An Unusual Haunting

In spirit of Halloween, I thought I’d start another fanfic. I plan for this one not to last that long, but my plans might change. Hope you enjoy, and please tell me what you think.

EDIT: Author’s Note: Hey, this is a note I’m making just now. It’s been a year since I’ve written this, and I just want to say that this story also has some sparks from other films. I want to list my inspiration. clears throat INSPIRATION: Mostly Ghostly: Who Let the Ghosts Out, The Little Vampire, and I think some of my Coraline excitement sank in this fic somewhere…

-------------------------------------------------1--------------------------------------------------------
Once, it was a boring rainy Saturday. Violet was surfing on the internet, Bob studying, Helen watching a drama movie, Jack-Jack napping, and Dash was just sitting there, staring at the endless drops of rain falling outside the window. Making annoying pitter-patter sounds on and on, and dotting the ground with wet spots.
He couldn’t concentrate on reading his comic books because the rain’s ongoing tap-tap-tap muddled his brain. He couldn’t sleep because he wanted to do something else. He couldn’t play board games or card games because no one would play with him.
“I’m bored!” he whined.
“Then find something do to!” Violet snapped, not looking away from the screen of the computer. “I’m in the middle of something important!”
Dash trudged to his room and looked around for somethig to do. He found a library book on the floor, which he didn’t even plan to read. He lost interest in it a long time ago, and he was waiting for the day to return it. But now there was nothing left to, so…
The title read: The Cell Cycle.
Boring. The word rang in his mind automatically. But he opened the book and started to read. The words didn’t even sink into his mind- they were like shallow shapes, blurs, marks. He saw them just fine, but they had no meaning to him.
Then, Dash turned the page to find an interesting picture. It looked realistic. It was a figure- a child. And it must have been holographic or something, because it was moving. The child’s eyes strangely followed Dash, mouth moving ever so slightly. Dash blinked and rubbed his eyes, and then just saw an ordnary smiling child in the picture, completely still. I must be too tired.
Then, the picture moved- it moved! In place of the child was a whole bunch of moving pictures- Dash forgot he was reading a book! It was like a movie packed secretly in the book.
The pictures drew him in, and Dash could not put the book down. Before he knew it, it was time for dinner.
“Coming,” he called out to his family. He struggled to pull away from the moving pictures. Bu he couldn’t.
“Dash, didn’t you hear Mom? It’s time for dinner!” said Violet.
“I know,” replied Dash.
“Then what are you doing still in here?”
“I’m-” then he realized it. “I’m reading a book. I’M READING A BOOK!” Dash couldn’t believe it. But it wasn’t a book. It couldn’t have been. I know I saw the moving pictures. I saw it myself.
He looked again, back at the book, only to find the picture of the child again. He searched for captions, words, any print at all,but all the pages became blank.
His heart skipped a beat as Violet burst into his room and said, “Dash, you spent all that time reading a book? Yeah right. Come on, time for dinner.”
“But look, Violet! It’s not a just a book! See?” He showed her the page.
“Oh…you’re right…it’s not a book. It’s just a hardcover whatchamacallit with printed words in to give you information, with the words inside of it matching what the title on the cover says. So what’s your new definition of the ‘book’?” she smirked.
“What? No, I mean, don’t you see the picture! It’s creepy, isn’t it?” he said eagerly, pointing at the page where he had seen the picture of the child before.
“Uh huh. A close-up of a cell. Niiiiiiiiice. Pretty creepy that those ugly things are alive and everywhere. Come on, Dash, you want dinner or not?”
“What!” Dash cried. He looked at the page and saw that Violet was right. Where he was pointing didn’t have the picture of the child at all, but a close-up of a single-celled organism.
“But it- it was there!” Dash stuttered. “And I wasn’t reading the book, I was watching a video! And it was awesome!”
“What was it about?” Violet questioned.
“It was…I don’t remember. I remember it was cool,” Dash mumbled.
He examined the book, and found that the cover was back, and all the print on the pages. He couldnt have imagined it…could he?

