you mean, you can’t change back?” asked Daily. 

“What do you think I mean?” asked Danny, stepping off the cloth, then stooping to ball it up into something he could easily carry.  “I can’t go back to being Phantom.”

“Then they really revived you?”

“No,” said Danny, “I don’t think so.”  He could still feel his ghost half, he just couldn’t grab it.  It had been like this for less than a minute and he already hated it. 

Daily shifted, looking around the park.  “Okay, um.  Can you do any of your… stuff?  The ghost stuff?”

Danny bit his lip and cycled through his basic powers.  Nothing.  He shook his head. 

“Oh, that’s bad.  You’re just like a normal kid now.”

He wasn’t wrong, exactly, but Danny wished he’d phrased it at least slightly differently. 

“A normal kid… In the park in the middle of the night…”  Daily shook his head.  “We shouldn’t be here when McGee comes back.  He still hasn’t chilled out.”

Meaning, he was still looking for things to report back to the agency that sent him in the first place.  Danny groaned.  “Don’t worry, I’m going home.”  Maybe his parents would have some insight into what had happened.  Or, at least, who they had sold Ghost Catcher thread to.

“Hey, no, wait, you can’t walk home from here like that.  You’re not even wearing a coat.”

“I don’t really have another option—”

“I’ll drive you.”

“Isn’t that Collin’s car?”

“He won’t miss it.  And he left the keys.”

Danny stared for a moment at the blatant lies, then shrugged.  He could still hear distant sounds of people running through trees and bushes.  It would take a while for Collins, Paterson, and McGee to catch everyone, assuming they caught anyone at all, and Fentonworks wasn’t that far away. 

He walked back to the car and opened the door, the front one, this time, and slid in.  Daily got in the other side, then stared blankly at the steering wheel. 

“You do know how to drive, right?”  It was a valid question.  Danny had never seen Daily drive. 

“Of course I do!  I just haven’t driven this car before.”  He started the car up, and very slowly pulled out onto the road. 

The slowness of the drive gave Danny time to further assess himself.  His ghost half was definitely, absolutely, still there (thank goodness).  It just felt… weighed down.  Pinned.  Tied up. 

He started picking at the glowing thread.  The patterns were repeated on his skin, but maybe it was just a matter of taking off his clothes…

The car slowed to a halt.  “Do you need me to walk you in?” asked Daily, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel.  “I can…  Explain to your parents?  Or maybe your sister?”  Jazz was mentioned in a significantly more helpful tone than his parents.

“No, I’ve got it,” said Danny, opening the door.  “Thanks for the ride.  You’ll let me know what you find out about that cult and…”  He gestured at himself.  “Whatever they did.”

“Okay,” said Daily.  “Yeah.  Of course!  That’s my job, right?”

Keeping an eye on and researching cults was part of Daily’s job, but telling Danny wasn’t.  Still.  “Yeah,” said Danny, smiling weakly. 

.

Collins frowned at the empty parking lot.  “Paterson!” he called. 

“Yeah?” came Paterson’s voice, echoing across the park. 

“Did I, or did I not park here?”

“What?”

Collins groaned.  “Give it up, they got away!”  He sighed.  “Possibly with my car.”

.

Danny did not have the best track record when it came to telling his parents about things, but he was trying to get better.  Still, he felt like the present subject had to broached delicately.  That was why he was sitting on the floor outside their bedroom, listening to his dad snore.

He wanted to tell them.  He wanted to fix this.  But he didn’t want to admit how much trouble he’d gotten into and how a bunch of cultists had gotten the better of him. 

But he was trying, and his new, ugh, magic glowing tattoos weren’t something he could hide.  He picked up the broom he had brought with him and opened the door.  No point in knocking, they both wore earplugs to bed.  He picked up the broom and poked his dad with the end of it. 

“WHAT!  GHOST!”

“Hmhph?” said Maddie.  “Ghost?”  She had a small ectoblaster in her hand already. 

“No, just me.”  Danny put down the broom and raised his hands. 

“Oh, Danno,” said Jack, rubbing at one eye as Maddie pried the earplugs from his ears. “What are you doing here?” 

Danny bit his lower lip.  “I… might have screwed up.”

.

“Danny, sweetheart, that doesn’t sound like it was your fault.  It would have happened even if you stayed home.  You were kidnapped.”

“I guess.”  It still felt like he could have done something.  Maybe if he’d paid a little more attention to the cults, kept a closer eye on what they were doing.

“But we do need to see what we can do with all this.”  She picked up his hand and rubbed her thumb over one of the green marks on its back.  “…and about that summoning thing.  I don’t like that these people can just snatch you away whenever they like.”

“And we’ll never let them do anything like that again!  Or else!” said Jack, brandishing the spatula he was using to flip the pancakes.

“It sounded like it was related to the date somehow.”

“That doesn’t comfort us much, sweetie.  Especially considering what they did to you.  Do you think they really involved your, ah…”

“I mean…”  Danny trailed off and took his hand back.  He rubbed his arms against the sudden chill.  “I don’t know.  It’s not like I’ve never gotten my powers knocked out of whack.  It could be like that.  Might even have a time limit.”

“But?” prompted Maddie. 

“But… it feels different,” admitted Danny.  “It’s weight, not static.”

“Do you think we’ll need to, uh, what’s the word again, for digging up a, um…”

“Exhumation,” said Maddie, before Jack could come up with a proper euphemism for corpse. 

Danny wasn’t really comfortable about his… mortal remains.  But the pauses and too-obvious references were, in many ways, worse. 

Literally everything else about his life was better than when he’d still been keeping things a secret, though!  He did not want to go back!

Except maybe to earlier tonight, when getting the dead half of his body shoved back into him wasn’t something he had to worry about happening.

“We’ll have to ask the police about that,” said Maddie.  “Maybe we can start with a few simple tests after breakfast, though.  See if how much your readings changed from your baseline.”

