Ghosts Don't Exist

Chapter 16: Space In The Mind

Damien stared down at his paper doodling little drawings of Danny and him causing mischief. He grinned slightly, his attention never even given to the teacher giving him skeptical looks.

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Alfred was cleaning rooms and tidying things up, why were young men so disregarding of organization? He was making his way towards the library, only to hear a small giggling voice of no one other than the ghost boy himself. He heard an old 1930s radio speak and the sound of something being set off. He carefully made his way into the library not seeing the little boy yet.

The library was a large room in the mansion, the second largest room actually. It didn't normally need any real cleaning besides the dusting and putting away the occasional book. He smiled to himself as he continued his house care duties. Danny was fine and so he not needed to intrude on the boys fun. "Whoa, it's so big!" He heard Danny say in awe. Talk about being loud in the library. He sighed smiling wider, whatever Danny was watching was fascinating him. Alfred gave a low chuckle as he put up a book titled 'Parental Studies: Controlling Your Out of Control Child'.

When he did make it over to Danny, he froze and stared. He couldn't be seen by Danny but he didn't think it was a good idea to intrude anyway.

In front of him sat Danny on the floor wrapped in a blanket holding Jasmine close to him. A small flat screen sat on a tv stand in front of him playing shuttle take-offs. Old shuttle take-offs. That was a tv he was hearing, not a radio.

A box full of organized and neatly stacked VHS Tapes sat to his left, to his right was a small stack of Astrology books. Some of those books were pretty big, seemingly much too advanced for Danny to read. One of the books were open, the biggest of them all, a piece of paper and pencil sat in it. Small equations and graphs were written on it, it was sloppily written and Alfred was too far away to tell if any of it was correct (as if to say he knew anything about astrology).

He felt a tear roll down his cheek, he had never seen such childish behavior in a long time. He held a watery smile and took an alternate route to clean the library, he didn't need to bother Danny.

Besides, Danny's commentary made him smile at how loud it was and at how surprised it sounded. He wiped his eyes and continued cleaning. No need to get sappy Pennyworth, but it reminded him of when Bruce was little before the death of his parents.

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Danny sat watching take-offs he'd never seen before. In his life back in Amity Park, he watched reruns over and over and over again. His mom would comment on the large stack of organized papers sitting beside his tv in an open binder.

The shuttle take-offs reminded him of his sister and mother. His mother was always kind and caring. She would drop everything to help him if he were hurt. I mean everything. She was the same with Jasmine, albeit less than with Danny since Jasmine didn't like all the concern she was getting. She was a kid that liked taking care of herself most of the time.

Danny's mom was obsessed with the supernatural and everything in between. That was obvious to those who knew her and not. Yet, she knew the basics of Astrology (and Zoology and Paleontology. Maddie wasn't dumb). She found her love of science in the unexplainable, but her sons sat in space. In NASA where millions to billions to even more dollars were put on building and trying to get shuttles in space.

Danny would show her his graphs of the angle the shuttle would lift off at. She had bought him a protractor for his calculations, he was way to happy to get that for his birthday.

There was notebooks upon notebooks in his room of fake shuttle take-offs he had made. He told his mom he wanted to be astronaut when he grew up. He wanted to go into another atmosphere so badly and his dreams were starting to become dissatisfying because he'd wake up in his bed realizing he wasn't passing Callisto, or landing on the moon, he wasn't starting a life on Mars. It wasn't real.

He begged his mother to take him to an actual shuttle take-off.

"Move to this degree and it wouldn't have crashed. And up a little, there." He was muttering as he fixed the math of a failed lift-off. It didn't matter though, that lift off was from the seventies. The voice that spoke sounded older than the seventies though. Aging did that to films he guessed.

He put his pencil down and ran his fingers through Jasmine's mane. "What do you think? They were only a degree off." He said and lifted up the lion to his ear. He smiled and giggled, "I know! That's what I'm sayin."

"Master Daniel, you've been in here for- goodness!"

Alfred had come in with a plate of small triangular sandwiches and a two cups of sweeten tea that was freshly made. The cups still had steam flowing from them. Danny had jumped at the sudden familiar voice. He exhaled and smiled softly. "S-Sorry, I, uh, I was watching stuff on space and I got consumed by it." He said quietly fiddling was his lions paws.

Pennyworth smiled and sat the tray of snacks down. "Those are some big books for such a young boy." He stated crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. Danny shrank back hugging his pink predator closer. "I just-"

"It's fine Master Daniel, however, do you mind telling where you found a VHS player and tapes? Why you need these books?" Alfred had sat down and looked at Danny expectationally. He expected big things from this kid.

"They were in a corner over by the adults section. I found these books on graphs and astrology afterwards. I was fixing the math and geometry of these videos." Danny explained almost excitedly. Alfred chuckled and ruffled Danny's hair. "That's pretty advanced, I have high hopes for you, Master Daniel."

"Um, what time is it?" Danny asked going over and grabbing a slice of the sandwiches. "It's four pm. I'm almost done cleaning, this is the only mess I have left." Alfred went to stand, sighed straightening his back. "I can clean it up! My mama said it's best to clean up after yourself because no one wants to walk into a dirty room." Danny stated and Alfred patted his head.

At least some little boys knew how to clean up after themselves.