Ghostbusters (16 page)

The cabbie, a palpable reconstructor-type three, had been dead for over fifteen years, but it still remembered how to drive, and it had nothing to lose. A skeletal hand flipped up the flag on the meter and put the engine in gear.

Roger Hubbard was already buried in his
Wall Street Journal
as the taxi leaped forward, scattering trashcans, executed a diagonal high-speed drift through the center of traffic, and sped off the wrong way down a one-way alley.

“What do you make of that, Harlan?”

“Well, I’ll be . . . It looks like the late Mayor Walker, tap-dancing on top of a municipal bus.”

In the customer payroll department of Security Atlantic Bank and Trust, most of the employees had their eyes on the clock. Just fifteen minutes to lunch. From her office the department manager noticed the situation and determined once and for all to put a stop to it. We’ll see how they like staying late. She rose, walked to the doorway of the section, and cleared her throat loudly. A few of the employees looked up, guilt written on their faces.

“I have something to say to you all,” she began, “and this applies to more than one of you . . .” She stopped, puzzled. Something was tickling her legs. She looked down as surreptitiously as she could, but there was nothing there. She determined to ignore it.

“As I was saying . . .” My God, there’s a hand tickling my legs. She gave a yelp of surprise, and slapped at the front of her dress. Someone giggled, What’s happening? It feels so . . . She struggled to turn and headed for the rest room. She barely made the door.

The typists and clerks looked at each other and laughed. But the phantasm was not alone. They were all late for lunch.

Louis Tully, Keymaster of Gozer, was approaching his goal: the meeting with the Gatekeeper, the preparations to receive the expected one, Gozer the Destroyer. His mind was filled with the glory of the Shagganah and all the Myriad Sacred Forms of the Torb as he entered the long pedestrian tunnel in Central Park. Several forms were clustered in the darkness ahead of him. Ah, he sighed. Fellow supplicants, witnesses to the Rectification. They spread our as he approached.

“Hey, man. We’re friends. Let us go through your pockets.”

The Keymaster was nonplussed. This was not how it had been foretold. “Are you the Gatekeeper?” he asked.

“Come on. You want me to stick you? Come across, man.”

“I am Vinz Clortho,” Tully said impatiently. “I am the Keymaster.”

“And I’m Mister Dave, baddest dude on this block.”

Tully considered. Gozer had never before come in the form of a dude. It smacked of treachery. “Do you bar my way?”

“Are you crazy, man? You don’t give, Mister Dave’s gonna rip you, man. Nobody gets by Mister Dave.”

Tully’s eyes began to swirl. “Do you bar my way?”

“Yeah, sucker. We bar you way.”

Vinz was filled with the strength of the Vuldronaii. He opened his mouth and let out a terrifying roar that snapped the blade of Mister Dave’s knife and tore bricks from the inside of the tunnel. Streams of iridescent light sparked out, discharging bolts of italic electricity into the muggers. They fled screaming out the north end of the tunnel.

“I thought you said we could take him, man.”

“What you think I am, Ghostbusters?”

The McLean 301, a theater just off of Forty-second Street, had seen better days. Having begun life as a variety house, it had gone through a succession of remodelings and downgradings as the neighborhood around it changed. Seven years ago it had shown its last first-run film, and was now hovering on the borderline between being an emporium for bad science fiction and a porno house. Today it was science fiction. The marquee proclaimed
ALL DAY ALL NIGHT 3-D SCIFI THRILLER
, and the house was packed.

At one time the McLean might have filled to capacity with sweating burlesque fans, with top music and comedy acts, or a neighborhood sprinkling of families for a night of Disney cartoons. Now it was the downtown gross-out crowd, the beer-drinking, pot-smoking, cheering locals in their cardboard 3-D glasses, who got as much loud pleasure out of
Z—the Undying Fungoid
as their more sophisticated cousins did from
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The screen was old and speckled with the refuse of thrown food, the johns didn’t work, and the print of the 1957 British SF flic was probably an original. No one seemed to care. For the audience, the movie was less an art form than an excuse for a social gathering one step below a riot, and they were having a great time, shouting insults, pouring beer on one another, and razzing the terrible film as it creaked and crackled through the sprockets. The undying fungoid was in the process of devouring a toy army truck when the ancient film gave a tortured gasp and parted. The screen went white, then black.

“You jerkbag, fix the demn theng,” an angry voice screamed, and a chorus of supporting jeers rose, full of comments about the movie, the theater, and the projectionist’s ancestry. The screen stayed dark. The chorus turned to a rhythmic stamping. Several patrons began to dismantle their seats and hurl the pieces at the projection booth.

The low whine underneath the crowd began to rise in volume until one by one the patrons quieted down to hear what it was. Like a dynamo, someone said. You never heard a dynamo in yer life, his friend replied, likening it to a distant police siren. No, a jet engine. Or a pipe organ. Suddenly the dim house and exit lights went out.