“Hey!  Could be that all you need is a trip through the old Ghost Catcher!”

“Ghost Catcher string partially caused this,” said Danny.  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to, uh, cross wires.”

“There shouldn’t be any problem with that,” said Jack.  “The strings aren’t reactive with each other, they wouldn’t work if they were.  Speaking of which, how did they even get it into this cloth?”  Jack used the spatula to point at the cloth, which was spread out over Jazz’s chair.  “Usually, you have to have special tools to work with any of it, or else it just falls through.”

“I don’t know, they didn’t really say anything beyond path of enlightenment nonsense.  You know, the whole ‘we worship you but won’t listen to a thing you say’ thing.”

Maddie sighed.  “We’ll just hope they get caught so they can tell us what they were actually trying to do.  In the meantime, we’ll do our own research…  And maybe you can use this as a break.  A little vacation.”

“In the same way sick days are a vacation, I guess.”

“Do you feel sick?”

“No,” said Danny.  “Not yet, anyway.”

“Maybe you should stay home from school until we can find a way to undo this.”

“Aw, no, Mom.  I don’t want to miss any school.  I’ve been actually doing okay this year.”

“But we don’t know how any of this is going to affect you.  What if it is temporary, and your… body is involved.  What happens if it times out in class?”

Danny swallowed, suddenly nauseous.  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

.

The chief of police sat in his office, blinds drawn, two thirds of the trouble trio and Cameron Daily. 

“You’re telling me that the person who is primarily responsible for protecting our city from hostile ghosts has been nerfed by cultists.  Cultists that you let get away.”

“Hey!” said Daily.  “I didn’t know you knew what nerfed meant, chief!”

The chief groaned.  “Find these cultists.  Figure out what they did.  Get the Fentons whatever they need to undo this.  Fast.”

.

“Alright,” said Maddie, as if she hadn’t been having a whispered argument with Jack only minutes before, “I’m going to city hall to file the exhumation paperwork.  You two stay here unless something happens to Danny.  No leaving for ghost attacks.”

“Aw,” said both Jack and Danny. 

“But, Mom—”  

“No buts.  This is a sick day for Danny, and someone needs to look after him the whole time.”  She pointed sharply at Jack.  “Don’t run off.”

Danny hunched his shoulder.  He wasn’t that bad to look after, was he?  Not that he wanted to be looked after.

“But if I’m the one to talk to Vladdie, it’ll be faster!”

“It’ll be hours, sweetie, if you two get started.  If he doesn’t leave you in the waiting room,” she added under her breath.  “You know how you two get.”

“Not when Danny’s at stake!”

Maddie gave him a look. 

“Fine,” said Jack. 

“Maybe you two can do something together while I’m gone.  Fudge, maybe?  Or cookies?”

“Oooooh!” said Jack.  “Yeah!  Cookies!  How does that sound, Danno?”

“I have homework,” groused Danny. 

“I can help with that, too!”

“Goodbye, guys.  Oh!  Remember, if I’m not back by lunch, run the tests again, okay?”

“Will do, Maddie!”

“Okay, Mom,” said Danny, giving a little wave. 

“Good, good.  So, keys, cell phone, wallet, boo-staff—” The door clicked closed, cutting off the rest of her list. 

“Okay,” said Jack, thumping Danny’s back and giving him a little shove at the stairs.  “I’ll get the kitchen set up!  You get your homework!”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  “Okay.” 

“Fundge here we come!” said Jack, pumping his fist.  “Get it?  Fundge?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, giving him a weak smile.  “I get it.”  He started for the stairs, irrationally annoyed he couldn’t fly up them.  He wouldn’t have flown up them anyway.  He hardly ever did that. 

He walked into his room and stopped.  Actually, where was his homework?  Where was his backpack? 

Ugh.  Typical. 

He started looking behind and underneath things, the process all the more tedious because he couldn’t just reach through them.  Hopefully he hadn’t done something stupid like phase it into the wall last night.  ‘Oops, I made my homework inaccessible to the living’ was not going to fly in any of his classes…  Unless he blamed it on his parents…  Food for thought.  He paused to email a request for class notes to Sam and Tucker.  Halfway through writing the message, he heard the screaming doorbell go off.

“I’ve got it!” called Jack. 

“Okay!”  Danny hit send on the email and kept looking for his backpack.  He dropped to the floor to look under his bed, scowled as it wasn’t there, either, then got up and tripped over his sheets, pulling them off his bed. 

Why had he put his backpack in his bed?  So stupid. 

He shouldered it and prepared to go downstairs, but… 

Something was wrong.  He thought back, trying to decide what it was.  Living… or unliving?  Half-living the way he did, he was pretty good at pinpointing the sources of vague senses of wrongness.

It was quiet. 

The front door hadn’t shut. 

Holy crap, had someone just kidnapped his dad?

Emergency blaster, emergency blaster…  He held his backpack by one strap to use as a bludgeon – the books in it were certainly heavy enough – and held the blaster steady in his other hand.  He would activate the Defense System, but his parents had ripped a lot of it out after the reveal and were still in the process of reinstallation. 

He tapped his door open with his foot and ventured out into the house.  It really was too quiet.  Almost suffocatingly so.  He held his breath.  Probably not the best choice, strategically, but something about everything…

He hit the bottom step of the stairs, turned into the kitchen, and ran into two people wearing oxygen masks. 

His reflexes were better, so he started firing immediately.  Ectoblasters weren’t meant to hurt humans, not really, but the impact to the chest was enough to knock both of the men back.  The recoil was equally sufficient to knock the air out of Danny’s lungs.  He wasn’t really trying to hold his breath, after all. 

He ran past them, inhaling, and… stumbled, suddenly dizzy. 

Oxygen masks. 

Stupid mistake!  Sometimes his instincts were good!

