Ghostbusters (11 page)

She put down the phone wearily and eyed the blinking lights without enthusiasm. Just what I always wanted to be—Jewish mother to the spiritual population of New York. Zeddemore looked up at her. “You got a question, sir?”

“Well, yeah. The ad in the paper just said what they wanted. But what’s the job?”

“I don’t really know, Mr. Zeddemore. They just told me to take applications and to ask you these questions: Do you believe in UFOs, astral projection, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, full-trance mediums, psychokinetic or telekinetic movement, cartomancy, phrenology, black and/or white magic, divination, scrying, necromancy, the theory of Atlantis, the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, the Bermuda triangle, or in general in spooks, specters, wraiths, geists, and ghosts?”

“Not really. However, if there’s a semi-regular paycheck in it I’ll believe anything you say.”

Venkman wheeled the Ectomobile around a tight corner, waved wearily to the crowd of autograph hounds and tourists clustered around the front of the firehouse, and slid the old Cadillac into the garage bay. “Open your eyes, Ray. We’re home.”

Stantz sat up, mumbled to himself, and climbed out. The Ectomobile looked like it had been through the Battle of Stalingrad, streaked with smoke and slime. Not often we have to chase the rotten things down on the road and zap them from the car, Venkman thought.
Hatari
with ghosts. He helped Stantz to unload the smoking traps from the back, his hands sticky with ectoplasmic residue. That’s the only part of this job I really hate, he had decided. The slime. Why can’t ghosts be as clean as they look? No, they have to leave trails of this ecto-snot whenever they get excited. If that’s what being dead is like, I ain’t going.

Stantz shook the Mark II trap experimentally, watching the static charges play over its surface. “Boy, that was a rough one.”

“I can’t take much more of this. The pace is killing me.”

Janine looked up impatiently as they entered the reception area. Venkman threw a paid invoice down on her desk. “Here’s the paper on the Brooklyn job. She paid with a Visa card.”

“And here are tonight’s calls,” she replied, passing them a bundle of work orders. Stantz shuffled through them, sorting them by way of distance and difficulty.

“Rats, Peter. We’ve got two more free-roaming repeaters here.”

“And this is Winston Zeddemore. He came about the job.”

“You’re black!” Stantz said delightedly.

“Yes, I know.”

“No, you see that certain forms of vapors, particularly the later types of cyclical roamers, respond better to black people.” He stuck out his hand. “Ray Stantz, and this is Peter Venkman.”

“Hi.”

“Come on back into the equipment area, Winston, and I’ll show you just what it is that we do here.”

Ah, Zeddemore thought. At last I’m going to find out the real skinny. Stantz was leafing through his resume.

“Very impressive. Strategic Air Command ECM school . . . black belt in karate . . . small-arms expert . . . as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Zeddemore, you’re hired. Now, as you may have heard, we locate ghosts and spirits, trap them with streams of concentrated quantum energy, and remove them from people’s homes, offices, and places of worship.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” Zeddemore replied, following Stantz down into the basement. “Now tell me what you really do.”

Venkman was still standing by the desk, reading through the work orders. He calculated the rising demand for their services against the projections Spengler had made regarding approaching PKE peaks. Yeah, we’ll definitely need help. Better hire the Zeddemore guy, and see about digging up another ambulance. He looked up. Janine was staring at him impatiently. “You say something?”

“I said that someone from the EPA is here to see you.”

What now? “The EPA? What’s he want?”

“I didn’t ask him. All I know is that I haven’t had a break in two weeks and you promised that you’d hire more help.”

“Janine, I’m sure a woman with your qualifications would have no trouble finding a topflight job in the housekeeping or food service industries.” He wandered back toward his office.

“Oh, really? I’ve quit better jobs than this one, believe me.”

Standing in his office was the tallest, thinnest man Venkman had ever seen. He sported a fashionably trimmed red-blond beard and was dressed in a beautifully tailored three-piece suit. Venkman disliked him on sight. Another nasal-spray type.

“Can I help you?”

The man tore himself away from the collection of news clippings that Stantz had been tacking to the wall since they had started, and smiled. Venkman didn’t like his smile either. Something of the predator in it, like a ferret or weasel.

