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“Hey, Kitty! Check this out!” Johnny shouted as they sped down the highway at about a hundred miles an hour. “No hands!” He held his hands up to show, while the bike kept speeding onward.
“That all you can do?” she responded. Kitty gripped his shoulders and pulled herself up to stand on the seat behind him. Johnny couldn’t really see it, but he knew from experience that she wasn’t using any ghost powers.
“Hell no, baby, I’m just getting started!” He waited for her to sit back down before he pulled the bike into a wheelie. Kitty cheered and laughed. She hugged him tight when he dropped the front wheel back to the road.
They might not be alive anymore, but this was living. The road stretched on before them, promising adventure for as long as they followed it. The chilly October air nipped at their skin, and it felt invigorating. Together they could do anything, handle anything. Everything was this moment of adrenaline and laughter.
“Hey, Johnny, do another wheelie!” Kitty said. She moved around so that she was sitting back to back with him.
“What’re you gonna do?”
“You’ll see!” she teased. She linked her arms around his shoulders, backwards. Johnny obligingly kicked the bike back into a wheelie. He couldn’t really see behind him, but he could feel Kitty’s weight resting on his upper back. The balance was kind of weird - he couldn’t keep them in a wheelie for very long. He managed to hold it steady for a good twenty seconds with Kitty balancing entirely on his shoulders before the front wheel bounced back down to the ground.
“What the hell, babe? Where’d you learn that?”
She laughed, and it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “Technus got some videos last time he got out. Thought I would try it out!” Kitty turned back around and hugged him tight. “I had to cheat a little bit, but I bet I could do it for real with practice.”
Johnny smiled. “We got nothing but time.”
They sped through the night, reveling in their freedom. At this time of night the roads were utterly empty. It was like the entire world was just for them.
At least, until a certain white-haired pipsqueak popped up.
Johnny’s first indication was an aggravated snarl from Shadow. He and Kitty looked around. There was a glowing black and white form flying behind them and gaining fast.
“Oh, for-” Johnny growled. He hit the gas. His bike didn’t have any actual gas in it, but ectoplasm burned out the tailpipe. The speedometer inched up to 120 and stuck. That was as high as it went, though with his ghostly powers Johnny could boost it up a bit more.
Green fire caught on the tires as Johnny gave his bike a speed boost. He was one of the fastest things in their part of the Zone like this. Walker and his goons never stood a chance at catching Johnny on his bike when it was powered up. Still the kid kept coming.
“What’s this twerp’s deal?” Kitty shouted in his ear. She tossed a couple blue bolts at him, but judging by the frustrated sound she made, both of them missed.
“We did try to possess his sister,” Johnny grumbled, “like two weeks ago.”
“We’re not hurting anyone now,” she complained. Then, louder, “Hey, kid! Since when are you a traffic cop?”
Johnny glanced in a rearview mirror. It looked like the kid tried to say something, but they couldn’t hear him over the wind. He didn’t want to slow down enough to hear him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t actually keep up the speed for too long. After about three minutes the bike slowed down enough that the brat overtook them.
“Hey! What the heck are you two doing out here?” he shouted at them when he caught up.
“Buzz off, kid!” Johnny shouted back. “We’re just having fun! We’re not hurting anybody!”
He glared at them. “I haven’t forgotten what you tried to do to my sister! It’s not gonna happen again!”
Johnny groaned. “For fuck’s sake, what part of ‘not hurting anybody’ didn’t you understand?”
For a moment Phantom actually slowed down. They were left alone for a few moments before his ridiculous speed returned. Johnny motioned for Shadow to go deal with the brat.
The fight he saw through the mirrors was painfully short. It looked like the ghost kid hadn’t forgotten what he’d learned about fighting Shadow since last time. He lit up a bright ball of pure-white ectoenergy so Shadow couldn’t hide, then pelted him with little ectoblasts. Shadow barely got in a couple scratches before he was sucked into that dumb can.
“Shadow!” Kitty shrieked. “What did that punk do to him? Johnny, we gotta go back!”