Something touched his upper arm, and he lashed out, swinging his backpack backwards.  There was an oof sort of sound, and one of the men toppled over.  The other one pulled the backpack out of Danny’s hand, which was a mistake, because he was still holding the gun.  Ectogun.  Whatever.  He shot him. 

Then…  Outside.  Whatever was in here, they couldn’t have enough to get the whole neighborhood, and if they could get away with just oxygen masks, it probably wasn’t super toxic.  Also, if it had spread very far, someone in the neighborhood would have noticed.  Probably.  Maybe. 

They’d notice enough to complain, at least. 

Halfway through the living room, he had to breathe again.  Human physical limits sucked. 

Black spots danced over his vision and left him on his knees.  He got back up and went for the door, stumbling drunkenly.  He hit it with his face.  Why were doors so hard to operate?

The black spots slowly grew until they consumed his vision. 

“Did… did he just run into a wall?”

“Just because he’s perfect doesn’t mean he smart.  And get rid of… we… need… backpack…”

.

Collins and Paterson stared at the most significant piece of physical evidence regarding Daniel Fenton’s kidnapping. 

“If you’re not going to say it, I am,” said Paterson. 

“Don’t say it,” said Collins. 

“I really want to, though.”

“Don’t.”

“I think ‘my homework ate a kidnapper’ is a great excuse for not doing it.  That kid is brutal.  How much blood do you think is on that thing?”

“Paterson, he got kidnapped.”

“Yeah,” said Paterson, a grin plastered on her face, “and that’s terrifying, thanks.  Let me have this.”

McGee escorted Daily through the front door of Fentonworks, his hand firmly on the man’s shoulder.  “Got him,” he said. 

“Oh, man,” said Daily.  “So, this is what a real crime scene looks like.”  He saw the backpack and squeaked.  “Is that blood?”

“Yeah.  Now do your thing and find out why these two think what happened last night in the park is connected to this.  Fenton wasn’t actually involved in that, was he?”

“His family takes care of the gravesite,” said Collins.  “And this is the biggest crime in Amity Park for years.  We have to look at everything.”

“Uh huh,” said McGee.  “Well, I’m going to go back out and question the father.”

Collins groaned internally.  Dealing with McGee was usually… if not exactly fun, then at least amusing, but dealing with his everything on a case like this…  With Danny’s… possibly with Danny’s life on the line, who knew how that worked with the whole cult thing…

“Do you think we can offload McGee on someone else?” he asked Paterson. 

“And give him something to actually report to his bosses?  Not a chance.”

Chapter 4

“Vlad,” said Maddie.  

“Maddie,” purred Vlad.  “What brings you here today?”

Maddie repressed the desire to curl her lip.  “I am informing you that we’re exhuming Phantom’s body, following the activities of the unidentified cultists last night.”

“Oh, but, Maddie, only family members can do that.  And unless you and Phantom are suddenly family members…”

“Don’t give me that,” said Maddie.  “I.  Know.”

Vlad’s expression soured.  “Yes.  Quite,” he said flatly.  “I am aware.  However, unless you want to make your relationship with the boy public, there’s nothing I can do about the law.”

Maddie, having anticipated this, slammed a piece of paper down on the desk.  “You won’t have to,” she said.  “The law is very much on my side for this one.  Municipal Ordinance 10776.  Investigative professionals registered with the city can request that any grave be exhumed.”

( Investigative professionals here meaning ghost hunters.  Not everyone had the kind of open-mindedness as the average Amity Parker, and although a ordinance against summoning ghosts could be laughed off, things like this tended to be taken a little more seriously.)

“ Request,” stressed Vlad.  “Requests, by their nature, are not automatically granted.”

“Maybe,” said Maddie.  “But when word gets around about the cultists, and it will, people will start asking why we aren’t investigating.”

“Is there even anything to investigate?” asked Vlad, putting on his fake innocent act again.  “Goodness, I thought the cultists left the memorial intact and undisturbed.  Are you saying I was misinformed?  Or has something happened to poor Daniel?  I’m sorry, to Phantom?  It really is fascinating that they both have the same first name.”

They glared at each other over the mayoral desk.  

“If I have to,” said Maddie, “I can always reveal you.”

“And I’ll deny everything, or reveal Phantom.”

“Not your ghost half,” said Maddie.  “Your continued sexual harassment.  There might not be enough of it to get you arrested, but there’s certainly enough for some interesting headlines.”

(She could also just wait for the police to get a warrant from a judge, but figuring out how to word it without saying anything about ghosts, cultists, or other things that would make outsiders overly curious took time.)

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.  Jack would be upset, but if it's for Danny, I think he’ll get over it.”

“Very well,” said Vlad, who looked like he’d swallowed a full box of spiders.  “I will approve your request.”

“Thank you,” said Maddie.  “I–”  Her phone went off.  Relishing the chance to be rude to Vlad, she answered it.  “Hello?”

.

“ Kidnapped?” Maddie Fenton repeated again.  “How?”

“Er,” said Collins, drumming his fingers on the wheel of his car.  This was not the best place to have this conversation, but there weren’t a lot of better options, so…  “The normal way, I suppose.  Someone broke into the house and took him.”

“Through Jack?”

“That’s something we’re investigating.”  Jack Fenton had been found passed out near the front door, and was one of the reasons they’d been called in.  Apparently, bright orange hazmat was visible.  Who would have thought.

“But,” said Maddie, “you think Danny’s okay?”

‘Okay’ was probably an overstatement.  An overstatement at best.  They hadn’t found any major organs or limbs strewn around the house, but there were signs of a struggle, and kidnapping victims were, as a rule, never okay.  

Also… Collins made the decision to not mention the bloody backpack.  Some things mothers (and potential suspects) were better off not knowing.  He was fairly certain it wasn’t Danny’s blood on the bag, anyway.  He almost felt bad for whoever kidnapped him.  

