Oh phew it's just that guy. Hey Dimitri I think your ghost got out or something.

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[Transcript]

        “PEEKABOO!”

        “PEEKABOO!”

        Bobbing at the threshold of a fog-shrouded rift in reality was a tiny, smiling, cartoon gumdrop ghost. Cody blinked. The hum, the loneliness, the wrongness of the world—none of it had lessened in the slightest... but now a playful presence perched upon it like a bowtie on a bear.

        “Ahoy there, little friend! Remember me?” beamed Davy Jones, looming like an uncle doomed to make a newborn cry.

        The sheet ghost’s smile melted to a frown.

        “YOU’RE SCARING IT, DAVE! THE POOR THING’S AS PALE AS A GHOST!” laughed Razor Rex, her eyes aglow. “TRUST ME: THERE’S NO NEED TO BE AFRAID OF US. RIGHT, FAUXBY?”

        The Witch’s face was dangling from the doorframe like a doll decapitated. As she slowly turned in circles, both of her eyes stayed fixed upon the puny phantom.

        “HEH heh HEH heh! But OF course, NO need at all...” she uttered unconvincingly.

        The ghost, however, seemed convinced. Its vacant smile returned, though it was still too shy to speak.

        “That’s right!” said Davy, dropping to a squat. “You should be THRILLED to see us! Think back: before your last bedtime, before you were tucked in beneath that sheet... somebody promised they would PLAY with you when you woke up, now didn’t they?”

        The ghost’s smile widened. It nodded, squirming where it stood upon the ground beyond the door. Or was it ground? Cody could make out damp wooden slats just past the threshold; he could still hear sloshing water, too, and Fauxbia’s fabric had gone rigid where it had swung out past reality, swaying like saloon doors in a rusty, creaking rhythm. The sheet ghost... was it standing on a boat?

        “Well, WE won the game of hide-and-seek that FIBBER left unfinished. Why wait around with a losing record, bored and lonely, dreaming of the day you’ll get a rematch? Why not play BETTER GAMES, the games WE want to play, right now?” Davy’s wicked grin stretched past his gums.

        The sheet ghost nodded excitedly. Cody squinted to focus his eyes on it. What was this creature? If it was a spirit, then why could he see it? The whole world beyond the doorway seemed to be purely supernatural... but the rift had bridged the gap between his senses and its secrets.

        In the rafters above, a rattled and impatient Sophie Sybil clicked her tongue.

        “W-what are they talking about? Who are they talking to? I can’t get a shot from this angle...!” whispered the amateur reporter.

        “H-huh?” Mayor Hijack blinked one eye free from its daze and then another. “Hey, wait! W-where are you GOING?!”

        It was too late to stop her. Sister Mouse had crept ahead along the catwalk, a place no rodent dared to tread without a death wish.

        “What’s that?” Davy asked, cupping his hook to his ear. “I can’t hear you!”

        “Peekaboo will play! Peekaboo LOVES games!” cheered Peekaboo.

        Davy exchanged a glance with Fauxbia; her eyes were glowing violet as the tiny ghost agreed.

        The SPHINX of PACTS’ Binding VOW! she cackled in her head, invoking stolen power. She sneered triumphantly at Davy as chains closed upon the eager phantom’s fate—

        Peekaboo frowned. It had felt a foul curse grasp it. It had been bound in some way. It didn’t like it. It had been trapped long enough. Peekaboo shuddered like a flan struck with a spoon. The fog behind it swirled, condensed; there was a sound of air unzippering.

        Davy’s shoulder burst in a gout of black gore. A gaping hole was punched through Razor Rex. The Witch’s dangling head was tetherballed at blinding speed into the air. The PTA had been barraged by something deadly, an energy that Cody couldn’t see once it had left the portal.

        DAD! he tried to scream, but his father’s command to stay silent held strong.

        The tearing air was silenced, too, as Davy’s hook flashed in a line across the floorboards. Fauxbia screeched in dizzy fright as her head spun about, unharmed; as fast as danger struck, it hadn’t reached her. Razor Rex’s glowing eyes had been snuffed out—now, with a pained hiss, she forced them back to flickering life. A stumbling swipe at the floor produced a sound like cheering toddlers at a pizza party, and the hole in her side vanished, reappearing as a pit carved through the stage.

        “AH HA HA HA!” laughed a feral, gleeful Davy, licking black blood from his face as he regenerated. Flesh and bone had grown like mold across his mortal wounds in seconds; the blast had pierced him, but it was no wooden stake. “L-like to... ROUGHHOUSE, do you?! Then you’ve found the PERFECT PLAYMATES!”

        Peekaboo stared blankly back at him. It drifted forward... and squished flat against thin air.

        “S-SILLY little SPOONFUL,” stammered Fauxbia, swinging slowly to a stop. She gestured at the markings on the floor, the chalk that spanned the open portal. “D-don’t you KNOW how HOPSCOTCH works? You have to JUMP, my sweet!”
        
        Peekaboo paused, as if in thought. Then it stretched a full foot higher. It grew a gap to make its base look like crude legs. It widened, thinned, and wobbled... but it couldn’t leave the ground.

        “No WAY around it, then,” the Witch snickered. Not WITH the Sphinx of GAMES’ Binding RULES enforcing PROPER play!

        “ANOTHER G-GAME... WILL HAVE TO DO...!” wheezed Razor Rex, braced against her scythe to stay afloat.

        “Since you agreed we’d get to choose...” a now-uninjured Davy oozed, “how about a round of TRUTH OR DARE?”