Ghostbusters (12 page)

High atop that building, before a templelike structure on the roof, two immense statues stood. It was a curious place to build statues, as no human ordinarily ever stood there and the building was just tall enough that they were not clearly visible from any of its neighbors, but great care seemed to have been taken in detailing them. Each depicted a doglike animal, fully the size of a man, with a flat, triangular, almost serpentine head, and four large, clawed feet. Lightning played over the huge terror-dogs, over the steep staircase, and the tall ornate metal doors that crowned them, over the ceremonial inscriptions and architectural oddities. And though they were stone, or a light grade of ornamental concrete, the eyes of the terror-dogs seemed to reflect back the energy of the storm. It crashed and cracked again, and a section of the pebbled surface fell away, freeing a glowing red eye beneath. And the claw again flexed, cracking more of itself loose.

As Dana Barrett stepped from the elevator, loud rock music suddenly competed with the fury outside. Louis’s party. She had, of course, forgotten, and with Peter Venkman dropping by later any thought of attendance was out of the question. Thank God. She tiptoed toward her apartment, but Louis Tully had ears like radar.

“Oh, Dana, it’s you,” he said, stepping into the hall. He hurried up to her. She did her best to smile.

“Hi, Louis.”

“Hey, it’s crazy in there. You’re missing a classic party.”

“Well, actually, Louis, I have a friend coming by.”

Louis was undeterred. “Great! Bring her, too, but you better hurry. I made nachos with nonfat cheese and they’re almost gone. I’ll make some more though.”

I have to give it to him for persistence, she thought, and then had a sudden idea. Introduce Louis to Venkman. Maybe it’ll scare him off once and for all. “Fine, Louis. We’ll stop by for a drink.”

“Hey, it’ll be great. You can meet all my friends, get to know the real me . . .” She shut her door, leaving him talking to the number plate. He sighed and took a last shot. “I got a Twister game for later . . .”

Wow, she’s gonna come, he thought, walking back to his apartment. She’ll love the party. It’ll really impress her. Maybe tonight’s the night. I’ll have to get rid of her girlfriend though. After all, I got great food, the latest with-it music, party games, door locked . . . Oh, no.

“Hey, lemme in . . .”

Dana tossed her coat in the closet, took off her leg warmers, and stretched out briefly in her favorite chair. It’s seven. That gives me an hour before Peter gets here. I can afford to relax for a minute, then grab a shower, be all fresh when he arrives. She laughed to herself, watching the storm move off to the west over the river, the last flickering edges of lightning playing above the city. In the distance Louis’s party boomed raucously. Louis Tully, Andre Wallance, Peter Venkman. I certainly can meet ’em, she thought, psyching herself up for the evening. Be ready to laugh off Venkman’s childish passes, keep him off balance. But, she realized, I’m the one off balance. A month ago he was a nut, a pest. Tonight I’m having dinner with him. I have to admit, there’s something in that loony approach of his that I like. Now, if I can just figure out what it is . . .

The phone rang, startling her out of her reverie.

“Hello . . . Oh, hi, Mom . . .”

Every Thursday, like clockwork, her mother called. No, not like clockwork, like magic. She always called when Dana was home, her voice having never appeared on the answering machine. No matter when Dana went in or out, Mother Barrett would catch her, usually, like tonight, when she didn’t have time to talk. And her mother liked to talk.

Talk had been the major recreation in the Barrett household. Her father had been a railroad worker for the Boston and Maine, invalided off on a pension, which had to make do for his wife and three children. But somehow they always got by, and she and her two brothers always had whatever they needed, if not necessarily everything they wanted. There was seldom money for the movies, but Dana had new clothes each fall—not flashy but well made—and when she had expressed an interest in music, from somewhere her father had come up with a cello. Each of the children had worked after school, and her mother was always running a dozen cottage industries, so there was money for her lessons, for Doug’s books, for Davey’s uniforms. Now Doug was a reporter on
The Boston Globe
and little Davey was playing center field for the San Diego Padres. Mother Barrett no longer had to scrimp, proud of her three children, collecting their clippings, and looking after them as best she could via long distance. But since the boys had married, that meant mothering Dana. Mother Barrett was not yet satisfied. She wanted a son-in-law.