Almost.

Whoever those people were, he doubted they were aware of even a tenth of what Danny did for Amity Park.  

“At this point, he is most likely still…” he hesitated slightly before the next word, “alive.”  He wasn’t convinced anything could kill Danny.  The kid seemed invulnerable, for all intents and purposes, and even as a human, he could do incredible things.

Maddie made a strangled noise on the other side of the line.  

“We’d like you to come down to the station,” continued Collins.  “Keep your phone on and with you.  It’s possible you’ll be contacted for ransom.”  Possible, but highly unlikely.  The Fentons were well-off, but not to this degree.  

“ I don’t have time,” said Maddie.  “ I have to look.”

“We’re looking.”

“ You aren’t ghost hunters.  It’s almost certainly a ghost that took him.”

“There’s reason to believe that is not the case.  Mrs. Fenton.  Maddie.  It’s possible that you saw or heard something important before you left or earlier this week.”

Maddie was quiet on the other side of the line.  “ You think I had something to do with this?” she asked, a thread of danger running through her words.  

“Not as such, no.  This is just– this is just procedure.  We need to look into everyone.  We’re talking to Jack, too.”

“ Is that why you think it was humans who did this?”

Again, the reason for that was more the bloodied bag, but, again, he wasn’t talking about that.  “Go to the station and you can ask him yourself.”

“Are you not at the station?”

Crap, what had he said to make her think that?  “That’s–”

“ You’re still at Fentonworks, aren’t you?”

“No?” said Collins.  

Maddie hung up on him.  

Great.  She was on her way and she’d be on the warpath.  He hit redial.

“Hello?” said Maddie, in a way that told him that she hadn’t looked at the caller ID and that she was considering what he’d said about ransoms.

“Look, Maddie, I know you were going up to see if you could get permission to exhume the body.  Could we– If you go to the station, we can get that started right away.  We have the equipment ready to go, the medical examiner is ready.  Everything is ready.”

“ You–”

“This is a crime scene, Maddie.  You can’t be here.”  

“ It’s my house.  And my son.”

“I know, I know.  We care about Danny, too.  But he’s not here.  You can’t help him here.”

There was quiet on the other side of the line.

“ Fine.” 

.

“So,” said Paterson.  “You went to the door and… what, again?”

“I already told him,” said Jack, who was sitting on the back of an ambulance, getting poked and prodded by an EMT.  “Can’t he tell you?”

“Sure,” said Paterson, glancing sideways at McGee, “but can you run me through it again?  For reference?  Sometimes, we remember things better the second time around.”

“I went to the door, and started feeling dizzy, but I opened it up - I shouldn’t have done that.  Should have realized that something was wrong.  I opened it up, and there was this duffel bag there.”

“Do you remember anything about the duffel bag?”

“It was taped over in weird places.  Patched.  Uh.  It might have been blue?  Or green?  But after I saw it, I just passed out.  I don’t know what it was about it that made me pass out.”

“Oxygen deprivation,” said the EMT.

“What?”

“Right, you said I wasn’t breathing before, so–”

“Which was caused by oxygen deprivation.  You show all the signs.  Whoever it was that did this must have released a huge amount of nitrogen or something similar into the area immediately in front of your door.”

“I didn’t feel like I couldn’t breathe, though.”

“You wouldn’t.  Our reflex to breathe is triggered by the presence of carbon dioxide, not the absence of oxygen.  Without rescue breaths, you would have died of asphyxiation.”

“That’s a thing?” asked Paterson, scrunching her nose.  

“Yeah,” said Jack.  “You can’t really work as a scientist without at least hearing about it.”

“People have died from it before,” said the EMT.  “You’re probably going to be fine, you were found fast, but you still need to go to the hospital.”

“But I need to find Danny.”

“They wouldn’t have stuck around,” said Paterson.  “We’ve already got everyone looking for Danny.  Amber Alert and everything.”

“Do you think they did the same thing to Danny?  The nitrogen thing?”

“It would have been in the house, yeah,” said the EMT.  

“Okay,” said Paterson, “so we should look for someone who bought a whole lot of nitrogen tanks or something?  What do people even use those for?”

The EMT shrugged.  “Science, I guess.  You ready to go, Mr. Fenton?”

“Alright,” said Jack.  

“Hey, wait,” said McGee, “I’m not done yet–”

“Then you can come talk to him at the hospital,” said the EMT.  “George!  Come over and help me!”

The EMTs packed Jack into the ambulance and drove away.  

McGee stared after it, tapping his foot.  “Do you think these kidnappers were able to revive Danny, or are we going to be looking for a corpse?”

“Don’t say things like that,” said Paterson.  She’d already seen Danny’s corpse once, after all, she didn’t need to see it again.  “It’s bad luck.”

.

Danny woke slowly.  He felt unpleasantly bruised, for one, and for another, the last thing he remembered was getting kidnapped, which was generally not a precursor to happy fun times.  

He peeled open eyes that felt disgustingly bloodshot, and looked around.  There wasn’t much to see.  The room he was in was small, clean, and bare, and he was lying down on a bed.  Someone had even tucked him in.  

Creepy.  Not that kidnapping wasn’t creepy in and of itself, but this was especially creepy.  

He struggled to sit up, and discovered that he’d been wrapped in a kind of improvised straitjacket.  Several layers of blankets were wrapped around him and held in place by belts.  He strained against them, but unfortunately whatever the cult from the other night had done was still holding strong.  No powers for him, not even a little bit.

And Danny didn’t even know why these people had taken him.  

His legs were still free, so, with a little extra maneuvering, he got up and walked around the room.  The one door didn’t even have a handle.  

He was stuck.  

His mouth suddenly even drier than it had been, he swallowed.  He was stuck.  Trapped.  Hadn’t even figured his way out of this frankly embarrassing ‘straightjacket.’  

