Darkness. It is not beginning or end, death nor life. It exists simply as the absence of all perception, a total shadow of mind. A cloak, that under which everything is hidden.

        And that's where our story really begins.

        Falling through what seemed to be an endless tunnel of shadows, Jordan Frye though he was going to die. So did his three siblings, falling beside him, strings of blue code dancing around them as they plummeted.

        None of them could speak, nor make any sort of noise at all. It seemed as if the darkness was a void of everything, absorbing any form of speech or movement, so that the young adventurers could not even feel the whip of the wind lashing at them as they fell.

        The void also seemed to absorb any speck of rational thinking.

        HOLYCRAPI'MGOINGTODIE! Jordan screamed in his head, flailing around as he fell. Although he tried to come to his senses, his efforts failed. Whether it was the fact that the fear pulsing through him was too intense or his mind wasn't clear enough to remain calm is unknown.

        He was suddenly aware that the darkness was beginning to fade, replaced by a steady beam of light that he and his siblings seemed to be falling into. Unable to look into it anymore, Jordan shut his eyes, hoping for the best. As he reached the ending of the void, he shouted, though he knew that he could not be heard.

        "HELP!"

***

        "Beep beep beep beep..." An alarm clock blared. A gloved hand reached out of the blankets on the neighboring bed and gave it a hard smack, silencing the wailing machine. After a few grumbles and short complaints, the owner of both the alarm clock and the arm sat up in his bed. His grey eyes were tinged red with exhaustion, his shaggy black hair tousled from being hidden under the pillow all night.

        The man yawned and got out of bed. He was not wearing any pajamas, but rather what appeared to be climbing equipment. The rope and pickaxe he usually wore on his back were under his bed. He rarely changed before bed nowadays, because of the nightly... incidents that occurred. He would rather be prepared for the worst, just in case his boss has another episode in the middle of the night.

        He soothed his hair against his head as he tried to clear his thoughts. Last night was one of the rare times when he slept without interruptions and he should be happy about that, and not worry over it like he was. The night before, for instance, his rest was cut short because of his boss- well... not him exactly- "requesting" a cup of his breakfast coffee. It seemed to be the only thing that got him back to sleep again. Somehow, it gave him comfort knowing that he had helped him.

        He quietly opened the door to the hallway. His boss's bedroom door was cracked open, snoring coming from inside. The man peeked his head inside. Thankfully, all seemed to be as usual.

        Pleased, he left him to sleep and went downstairs to the kitchen. As was routine, he made two cups of coffee and prepared the coffee maker for a third. When he finished, he glanced at the clock. 9:44. Silently he counted to himself until he reached sixtly. Right as he finished, he heard a door creak open and the hallroom light switched on.

        Right on time, Ghost. He thought to himself, smiling faintly.

        His boss slid down the stairwell. "Morning Toast!" He said gleefully as we walked into the room.

        Now, if you saw these men on the job, you would have thought that Toast would be the one in charge, as he was 27 and Ghost was 23. But Ghost had founded their company, which he named the Paranormal Investigators Extraordinaire. At that time, it was just Ghost and the little beat up minivan that he called Sasha with second hand equipment crammed inside. But one day he met up with a man named Jonathan Zachary Toast that had training in the paranormal. It turned out that Toast had recently moved from England and was currently looking for  job, which Johnny Ghost eagerly offered him.

        The company grew from there. They got Sasha completely upgraded and repainted, despite Toast's insistence upon just getting a new van.

        "Good morning, sir." Toast said, calling him "sir" as an act of respect. "Did you sleep well last night?"

        Ghost shook his head. "No... I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but I'm not rested at all. I might take a nap later." He yawned as if to underline his point.

        Toast stiffened. "That's... certainly odd, sir. Why don't you get your coffee and lay down for a nap awhile. We don't have a call today, so we should be relatively free."

        Ghost nodded sleepily and took his coffee mug to the beat up chair that had been shoved into the corner of the room. Toast marveled some days at his blindness to the fact that someone else was sharing his head.

        I suppose I should explain before I go any further.

        Johnny Ghost was never normal. Even during his childhood, it was clear that he was different from everyone else. Everyone credited it to PTSD, because his parents both died before he even knew them and spent most of his life going from foster home to foster home. But it was worse then just that. During class he would become violent randomly, and later have no recollection of the event. It was mostly ignored, and assumed to be short-term memory loss. Then there was the day that while in one of his phases, he injured a student with a pair of scissors. It wasn't serious, but it was enough to cause major concern.