“Yes, everything’s fine. No . . . nothing to speak of . . . Mother, I don’t have time to just go out and ‘meet’ men . . . Mother! I will
not
try a dating service . . .”

She thought of Peter. That would scandalize the folks at home, at least give them something to talk about. Why not?

“I can’t stay on the phone too long, Mom. I’ve got a date and I’ve got to get . . . Yes, I said a date . . . He’s very nice, Mom. He’s a Ghostbuster . . . Yes, the ones on television . . . I’ll tell you all about it the next time you call . . . Okay, you can call tomorrow . . . I promise, ’bye.”

Yes, Mom. A scientist. A loony, little-kid scientist. She closed her eyes and put her head back, not noticing that the storm had returned, the clouds pressing in against her windows, the ominous rumble of ripple lightning echoing over the bump-a-doop of Louis’s party. And then, suddenly, a low, eerie moan. A drawn-out sigh. As if something very large and very old was awakening.

Her eyes opened immediately and she looked toward the kitchen. Intensely bright light was coming from under the door. As she watched, mesmerized, the door buckled, then drew in, like a great rhythmic pulse. Like a heartbeat. No . . .

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, and started to rise, but a pair of dark, scaly hands ripped upward out of the chair and locked around her waist, pinning her to the cushions. She had time for half a scream before the second pair took her by the chest and across the mouth. The chair began to turn slowly toward the kitchen.

This isn’t happening, she thought, struggling against the awful embrace. I’ll wake up in a minute. The door was pulsing now, like a giant membrane; and then the chair began to move toward it, gathering speed. With a roar the door swung back, revealing a fiery chamber where her kitchen had been and, standing to receive her, the looming presence of a terror-dog. There was no way to struggle, no way to scream, and mercifully she passed out as the chair slid into the flames, the door closing behind it.

Coincidentally, in a cab heading uptown on Central Park West, Peter Venkman was also thinking of his childhood. Earlier that month one of the supermarket tabloids had run a profile on Venkman, charging that he had been a carnival con man during his summers away from college. Venkman had been furious. But you
were
a carny barker, Stantz had said, not understanding Peter’s anger. What’s the problem? Peter had refused to talk about it. It wasn’t just a carny, he thought, it was my home. And I wasn’t just a barker, I was the best. But there was no way to explain that to a reporter who was looking for an angle to titillate an audience that had trouble with the
TV Guide
crossword puzzle, to whom investigative journalism was a report on Lady Di’s latest snit. He had held his tongue and planned his revenge, the next day giving Janine a card with written instructions on exactly what to do if the offices of the newspaper called. Then he waited for a combination of the right circumstances. It took ten days.

“Dr. Venkman, this is Bill Hibbler at the
National Reporter.
We did a story on you?”

“Several stories, as I remember. On each of us, and on the firm.”

“Well . . . yes . . . but I’m calling on a different matter.”

I’ll bet you are. “And what might that be?”

“We seem to have a ghost.”

The phantasm, a large and voracious creature, had terrorized the editorial offices of the
Reporter,
jamming typewriters, exposing film, setting fires in the wastebaskets. The toilets had overflowed, lightbulbs exploded, the phones sang obscene ditties. The operation of the scandal sheet had come to a standstill. The presses were full of ectoslime.

“That sounds like a class-nine autonomous roaming disrupter,” Venkman had said sagely. “But I got the impression from your articles that you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

“Of course we believe in ghosts,” Hibbler said defensively. “We never said that.”

“No, what you said was that we were a bunch of fakes, charlatans, bunco artists.”

“I . . .”

“Interesting word. Haven’t heard anyone say
bunco
since the days when I was with the carnival. But you know about that too.”

There was a long silence. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I’d say a retraction, an apology to Ghostbusters, all of our employees and our families, and the admission that you libeled us. That should do it.”

“We never retract!”

“Good policy. Enjoy your ghost.”

Venkman hung up the phone and looked at his watch. I give them forty-five minutes, tops. It took forty-two. Venkman made the arrangements, quoted an outrageous figure, and took Hibbler’s MasterCard number. Then he went looking for Zeddemore.

“Winston.”

“Yo.”

“Remember that class nine we dropped off last night. Well, it seems they didn’t want it after all.”