When he came back from dinner to look at the book, it happened again. He saw the picture of the child, same face, different position. All the other pages were blank. But whenever he showed anyone else, what he saw faded away.
That night, he had trouble sleeping. When he finally got to an uneasy sleep, he dreamt that the child from the picture was floating in midair, speeding in all directions. He danced carefreely above the ground, and landed in front of Dash.
The child grinned, “Hi, I guess you’re wondering-”
But Dash woke up before the child finished his sentence.

That morning, Dash ran outside to play. There were some kids at the park that he greeted cheerfully, inviting them to play with him. The two kids he approached were a tall redhead wearing a t-shirt that said “Save the trees! Give less homework!” and shorts and tennis shoes, and a brown-haired, slightly shorter guy with a striped shirt and shorts and sandals. They were sitting on the jungle gym, swinging their legs and now looking at Dash.
“Whatcha got there?” they asked.
“A ball, can’t you see?” said Dash. “Anyway, wanna play?”
The first, taller boy jumped down. “I know what a ball is, stupid. But sure, I’ll play.”
Dash was offended by the boy’s first remark, but he went on to play happily with them anyway. However, when he threw the ball towards them, the two hit the ball over the gate. “Oops.”
Dash kept on going to fetch the ball from over the fence, refraining from using his superpower in front of them. The last time, when he came back, they were nowhere to be seen until they lunged at him from out of nowhere and tackled him.
Dash fought them off and tried to stand up to them, but he ended up walking home with a bleeding nose and a bruised arm, along with his ball, out of air.
“Dash, what-! I don’t want to know,” said Violet.
“These weirdoes were so bored they hit me,” groaned Dash.
“I’ll teach them a lesson. No one messes with my son,” snarled Bob.
“Violence and revenge is not the answer,” said Helen. “Dash, you should have just gotten away.”
“But then I’d be a coward.”
“It’s better than what you are in now,” said Violet.
“We should have a talk with those guys’ parents,” said Helen.
Dash complained of pain all the way home.
The no-longer-energetic boy moaned as he went to his room again and opened the book.
Inside, instead of print explaining the cell dividing, the words spelled out:
A-r-e-y-o-u-a-l-l-r-i-g-h-t-D-a-s-h?

WOW…strange things are happening to dash…

Great Job BDD…i love stories like that. Mystery…you have to figure out why.

It sounds really good!

Oh boy, an extremely intriguing tale. very nice. You got me excited for this story. keep it up.

I hoped to attract more readers than just two, but I apprecitate the comments, guys.

don’t worry…that’s two more then i have for my latest fic…and i’ll keep listening and giving thoughts and comments.

Me too. And don’t worry. It seems as though as there isn’t as much TI fans as i thought there would be, but you got fans of your work. Be happy for that.

Thanks, guys.

Al-Bob: Wait, you made new fanfics? I can’t believe I missed those! I better go check those out soon.

ya…i haven’t advertised them yet…i probably should.

I just ask people if they would like to read them or not. if they do, they do. If not, thats fine as well.

------------------------------------------------2---------------------------------------------------------
Dash was speechless. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. The message then disappeared. And in its place was a new one.
W-h-o-w-o-u-l-d-a-c-t-u-a-l-l-y-e-n-j-o-y-b-e-a-t-i-n-g-k-i-d-s-u-p? W-a-n-t-m-e-t-o-t-a-k-e-c-a-r-e-o-f-t-h-o-s-e-j-e-r-k-s?
Dash didn’t know what to do at that moment. He didn’t know whether to shut the book and avoid it or to keep watching in case something happened.
He didn’t know if he actually wanted to respond or not. And besides, how would he respond?
He started to speak, but the words were caught in his throat because he had too much shock. Then he stuttered in a scared whisper, “I-I-I d-don’t thin-k I’-m the o-on-ly ki-id who gets beat u-up.” He was afraid of what the reply would turn out like.
I-w-i-t-n-e-s-s-e-d-a-n-o-t-h-e-r-h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e-a-c-t-l-i-k-e-t-h-i-s-b-e-f-o-r-e. D-o-n-t-w-o-r-r-y-D-a-s-h; I-m-h-e-r-e-f-o-r-y-o-u.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” mumbled the frightened boy.
The messages became swallowed up in blank ness, and the book turned normal again. Dash shuddered as he went to bed early.

