Chapter Text
The streets of Amity Park were barely recognizable in the fog that made everything look monotone grey. Not a single person or soul was in sight, the eerie scene making the hair on Sam's neck stand up. As she walked on the sidewalk, she could hear the screams and feel the pain of spirits around her yet she couldn't see any, even through the mist. She started to run as she tried to follow the feeling of spirits in need, but the town seemed to be empty. She came to a stop at the end of the street when everything went dead silent. All she could hear was her own breathing until her ears started to ring while she felt a presence behind her. She turned to see one of the most horrifying creatures she had ever seen. Its torso was huge compared to its tiny arms and legs and its back was hunched. The face looked like an unfinished drawing, with eyes that looked sewn shut that spewed what she could only describe as black guck. The only crevice on its face that was open was its mouth as it ran towards her with its sharp teeth and jaw unhinged.
Sam jolted up from her sleep in a panic, breathing hard and sweating as she looked at the clock: 3:03 am. She tried to slow her breathing as she threw the blankets off of her and stared into her lap. A figure stirred beside her, but she barely noticed as she held her gaze down.
"Another nightmare?" Danny asked, still groggy with sleep but also concerned about his girlfriend.
"Not another nightmare. The same one," she informed him while her hand went through her hair. She had already seen this creature multiple times in her sleep before, always jolting awake between three and four in the morning.
"Are you okay?" He asked, but her mind was racing too fast.
"I'm gonna go for a walk," she said before getting off the bed and going to the closet to pull on warmer clothes.
"Sam, it's freezing out there," Danny protested as he sat up, but she pulled on a beanie before leaving their apartment. He grunted in frustration before he hopped out of bed as well, never one to leave his girlfriend alone in the night. While he hurriedly got dressed, Sam had already made it down the street, the same street she walked in her dream. Surely it meant something, but she didn't know what. In the dark, she heard footsteps behind her before Danny showed up by her side, but she almost didn't pay any mind to him. "Can you come back up to the apartment, please?" He asked, but Sam couldn't focus on anything but her gut feeling that something was wrong.
"You know, lately, I haven't been seeing spirits. Hardly any over the last couple of months," she said as they walked, barely noticing the harsh January weather over all of her thoughts.
"Shouldn't that be a good thing? It sounds to me like fewer people are dying," Danny suggested.
"I've pretty much seen at least one spirit once a day since I was a kid. Not seeing any in two months is concerning."
"Maybe it's a good sign?"
"No way. Something is off." Before they could turn the corner, Danny placed his hands on her shoulders to stop her and get her attention.
"You'll find out what's happening when the time is right. Right now there's nothing you can do about it," he told her. He removed one hand before wrapping the other around her shoulders and directing her back to their apartment complex. "You have to try to sleep. We have work in a few hours."
"I don't know if I can."
"Just try, okay?"
A few hours later, Sam found herself at work, tired and cranky. The good thing about working with plants was there was no need for customer service. She was putting her botany degree to use by working at a farm where she tended to the greenhouse and got plants and flowers ready for transport. It was about an hour away from the apartment, but the people who owned the farm were great, so there were no complaints there. Plus, the heat of the greenhouse felt amazing compared to the harsh winter weather. Summer was a different story, but nevertheless, it was good money. During her break, she went inside the farm to get coffee from the break room. As it brewed, she yawned and rubbed her eyes afterward.
"Still not sleeping?" Her manager, an older woman in her fifties named Martha, walked into the room as soon as Sam started to yawn. Her blue eyes had some green in it and her light brown hair was covered mostly by a bandana that she always wore to work. She took a coffee mug from out of one of the cabinets and approached Sam who leaned against the counter.
"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't," she answered, taking the coffee pot and pouring a good amount into her own cup before placing it down in front of Martha. It wasn't like Sam could tell her what was going on; the only people who knew about her abilities were still just Danny and Tucker.
"Insomnia is a tricky thing. Have you tried smoking weed?" Sam choked on her coffee at Martha's out-of-pocket statement but enjoyed it thoroughly. Martha was a really cool boss, and as long as she knew you worked hard, was a pleasure to be around. Despite being from an older generation, her humor was pretty versatile.
"I'm not at liberty to say," Sam responded before they both sat at the small round table in the middle of the room.
"On a different note, did you ever set a date yet?" Martha asked before sipping her coffee. Sam never wore her engagement ring to work out of fear of losing it or getting it dirty, but she had mentioned it at work when the proposal happened a few months ago. Even though she and Danny had been dating for five years, they both wanted to wait until after college before even thinking about getting married.
