Fantasma

by MemoryLane

Kihono

There was a long silence among the three friends. Danny and Sam both simultaneously dropped their jaws, the former actually taking a brief step backwards. His lungs refused to expand, as he felt a large lump forming in his throat, straining it to the point of where it physically hurt him. Even though Tucker had been the first to acknowledge it, he was shaking harder than his friends.

Tucker sprinted behind Danny and Sam and desperately flailed his arms in the air, as if the portal had just suddenly gone invisible instead of disappearing entirely. “I...I...” Tucker babbled repetitively, as his hands felt absolutely nothing but air. A small bead of sweat cascaded down his forehead, as his mind instinctively soared in a kind of paranoia of which he had not been accompanied by, as of late.

“Uh...” Danny was just as dumbfounded as Tucker. His jaw was hung humorously low to the ground. Unlike his other male companion, he refused to panic. For him, this was something that he had gotten very accustomed to. It was quite often that he was stuck fighting rather odd and terrifying ghosts. He had long outgrown his fear, as he had a duty to uphold in Amity Park. Situations like this definitely unnerved him, but he was by no means afraid. Well, he was not until Sam stepped in front of him as he wandered closer to the much-more-unstable Tucker.

For some reason, making Sam angry was something that Danny did not like to do, by any means. By the way her fists were clenched, and how hard she gritted her teeth, he assumed that he had done exactly that.

“What the heck, Danny!? Do you know what you just did?” Sam practically screamed in his face. Sam was so aggravated that she did not even notice Danny wipe trace amounts of her spit from his cheeks. “There’s some sort of strange phenomenon going on inside the portal, and what do you do? You jump right through it!”

Danny raised a finger to intervene, but Sam was too wrapped up in venting her frustrations to care.

“Guys? Guys, give me a hand! The portal has to be a-around here somewhere! Just help me look!”

“Jeez, Danny! We deal with the Ghost Zone and terrifying deities every other day! But then this comes along, and it didn’t cross your mind to stop and think that it may not be a good idea to jump straight into something like that!?” Sam shouted, putting her fists on her hips as a way to keep herself from clocking Danny straight in the mouth.

“Well, it’s kinda how I got my powers in the first place...” Danny interjected, raising his index finger into the air a little bit.

By no means was Sam amused by that comment. With an irritated grunt, she threw her hands in the air and turned her back to him. Almost immediately, Danny regretted opening his fat mouth, and his stupid brain from impulsively jumping inside the portal. Sam did seem to have a point.

Tucker was practically in tears on the other side of the clearing. “G-Guys! I-it’s not here! Why isn’t it here! I mean, we just came through it a second ago! Please help me look!” he begged, slowly losing his faith, as well as his sanity, in a matter of moments. Sam rolled her eyes, walked over and grabbed Tucker’s shoulders. Without a moment of hesitation, she proceeded to shake as violently as she could, causing his head to go flying back and forth. “Ow!” he exclaimed when she had finally ceased. For a second he feared that he may had obtained whiplash.

“Calm yourself!” Sam coaxed as she stared at her friend directly in his dark brown eyes. Tucker glared at Sam, not exactly with worry anymore, but with a slight hint of annoyance.

“I am calm, okay! Don’t shake me like that!” Tucker shot back, shrugging off Sam’s hands and rubbing the left side of his neck just a little bit. Danny silently frowned at the whole situation, and Tucker took quick notice. Seeing this, Danny stepped up to speak what had been on his mind for the last few minutes before Tucker formed some kind of bad opinion in his head about him.

“Look, I’m sorry, alright? I wasn’t thinking. I...” Danny was going to say something along the lines of what he had heard before he had jumped through the portal. The weird voice that almost seemed to coerce him into, rather impulsively, hopping inside. However, Danny kept that little fact to himself. He knew that if he tried giving some kind of excuse, whether it was exactly that or not, it would not end well for him. Plus, Tucker did not appear to be too angry with him at that point. The last thing he wanted was to have both of them mad at him. “...I don’t know why exactly I did it. But I didn’t plan for this to happen!”