Dash woke up to strange machine noises. It turned out to be Vi’s laptop, but it was in his room. “That’s weird. Why would Vi leave her laptop in my room?”
Then Dash flinched as he realized the computer was on. And the mouse was moving by itself, the virtual arrow logging in on a wordpad.
Then a message typed up: Dash, please don’t be so scared of me. You’re just like everyone else I’ve tried to be friends with.

Dash woke up the next morning to find the computer gone, without a trace of it being in his room. He raced down the stairs and immediately began to fight Violet.
“Ow! Dash, what the-ow!” his sister yelled as he tried to hit her over and over again.
Violet finally put up a force field and knocked him off. “Geez, what the heck is wrong with you?”
“Don’t think you can get away with it. You almost had me there,” Dash growled.
“Get away with what?”
“Trying to scare me last night. I know it was you, Violet. You turned invisible and typed up messages to me,” said Dash.
“You’re messed up little twerp. I don’t get up in the middle of the night. I was fast asleep by then.”
“No, you were in my room, trying to scare me with the computer,” insisted Dash.
“Get real. You know I’m not the prank-puller in the family- you are.” Violet rolled her eyes.
“That’s what makes you seem so innocent,” Dash glowered. “Admit it, you were trying to freak me out.”
“I did not!” said Violet. “Whatever it was, it was your imagination. Besides, why would I even want to waste my good night’s sleep in your creepy room? And why would a ghost want to waste time getting stuck with you?”
“It was you,” Dash said under his breath, positive he was right, but deep down, uncertain. What if it wasn’t Violet?

The next day, there were conferences held at his school, so it was a minimun day. After the rushed class day, he got out of school early. And he found something in his backpack he had never seen before. There was a note that said, You didn’t forget me, did you, Dash? He crumpled up the note and threw it away, deep down knowing that he was indeed scared, but also suspecting that it was a joke.

He came home to try to find the book again, but his mother said that she had already returned it to the library. Dash was both depressed that he couldn’t get to the bottom of it all, and relieved that he didn’t have to face that book again.

Though it seemed that someone or something just wouldn’t leave him alone…

Oh boy! This story gets more and more exciting every time a new chapter gets posted! Really nice chapter. I too thought it could’ve been Violet, but then I remembered those wierd messages Dash got and thought it could be something else.

I asked myself after reading this. “Is it a ghost or some prank? If it is a ghost, what are it’s true intentions?”

ya TSS…it gets more wierder by the second. Just the thought that the pc speaks and has intelligence is scary to me…

Glad to know you’re getting into it.

------------------------------------------------3---------------------------------------------------------
Dash finished his homework and considered playing video games, but became hesistant. What if the weird messages interrupt the game, too? He lay flat on his bed, staring at the blank, bland ceiling. Then he heard a voice that startled him as it cut through the silence. It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to snap Dash back from his bored daydreamings.
“Who’s there?” Dash demanded.
“You might want to quiet down;” murmured the voice, “you don’t want to cause commotion, do you?”
The voice was nearby. It was from a boy about the same age as Dash- it sure sounded like it. But it was barely a whisper yet it echoed eerily in Dash’s ears. And it was closeby- right in the very bedroom, perhaps even on the bed.
“Leave me alone!” Dash hissed. “Whatever you are, quit trying to freak me out, okay?”
“I can’t and won’t do anything to you. I said not to worry. Surely you got my notes to you?”
Freaked out, Dash took off, speeding out of the room before the voice could finish explaining. Hopefully, when he got back, whatever it was that was haunting him would just forget it.