“He’ll be okay, Kitty,” Johnny insisted. “That thing doesn’t hurt, it just stuffs you in a little box until he lets you out.”
“Then we have to get him out!”
He huffed. So much for having a fun night out. Johnny spun the bike around into a stop. The ghost kid came to a halt in midair just feet away.
“Whose body did you have to steal to get out this time?” the kid demanded. Kitty scoffed.
“Nobody’s, kid. That was just because I was stuck inside the portal. Besides, it’s October. ”
The kid scrunched up his face, clearly trying to think very hard. After a moment he relented. “Why does that matter?”
Johnny felt like his legs had been swept out from under him. He’d been beaten up by a kid who didn’t even know how the annual cycle of the Zone worked? That was beyond embarrassing. “How long have you been dead?” he asked.
“I’m not dead,” the kid insisted, which said more than any number could have. “I think it’s been… a little over two months since I got ghost powers.”
Since the kid died. He was only two months a ghost and he was kicking Johnny’s ass. That would have been embarrassing if it wasn’t so damn sad.
“Will you let Shadow go and listen so we can explain?” Kitty asked, far too sweetly.
“No way,” the ghost kid said, flying another couple feet into the air. “First you explain, then maybe I’ll let him out.”
He wasn’t completely stupid, at least. “Okay, so on Halloween the barrier between the living world and the human world is really thin, right?” Kitty explained quickly. The kid nodded along, although he crossed his arms like he was pouting. “Well, it doesn’t just happen all of a sudden on one night. Throughout October the barrier gets thinner and thinner, so we can do more ghost stuff in the human world.”
“Haven’t you been feeling stronger the last couple weeks?” Johnny asked.
The kid thought about it for a while before shrugging. “I guess? I thought I’d just gotten a power boost or something.”
“This isn’t some arcade game, kid,” Johnny said. “You’re a ghost.”
“No I’m not!” he insisted. “I’m still alive, I just have ghost powers.”
It was painful to watch. Johnny could remember the first few months after their crash, when he’d been convinced that there was something else going on and he just had to find the way back home. Coddling the kid wasn’t going to make it any easier. “Just ‘cause you can look human doesn’t mean you’re alive. I can do that.”
“Right, did Skulker hunt you down for being both human and ghost?” the kid argued.
“He what,” Johnny said at the same time that Kitty asked, “ You’re why he’s been so pissed off?”
“Yeah! Okay, not just me. He took my friend’s PDA- But that’s not important. The point is, I’m not a ghost, I’m just kind of ghosty. Ghostly?” He looked awfully proud of himself, whatever he was.
“Great, fine, you’re somehow dead and alive at the same time,” Johnny relented. “Can we have Shadow back now?”
“Oh, right.” The kid looked at the thermos in his hand. “You really aren’t going to possess anyone?”
Johnny was going to do something really stupid if the kid didn’t let Shadow go now. “No! We’re not gonna possess anyone!”
“Or try to date my sister again?”
“Look, I’m sorry about your sister. She’s a nice gal and all. Would you let Shadow go already?”
The kid hesitated another moment before shrugging and uncapping the thermos. Blue-white energy burst out along with Shadow’s screech of freedom.
“Don’t make me regret this, okay?” the kid said, trying to look tough with his shoulders squared up. Johnny wasn’t paying attention, more concerned with making sure that Shadow was okay. Shadow whined and spat like an embarrassed cat, but he didn’t seem to have more than the ghostly equivalent of bruises.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Kitty asked.
“Uh. I’m Danny,” the kid answered. A human name, because he was still warm. Or half-alive, however that worked. “I’ve been thinking about going by Phantom? It kinda rhymes with my last name. Fenton, Phantom.”
“Nice meeting you, Phantom!” Kitty said cheerily. “I think we ought to head back home. What d’you say, babe?” She put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. Shadow sunk back into the darkness around them.
