Work Text:
"So whaddaya think is the real reason that Garth told us to stay away from this place?" asked Dean around his burger.
They'd done most of their research before coming here—well, Sam had researched it in their motel room after hearing about it at the pub the previous night, back when they'd still been in Iowa; Dean had stayed behind to play pool to get them some more cash before they'd put that town in their rearview mirror—but they'd checked in with Garth on it. He hadn't had any records of someone dealing with the ghost problem here, and the stories Sam had found were current, so Garth shouldn't have told them to steer clear.
A hunt was a hunt, after all.
Sam grimaced and slid his brother a wad of napkins. "Probably because even though unofficial claims place it as the most haunted town in America, the entire thing seems like a gimmick?"
Dean grunted and kept eating while Sam picked at his salad. "Not gonna be more of a tourist trap than that Mystery Spot." Granted, they hadn't seen any ghosts since coming here, and eavesdropping on the locals over supper hadn't given them any leads. It was a late supper—pretty close to nine thirty by the time they'd rolled into town and found a motel with dirt cheap rates, presumably because almost the entire thing seemed to be under construction—but it wasn't like their lives had ever revolved around normal mealtimes.
He'd tried with Sam when they were kids, but there'd been only so much he could do when it had been just the two of them alone in a motel room.
Sam motioned to his laptop. "These guys offer ghost tours." The opened page proudly advertised BOO-Yea Ghost Tours in an eye-bleeding green font that glowed against its black background and was meant to be reminiscent of slime. Or maybe melting candle wax. Either way, Dean had fake IDs that looked more legit than that. He'd made fake IDs at age ten that had looked more legit than that. "Assuming we can track down the kid who leads them, anyway."
Dean rolled his eyes. "We'll just stick with the plan."
The plan was simple. They'd needed simple for a change; that was why they were doing this in the first place. That, and they were in the area. Sort of. Near enough to the area, anyway. Nearer to it than to the bunker. They'd figured it was a 'two birds with one stone' sort of deal, so no one had to come back and clean up the place once the situation inevitably shifted from bad to worse.
They'd break into the high school, confirm that the ghost story they were chasing wasn't just a ghost story, and then hit the graveyard before anyone was the wiser.
Their ghost wasn't dropping bodies yet, but it was better not to let it get that far. Unlike other monsters, ghosts were on a deadline. They would turn against humanity sooner or later, even the friendly ones. They didn't have a choice in the matter. Better to force them to move on before they got violent.
Besides, people didn't put out frickin' million-dollar bounties for no good reason, anonymous or not.
Garth had warned him that this case was an old one and, consequently, that that bounty may not be honoured—something about a claim and then an escape, the matter being dropped but nothing officially rescinded; Dean wasn't even sure if Garth knew what was going on on that front—but it wasn't like they'd have been able to claim it anyway. They were both dead multiple times over (not that that might matter in this town), but even if they weren't, there wasn't really a way they could claim that money and remain anonymous.
Besides, from what Sam had been able to dig up on the entire incident, the (supposedly) best-known ghost hunters in the world who'd been hired to take care of the ghost in question were laughably far from competent. It wasn't like he'd expect that an actual hunter would've been contracted—even if they didn't operate in different circles than the ghost hunters for hire, no hunter would've looked at that sort of prize for a single job and not been suspicious—but the ones who had shown up likely weren't any more legitimate than the GhostFacers: hopeful amateurs at best, scam artists at worst, and none of them worth a round of rock salt. They'd probably all had some tech, less know-how, good advertising, and too much ambition for their own good.
Well, except that supposed government group.
Sam hadn't been able to dig up anything on these Guys in White, which was bad enough, but if they did exist? Dean did not want to meet them.
He and Sam might not be ghosts, but if these guys had gotten their hands on Henriksen's files and kept an eye on the news, they'd know dead men walking when they saw them. Worse, for ghost hunters, they might not care if those men were no longer as dead as they'd once been.
Getting locked up in a normal prison was bad but not too bad—been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Multiple times. But something like that detention centre in Rocky Mountain National Park? No thanks. Dean didn't want to have to break out of some freaking secret facility again.
Frankly, they couldn't afford to break out of some place like that again.
They might not even manage it.
Wasn't like they could make another deal with Billie.