The door opened, and Danny stumbled back, overbalancing and thumping into the wall.  Severa masked figures walked in.

“Oh, he’s perfect!”

They came in, crowding him.  

“Back off!”  Danny kicked out, but he was at a bad angle, and the first of the mask-wearers was able to get close enough that Danny couldn’t do anything other than try to bite, which didn’t really work if the person you were trying to bite was holding your face.  

“Just perfect.”  They tilted Danny’s head this way and that, and Danny couldn’t pull away.  “Age, of course, is important, but appearance, too.  I hadn’t realized…”  They fell to muttering.  

Danny’s eyes flicked from mask to mask.  They were plain white plastic with the eyes blacked out with some kind of fabric.  Simple, but effective.  Danny didn’t know who these people were.  

“Yes, our sponsor was right.  You’ll do perfectly.  Perfectly.”  They patted Danny’s cheek.  

“Sponsor?”  Danny didn’t want to interact with these people at all, but he needed information.  

“I know you must be so frightened.  We would have tried a more peaceful way, but those ghost hunters…  They would never see reason.”

The other mask-wearers shifted, grumbling.  

“The number of times they have assaulted our lord–  No, no, we had to get you somewhere safe.  After all, you are to be the host for our lord, Phantom.”

Well.  That.  

What?

He stared at the masked person, uncomprehending as they waxed poetic about Phantom’s - his - virtues.  Many of which Danny didn’t have.

“... honor, to be chosen, and an honor, too, to be here to witness.  But, of course, you’ve asked after our sponsor.  He asked to meet with you.”  They ran their hand through Danny’s hair, which was just.  Bad.  “Yes.  We have followed his word for some time, and he has never led us wrong, you know.”

Danny didn’t know.  And he didn’t want to meet this ‘sponsor’ they were talking about.

“He’ll be coming soon,” said the masked person.  “You’ll talk, and then… then we prepare.”

The masked people filed out of the room and closed the door behind them.  Danny futilely tried to open the door, in case they hadn’t closed it properly.  Frustrated, he sat down on the bed.  

Another cult.  A different one, too, if he knew anything about cults, which was not a sentence he’d have expected to say before he became a half ghost.  Worse, not only was it another cult, it was another Phantom cult.  What part of his behavior as Phantom made people think he wanted cults?  

Superman didn’t have to deal with this.  

Superman was fictional.  

Maybe he could use the walls or the edge of the cot to shift the belts around, and from there he could use the buckles to… pick the nonexistent lock on the door.  Right.  Not likely.  Maybe he could do something to - no, the hinges were on the outside.  At least, he could use them as a weapon, probably?  Maybe–

Danny’s ghost sense went off, and he tensed.  He wasn’t ready for a fight, but he was ready to be a pain, assuming this ghost was involved, and make a plea for escape, if they weren’t.

A ghost phased through the door.  

Danny hissed.  

“Plasmius.”

“Hello, little badger.”

Chapter 5

Notes:

For Ectoberhaunt 2024 day 7: Bury/Unearth. Coming back to our origins, somewhat. XD

Danny debated trying to tackle or bite Vlad, but decided against it.  Vlad’s reflexes were more than sharp enough to dodge him or go intangible, unfortunately.  

Unless he was distracted.  

(If Danny saw an opening, he would take it.)

“What do you want?”

“Why, to help you, of course,” Vlad said, making a quick flight around him, then casually pushing him down, so he sat on the bed.  “I heard of your little problem with your powers and the cult and I thought, ‘why, I have just the thing for that,’ and now here I am!”

Danny glowered.  “I don’t know what fantasy you’re living in, but I’ve never been that gullible.  Try again.”

Vlad sighed, sounding very put-upon.  “I really am here to help.  You see, I have a way to reverse what was done to you.”  He split off a duplicate, who knelt and poked a glowing line where it wrapped around his ankle.  The sensation seemed to ripple out along the line, traveling up his leg and down around his foot.  He twitched involuntarily, skin crawling, and kicked at the duplicate, who laughed.  “Two ways, in fact.”

“Uh huh,” said Danny.  “Sure you do.”

“Oh, yes.  The first way is to allow all of this to continue.”  One of each of him sat next to Danny.  “Our friends here have a ritual that will reunite you with your other half.  But at a price.  The ritual includes a bonding component that will seal you to whoever carries it out.”

“Of course it does,” said Danny, rolling his eyes.  “What’s the world coming to, that even cultists won’t carry out rituals without compensation.”

“I know,” said Vlad.  “Not at all like, say, ancient Rome, where you could throw around a few supernatural powers and everyone would just bow down, like that.”  He snapped his fingers. 

Danny glared at him.  He'd been in ancient Rome, too.  It didn't happen quite the way Vlad characterized it. 

“Now the other option is to simply accept me as your mentor and–”

“No.”  

“Come now, Daniel, you don't know what these people will demand of you.  They're terribly unstable, you see.  Irrational, even.  I am clearly the logical choice here.”

"I would genuinely," said Danny, " literally rather be bound to a bunch of random cultists than you."

Vlad raised an eyebrow.  "The same cultists who drugged and kidnapped you?"

"At least they're my people. "

The statement resonated through Danny, down to his bones.  

Vlad scoffed.  “As if that means anything.  Very well, then.  Don’t come crying to me when those bindings start to pull on you.  I gave you a reasonable choice.”

Yeah, right.  Danny rolled his eyes and set his body at an angle from Vlad's, signaling hiw done he was with this conversation.  

“Hmph.  So be it.  You know where to find me if you ever want to be free again.”  Vlad turned, reabsorbed his duplicate, and knocked on the door to be left out.  

What a loser.  If he messed with Danny's corpse again, Danny would find his and dig it up.  See how he liked it. 