“Of course you didn’t! But guess what? It did!” It appeared that the more Danny talked, the more argumentative and infuriated she became. Taking this into consideration, he shut his mouth until he deemed it necessary to open it again. “And now we’re stuck here with no food, or water, or knowledge of anything or-!”

Sam was definitely the most outdoorsy of the group. She actually knew various ways of finding food and water in nature. Considering that they were in an area, or...world...that they had no clue about, Danny found her skills to be practically useless. He began to suspect that Sam only said that simply for no other reason than to make him feel bad. Unfortunately for him, it was working. Despite this, he managed to tune out Sam’s nagging voice until Tucker got equally as tired. As Sam paused to inhale, Tucker butted in.

“Arguing isn’t going to solve anything!” In Danny’s head, he was slowly rooting Tucker on. “We’re here, and there’s...there’s no way out! The portal is gone and I don’t think it’s coming back!” Tucker explained. The realization slowly began to dawn on Sam, and her anger subsequently began to subside, much to Danny’s undying glee. There was a long, and rather awkward pause as everyone in the clearing stopped for a moment to think.

Since Sam had appeared to calm down, Danny found the courage to speak up. “Uhm, where are we anyways?” Danny asked, taking the time to actually look at his environment. The trees and other forest plants were glossy, and wet with dew. He presumed it to be extremely early in the morning. The chilled air and the fact that a very familiar songbird was singing made him think this. He tried to remember what kind of bird it was, as he had no idea. The only time he would hear it was when him and his father would go fishing in a lake just outside of town. It was some kind of two-noted tune, but Danny unwittingly decided not to think about it too much.

He looked over to see Sam and Tucker squinting through the forest. Their movements were basically begging Danny to answer their unsaid question. “I have no clue. All I can see is brush and trees and...more trees,” said Danny. Sam was going to ask how he knew, but Danny simply pointed to his glowing green eyes, causing her to let out a small “oh” of understanding.

“Well what do we do? This place looks...weird,” Tucker stuttered. For some reason, Sam’s mindset seemed to change upon looking at the invigorating new environment in front of her.

"Are you kidding? This is absolutely gorgeous!"

Danny was about to call her out, saying that she was just bashing the decision Danny made to enter the portal to this place not even two minutes ago. He held his tongue as to not bring unneeded attention upon himself yet again. “Sam, you’re all about nature. Where are we?” Danny already knew Sam’s answer, but there was no harm in asking away anyways. If anything, they might actually get something out of it.

“Hm...” she began to walk around, gazing and inspecting the various plants and trees that surrounded them, although she made sure not to wander too far. Even she knew of the possible danger that could lie ahead. After feeling a few leaves on the trees, and closely investigating them, she turned back to the awaiting Danny and Tucker. “Some kind of deciduous forest. Some of the trees around here are actually maple, but the rest I have no idea. All I can tell you is that we’re somewhere in the northern hemisphere. I mean...look at these plants!” Sam exclaimed, squatting down to get a better look at a very pink plant on the ground. It had very rosy petals with many light green leaves. What made Danny so sure that it was nothing he had ever seen before was that fact that the flowers were paired, and the stems were coiled around one another. If Danny wanted to pull one out, he would have to pull them both.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t think we’re on Earth, to tell you the truth,” Sam admitted. Tucker dramatically threw his hands to his temples.

“Oh man! If my dad finds out I went to another world again he’ll have me grounded!” He shouted. Both Sam and Danny rolled their eyes before turning their conversation back to the situation at hand.

“Well, then where the heck are we?” Danny muttered out loud. The only responses he received were two very blank stares. He felt like hitting himself in the face. They were stuck in what appeared to be a different world with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Not only that, but he had stupidly gotten his friends involved as well.

“Let’s take inventory on what we have before we set up a game plan,” Sam suggested, to which Danny and Tucker quickly obliged. If anyone had the rights to call the shots at a time like that, it was most definitely Sam.

One by one, the friends took out everything that was in their pockets. The results were less than flattering, to say the least. Sam had absolutely nothing on her besides her dark purple flip phone. Danny was going to question where she kept it, seeing as she was wearing a skirt, but stayed quiet when he meagerly saw her slip it into her left boot. “Yeah, all I have is my phone,” she said anyways.