Dean finished his burger, licked his fingers, and cleaned himself up with the napkins. "Eat up, Sammy. We ain't got all night."
Sam's bitchface resurfaced, just as Dean had known it would. "Bitch."
"Jerk." The response was automatic, but at least Sam was shovelling the salad into his mouth, even if it made him look like a chipmunk. Dean reached across the table to pack up the laptop and added, "If you choke on your leaves, I'm not giving you the Heimlich."
Sam's glare intensified, and for a moment, it felt so much like their old days of hunting together that Dean could almost forget the craziness their world had become.
The EMF meter had squealed constantly from the moment they'd turned it on, which had basically been the moment they'd crossed the threshold of the school. Every light red. All the time. Sam had never seen it do that before. Usually, there was at least some variation in the levels to help them pinpoint their search.
This time, there was no variation.
And no visible ghost.
The latter should be a good thing, but if the background levels in this place were so strong the EMF meter was useless? Not so much.
"Guess they weren't kidding about Amity Park being the most haunted town after all," he muttered, and Dean snorted.
"You sure you didn't break it?"
"In what, the two minutes it took us to walk from the Impala and for you to pick the lock? No."
"You didn't try it at the car."
"I didn't put it away broken, either. Did you?"
"If I'd broken it, I'd've fixed it." Dean shone his flashlight onto the lockers. "Which one of these things is supposed to be cursed again?"
It figured that he'd been too focused on whatever the hell that Nasty Burger Special had been to remember. Sam resigned himself to giving Dean the rundown again.
"724," he said as he put the EMF meter back into his pocket. There wasn't any sense in having it on, not when a ghost could show up right in front of them and it wouldn't be able to spike any more than it already had. He switched his flashlight to his left hand and readied his shotgun instead, mimicking Dean's stance with the flashlight resting atop the sawed off. "Sidney Poindexter had it from '54 to '58."
"And he offed himself in '58?"
"Debatable. The autopsy report says it was suicide, but his mother spoke to the paper and insisted her son wouldn't have thrown his life away right after he'd been accepted into MIT and had qualified for a full-ride scholarship. She believed he was murdered." Sam hesitated. "Well, she believed he was pushed off the roof of the school, whether or not the kids involved—because she thought it was his classmates—were smart enough to know the end result of that. From the kind of life this kid apparently had, it wouldn't surprise me. Nothing came of the investigation, though."
"Which could explain why Casper High has its own Casper the Bully-Bludgeoning Ghost."
"Yeah. The local ghost stories say he haunts his locker because he was stuffed into it so many times. That picking on him was a graduation requirement."
Dean huffed, turned the corner, and finally found the staircase. Sam didn't bother stopping him; from what they'd seen of the first floor, the 700 lockers were elsewhere. "Explains his whole hero gimmick. Looking out for the little guy, protecting all the nerds in need. You got any idea why he decided to expand his territory to the rest of the town?"
"The reports of all the other ghosts started coming in about two years ago. Doubtful he wouldn't have seen that as them being bullies when the attacks are the reason for all that construction we saw. Between that and the fact that kids still talk about him, I'm guessing he got the power boost he needed to breach the boundary of the school grounds."
"But?"
Trust Dean to know there was a but. "But they're not ghosts like you and I think of ghosts. Most of them, anyway. I can match up a few names of ghosts with people who actually died in this town, but Poindexter's the only one who's cropped up consistently since his death. He rebranded a couple of times, though."
Dean looked at Sam instead of starting the sweep of the second floor. "Rebranded?"
"When he expanded his haunt, it affected his appearance enough that people didn't recognize him. Called him Inviso-Bill until he decided to go with Danny Phantom."
"You're sure it's Poindexter?"
"You can count the number of teenaged deaths in this town within the last century on one hand. He's the only one who fits."
"So why go with Danny if his name's Sidney?"
"Daniel's his middle name. Kept the P for Poindexter but thought Phantom was cooler, I guess." Sam shrugged. "Or maybe he thought going around with an S on his chest for Sidney would feel too much like a Superman rip-off. That's not really the point. I mean, if you'd spent your life with so much relentless bullying that your name practically became synonymous with it, wouldn't you want to start over with a new identity once you had the opportunity?"