… Okay, he probably wouldn't do that, because, first off, gross, and, secondly, it kind of felt sort of… evil.  Like a Vlad thing to do.  

Danny sighed unhappily and leaned back on the bed.  He was glad the cultists hadn't run right in after Vlad left, but their absence made him nervous, too.  What were they planning?  What were they waiting for? 

And when they did come… would Danny be able to stop them?

.

Cameron Daily parked his car and removed his hands from the steering wheel.  He was nervous enough that he was sweating, and sweating enough for his skin to peel stickily from the wheel.  Normally, he wouldn’t be the only one here, but all the other detectives were busy - especially Paterson and Collins, who were managing the kidnapping - and Cameron was the only one with the knowledge.  And he hadn’t really gotten permission for this.  

Still.  Maybe he should have asked one of the uniformed officers…  

Too late now.   

He took a deep breath and slid out of the car, tucking his computer under his arm.  He steeled himself one more time and jogged up the steps to the door.  The door swung open and the LaMar family looked down at him, amused.

“We were starting to wonder if you’d ever come out of your car,” said Mr. LaMar.

“You, er, know who I am, then?” asked Cameron, nervously.  Even if he was the head of Cult Division, he never really interacted with the cultists face-to-face.  

Sophia LaMar, standing a little back from her parents, laughed a little while her mother nodded.  “Of course,” said Mrs. LaMar.  “You’re the one who is supposed to monitor all of us horrible, disruptive cultists, yes?”

“Um.  Yeah.  Sort of.”

“Then what brings you here, to our doorstep?”

Cameron took a deep breath.  “I’m here to tell you that Danny Fenton was kidnapped earlier today, and to ask for your help finding him.”

.

“I know, I know the ordinances give you the right to order exhumations, even without the mayor's approval,” said the small rotund woman who managed the park.  The younger people who did the caretaking and maintenance stood arrayed behind her.  “As the chief of police and the head coroner and, er.”  Her eyes flicked to McGee (freshly arrived from the continuing debacle at the Fenton house, which, according to Collins and Paterson, he had not been helping with), who narrowed his own eyes suspiciously.  “Since there was a request by a special investigator earlier - but they're not here, so…  Ah.  It's just.  Can you say the reason again?”

Police Chief Jones (recently promoted from captain after the former chief finally had that nervous breakdown he'd been threatening to have since the ghosts showed up (it wasn't like it was all that much of a change; he'd been doing most of the job anyway, and Amity was small)) let out a long, measured sigh.  

“We believe,” he said, calmly, “that he may have been involved in a kidnapping.”

“A kidnapping,” repeated the park manager.  “But this is Phantom.”

“Involved,” said Chief Jones, through his teeth, “not a perpetrator.”  

“Then why are you digging him up?  Let the poor boy rest!”

Chief Jones wished, fervently, that he didn't need the manager's sign-off under the ordinance he was currently abusing.  He wished Vlad Masters had done what he'd told Maddie Fenton he was going to do and signed the exhumation order so he didn't have to do this.  He wished that he had someone other than McGee next to him; he'd even take Daily.  He wished that McGee's ‘real’ bosses would shove right off and forget Amity Park even existed.  He wished that one of the Fentons was here, to dazzle people with vaguely scientific babble.  He wished those cultists had left Phantom alone.  

Above everything else, he wished that Danny Fenton hadn't been kidnapped.

But Chief Jones was an Amity Parker, and like all Amity Parkers he did all his wishing in his head and with a lot of swearing.  

“Ma'am, we would like nothing better, but do you think he would be happy to know that kidnappers were using his grave?”

“How could they even be doing that?”

“I'm afraid I can't comment on ongoing investigations.  Ma’am, it’s Danny Fenton that was kidnapped.”  The other park workers started whispering furiously among themselves.  Jones knew that Danny did volunteer work at the park, sometimes.  It wasn’t out of the question for some of them to know him.  

“Oh,” said the park manager, finally accepting the papers.  “Alright.  If you say so.  But I'll be filing a complaint about this.  We all care about Danny, he’s so conscientious, but I can’t imagine that Phantom would be involved in something like that at all.  Not without putting a stop to it right quick.”

Well, it couldn't be more damaging than whatever Masters’ complaint would be like, and the other people who’d receive the complaint were, well, him and the ME.  Possibly the public health department as well, but nothing short of a plague outbreak was going to get them interested in anything other than their routine duties and their research into the effects of ectoplasm on human health.  Oh, and he supposed the county would hear about it, too, but they’d already sent McGee, and there was nothing untoward about digging up a body as part of an ongoing investigation.  

Then, of course, the park manager was the kind of person who read through every document she signed.  It was admirable, really, and under other circumstances, Jones might appreciate it.  

However, when Vlad Masters strolled up, seemingly out of nowhere and plucked the paper out of her hands, he was a bit… annoyed.  

“How gauche!” he exclaimed, with evident delight.  “Going around me when dear Madeline already extracted my word that I would help you in this matter.  Tut tut, captain.”

“It’s chief, now,” said Jones, suppressing the urge to ask what crypt he’d crawled out of, the ghoul.  If Danny’s kidnapping wasn’t so obviously cult related, Masters’ would be the top suspect.

“ Acting chief,” said Masters.  “You still haven’t been confirmed by the city council, of which the mayor, that is, me, is the acting head.  Ah McGee, have you ever considered a position in police administration?  I’ve heard good things about you.”

McGee, to his credit, stared at Masters in undisguised horror. “No.”

“A shame, a shame.  And a shame that I was never able to check in on you when you first transferred in.  I do so like to greet our new defenders of the peace.”

Unless they were Phantom, Jones thought sourly.  

“But, really, I don’t suppose you’ve brought the paperwork for me?  I’ve left my copy at the office, unfortunately, and–”

The park manager snatched the paperwork out of Masters’ hand as he waved it.  He looked flabbergasted as she went ahead and signed it.  “Since I know it does have your approval, now, Mayor Masters,” she said.  “I can just sign this.  Save you a trip.”  She handed the paperwork back to Jones.  