Danny did not have much on his person either. In his back pocket resided his wallet, which only contained about five dollars. However, he knew the length’s Sam will go to get her way, and that she would most likely recommend that they use it to fuel a fire. With that in mind, he kept the money to himself. “All I have is my wallet, and my cell phone,” Danny acknowledged. Curiously, he took out his light blue flip phone and opened it, hanging onto a small hope that he might have been able to make a call.

“You don’t honestly think there’s reception out here...?” Sam commented. Danny, after hearing it put that way, blushed a little bit and slid the phone back into his pocket. He had checked, there was indeed no service. He scratched the back of his head.

“Heh...”

To Danny’s surprise, he had actually forgotten about Tucker, who was pulling various things one after another out of his beige backpack. A glint of hope resonated inside of Danny, but it was soon extinguished after he realized that Tucker carried barely anything of particular value. “Okay, I have some beef jerky,” Tucker said, tossing the package to his side. “...a Mountain Fizz...” Tucker tossed the soda next to the collection of beef jerky. “...and then I have both good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” Danny asked immediately.

“I have my PDA, and it’s on full battery,” he replied. Sam sighed, as that did not make her feel the least bit safe. Sure, Tucker’s PDA had got them out of jams before, but surely it could not get them out of this one. Both Danny and Sam doubted that its GPS system would actually work in a place like that.

“What’s the bad news?”

“Well, I only have this one. The rest of my PDA’s were getting repaired today...as well as my charger...” Tucker explained, as everyone else almost instantaneously caught on.

“No offense, but how is your PDA supposed to actually help us out here? Not like the GPS system on there actually works,” Danny inquired, sliding his hands into his blue jeans. Tucker thought to himself for a moment, before actually opening his mouth.

“I’m sure it’ll come in handy at some point or another, just not now,” He replied. With that, he powered off his PDA and thrusted it into his backpack, along with the single soda and the package of beef jerky.

Danny had the worst feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was no way they would be able to stay alive for more than a few days without food and water. The beef jerky, say Sam did suck it up and eat some, could only nourish them for a few hours. It was actually a very tiny portion, in that case. The soda would not help either. If anything, it would make them much more lethargic and tiresome, not to mention all the sugar inside of it. Danny did not know if the soda would actually cause them to dehydrate faster, or if their bodies would just do that on their own without it. They needed actual food, and clean water. Hunting was definitely out of the question. If they were indeed in another world, it would be safe to assume that almost every meat source in the area could be potentially dangerous to eat. There were plenty of ways that they could get either poisoned or sick.

Also, Danny dealt with dead people all the time. He did not condone killing at all, and hoped to avoid hunting anyways. He silently hoped that they would come across some kind of common fruit, like an apple.

“So what’s the first course of action, Sam?” Danny asked, turning his gaze to her after watching Tucker slip his backpack into its snug position on his shoulders.

“Wait, why does Sam get to call the shots?” Tucker interfered, squinting his eyes at Danny just slightly. “I say I get to lead!”

“Tuck, Sam knows alot about navigating the woods already. If anything, she could get us out of here and to civilization,” Danny replied. Tucker opened his mouth, but upon further thought, closed it and proceeded to slouch his shoulders, dejectedly.

“Anyways...,” Sam’s voice cut through the chill air like a dull butter knife. “There’s a trail over there, and it has some kind of prints. I really can’t make them out, but they’re smaller than ours. It’s probably better if we go down there, we don’t know what kind of predators live out here,” she concluded, crossing her arms pridefully. Danny was always impressed with Sam, as he never met anyone as good at survival as her.

Unbeknownst to Sam and Danny, Tucker gulped as soon as Sam actually finished her sentence.

A thought rose in Danny’s head, and began to walk passed his friends and down the eerie looking wooded trail. “I can actually see, I’ll lead the way,” he said as he pointed to his abnormally green eyes. Tucker followed right behind him. Sam, however, closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Did you not learn anything from what I practically yelled at you earlier!?”

“What?”