"Getting bullied was more a you thing than a me thing," Dean said dryly as he started moving again. Sam frowned but didn't argue Dean's assessment; Dean had never had a lot of friends, but he'd never backed down from a fight, and he pretty much always won them. Every kid in every school they'd ever attended had quickly learned that. Sam had never had much trouble making friends, but there had always been at least one kid who thought the new guy would make a good target. Well, it'd happened till he'd hit his growth spurt, at least. "Anyway, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that I know what your point is. What the hell does Poindexter think he's protecting everyone from if it's not ghosts?"
"Everyone in this place still calls them ghosts," Sam pointed out. "Even the news outlets. They just aren't, not most of them."
"So what are they?"
"Beats me." Sam rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "Could be magic. Could be something left over from Gabriel being a dick when he was on the Trickster schtick. Or most of it's invented, which is why only a few of the ghosts are based on real people who died in tragic accidents—those might be the only ones who'd had stories about them before the influx."
"So half gimmick to rake in suckers for cash, half haunted like Heaven and Hell are shut again."
"More like 80-20 on that, but otherwise, pretty much." Once they got confirmation on that twenty percent, they'd have to salt and burn the others, but Poindexter—Phantom—was the only one who seemed to be talked about consistently, regardless of name.
"Fan-freaking-tastic. Love not knowing exactly what we're dealing with." Dean turned the corner, and they finally found lockers in the 700s. "Keep your eyes peeled."
Sam didn't need the reminder, but he didn't begrudge Dean for it. He'd rather have the reminders than not have Dean. They lapsed into silence upon unspoken agreement, and when Sam finally found the infamous locker 724, Dean covered him.
Poindexter didn't show in the scant amount of time it took Sam to pop open the locker.
"Nothing in here he might be tied to unless you count a broken mirror," Sam murmured to Dean. He pulled out the EMF meter again just in case but wasn't surprised when it instantly maxed out.
"Well, it ain't less active than everywhere else," muttered Dean as Sam snapped off the EMF meter and reached instead for a bag in which to take the pieces of the mirror with them. Chances were high that it wasn't anything special, particularly since no ghost had shown up to interrupt them, but he didn't want to come back here if a salt and burn of the corpse didn't do the trick.
The mirror had been a decent quality one at some point, at any rate. Cheap metal frame, sure, but still metal and not plastic. Definitely could've come from Poindexter's time. The locker didn't seem to have gotten much use since; it was grungier than the others by a long shot, with hinges that squeaked and a dent in the door no one had ever bothered to hammer out. Not that every locker here fared much better, but the others still were, on the whole, better.
"How much digging do you think we'll get done before we get company?" Dean asked as Sam shut the locker again.
Part of Sam wanted to say not much, since Poindexter obviously wasn't haunting his old locker anymore and he'd feel them disturbing his grave eventually, but part of him wondered if Poindexter would show up at all.
Gimmicks might abound in this tourist trap of a town, but the EMF meter wasn't lying. There were ghosts here, or at least one ghost. A ghost that must have some association with the local high school if the EMF readings were so high. The stories of Phantom's heroism were as varied as they were plentiful, much more so than the more nefarious stories, and so much of it lined up with the stories about Poindexter, but what if Sam was wrong about the rebrand and the name change? What if the ghost they were dealing with wasn't Poindexter?
"I give it twenty minutes," said Dean.
"Nothing till we hit the coffin," countered Sam. Because if they weren't dealing with Poindexter but they were still dealing with a protective ghost who would be protective right up to the point that protection got twisted into something that would lead to people's deaths? Disturbing a grave might tweak their senses, even if the grave wasn't theirs.
Sam was taking his turn digging by the light of the moon when Dean heard the voice behind him say, "Is graverobbing seriously still a thing?"
The ghost was floating too close to Sam for Dean to shoot him on sight, but a split second later, Sam was already hitting the dirt, so Dean didn't bother talking when he could be shooting.
"Ow!" The ghost—Danny Phantom, Sidney Poindexter, whatever frickin' name he wanted to use—rubbed at his chest with one hand where Dean had shot him with the rock salt. He held a soup thermos in the other hand. Dean had no idea what was up with that but suspected he didn't want to find out. "That hurt. What the heck was that?"
It should've done more than hurt.
It should've dispersed him entirely.
Dean had a bad feeling about this.