“Thank you,” he said, sincerely, before turning to the assembled workers and machinery operators.  “Alright!  Let’s get to work!”

Chapter 6

Chief Jones was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.  

Oh, certainly, exhuming the body was necessary for Danny’s overall health, but doing it now?  When Danny had been kidnapped?  Without the Fentons on hand?  That felt unstable.  What were they supposed to do with it, without Danny and the adult Fentons here?  Jones didn’t know anything about ectology, not outside of the familiarity any layperson living in Amity Park had.  Molly, the ME, knew a bit more, but all her knowledge was focused on how environmental ectoplasm affected the decay of dead bodies.  

More importantly, at least some of the crowd gathering around the edges of the police cordon blocking off the memorial and the equipment they were using looked like they were about to riot.  Some of those would be Phantom cultists - by which he meant the hardcore occult variety that had gotten them all into this mess, not the run-of-the-mill ones who casually propitiated Phantom as a kind of guardian spirit.  

Jones was spending too much time listening to Cameron Daily.  Or maybe not enough.  He’d like the situation a lot better if he knew which of the groups glaring at him was likely to charge at the officers holding the line, which ones were crazy fans that’d try to steal parts of the body, and which ones might just have supernatural powers on hand.  

The little crane they had over the grave started to crank the casket out of the ground.  It wasn’t fancy, as these things went.  Classic, simple.  Danny had helped pick it out.  And then, Jones understood, had added certain features to keep Mayor Masters, among others, from disturbing it.  

He rather hoped this wouldn’t set any of those ‘measures’ off, but he wasn’t optimistic.  He’d been to Fentonworks.  He knew how the Fentons thought.  

Or, no, that was a lie.  He knew the kind of things they stuck into their walls.  Close enough.  

The crane deposited the casket on the back of the small truck they were going to use to transport it to the ME’s office, and Molly jumped up beside it.  

“I want to take a look, before we go,” she said in a low voice, just loud enough to be heard over the chanting and shouting of the crowd.  “Just make sure.”  She started fiddling with the clasps that held it closed.  

Jones reached up to put one of his hands over hers.  She didn’t say make sure of what.  “What if it’s–”  Jones pressed his lips together, trying to pick out his words carefully.  “Is that wise?  What if it’s… weird?”

“Weirder than it was before?”  Molly gave him a very thin smile.  “Listen to the crowd, Chief.  They’re already calling us graverobbers.  What if we get all safely in private, and the body isn’t there at all?  We know what those people were trying to do.”

Jones grimaced.  Reuniting with flesh.  That could mean a whole host of things, but he hadn’t thought that the dead body could somehow fuse with Danny’s half-living one.  Not until Molly put the thought in his head.  

He would have preferred it if she hadn’t.  He might not have seen a lot of action in his time on the force, but he hadn’t been sitting behind a desk the whole time, and the logistics of that particular action still made him feel vaguely ill.  

But he could see where Molly was coming from.  If the body had somehow vanished or been damaged, then letting the public know…  It would help with damage control.

On the other hand, the reputation of the police department, near and dear as it was to his heart, wasn’t the only consideration here.  As strange as Danny Fenton’s situation was…  As strange as the body was…  This was still the body of a child, not something to be displayed in public, without even a family member present.  

And there were other things ‘reuniting with your flesh’ could mean.  Several of the ones Jones could think of resulted in Danny’s living face plastered on his corpse.  

He shook his head and was just about to explain his reasoning to Molly when the miniaturized Spector Detector on his belt - barely good enough to detect a ghost at five feet, but more reliable than the longer-range models the Fentons produced - shrieked at him.  The little truck suddenly shot forward, its driver’s side wheels running up and over the edge of the park’s central fountain.  Jones had just enough presence of mind to drag Molly from the truck’s bed rather than try to run forward with it.  The fountain’s sides were tall enough that the truck tipped over, spilling its cargo.  

“Oh my,” said Mayor Masters, just behind him, and Jones would swear the man had left minutes after they started digging.  “I would have thought you would invest in better equipment for such a delicate operation.  Or is the driver drunk?  In any case–”

Jone didn’t hear the rest.  He was too busy trying to deal with the riot.  

.

Cameron Daily sat in the LaMars’ living room, not drinking tea.  It wasn’t that he disliked tea, or that he thought the tea was bad, it was just.  Drinking cultist tea.  That sounded like a recipe for disaster.  Or at least, like.  Weird drugs.  Which would be a disaster, because he worked for the police department and they did have regular drug tests, even now.  

He also didn’t eat the cookies.  Even though they were very tempting.  

“I don’t know who would have kidnapped Lord Phantom,” said Sophia, as her parents called their respective congregations.  They and Cameron had already been through all of the formalities, and Sophia had volunteered to share what little information they had on potential suspects.  “But the ones who I told you about before, the ones who tried to do their rites upon Lord Phantom’s grave itself, without his permission, those ones, we call the radical unifiers.  They call themselves something like the ‘the Ones Called to Unify the Divine Lord.’  They have a longer name, of course.”

Cameron, who was quite familiar with cult naming conventions, nodded.  “Of course.”

“They were part of ‘the Ones Called to Exalt the Divine Lord to Perfection,’ before,” continued Sophia.  “But there was a schism in their group not long ago.  Some parts of the group chose to follow what they called ‘spiritual prophets,’ while the rest of the group decried those prophets as false, or, at least, misled.”

“How do you know about this?”

“Some of the exalters joined the Greater Congregation of Gratitude,” said Sophia, “after seeing that our Lord Phantom does not seek perfection, nor exaltation, and that our role is not to force ourselves and our desires upon him, and reap uncertain rewards, but to enjoy the blessings he has brought for us in the present, while showing our gratitude and supporting him in his task.  We have pamphlets, if you–”

“I already have pamphlets, thanks,” said Cameron, quickly.  