        His guardians at the time immediately took him to a psychologist, who diagnosed him with Multiple Personality Disorder. She also figured out that it was most active when faced with extreme anxiety or presented with a large weapon. During a session, she actually got the alternate personality to speak, and he identified himself as Jimmy Casket. With the help of medicines and therapy, Jimmy Casket seemed to gradually retreat. But once Johnny reached 19, his foster parents died in a car crash. He was in the car himself, but emerged relatively unharmed. The odd thing to him was that no one was on the road, they didn't crash into anything, and it was a perfectly clear day. Although no one knew, the car crashed because of him.

        He had been skipping his medication all week, although his guardians didn't know. Jimmy was coming back more frequently, though he was completely unaware as Casket could toy with his head. He thought that everything was fine, so he just stopped taking it. It would soon prove to be a bad decision.

        Everything that day was a bit abnormal. Jimmy had appeared many times, and it was only just past noon. In fact, they were driving to the psychologist to fix the problem. Apparently this irritated Casket, and he decided to make his opinion known.

        No one knew quite what happened. Johnny had passed out near the beginning of the ride, and woke up to the worried faces of several paramedics. His head was throbbing, and the snow that he was laying in was no longer a pure white, but stained a sick red. He nearly puked, as he always became queasy at the sight of blood. His arm appeared to be cut, but that was the extent of his injuries. He sat up, much to the protests of the paramedics.

        "You don't want to see this, kid-" One warned.

        He ducked under their arms and limped into the frost, searching for his foster parents. When he found them, he wished he'd never looked. THe paramedics eventually caught up to him and loaded him into an ambulance while he was too shocked to protest. The shock was not from the realization that his family was gone, but the fact that they had died from a stab wound.

        And he happened to have a perfectly knife shaped glass shard in his jacket pocket.

        The world around him became a blur, and he could perceive very little. He was shaking and yelling random phrases at no one in particular. Most of them were ununderstandable, but others could be understood as "NOT MY NAME! N-NOT MY NAME!" Some of it was trauma, but the real reason that he was shouting at no one was because of Jimmy Casket, the voice in his head.

        He awoke in a hospital bed three days later with no memory of the accident, which begged the question: who was really in control?

        Following this, Johnny decided to try and have a normal life. Jimmy constantly chattered on, offering his psychotic and sometimes sarcastic opinions about everything Ghost did. Ghost never gave it a second thought. Johnny attempted to get a technological degree, but got bored and decided to walk out on the course. Literally walked out, as he spontaneously announced that he wanted coffee and left the classroom. After his coffee, he began to contemplate job ideas, with Jimmy's commentary running the whole time. At one point, Jimmy sarcastically suggested that he become a paranormal investigator and try to find his brother. Johnny replied that he had no brother, but he would consider the idea. Surprisingly, Jimmy went silent and muttered to himself. Johnny took this as a good sign and began to study the field. He soon grew to love the subject, and even created his own company: Paranormal Investigators Extraordinaire. He then met his partner, Johnny Toast, and they became the top Paranormal Investigators in the country.

        Toast, however, was concerned about this Jimmy character. The final straw was when Ghost climbed out of a window and broke his leg under Jimmy's influence. Soon after, Ghost was back on his medication and completely forgot about his little voice. Toast credited this to Jimmy, who had been proven to toy with his partner's mind.

        Now, three years later, Jimmy was coming back. He would get up in the middle of the night and bother Toast for food and heavily caffeinated beverages, and promptly began sharpening knives on the occasion that it was denied. Toast obliged every time, because he worried that Jimmy would harm Ghost if he became upset. And now, sitting in he and Ghost's living room, his worries seemed to be returning.

        "Toast? Hey Toast." Said Johnny Ghost, stirring his coffee as fast as he could in an attempt to make a whirlpool.

        Toast broke out of his frightened daydream just in time to answer. "Hmm? Oh, yes, sir?"

        "What's that beeping?" Ghost asked, readjusting the mangled pillow that he was sitting on.