That night, Dash cautiously went to bed. He lay down, hearing the bed’s very small creaks and groans, because he had grown very sensitive to even the slightest noises.
Then he heard the sound of the wind outside his window, blowing harder and harder until it almost sounded like a zombie’s moans. The trees’ branches outside were partially bare, and the thinnest branches lightly tapped the window as if they were fingers.
Above all the sounds was the sound of a regular boy. Dash listened to hear faint weeping from the same voice that he had heard earlier that day. The wind delivered the indistinct echoes of the voice. It wasn’t very clear, but Dash thought the words must have been: “Is there anyone in this world that will be my friend?”
Slightly disturbed about whether or not someone out there was truly troubled, Dash lay there still in bed, but half of him wanted to sneak out and see who was crying. Surely he could help. Couldn’t a little super do little good deeds for others, too?

“Dash? Wake up, Dash. C’mon, wake up.”
“What?” mumbled a tired Dash. Then it came to him that the voice telling him this was similar to the one he had heard recently. He realized that there was a kid in front of him, same age, urging him to get up.
Dash shut his eyes one more time and slowly lifted his eyelids but saw no one there. Then he found that he was lying on the ground instead of the mattress. Weird. I must have fallen out of bed. But he had also felt that there was a very low roof- the mattress- over him. He was under the bed.
Too tired to know which way was which, he lazily dragged himself more and more under the bed instead of crawling out.
After that, he discovered that there was tons of empty space in front of him, though the wall should have stopped him by now.
Something kept on pushing him to keep going. Dash gradually became more awake.
There was that boy again, next to him, and Dash realized he beared a striking resemblence to the picture of the child he saw in the book.
“W-where are we going?” Dash stuttered. “It’s the middle of the night. Aren’t you tired?”
The boy shook his head. “Nah, I don’t really need to sleep anymore.”
Dash was unsure of what he meant, but shrugged anyway.
“I’m Cody Samson, by the way.” Cody’s face was friendly. “Nice to meet you, Dash.”
“How do you know my name?” Dash asked.
“I usually hang around. Not many people hang out with me. But I can still catch their names,” answered Cody. “Come on. Keep going foward-” he pointed foward, farther down under the bed- “and we’ll get back at those guys who treated you unfairly.”
“What?” said Dash, confused. “We’re just under the bed. How’d you get under my bed, anyway? How’d you even get in? Do your mom and dad know you’re out?”
“Just trust me,” was all Cody said.

Dash was amazed to find that Cody had led him to another house. “One of the jerks live here,” Cody informed. “You just wait right here. I’ll take care of it.”
“Cody, wait-! What?”
Cody had instantly disappeared. Dash was left in practically the middle of nowhere, surrounded by unfamiliar walls.
Then, one of the bullies he recognized walked into the room. The redhead saw Dash and screamed, “Intruder!” Then he looked again and his face turned into a scowl. “What, you’ve come back to sue me for a ruined ball? You had better get out of my house, or I’ll not only beat you up, but, oh, you’d better run.”
“Fine, I will,” stated Dash as he ran around everywhere, nonstop, afraid of being caught, and not taking chances. “What the- you little freak, you’re going to get caught sooner or later! I swear, I’m gonna get you…”
But the kid never got the chance to. Cody jumped off the ceiling and seemed to have transformed partially into a vampire bat. Because he still had human features except for his sharp fangs, piercing, scary eyes, and long, thin finger bones webbed with wings, he could easily have been mistaken for a supernatural vampire. The bully shreiked in fear.
“I don’t think so,” hissed Cody, emphasizing his pointy fangs. “What is wrong with you? What pleasure does anyone have in another’s pain?”
“Don’t bite me,” whined the kid. Dash covered his mouth to muffle his laugh at hearing a bigger, meaner kid sound like that.
“You will leave him alone from now on, is that clear?” vampire-form Cody questioned.
“Yes,” mumbled the kid.
“I can’t hear you!”
“YES!” yelped the kid. Dash laughed even harder.
“I’ll let you go with a warning. But the next time you or your companians repeat this act, you can’t even imagine what I can do to you then.”
“Okay, okay! AHHHH! I just saw a vampire! A vampire! A blood-sucking, horrible, creepy vampire! It’s gonna kill me and make me one of them!” he screeched, madly running up the stairs, followed by a slight THUD sound.
Cody was in complete human form again, and approached Dash with a grin. “See, he won’t bother you again. Tomorrow we can go for the other guy!”
Dash couldn’t help but also smile, but it quickly disappeared as he asked, “But how did you…?”
“Oh, the bat thing?” Cody laughed. “I have superpowers, too. I am a shapeshifter. I can turn only into a bat. And don’t worry. No secret is going to get out. People will think he’s just insane.”
Cody led Dash home under the bed again. “I haven’t really had any fun with anyone else before like tonight,” Cody admitted softly. “I’m usually all alone. Will you hang out with me again?”
“Sure,” Dash shrugged. “But next time, just let me know the plan before you dump me clueless.”
“Okey-dokey. Good night, then.” Cody held Dash’s arm for a few seconds then let go as he mysteriously vanished.
Dash checked under the bed to find the wall back in place again. And it took him a long time to realize that his bruises on his arm had entirely healed as if never there in the first place.