As the time practically flew by, Danny’s presumption about the time of day proved to be correct. The sun refused to show itself over the horizon, but it did happen to get a little brighter in the forest, to the point of where Danny could turn his eyesight back to normal. The morning birds slowly began to arise from their peaceful slumber, and played their wondrous tunes without hesitation. The sounds delighted Danny, but he decided not to let his mind wander at a time like that.

Their entire group had been nothing but dead silent. They simply stayed upon the trail, watching and waiting for good news for what seemed like two hours. Tucker’s noxious voice almost scared the wits out of Danny. “So, anyone want to play I Spy?”

Danny and Sam did not even dignify that ridiculous question with an actual response. But since the awkward string of silence had been broken, Danny thought he might as well take advantage of it.

“I honestly don’t see any sign of an exit approaching any time soon,” Danny said truthfully, letting out a less than convincing sigh. Tucker loudly groaned from the back of the protective line that they had formed. Danny did not hear a peep from Sam, and the only reason that he knew she was still there was the fact that he could feel her slippery breath on the back of his neck.

“Well, what are we going to do now?” Tucker asked, stretching his voice in a way that made him seem like he was complaining. Danny felt slightly bad, and looked over his right shoulder to speak to him.

“Don’t worry, Tuck. There has to be-” Danny cut himself off, and stopped dead in his tracks. His movement mimicked that of a deer caught in the middle of a dozen speeding headlights. His eyes caught on something far in the distance. Without a single noise, he hurriedly ducked down behind a nearby bush. “Get down! Quick!” he whispered loudly. Sam did not take a single moment to hesitate, and squatted down right next to Danny. Tucker, however, was not paying attention.

“Huh? OOF-” he exclaimed as Sam forcefully pulled him down to the ground next to her. “Hey! What’s the big-” Danny practically jumped over Sam to do nothing more than to slap a hand over the loud mouths large lips.

“Shh!” Sam and Danny hushed simultaneously, putting a finger over their lips. Tucker’s eyes softened, and Danny let go of his mouth. “Be quiet. There’s a light in the distance,”

Tucker, having learned his lesson, resisted the urge to look over the brush. Sam, unfortunately, was much more eager at the off-chance that they might have found some sort of civilization. “Really?” she whispered. Danny was about to pull her back down to their hidden position, but after some deep consideration, decided not to.

“Yeah, we need to be quiet. Who knows who’s over there?” Danny questioned. Another bead of sweat fell from the technogeek’s face upon hearing Danny’s words.

“Y-yeah! What if it’s a hungry tribe of...werewolves!?”

“Werewolves?”

“...I don’t know! But you know what I’m getting at!” Tucker had to remind himself not to shout. “We’re in unknown territory, possibly even a different world! Who knows what could live in this forest? I haven’t seen one creature yet...I bet the food must be pretty scarce...” Tucker gulped yet again.

“Or we could just go check it out?” Sam suggested, standing up from her crouched position, practically staring down at their much more passive friend.. “What if someone lives there who could actually help us out?”

Danny rose up as well. “As much as I hate to admit it, Sam’s right. Look, if something happens I’ll go ghost and whisk us away,” he chimed, desperate to get Tucker to cope with their decision. It was not like Sam and Danny could just leave Tucker there as they investigated. What if there actually was something out there? It was not like Tucker could protect himself with what he had on him.

Tucker looked left and right nervously, shaking just slightly before deepingly exhaling. “Fine, let’s just make this quick,” With that, Tucker jumped up, but did not take a single step in any direction.

“I’ll go first, then...wimp...” Sam mumbled as she trudged through the brush noisily towards the mysterious light. Danny followed directly behind her, while Tucker lagged in the back of the line, scratching his head.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on!”

For some strange reason, the closer that the group had gotten towards the odd light source, the less the songbirds managed to sing. It was as if the light was drowning out all the natural noises of the forest, and replacing it with a horrifying silence, something that Danny was excruciatingly sick of, at this point.

As well of annoyed, the closer they got, the more confused Danny seemed to become as well. The light source slowly began to take shape into something extraordinary. He could not quite see over Sam’s head, and the low hanging branches and the rather tall bushes made it difficult to see it properly.