“Some people just can’t make up their minds.” Zeddemore laughed.

Right. I’m a pretty easy-going guy, Venkman thought, but nobody dumps on my dad. Peter Venkman had been born on the lot of King City Attractions, in a tent, on a field, in Sedalia, Missouri. It was the last night of the week-long run and his birth had been exceptionally easy. His mother had been taking tickets. When the show had started she’d closed the booth, gone back to the dressing tent, and had Peter. His birth had been unattended, but his baptism had been a cause for celebration by everyone from his impresario father to the lowliest rigger.

The carny wintered in Iowa City, and Peter had attended the schools there, touring summers with the show throughout the Corn Belt states. He worked as a candy butcher, as a roustabout, as a painter and carpenter, but it was at the games of chance that he really excelled. Whatever game Peter was running always pulled in the nightly top take and he became adept at judging people, knowing who would bite and who wouldn’t, knowing who wouldn’t squawk at a good-natured skinning and who came, with dreams in their eyes, expecting to lose but hoping to win. And somewhere along the way he learned the lesson that his father had been teaching him. You can take a sucker but don’t break a dream. He watched nightly as the people played his games, and he saw those dreams. And when he could, he rewarded them. And one day he realized what the dreams were that had been growing in him.

“Dad, I wanna go to college.”

His father had smiled. “Why, Peter? What do you want to do?”

And he confessed that he didn’t know. His father had smiled again, then laughed softly. “You’ll tell me when you find out? If you find out?”

It was a strange question, but Peter Venkman was used to strange questions on the carny. “I guess you’ll be the first to know.”

He watched the upper Sixties slide by outside the cab window. Well, I just may finally be finding out. I wish the old man had lived to see it. The cab pulled up at a light on Central Park West at Seventy-third and the cabbie turned around.

“Excuse me, but aren’t you one of those Ghostbusters?”

Venkman smiled. “Yes, I’m Dr. Venkman.”

“Whaddaya make a that, Doc?”

Venkman leaned forward and looked to where the man was pointing. A spectacular lightning display was hovering over Dana Barrett’s building.

Louis Tully was doing his best to keep his “classic” party going. He had set out the plates of expensive delicacies the man at the import store had recommended and made sure that the music was loud, at least loud enough to be a continual reminder in Dana’s apartment. But where was she? Maybe her girlfriend hadn’t arrived yet. He surreptitiously smelled his breath and assured himself that he was at his best. I look good, he decided. I look very New York, very hip. She can’t help but notice. He opened a Perrier and struck a casual pose.

“Louis, do you have any Excedrin or Extra-Strength Tylenol?” a tall, chunky woman asked him. Her name was Phyllis Puffet, she ran an answering service, and, like everyone else there, Louis did her taxes.

“I have acetylsalicylic acid but I get the generic from Walgreen’s cause I can get six hundred tablets for thirty-five percent less than the cost of three hundred of the name brand. Do you have a headache?”

Phyllis Puffet frowned. “I’ll ask someone else,” she said, and moved off toward the bathroom. Louis spotted two men pondering the lox platter.

“How’s it going, Bob? Irving? That’s Nova Scotia salmon. The real thing. It costs twenty-four ninety-five a pound, but really twelve forty-eight a pound after tax. I’m writing this whole party off as a promotional expense. That’s why I invited clients instead of friends. Try that Brie. It’s dynamite at room temperature. Maybe I should turn up the heat a bit . . .”

They looked at each other, wondering whether one of them should answer, but Louis had already moved off. He was being accosted by a tall pouting blonde in a dance leotard.

“Louis, this party is boring,” she whined. “I’m going home.”

“Aw, don’t do that, Andrea. C’mon, if we dance, maybe some of the others will start dancing.”

“Okay.”

Andrea immediately launched into a wild frug, Louis struggling to keep up until the doorbell rang. At last, he thought. Dana. But it was only a short, pudgy couple. He helped them out of their coats.

“Everybody, this is Ted and Annette Fleming. Ted has a small carpet cleaning business in receivership, but Annette is drawing a salary from a deferred bonus from two years ago and the house has fifteen thousand left at eight percent . . .” Louis babbled cheerfully as he detoured around the wildly dancing Andrea and took their coats to the bedroom.