uh oh…Dash is going to be in real trouble. Cody seems to be a nice kid but there is just an odd feeling about him that gives me the creeps…

Great chapter BDD. Keep it up. I get excited everytime I read a new chapter.

----------------------------------------------------4-----------------------------------------------------
Dash came home to his room, as normally.
“Hello!”
“AHH!” Dash yelped. “Oh, it’s you.”
Cody was hanging on the corner of the ceilng. He hopped down and greeted Dash happily.
“I gotta do my homework now,” Dash sulked.
“Homework?” Cody wrinkled his nose. “What is it even for?”
“I don’t know, maybe to torture kids.” Dash rolled his eyes as he picked up a pencil to write.
“Or could it be to steal your soul for the school?” Cody said in a dark voice.
“Yeah, sure” Dash said, half-listening as he began to write a short essay paragraph.
Cody watched Dash for a while, and finally said, “What am I supposed to do?”
Dash turned to face him. “Don’t you have something to do? Like, what’s your mom and dad doing?”
“Heck if I know,” Cody sighed. “I’m usually alone, like I told you.”
“What happened to them?”
“They never wanted me anyway. I’m like bad luck to them, apparently. And nobody else wants me even the slightest near them.”
“How come?”
“It’s hard for me to say, exactly. If I told you, you’d treat me just like everybody else.”
“No, I wouldn’t-” Dash was cut off by a sudden signal alarm. “Sorry, gotta go.”
“Where are you going?” Cody asked.
“The Incredibles are needed. Sorry.” Dash took off to put on his supersuit and join his family.
Cody’'ll be fine. But I wonder why he needs to find shelter in my house. What could he be hiding, or hiding from?

Dash came back from the last trip, late at night. “Next time, I wear a helmet before I take a ride,” he reminded himself dizzily. “And next time, according to Mom and Dad, will be tomorrow.”
Then he noticed the sheets of paper on his desk. “Oh great,” he groaned. But as he sat down to do his homework, he realized there was nothing blank, and his homework had been filled out for him.

“Cody?” Dash called out. “Are you still here?”
“Down here,” mumured the boy’s voice, under the bed.
Dash was about to bring up the question if Cody had done his homework for him, when Cody’s ears sharpened, pointed and pricked up to the sound of the wind outside.
“I can’t talk now,” he barely even whispering.
“What?” said Dash.
“Shh, listen. Hear that?” Cody said, cringing.
In the silence Dash heard a howl. “It’s just one of the neighbor dogs, or a wolf far away.”
“No, it’s not any neighbor’s dog,” Cody disagreed. “It’s a dog that hunts down people for their owners. And I think it’s after me.”
“What?” Dash was all confused, and also a little tired.
“It’s a long story. I can’t keep you up.”
“You can stay in my house, then, even though you already did it before.”
“Tomorrow, can you come with me to break into a secret lab?” Cody inquired.
“Sure, sure,” Dash yawned, before realizing what he just agreed to.
“Wait, what did you say?” Dash said suddenly. “But I already have tomorrow booked.”
But Cody was gone, again. Dash checked everywhere, but the mysterious boy had just vanished.
Dash shut his eyesand slowly drowned into sleep. The last sound he heard was a distant cat’s low meow, and behind his closed eyelids, he saw a short vision of Cody.