He shot the ghost again, and this time the ghost did flicker out of sight. When he reappeared, it was behind his own tombstone, and he was close enough to the ground that he might as well have been standing on it like Dean was. "Okay, one," said the ghost as he clipped the thermos to his belt, "no thanks for that, please don't do it again. Two, again, graverobbing? Seriously? This isn't even the newer part of the cemetery. Not that I want you to go digging anywhere, but if you're hoping to sell it to someone who wants to teach themselves anatomy, don't you need, like, something more substantial than whatever you're going to find here?"
Dean risked a glance at Sam.
Sam was frowning, probably because he'd managed to pull out his own gun without the ghost noticing—or caring if he did notice—and Dean was still armed. Usually when a ghost showed up at this point, their weapons had been flung away and at least one of them was being strangled while the other tried to get into a position where they could either shoot without harming their brother or light the sonuvabitch up.
"I know it's weird thing to ask, but this is a weird thing for you to do, so can you just tell me? I have a friend who's going to grill me when I tell her about this."
"You won't have to worry about it," Dean said. He didn't shoot again, tempted though he was. He wanted to have a better idea of what they were dealing with. The kid was definitely a teenager, and he was definitely a ghost, but he looked a lot more substantial than any ghost Dean had ever met, and it made his skin crawl.
Had magic mixed with ghosts in this place? Was that the reason Garth had warned them off, as opposed to just not having up-to-date information? Dean couldn't imagine why he wouldn't have told them if that were the case. Garth might have built a few tentative connections within the werewolf community (only made up of the good ones, apparently), but even if the rest of the supernatural world could smell that something was rotten in Amity Park, Dean doubted they'd be bound to protect its secrets.
The ghost pulled a face. "Okay, look, if you tell me why you're doing this, I might be able to help you. In, like, a non-illegal way. Because this is definitely illegal, and it's not normally my thing. I mean, technically, the thing I should be doing is calling the police."
"A ghost phoning the cops on us." Dean snorted. "I'm sure that'd go over great for you."
"Better for me than for you." The reply came with crossed arms. "The cops know I'm one of the good guys. The human ones do, anyway. I wouldn't say we're friends, but they're not going to shoot me on sight like some people in this town do."
It wasn't said like he meant Dean.
"You know why we're doing this," Sam said quietly.
"Uh, actually, I don't. That's why I asked. Obviously."
He was chatty for a ghost, which was weird in and of itself. Sure, not everyone had had their throat cut or been strangled or hanged or whatever, but Dean could count the number of ghosts he'd actually talked to that he hadn't known in life on one hand. Most of them jumped straight to the 'trying to kill him' point, which was annoying but at least a familiar song and dance.
Him being chatty wasn't what worried Dean, though. The problem? This ghost didn't sound like he'd expect a ghost from the 50s would, even one who turned up often enough to practically be hanging out with the living. He sounded like a ghost who was fairly recently deceased.
Crap.
"You're not Poindexter." Dean didn't even need to ask it as a question. "Dammit, Sammy. How'd we mess this up?"
"Poindexter?" repeated Phantom. "Like, Poindexter Poindexter? Sidney?" He leaned forward so that he could see the name on the gravestone—Sidney D. Poindexter, 1940 - 1958—and turned, impossibly, a bit green. His eyes were wide when he looked back up at them. "Poindexter's buried here? You're digging up his grave?"
"Not anymore," muttered Sam as he climbed out of the grave and traded his gun for the spade again. They probably still would dig it up—if Poindexter were hanging around as a ghost, someone would have to eventually, and it might as well be them if they were here—but that wasn't something you told a different ghost. Especially not when it might mean dealing with two ghosts who weren't likely to pull their punches when it came to protecting each other from a threat.
Phantom shot up into the air, and all of a sudden, it wasn't his face that was green. There was a ball of green light burning in each of his hands, and they were held out towards Dean and Sam like Phantom was the one holding a loaded gun—or two, more like. "Talk. Now."
Dean shot him instead of wasting time wondering what the hell Phantom was doing.
Phantom vanished and appeared, predictably, behind him. Dean ducked at Sam's warning shout, the iron blade of the spade swinging over his head. It must've gotten Phantom, since he wasn't there when Dean straightened up again, but—
The temperature dropped abruptly—frickin' ghosts—and Dean spun, but he heard Sam cry out before he saw Phantom, and then the sight he saw was so bizarre he stopped looking for Phantom.