For a few minutes, Danny was wondering how close Sam was actually planning on getting to the light source before she finally ducked down behind a bush similar to what they were hiding behind just a few minutes ago. Danny and Tucker followed her example closely, while Tucker took the short route, and sat on Sam’s right, while Danny traveled around so that he could sit on her left. The three kids dropped their jaws as their eyesights finally focused, and they could actually lay eyes on what stood in front of them.

“I...I don’t believe it...”

“What the...”

“It’s a...treehouse?”

Tucker was correct, technically. Danny observed the strange architecture closely, not wanting to miss a single detail in it. It seemed to be a very large, and overgrown, tree. Although, he had no idea what type of tree it actually was, and Danny presumed it to be something that was native to this area, but not exactly their world. The base of the truck circled the inside of the clearing in about 50 feet diameter, much larger than anything near Amity Park. In the front of the tree, was a large purple door, and some small wooden stairs that lead right up to it. There was a small stone...something...stuck on said door, but Danny was too far away to be able to make it out.

On both sides of the door were two small circular holes, serving as windows. They both lacked sills, curtains, or anything else that would normally accompany a window. They were just...there.

However, what really unnerved Danny was what surrounded the treehouse entirely. Hanging from the ruthlessly tall branches were bottles, with various strings of rope around the necks. The bottles were all sorts of different colors, and were all kept shut with a cork. The most common colors were purple and red, but what Danny was more curious about was what was in said bottles.

On the ground, were a dozen masks. Very strange and emotion-filled masks that reminded him of something an ancient African tribe would wear as they danced around a campfire. Or was he thinking of Hawaiian tiki masks? He really could not differentiate what kind of mask they were, but he knew that he had seen them before.

A light burned from inside the hut, as well as a fire inside Danny. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, prompting both Tucker and Sam to hush him in return.

“It’s a hut...oh man...the werewolves!” Tucker brought back up, tugging and pulling on his beret nervously, as Sam did not appear to be the least bit affected.

“Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s go knock,” Sam said, standing up after greatly observing the situation and the hut herself.

“What? You can’t be serious! Who knows who, or what, lives in there?” Tucker replied, scrambling to drag Sam back down behind the bushes. Danny was clever enough to grab the back of his dark yellow sweater just before he could manage to actually stand on two feet.

“Well, duh. That’s why we should find out. Who knows? Maybe they could help us. It’s obvious that someone lives here,” Sam reasoned. “It’s better than walking away and potentially dying in the woods,”

By the time Danny looked back up, Sam was already walking through the clearing and headed towards the treehouse. Upon closer inspection, the stone item on the door that Danny was unable to make out was a skull and crossbones. And it was not stone, just worn bone.

It was Danny’s turn to gulp.

Sam gingerly made her way up the tiny staircase, the heel of her boot literally hanging off the edge of the stairs as Danny and Tucker stood at the bottom. Danny kept a strong grip on Tucker’s shirt, just incase something noncompliant would happen to reside on the other side of that door. Sam successfully knocked, and called out to the hut owner: “Hello? We really need some help out here! Can anyone help us?”

No response.

“Hello? Please, we’re lost, and we’re low on food and water! If you could at least point us in the right direction?” She asked again, pounding on the door two more times. Danny’s hopes, yet again, began to drop dramatically. It was so weird, usually things always work out perfectly. Even if their plans do not work out in the end, it usually turns out alright. Maybe this was the time were the perfect streak was finally brought to an abrupt halt.

“Oh look! No one’s home!” Tucker turned to Danny, his eyes pleading and begging. “Can we go now-”

Tucker was completely interrupted, when the sound of various gears and tumblers in the door creaked. Sam took a few steps back down the stairs. As a small wave of nervousness finally reached her, she searched for a slight consolation in her friends.

The door eventually opened, and the bright interior of the room momentarily blinded Danny. When his eyes focused just a few seconds later, his jaw dropped for the third time that day. He refused to believe just exactly he was looking at, and for a swift instant he felt like falling down, or even running away.

“Oh, hello! I was was not expecting a visitor! Especially not...you three, in particular...”