“I’m Walter Peck. I represent the Environmental Protection Agency, third district.”

“Great! How’s it going?”

Venkman grabbed his hand and shook it warmly, managing to leave a large smear of ectoplasm on the man’s suit. Peck looked at the slime with barely disguised disgust. Venkman shook his head sadly.

“Sorry about that. Holy water takes that right out.”

“Holy water?”

“Right. What can I do for you?”

Peck looked him in the eyes and Venkman realized that the man wasn’t especially tall, just thin. “Are you Peter Venkman?”

“Yes, I’m
Doctor
Venkman.”

Peck stared at Venkman’s soiled jumpsuit. “Exactly what are you a doctor of, Mr. Venkman?”

Venkman indicated the rank of framed diplomas behind the desk. Admittedly most of them belonged to Egon and Ray. “I have Ph.D.s in psychology and parapsychology.”

“I see,” Peck replied snidely. “And now you catch ghosts.”

“You could say that,” Venkman said, plopping himself down into his stuffed chair. Peck took a seat across the desk from him.

“And how many ghosts have you caught, Mr Venkman?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“And where do you keep those ghosts once you catch them?”

“In a storage facility.”

“And would this storage facility be located on these premises?”

“Yes, it would.”

“And may I see this storage facility?”

“No, you may not.”

Peck’s smile dissolved instantly. “And why not, Mr. Venkman?”

Venkman’s smile was all boyish innocence. “Because you didn’t say the magic word.”

“And what
is
the magic word, Mr. Venkman?”

“The magic word is
please
.” Venkman said softly.

Peck laughed nervously, totally at the end of his patience. “May I
please
see the storage facility?”

“
Why
do you want to see it?” Venkman asked sweetly.

“Well, because I’m curious. I want to know more about what you do here. Frankly, there have been a lot of wild stories in the media, and we want to assess any possible environmental impact from your operation. For instance, the storage of noxious, possibly hazardous waste materials in your basement. We want to know exactly what sort of scam you people are running here, Mr. Venkman. Now, either you show me what’s down there, or I come back with a court order.”

Venkman felt his blood pressure boil over. That does it. After a day like I’ve had, I don’t have to come home and listen to this. He stood up and leaned across his desk, nose to nose with the skinny bureaucrat.

“Go ahead! Get a court order, and I’ll sue you for wrongful prosecution.”

Peck stood stiffly, his briefcase held in front of him like a shield. “Have it your way, Mr. Venkman.”

He turned and strode quickly out of the office. Venkman followed him to the doorway. “Hey! Make yourself useful. Go save a tree! And that’s
Doctor
Venkman!”

Winston Zeddemore was absolutely fascinated as he stood peering through the view slit. It’s a damned prison, he thought. A prison for ghosts. Inside, the various multicolored spirits, wisps of color and light, swirled about aimlessly or slouched in despair against the walls. Occasionally one would drift up to the viewport and stare back, like a grouper in an aquarium. It was depressing, but at the same time Winston couldn’t think of any other solution to letting them run loose. But this had never happened before. There had always been a few ghosts. Why so many now? Weird.

And these guys actually catch ghosts.

And I’m going to be a Ghostbuster.

Mama Zeddemore, I hope you’re satisfied.

Spengler worked at the bench, repairing a damaged proton pack, muttering to himself about “hyper-spatial toruses” and “magnetic monopoles,” stuff even Stantz didn’t understand; but at this point Stantz wasn’t interested. He was worried about the grid. “Winston.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll show you how to unload the traps.” He slid the smoking box into a slot on the wall of the storage facility. There were three, like airlocks of different sizes, for the custom traps Ray had put together. This one was a Mark II. “You set the entry grid, push this button, wait for it to cycle yellow.” The slot lit up. Stantz pulled down on a heavy knife switch, and the slot emitted a loud cycled humming, like the sound a Xerox machine makes, Winston realized, as the trap was cleaned. The sound ended with a loud snap, the humming stopped, the indicator flashed.

“The light is green, the trap is clean.” He tossed the little box into a bin marked
FOR RECHARGE
. “Got it?”

“Got it. Seems simple enough.”