"What the hell?" Dean bit out, jumping over the grave to get to Sam's side so he could examine what looked like a solid block of ice freezing his brother's feet (and the spade) to the ground.
"Dean—" started Sam, but Dean's own feet froze in place with an ice as cold and all-consuming as the fires of Hell burned hot.
Phantom reappeared between them, pulled the gun out of Dean's hands, and tossed it aside with unnerving ease. Dean had been surprised, but he hadn't loosened his grip; the gun had just melted through his fingers like it wasn't any more substantial than air. The same must’ve happened to Sam, since he wasn’t holding anything anymore either. Dean might have protested if Phantom didn't look so angry, but there was a time and a place to piss off a creature more powerful than you, and this wasn't quite the time.
They needed to be in a better position first.
"Unless you want frostbite," growled Phantom, "I suggest you tell me what's going on."
Dean forced himself to concentrate. He'd dealt with hellfire; he could deal with this freaking ghost ice. "You wanna tell us your name first, just so we're clear? Since you're apparently not Sidney Poindexter?" It might be a faint hope, but Dean would take what he could get. If the ghost talked and they didn't have to….
Phantom crossed his arms. "Danny Phantom. Got it? Danny. Not Sidney. I don't know why you thought I was Sidney. I don't even look like him."
"Daniel is his middle name," muttered Sam, and Phantom shot him a surprised look, his arms dropping back to his sides.
"Really?"
"Your whole hero schtick is the same, too," added Dean, more to keep Phantom's attention on him than anything else. It gave Sam a chance to try to use the handle of the spade as a lever to crack the ice. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be working, so Dean was going to have to buy him as much time as possible. "Protecting people from bullies."
"I try to protect people, sure, but not just from bullies." Phantom wrinkled his nose. "Apparently, I also protect people's corpses from being robbed from their own graves, and I can't believe I just said those words out loud. You know how insane that sounds, right?"
Dean wished he didn't. He also wished he could feel his feet, but that ship had sailed. Phantom must've frozen to death or something to be able to control ice like this. "We're not graverobbers."
Phantom gestured at the pile of dirt behind them. "Doesn't look like you're doing arts and crafts."
The truth of what they were doing wouldn't make him happier, especially if he realized that was in his future. Once they figured out who the hell he really was, anyway. Dean decided to put it the nice way. "We protect people, too."
"By digging up graves. Yeah. Sure. Pull the other one."
"You protect people from other ghosts, don't you?" Sam asked, and Dean realized he must have given up on trying to free the spade (and, by extension, himself). "We're just trying to do the same thing."
Phantom blinked at them.
Then, "You're ghost hunters?"
Sam and Dean exchanged a look.
"I'm going to take that as a yes," Phantom continued, "but it still doesn't explain why you're digging up a grave. My, uh, the ghost hunters around here have never done that."
"You have hunters in town?" Dean asked. Garth had never mentioned that.
Then again, Garth might not have known that.
But Sam had also not mentioned it, and he'd probably found something on them. Maybe he'd assumed they were part of the gimmick. Or maybe he'd figured that they were in over their heads and unable to handle the ghost problem by themselves.
Dean would have judged them for that if he'd been able to move, but apparently, Phantom had some unexpected tricks up his sleeve.
Guess that explained Phantom's comment about people shooting at him, though.
"Yeah, they're the reason the ghost problem is so bad." When they looked at Phantom blankly, he added, "What, you didn't hear about this place from some obscure forum on the internet? The whole ghost portal thing isn't made up. The Fentons have it in their basement."
"Ghost por—? What are you talking about?" He wanted to say it was ridiculous, but with what he'd seen, he really shouldn't say it was ridiculous. Besides, it might just be a different name for something normal, like a weak spot in the Veil.
"A ghost portal. To the Ghost Zone. Which does not stay closed even when it's supposed to."
Huh.
Dean wasn't completely sure what Phantom meant about a ghost zone if it wasn't another name for the Veil, but he was pretty sure the local hunters had screwed up as much as he and Sam had, which was saying something, considering everything they'd done. This sounded almost as bad as opening a gate to Hell and letting the demons out for a free-for-all.
Well, not quite. Amity Park hadn't turned into the murder capital of the country or anything.