“I suppose you would,” said Sophia, sipping her tea.  “Now, there was another group that split off from the exalters.  It is my understanding that they followed a different prophet and have a somewhat different calendar of holy dates.”  She sighed.  “They are of the opinion that Lord Phantom requires a living avatar of some sort in order to be ‘complete,’ and to, therefore, bring about a paradise here on Earth.  As many of those groups do, they have settled upon one living person in particular.”

“Danny Fenton.”

“Yes,” said Sophia.  “Why so many disparate groups seem to fixate upon him…  Even within the Greater Congregation there are a few…”  She shook her head.  “In any case, if you truly believe the two incidents, the kidnapping and the ritual on Phantom’s grave, are connected, that is where you should start.”

“Thank you,” said Cameron.  “And you have my number, in case you hear anything?”

“Yes, and for the police in general,” said Sophia, smiling faintly.  “And as I am sure you have realized, many of our fellow congregants will be canvassing the city, searching.”  Her smile faltered.  “We have not seen our Lord Phantom today, either.  It is not unheard of for him to take a day of rest, but the timing troubles more than just myself.  Gratitude implied repayment.  We shall do so, as we can.”

.

Cameron shook himself all over once he was out the door and down the stairs.  The dynamics of that family were weird.  He didn’t get why the parents let their daughter do most of the talking.  

.

Only a minute after Cameron Daily had left, Mrs. LaMar’s phone rang in her hand before she had dialed the next number on the phone tree.  She answered.  

The caller was a congregant who had been watching as Phantom’s body was exhumed.  

She didn’t like what she heard at all.  

.

Danny didn’t think the room he was in had proper ventilation.

That was par for the course, what with this being a kidnapping that used belts and blankets in lieu of a straitjacket, but still annoying.  Without his super-not-breathing skills, he kind of needed the oxygen.  And someone outside the room was burning incense and it was starting to creep under the door and make his nose itch.  

On the positive side of things, though, he’d managed to shuffle some of the belts down a few inches by repeatedly rubbing up and down against the walls and bed.  He was hopeful that, given enough time, he could remove at least a few layers of the ‘straitjacket’ and wriggle out of the rest.   

But, before he could get even one belt all the way off, the door to the room opened and the masked cultists walked in.  

Danny immediately went for a headbutt.  To his genuine surprise, the attack succeeded in bringing down the first cultist, but he hadn’t planned for what would happen next and he overbalanced.  Another cultist caught him before he fell, and rewarded them with a sharp kick to the crotch that way, unfortunately, blunted by their robes.  And them being a woman.  

At that point, though, the cultists had truly started to react, and the rest of them worked together to bundle his whole body in a set of thick quilts.  

“Why do you people keep using blankets?” he asked, aggrieved, and vaguely hoping that one of them would get close enough that he could bite.  “First at the park, at the memorial, and now with this stuff…?”

“What do you mean, at the park?” asked one of the cultists.  “We weren’t at the park.”

“Sure you were,” said Danny.  “You did some kind of binding ritual on him to, uh, reunite him with his flesh or something.  Which, like, I guess didn’t work, otherwise you wouldn’t want me.”

“That wasn’t us,” said the woman Danny had kicked.  She sounded somewhat pained.  “Those people…  Heretics!”

“They may worship Phantom, but they have lost their way.  Never would our lord be satisfied with mere dead flesh for his vessel.  For him to take his true, divine place in the universe, he must have life as well as death.”

Oh.  So Vlad had manipulated not one but two cults into doing this.  

How wonderful.  

Despite his continued squirming, they hoisted him and his sweltering blanket-burrito up onto their shoulders and carried him out.  

“It really is for the best,” whispered the cultist closest to Danny’s head.  “There’s some debate over what exactly will happen to you, but all of the options sound…”  They sighed, wistfully.  “Rapturous.  You could merge with Lord Phantom, you could remain within his body, able to see his acts and miracles first-hand, you could even be ejected from the body and become a ghost yourself…”

“Why don’t you do it, then?” asked Danny, archly.  

“Oh, I asked, but I don’t meet the requirements,” said the cultist, nodding sagely.  

“He’s wrong, anyway,” said one of the other cultists.  “You won’t be ejected from Lord Phantom’s body.  Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any point in asking you to carry our wish–”

“Oh my gosh, don’t say that,” said Danny, wriggling.  “Are you trying to make all this worse?”

“He’s right,” said another cultist, more harshly.  “We don’t want to attract the attention of Lord Phantom’s enemies.”

They didn’t talk much after that.

As they went further down the hallway, the scent of incense increased, as did the smell of other things Danny couldn’t put a name to.  Some of it was sweet, like perfume, but other parts of it reminded him strongly of ectoplasm or old blood.  It was enough that he started to feel woozy, overwhelmed, and he sneezed once or twice before they reached the door at the end of the hallway.

To Danny’s surprise, their destination turned out to be a kitchen.  A clean, but rather worn, old-fashioned looking kitchen.  One with no windows.  Considering the hallway he’d been moved down…  Maybe they were in some kind of community center?  A church?  Regardless, it was big enough for another half dozen or so cultists to fit in.  

On the main counter were a number of containers- made of glass, metal, wood, ceramic and in all different shapes - full of differently colored liquids and powders, and pots full of something bubbled on the stove.  On the shelves, dozens of sticks and small bowls of incense burned.  

The tallest of the cultists - the leader, probably - stepped forward.  “Now,” he intoned, spreading his arms, but ruining the effect slightly by checking to make sure the sleeves of his robes weren’t falling into any of the weird potions, “let us begin.”

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 8 of Exhumed
• Part 2 of Dannymay 2023
• Part 69 of Ectober Fics