Dash dreamt of a little boy- a stranger- who sat atop his house’s rooftop, weeping over something. The boy then jumped off the roof, and was nowhere to be seen. But in the clouds, a shadow of a small figure flashed by, being followed by fierce wolves with snapping jaws. Several anonymus screams echoed through the scene before Dash woke from his nightmare.
The only thing he remembered, though, was that the little boy’s face looked somewhat familiar, but the sequence was too dark for him to be so sure.

Oh boy! An excellent chapter! I really enjoyed reading it, especially the ending. Keep it up. Update soon.

ooohh… a familier face is something. That part excited me the most…

---------------------------------------------------5------------------------------------------------------
After being excused from school early the next day, Dash was immediately rushed into the family car without a stop home. I hope Cody’s okay with me leaving again, he thought nervously. Though really I only hung out with him once.
Once the Incredibles were on the new private jet, Dash couldn’t help but impatiently say,“Are we there yet?”
“What does it look like?” Violet snapped. “Of course we’re not there yet! Not unless by ‘there’ you mean in the clouds.”
“Well, I’m bored. It’s a long flight, and I didn’t pack anything,” Dash said.
“I’ve packed some stuff for you two, in the back room. How about you find something to do with those?” Elastigirl suggested. “In the meantime, you could aslo tell ghost stories, just to get you in the Halloween mood.”
“Halloween’s not for two weeks, Mom,” said Violet. “But it’s never too early too early for a scare, I guess.”
“Nothing too freaky, though,” Mr. Incredible advised. “You don’t want to get too distracted with vampire and werewolf thoughts when we’re in action.”
The moment his dad mentioned the words “vampire” and “werewolf”, a chill ran up Dash’s spine and he slightly shuddered. He didn’t know why. He had never been scared of something like that before.
“Sure, I’ll go check the stuff out,” he said as he hurried into the back room excitedly. He bent down to start to pull enjoyable items out of a bag in the corner, when suddenly a low voice whispered from behind him, “Hey, Dash.”
The super nearly jumped and stopped himself from screaming just in time. “Cody, what the heck are you doing here?” he hissed.
“You promised to help me sneak in the secret lab last night,” Cody reminded him. “And when someone makes a promise with me, that promise is kept.”
“But I’m on a mission right now,” Dash protested. “I want to run and kick and smack and do all sorts of stuff to bad guys, not sneak into a boring lab.”
“You promised,” Cody said sternly. “And besides, I don’t like violence. Remember when those jerks beat you up? Why are you going to beat others up, too?”
“But this is different,” Dash argued. “We’re talking about bad guys. You know, we have to do it to them before they do worse things to everyone.”
“When you fight fire with fire, you only get burned,” Cody disagreed. “But you don’t…kill…do you?” The way he said “killed” made it seem like the worst possible word, and the eeriest thing.
“I don’t, but grown-up supers- well, it’s not like we want to. But when we have to…you know, we don’t cause the murder, it just happens and there’s nothing else we can do,” Dash said uneasily. Cody seemed to be trying to make him feel guilty about superhero work. Cody just stared at him as if what Dash said didn’t help.
“But that’s not all we do. We save people’s lives while the bad guys threaten them.”
“What’s wrong with just scaring them from ever doing it again? Then no one gets hurt,” Cody indicated.
“It’s not enough to just scare them. Especially when they’re the scary ones.”
Cody, still opposing the idea, persistantly said, “When people hate each other, they waste time wishing each other were dead. After they make it reality, what do they accomplish? Nothing- all they get is a bunch of corpses and/or the title of a murderer.”
“Can we not talk about this?” Dash said, spooked a little by what Cody said, even though he did make a point. “Back to what you said about the secret lab- what’s so important of it anyway?”
“I’ll explain when we get there,” Cody replied.
Which is probably never, Dash thought silently.
“I need special assistance to get in,” Cody added. Dash wondered what he meant.
“Dash who are you talking to? Is someone in there?” Violet’s voice from behind the door suddenly said.
“Uh, no, just playing a card game against myself…with two different personalities!” Dash called back.
“Nice excuse,” Cody remarked.
“Thanks.”
The rest of the flight, Dash and Cody shared half scary half funny stories, and played some card games.