"Which still doesn't explain why you two are digging up Poindexter's grave," added Phantom pointedly.
"It can help a restless spirit to move on," Sam said, which Dean supposed was a diplomatic way of saying they'd ice the ghost before it could ice them.
"Uh huh." Phantom didn't sound like he believed that. "Except Poindexter's not a problem anymore—I hear he's finally experiencing some popularity he never had in life and is enjoying hanging out at his version of the school now—so I don't see him outside of emergencies, and you guys were never really looking for him anyway if you thought I was him."
Crap. He hadn't forgotten that part.
Dean caught Sam's eye, and Sam raised his eyebrows, just a fraction—just enough for Dean to notice.
Fine.
Dean shrugged in return, and Sam took point. It wasn't like Dean was having a whole lot of luck, and Sam could expand on what he'd said before and try to spin it in a way that would get Phantom to either spill his guts or leave them alone long enough to figure out which grave was his. "Look, you mean well. We can see that now. You're doing what you can to help people. But fighting other ghosts and getting stronger by defeating them—"
"I don't get stronger when I beat them," interrupted Phantom. He hesitated, then amended, "I think. I mean, I get better at stuff because practice makes perfect, y'know? And sometimes I develop new powers, but that's not because I've fought anyone. That would've happened anyway."
He didn't add I think again, but Dean could hear it.
Sam smiled at Phantom. "You're doing your best. You're trying to do good. And that's great."
Phantom crossed his arms again. "I sense a but coming."
"But over time, ghosts can become like injured animals. They can become so angry, so hurt, so overwhelmed and upset, that they'll lash out at anyone in their path."
Phantom raised an eyebrow. "How many ghosts have you guys actually met? I'm not the first, am I?"
Dean dragged a hand down his face. "Too many to count. Probably more than you have."
"I sincerely doubt that."
"So doubt it. Won't change the fact that you can't stop that change from happening to you. The longer a ghost stays here, the more dangerous and violent they'll become." He probably should have tried to put that more diplomatically, like Sam had, but he could've put it a lot worse, too, and frankly, all Dean could think about was Bobby, and—
"Right. And who told you that again? Some random person on the internet?"
"A reaper." Dean didn't want to get into details.
"A what?"
"A reaper. Y'know, the ones who reap you. And who are supposed to take you to your final resting place. Or at least give you a choice and explain the deal. Which obviously didn't happen in your case, which is why you have no idea what I'm talking about."
"Huh." Phantom scratched at his head. "You sound like you really believe that."
"We wouldn't have been digging up a grave in the middle of the night if we didn't believe it," grumbled Dean.
Phantom hummed. "Fair point, I guess. Look, it still counts as grave desecration even if you don't actually steal something, right? Sidney deserves better than that." He held out both hands again, and Dean stiffened, expecting something else to come at them—maybe more ice, maybe some of that green light (fire?), maybe just Phantom himself—
Instead, the pile of dirt behind them began to glow a faint green and started to shift. It was slow at first—one clod of dirt at a time slow—but as Phantom grunted and pulled, it picked up speed, and the entire pile oozed past them and back into the hole.
By the time Phantom had dropped his hands to his knees and bent double in the air, panting for breath a ghost shouldn't freaking need, the only indication that there had been any activity at the site was the freshly turned soil.
Sam tried pushing and pulling on the handle of the spade again. Dean heard something crack, but from the unhappy look on Sam's face, it hadn't been the ice.
The cracking sound had caught Phantom's attention, too. "You guys don't need to dig up my grave and do whatever you were planning to do to Sidney," he said. "I'm not going to go crazy. Or excessively violent or whatever. I'm—"
"It doesn't work like that," Dean cut in. "It's not something you can control. It's not something you can stop. Once you've lost your humanity—which, newsflash, happens when you die and that connection to life is severed—you're on a clock. How fast it ticks down changes, but you lose more of yourself as it goes on. And once you're out of time, you're not you anymore, and people around you die because of what you do to them. If you accept that now and decide to move on, we'll get out of your hair."
"And if not, you'll hunt me down? Once you can walk again, presumably."
Smartass.
"If you truly want to help the people of this town," Sam said, his voice all gentle again, "the best thing you can do for them is move on. The other hunters will take care of the ghosts you've been fighting."