“Yeah, we’ve worn out our welcome,” Johnny said. Besides, now he had to go figure out what Skulker knew about this weird ghost kid. He revved the bike’s engine and sped off into the night.
Johnny usually did his best to stay far, far away from Skulker’s island. Not because he was afraid of getting hunted or anything. A couple of road ghosts and a shade were way too boring for Skulker to bother with. The danger of being near Skulker’s lair came from the creatures he kept. Sometimes they would escape, or he would let them out on purpose to have some fun. Johnny, Kitty, and Shadow weren’t pushovers, but they didn’t go around asking to get attacked by manticores or drakes or whatever.
All this to say, driving towards the island wasn’t something he wanted to be doing.
“Why the hell are we doing this?” he asked for at least the third time.
“You don’t have to come,” Kitty sniffed. “I wanna know if he was telling the truth. Somebody who’s barely been in the ground two months kicking Skulker’s ass? If he’s in the ground, I mean.”
They stopped at the border to the island and hovered, sending out a weak pulse of energy as a greeting. Barging in on someone else’s lair was a good way to get ended. It took a moment before they received an answering pulse of energy hesitantly welcoming them in.
“What do you want, roadkill?” Skulker snapped at them as Johnny landed the bike. He hadn’t even looked up from where he was fixing some piece of equipment.
“Oh, nothing much. Heard you got your ass kicked by someone who’s not even rotting yet. Losing your touch, old man?” Johnny knew it was stupid to taunt Skulker, but sometimes it was fun to push his luck.
Skulker looked up and glared so hard that his left eye twitched. Johnny didn’t know how he did that with the mechanical body suit, but it was kind of impressive.
“I remember him sending you crying back to your lair,” Skulker shot back.
“Maybe, but I’m just some punk. I never claimed to be the greatest hunter in the whole of the Realms.”
Rather than blowing up at the insult, Skulker scowled and looked back at his work. “I would have had him if I hadn’t gotten complacent. The technology on the other side is… different from what I remember.” As if to emphasize this, the thing he was working on made a strange pinging noise and a piece flew off. Skulker put the device down in disgust. “Did you really just show up to tease me about losing a fight?”
“We wanted to ask why you were hunting him,” Kitty said, leaning over Johnny’s shoulder. “He’s just some random new ghost, right? There’s tons of those around here. I saw a couple new doors on the way here.”
“Don’t insult me,” Skulker growled. “He’s liminal. Do you even know what that means?”
Johnny had heard the word before, but he didn’t know what it meant. He shrugged, and so did Kitty, but Shadow chirped an affirmative. Johnny looked over at it.
“You do?”
Shadow chirped again, this time more smugly. Little git. Shades couldn’t really communicate with words. They were mostly telepathic, transmitting emotions and images to their hosts and each other. Johnny didn’t know much about Shadow’s existence before they met, but that must have been when he had heard about it.
Skulker grumbled something about lazy kids before explaining. “They’re ghosts that are still alive. Still grow up like normal humans. But they have a core like a ghost.”
Johnny shuddered. That didn’t seem right. He’d only been dead for about twenty years, give or take, but he couldn’t imagine that kind of confusion. Life was warm, and hectic, and messy. His afterlife was fun, but it wasn’t anything like living at all. How could someone go through all the mess of living while also being dead?
“That’s possible?” Kitty asked, sounding just as appalled as Johnny felt.
“It’s not common,” Skulker said, “but it happens. I’m pretty sure he’s only the third in the last two hundred years.” He crossed his arms in a sulk. “And I will catch him.”
“He’s awful strong for only being half-dead,” Johnny said, remembering how hard the kid hit.
“Don’t think of him as ‘only’ half-dead, roadkill,” Skulker said. “He’s as ghost as we are. He also has a living half to feed him energy and stabilize him.”
“How do you even know all this?” Kitty asked.
“The same way I know about all my prey. Research and observation. Are you three done, or do I have to chase you off my island?”
“Yeah, I think we’re done talking to nerds for a while,” Kitty responded. “Let’s ride, boys.”