Stantz smiled. “A lot simpler to run than to build, I can tell you.”

Spengler put his head down on the bench with a low moan. “I’ve got to get some sleep, I’m starting to make mistakes. You okay, Ray?”

Stantz shrugged. He didn’t seem to tire as fast as the others. And the job continued to be fascinating. He often came downstairs in the middle of the night to watch the ghosts through the viewing port, though lately he’d begun to have the same feelings that Zeddemore had experienced, that penning the spirits up like that was somehow wrong. But if there was an alternative to an endless matinee of
Spooks Run Wild,
he didn’t know what it was. The facility was too small—this was true—but even Egon had never planned on the volume of business they were getting. Something very unsettling, very dangerous was about to break, and they had to find out what.

“Egon, I’m going to need two new purge valves. How’s the grid around the storage facility holding up?”

Egon adjusted his glasses and blinked back the fatigue. “I’m worried, Ray, It’s getting crowded in there. And all my recent data points to something very big on the bottom.”

“How do you mean ‘big’?” Zeddemore asked.

Spengler rummaged among the bits of wire, plastic, and lunch on the workbench until he located an intact Hostess Twinkie. He held it up by way of illustration.

“Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. According to this morning’s PKE sample, the current level would be a Twinkie thirty-five-feet long and weighing approximately six hundred pounds.”

Zeddemore whistled. “That’s a big Twinkie.”

Stantz nodded. “We could be on the verge of a fourfold crossover . . . or worse. If what we’re seeing indicates a massive PKE surge, we could experience an actual rip.”

The three were looking very depressed when Venkman came down the stairs. “How’s the grid around the storage facility holding up?”

“It’s not good, Pete.”

“Tell him about the Twinkie,” Winston said glumly. Venkman looked curiously at Zeddemore, then at Stantz, who shrugged.

“We had a visit from the EPA.”

“What’d they want?”

“A whole lot of doodly-squat.”

If a sane dog fights a mad dog, its the sane dog’s ear that is bitten off.

—Burmese proverb

Night had come swiftly to Manhattan, the end of October bringing lengthening darkness and sunsets that crashed down like collapsing buildings. The skyscrapers glowed briefly red, then switched to their own feeble illumination, the Great White Way making a vain attempt to hold back the dusk, the billowed clouds and snapping lightning, the storms of autumn rolling in off the wind-tossed Atlantic. Approaching Halloween, the holiday of oblivion, shorn by the church from its hopeful pagan roots. Witches and spooks painted on store windows, and little Ghostbusters’ no-ghost stickers, like offerings of blood to warn away the destroying angel. Or to attract something else.

A strange year, Harlan Bojay thought as he shuffled along the sidewalk. Suddenly New York is awash in superstition, and the technology of scientific spirit removal. The pockets of his greatcoat held a folded copy of
Omni
that he had found in the subway station at Times Square. He had read several articles on the new phenomenon before being asked to move on, and was pondering the question on many minds, from Walter Peck’s to Peter Venkman’s. Why now? Where are they all coming from, and why New York?

Lightning forked down from the roiling thunder-head, striking the cap of a nearby building. Bojay instinctively opened his mouth against the accompanying clap of sound and ducked, though it could not possibly hit him here in the street with so many tall buildings about. But something did, glancing off his shoulder and bouncing along the sidewalk. The blow stung, and Harlan looked about for some sign of trouble—a recalcitrant youth or perhaps a piece of improperly shielded machinery. There was none. He was alone on the street. He reached down and picked up the offending object.

At first it appeared to be stone, but it was not. It was a lighter substance, like terra-cotta or a given grade of ornamental concrete, and Bojay realized that it must have fallen or been blown from the rooftop by a bolt of lightning. An odd shape, like a horn or claw, he thought, peering into the hollow interior, and was startled to see a residual wash of blue static play across the inside. He dropped it on the sidewalk and peered up at the top of the building, watching flashes of light reflect from the gargoyles on the height. Yes, if it had been stone falling from up there, it would have taken my arm off. He looked again at the little claw, now lying harmless on the pavement like a cement croissant. Then he flipped his collar up and headed swiftly for the park.