Phantom made a face. "Look, I love the guy, but Jack Fenton can't hit the broad side of a barn. The others have better aim—unfortunately for me—but I'm definitely the best ghost hunter in this town. That's not even me bragging. That's just the facts. And, anyway, you don't know the whole story. I haven't lost my humanity."
"You're dead."
Phantom nodded at Dean. "Yeah, sort of, I guess I technically am. Right now. But I haven't lost my connection to my humanity. Which is probably why no reaper person showed up. But if the lack of that is what you said makes ghosts lose themselves and turn into complete fruitloops, then I'm in the clear. So we're good. And you can go home." He paused. "Will you go home if I let you go now?"
He must've been able to read the no, you're crazy and proving that the longer you talk in their faces.
Phantom's feet hit the grass again, and Dean was surprised to realize that it bent under his weight. He had weight.
And he cast a shadow, faint though it was in the moonlight.
"Look, don't repeat this to anyone—except another ghost, I guess; they all already know—but I'm not as dead as I look. I could say something all spooky and ominous like you'll never find my body, but I get the feeling that's not going to help my case." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You won't find my body because there isn't one to find."
Dean did not like those implications. A quick glance at the horrified disgust on Sam's features meant they were thinking along the same lines. "You're possessing your freaking corpse?"
Phantom held up both hands in front of him as if to ward them off. "Ew, gross, no. Definitely not. Nothing remotely like that. It's just what I said before. I'm not as dead as I look."
"Meaning?" prompted Sam.
"Exactly what it says on the tin. Not as dead as I look."
Dean caught Sam's eye again. He'd been to Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory. Between the two of them, they'd been killed and resurrected, had their deaths reset, had their souls yanked out of wherever they'd gone, run around without a soul, been turned by a vampire, been possessed by angels and demons, straight up been a frickin' demon—
They weren't as dead as they might have once looked, either.
Because they weren't actually dead anymore.
Meaning none of that explained Phantom's whole deal.
"Magic?" asked Sam, his voice still carefully neutral.
"Don't think so. Not from what I've seen of magic, anyway. I'm pretty sure it's just pure dumb luck."
Right.
They'd had their fair share of that, too, but they'd had an awful lot more that had seemed like that while in reality, it had turned out that someone else was pulling the strings, manoeuvring pieces on the board, or writing the frickin' story.
Phantom stretched, yawned, and said, "Anyway, I want to get back to bed, so how about we call this a night? I'll let you go, you stop digging up graves and leave in the morning, and we'll call it even. Pretend we never saw each other or had this conversation and everything."
"Bed," Dean repeated flatly.
"I mean, more sleep for me means I'm less likely to be cranky like you, so…." Phantom shrugged. "Yeah."
Dean huffed. "If you actually sleep, you're not—" He broke off as Phantom's hands shot out, grabbing both him and Sam by their arms, and pulled.
They stumbled free of the ice.
"What kind of monster are you?" growled Dean. He was spending too much of his concentration on trying to remain upright on feet that were tingling with painful pins and needles to lunge at the damn thing that had done this to him. "You sure as hell aren't a ghost."
"I'm a ghost. I'm just a different flavour of ghost than whatever you're used to, apparently," said Phantom, and he gave them a mocking salute. "See you again never."
He vanished.
Behind Sam, the spade fell free of the ice. The shaft had splintered at the shoulder, though. They'd have to buy a new one.
Dean didn't particularly want to buy a new one here.
"Guess that's why Garth warned us about Amity Park, huh?"
"We're telling him something came up and we never made it here," Dean said as he spotted Sam's gun and picked it up. If this whole mess had been going on for so long without anyone else sorting it out, it could wait a little longer. He kept searching for his own weapon as he continued, "We can come back and deal with whatever this is when we're not walking into it blind."
"Or have something else hanging over our heads?" guessed Sam. "Is that ever going to happen again?" He didn't make it sound like he thought that was possible. With everything they'd dealt with, one thing after another, Dean couldn't really blame him for it.
Sam had never wanted this life, but it had claimed him anyway.
Dean's hand closed over his own gun. A few blades of grass tore out with it as he straightened up. He knew how Sam felt—knew how tired Sam felt—but he pasted on a cocky smile anyway. "Sure it will. Gotta have faith in something, Sammy. Might as well be that."