        Toast was suddenly aware that there was in fact a beeping noise, and it appeared to be coming from downstairs, in the basement. "Some of the equipment is going off, I think." He replied, setting the breakfast preparations aside.

        Ghost accidentally snapped his coffee stirrer and swore under his breath. "Do we have to go check it now?"

        Toast nodded, urgently. "The neighbor's house exploded the last time we ignored it, Sir, and we certainly don't want a repeat of that."

        "They still have no proof that is was us," Ghost replied, getting up to follow his teammate. "We blamed it on their dog, which should hold us for awhile."

        Toast sighed irritably and rushed down the stairs to the basement, Ghost following in suit. He pushed open the door and rushed to the various monitors and equipment was was positioned all around the room. All of them were beeping or giving off some sort of alarm, signaling a large shift in... Toast didn't know. Ghost did, but he just called it "Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey Stuff," which worked out fine for him.

        "These readings are off the charts!" Ghost exclaimed, dashing over to the gravity fluctuation detector. "Everything's haywire. It's like reality itself is collapsing!"

        "Not quite, Sir." Toast replied, typing into a large computer as charts flashed on and off of the screen above it. "More like... a hole in space time."

        "Like a wormhole?" Ghost asked, pushing buttons furiously.

        "Sort of. I don't know, Sir. Can you pinpoint the origin?" Toast asked.

        "One step ahead of you," Ghost answered, tilting his screen so that Toast could see. "You may want to look at this."

        Johnny Toast looked at the screen for a good while, before glancing up at his comrade. Invisible words traveled between them and they both ran upstairs as fast as they could. The signal was coming from their backyard.

        They made a mad dash for the back door, crashing outside and falling onto the lawn. Ghost looked up, and saw that the sky was crowded with stormclouds, multicolored lightning flashing everywhere. A funnel of clouds was extending into their lawn, growing larger every moment.

        "What's going on?" Ghost shouted, his voice muffled by the wind.

        "I don't know, Sir! Get inside!" Toast yelled, trying to pull his partner back into the house.

        "No! Wait! We've gotta see this!" Ghost protested, watching the storm rage.

        "Are you mad?! We need to get to safety!"

        "You think a wall is going to save us? Just watch! If anything goes wrong, we're going to die anyway!"

        Toast groaned at the reckless nature of his partner. "No. Sir, we need to get out of here."

        Ghost got up and began to inch closer to the cyclone. "Fine. You go then. I'm staying here."

        "Certainly not!" Toast shouted, grabbing Ghost's sleeve and giving it a sharp yank. "Run!"

        But Ghost would not move. The cyclone expanded until it took up the entire lawn, flashes of electricity blinding the duo. There was a huge pulse of light, and then a humungous explosion. Somehow, nothing was damaged besides a rather large crater in the lawn.

        Toast opened his eyes as the dust cleared. Helping his partner up, he coughed a few times. "What was that?!" He asked, not expecting an answer.

        "I don't know... Let's go look." Ghost replied, dragging Johnny Toast to the crater.

        "I hardly think that it's a good idea, Sir, it could be radioactive."

        "Toast-"

        "Sir, we should get some equipment to test the stability of this event."

        "Toast-"

        "C'mon, let's go inside-"

        "Toast! There's people inside."

        "What?!"

        Both men leaned over the smoking crater, craning their necks to see what was there. Ghost kneeled next to the gaping hole, shifting the debris and dirt. To his surprise, four teenagers were laying at the bottom of the pit. Ghost gasped and tried to shake one awake. "Hello?! Wake up! Who are you?"

        The older boy with a blue hoodie jumped awake and groaned. "What- Where are we? Who're you?"

        Toast leaned over the crater. "I'm Johnny Toast, and this is Johnny Ghost. Are you alright? Do you know what just happened?"

        The boy shook his head. "No, I don't. All I remember is being attacked by- You!" He pointed to Ghost feverishly. "You're the one that attacked us! Wait... No. You don't have red eyes or the knife. Was it you?"

        Ghost almost laughed. "No. I've never seen you in my life. Are you sure it was me?"

        Toast coughed. "Why don't you all come inside?" He suggested, interrupting the conversation. "You should get cleaned up and then we can sort out what just went on."

        The boy nodded and began to try and wake up the other teenagers. Toast furrowed his brow, deep in thought. They were in a big mess, and Jimmy Casket was the source of it all.