Johnny revved his bike and kicked off, driving them back into the swirling green of the wilds.
They went back into Amity Park a few days later, just a few days before Halloween. It was a lovely autumn evening. The setting sun cast orange light across the clouds above trees that were yellow and red. Leaves crunched beneath their feet. They couldn’t feel the cold, but there was a nice breeze that made Johnny’s hair blow back.
It was a nice, quiet date night. Johnny walked with an arm around Kitty’s shoulders, and she leaned into him. In some ways it was like any other day, but they were in the real world, looking at a sunset and living trees. It had been so long since they’d had that.
So of course they got interrupted.
“Uh, excuse me?”
Kitty froze for a moment at the voice. Johnny turned a bit to see who was bothering them. As he expected, it was the ghost kid. Phantom. He floated a few feet away, a hesitant look on his face and his body tensed up like he was about to run away at any second.
Johnny sighed. “What do you want, twerp?”
The kid drooped a bit and raised a hand to the back of his neck nervously. “I, uh. I wanted to say sorry. For being a jerk the other day. I’m not used to seeing ghosts out that aren’t attacking people, or about to attack people, and- Yeah. I’m sorry?”
Johnny’s eyebrows raised in surprise. This was absolutely not what he was expecting.
“Thank you,” Kitty said. She peered around Johnny at Phantom, frowning, but her eyes were alight like she was looking at him for the first time. “Shadow’s back with the bike, but I’m sure he’d like to know you’re sorry.”
“Yeah. I’ll, uh. Go tell him.” Phantom squirmed a little uncomfortably.
“And Phantom?” Kitty said, “I’m sorry about your sister. We- I got impatient. It’s been so long since we’ve been in the human world…”
Phantom shrugged. “Well. Don’t do it again, I guess? I’m still kinda mad about that.”
“You’ve seriously never met another ghost without fighting?” Johnny blurted out.
“Other than you guys? No,” Phantom said. “There was the ectopusses, then the lunch lady, and Skulker, Technus, Pointdexter, you two, and that weird dragon ghost.”
“You fought a dragon?” Johnny echoed. “How-”
Kitty interrupted. “That’s a lot of ghosts to fight in just a few months.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault. I don’t even want to!” Phantom crossed his arms and scowled at the ground.
“I’m not saying it is,” she said kindly. “I’d fight back if Skulker started coming after me, too.”
“Kitty, what’re you doing?” Johnny whispered, but she ignored him.
“Why do you know Skulker, anyway?” the kid asked. He wasn’t scowling anymore, but he was still looking at them through somewhat narrowed eyes.
Johnny answered this one, “His lair’s in the Warzone. We drive through there a lot. Hell, your family’s portal’s in the Warzone.”
“In the what?”
Kitty hummed. “Tell you what, Phantom. How about we make an agreement? You let us out of the portal every so often, and we teach you about ghost stuff?”
“My parents are ghost hunters. I know plenty about ghost stuff,” the kid grumped.
“You didn’t know about ghosts getting more powerful near Halloween,” she pointed out. “You’ve only been around ghosts for a couple months, right? Well, we’ve been ghosts for twenty years. We know a little more about it.”
It took Phantom a few seconds to consider it. “Yeah, okay. But if you do hurt people I’ll kick your butts.”
“Deal,” Kitty said with a bit of a smirk.
“Yeah, great. Why don’t you go apologize to Shadow and let us get on with our date?” Johnny grumped.
“Just one more thing,” Phantom said. “What’re your names?”
“I’m Kitty Cabbie and this is Johnny 13,” Kitty answered.
“Nice to meet you. Uh, have fun? Bye!” Phantom shot off into the air without waiting for them to respond.
Johnny groaned. “Great, we have to babysit now?”
Kitty elbowed him. “It’s not babysitting if we can tell him to buzz off. Besides, it means we get something out of it. Now, let’s finish that walk.”
The sun had set, leeching the color from the sky. Still, they could see perfectly in the dark as they walked along together.