As soon as the parents announced that they’ve landed, Dash quickly stuffed everything back into the bag and turned to Cody. “How are you going to make it out without my family noticing?”
Cody only winked, just when Violet yelled, “C’mon, Dash! Usually you’re the rusher.”
“Coming,” Dash replied. When he turned back, Cody was gone.

It was a while before Dash saw Cody once again. First, the family shared the game plan, then they split up. Next, Dash went in his planned direction, wandering into an old, abandoned building. Even the cobwebs that hung around it were abandoned by their own spiders. It was the perfect Halloween theme- which made Dash wonder if it looked this way on purpose or by some coincidence.
Inside the building, a bat leaped down from the corner of the ceiling, and once it landed it became Cody in his human form.
“Dude, you gotta stop doing that,” Dash said.
“Well, here we are, then, in the secret lab.”
“This is the secret lab?” Dash said in disbelief. “It looks so…old.”
“The real secret is downstairs,” said Cody. “Follow me, I know just the place.”
“So you’ve been here before,” Dash guessed.
“I’ve explored it once or twice out of boredom,” Cody admitted.
“Then what do you need me for?”
Cody just seemed to be avoiding that question as they crept down creaky stairs that looked like they could break apart any moment.
Dash repeated the question again, but Cody ignored it, acting busy with something else. He uncovered an antique trunk full of tattered sheets of paper and fabric, and dug deep to reveal a disc-thin object.
“What is it?” Dash asked.
Cody flipped it over and moved it back and forth until small print came into focus.
“What’s it say?”
“I dunno. It’s a code.”
“I need you to take this disc and do research on the words. Find out what it means.”
“Why me? Why don’t you do it?” Dash questioned.
Cody was silent for a moment before saying, “I can’t tell you that. All I can tell you is that I can’t be around computers.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t! And it’s really important and urgent you do it. Apparently we have until Halloween to stop whatever it is.”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s all I could decode before-” then Cody hesitated- “never mind. You wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“What are you hiding? Can’t you tell me? I’m your friend.”
Cody’s expression looked surprised. “You…you really think of me as a friend?”
“Yeah,” Dash said, as if it was obvious.
“Then as a friend, can you just trust me that it’s for the best you find out?” Cody begged. “Please? I need you to do this for me.”
“Fine. But after I do it, you’ll tell me everything you’re keeping secret right now. Deal?” Dash held out his hand.
“I swear it,” Cody confirmed, reaching out his hand to shake.
After that, Dash carefully held the small disk-like card in tight in his hand, and rushed back upstairs to look for the other dangerous items that he had been assigned to get rid of. They were stuff villains had left over, for sure.
But there was one eerie feeling that wouldn’t stop bugging Dash. He could have sworn that Cody’s hand was light when they shook hands, and he barely felt it at all. Not to mention, this was the first time he had noticed, from looking at the walls while climbing downstairs, that it seemed Cody cast no shadow.

Cody is getting pushy…my hinch is that cody is a vampire bat.

They don’t have shadows and the bat cody can transform into proves it…but i can’t figure out what the computer stuff is about.

Great chapter…