"We might elope," Sam told her, causing Martha to laugh but Sam's face didn't change.
"Oh, you're serious?" She asked, making Sam shrug.
"I'm not really a wedding person. Besides, my love life isn't anyone else's business but my own."
"Cheers, I'll drink to that," Martha said as she took a sip of her coffee. Sam's phone vibrated in her pocket and she fished it out to see who was calling. "Hubby?" Martha guessed jokingly.
"Tucker. Give me a second," she said as she rose, stepping out of the break room to answer. "Hello?"
"What up, freak?" Tucker's voice rang loud and clear through the phone. "You on break?"
"Obviously."
"Is your green thumb still green after all this time?"
"That's never changing." Tucker hummed from the other end, getting distracted while on his laptop. He was able to get an IT job after college where he worked from his apartment. It was convenient for him since he had always been lazy, but Sam tried to change that by making him get out more.
"What are you guys thinking for dinner tonight?" He asked. The trio always hung out on Fridays, usually going over to Tucker's where they watched movies and played video games. They only lived twenty minutes away from each other but working full time made it harder to see each other more than once a week.
"Danny said something about chinese I think."
"Chinese it is. See you at seven?" He asked.
"Yup."
"Bet." He hung up the phone and Sam yawned once again before trudging through the rest of her day.
By the afternoon, Danny and Sam had made it over to Tucker's apartment. They goofed with each other like normal twenty-two year olds; teasing, name calling, the occasional hitting, but all in good fun, of course. They were all watching a TV show together on the couch later in the night with Danny in the middle of his two best friends when Tucker looked over to see Sam asleep on Danny's shoulder.
"Sam-" Tucker started to say, but Danny sushed him.
"She has to sleep. She hasn't been for a while," he said in a hushed tone.
"She's still having nightmares?" Tucker asked, remembering when Sam had told him when it first started happening.
"Yeah," Danny answered, turning to look down at her relaxed face.
"Do you think it means anything?"
"I have no idea and neither does she. This has never happened to her before." Tucker grabbed his beer from off the side table next to the couch to sip it.
"Any ghost attacks in the last two months?" He asked.
"Yeah, a few. Why?"
"So it's just spirits that aren't around?" Danny nodded his head. "What if something is wrong in the in-between?" The in-between is what Sam called where these spirits resided. They get stuck in a plane of existence when they die traumatically or suddenly, not understanding what has happened and, therefore, not being able to move on to wherever they go next. Sam had vowed to make it her mission to help these spirits considering she was the only one with these abilities to do so.
"How could there be something wrong?" Danny asked, causing Tucker to shrug. "And even if there was something wrong, it's not like we can go there. It's not like the Ghost Zone where we can just open a portal and," he made a whooshing sound and motioned with his hand, referring to the Specter Speeder they always used when occasionally travelling to the Ghost Zone.
"I don't know, dude. I'm just thinking outloud," Tucker defended. As the boys quietly bickered, Sam started to come out of her sleep. She could hear vague ringing as her eyes slowly opened, only to see the eyeless creature from her dreams floating across from her. She yelled and jumped nearly three feet off the couch, getting the attention of the boys, but their worries fell on deaf ears while Sam looked around for the creature who seemed to vanish.
"It was here! I saw it!" Sam exclaimed, panicked.
"The thing from your dream?" Tucker insinuated, making her nodd violently. "Is it still here?"
"Well... no," she said as she looked around, but managed to see the looks Danny and Tucker both exchanged with each other as they stood up. "It's real. It was just here," she said more sternly, getting the feeling they didn't believe her.
"Sam," Danny started to say while he places both hands on her shoulders, "you just woke up. You were probably just seeing things while you came out of your sleep." Sam's eyebrows got angry before she pushed his hands off of her.
"I'm not crazy! Stop talking to me like I am," she yelled, and Tucker lightly pushed Danny out of the way, his own way of telling him to stand down so he could handle this.
"That's not what we're saying at all. You haven't slept for two months. You're exhausted, you're not thinking clearly, and you're very much on edge," he told her while a hand went though her hair. "Why don't you guys crash here tonight? You know you're always welcome to."
"It's okay. I'm fine," Sam said as she started to grab her things so she and Danny could leave.
"Are you sure?" Danny asked.
"I think I'll sleep fine in my own bed."
Little did she know, she was very wrong.