A few of the audience settled back, thinking that the show might be starting again, but most of them knew better. There was an electricity in the air, as if the entire building had been put through a giant electromagnet. The curtains crackled with it, and a pattern of soft, vague, blue static discharges crawled over the screen, flowing, concentrating. The people watched in awe as they swirled into the center, forming an intense spot of light, while behind them the theater began to vibrate with a low, moaning sound. Like voices, thought one man. No, like music, like old songs.

Suddenly the point of light leapt in a straight line to the projection booth, as if the camera had started, a beam of wavering light stretching across the audience. The moaning resolved into ghostly music, an olio of dance-hall tunes, as the first glowing phantom appeared on the lighted line. It was a strutting comedian in straw boater and checked suit, a cane in one hand. Next came a black-faced minstrel with a banjo. A fan dancer followed, then a floppy-pants comic with suspenders and a spade beard. A stripper in a feather boa. A singer in a slick gown. A juggler. A chorine.

The audience hung there spellbound as the ghosts of a century of New York theater paraded down that spectral runway and vanished into the projection booth, every sort of act that the McLean had witnessed from minstrels to matinee idols. And when the last one was gone, and the magic had gone out of the old theater, there was a long moment of silence from the stunned crowd, followed by the loudest and longest applause that McLean 301 had ever heard.

Some distance away, Winston Zeddemore was feeling far from entertained. How could he explain this to his mother? The first Zeddemore boy to ever wind up in the clink. He turned and looked at a huge biker who was watching him curiously.

“We’re gonna get five years for this. Plus, they’re gonna make us retrap all those spooks. I
knew
I shouldn’t have taken that job.”

The biker spit lazily and scratched his jaw. “Tough luck, man.”

Most of the rest of the tank’s occupants were gathered around Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler, who were trying to ignore them. Stantz had his blueprints spread out on the floor.

“Look at the structure of the roofcap. It looks exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in space.”

Spengler nodded excitedly and nudged Venkman. ’‘And look at this, Peter. Cold-riveted girders with selenium cores.”

But Peter Venkman was accutely conscious of their audience. He turned to the group of hoods who were trying to figure out Stantz’s coverall. “Everybody with us so far?”

Stantz grabbed his arm. “The ironwork extends down through fifty feet of bedrock and touches the water table.”

Venkman still didn’t get it. “I guess they don’t build them like they used to, huh?”

“No,” Stantz cried. “Nobody
ever
built them like this. The architect was either an authentic genius or a certified wacko. The whole building is like a huge antenna for pulling in and concentrating psychic energy.”

“Who was the architect?”

“He’s listed on the blueprints as I. Shandor.”

“Of course,” Spengler yelped, startling everyone in the room. “Ivo Shandor. I saw his name in
Tobin’s Spirit Guide.
He started a secret society in 1920.”

Venkman rubbed his forehead painfully. “Let me guess . . . Gozer worshipers.”

“Yes. After the First World War, Shandor decided that society was too sick to survive. And he wasn’t alone. He had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted bizarre rituals, intended to bring about the end of the world.”

Venkman nodded. “She said he was the Destructor.”

“Who?”

“Gozer.”

“You talked to Gozer?” Spengler asked, confused.

“Get a grip on yourself, Egon. I talked to Dana Barrett and she referred to Gozer as the Destructor.”

“See?” Ray Stantz exclaimed proudly. “I told you that something big was about to happen.”

Zeddemore had heard enough. “This is insane! You actually believe that some moldy Babylonian god is going to drop in at Seventy-eighth and Central Park West and start tearing up the city?”

“Not Babylonian, Sumerian,” Spengler said breathlessly. “And he won’t have to. Ray, do you remember what we discussed about ERMs?”

“Yes,” Stantz replied. “All the psychic potential of the city released. The Big Twinkie! We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What’s he talking about?” Zeddemore whispered

“I’m not sure,” Venkman replied, “but it sounds bad.”

“Hey!”

They all turned. A high-ranking police officer was standing in the corridor outside the holding cell, flanked by two jailers. He pointed at Venkman.

“Are you the Ghostbusters?”

“What about it?”

“The mayor wants to see you right away. The whole island is going crazy. Let’s go.”

That government is not best which best secures mere life and property—there is a more valuable thing—manhood.

—Mark Twain

Hizzoner had had an extremely successful term as mayor, and he was determined not to let it be spoiled by a few ghosts. Ghosts, fer crissake! I get along with Italians and blacks, with Poles and Irish, with Puerto Ricans and Chinese. My credibility is solid with big business and environmentalists, with Jews, Catholics, and Muslims, with liberals and conservatives. My visibility extends with impeccable clarity to the Carson show, the Letterman show, to Donahue and Griffin and
Good Morning America.
I’ve published a book, done cameos on
Kate and Ali
and
Ryan’s Hope.
They’re doing a play about my life. I’ve done a good job. So, what do I get? Ghosts.

Hizzoner looked up, watching his aides as they tried to keep traffic moving in and out of the big office. The police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the city and state police commandants, the archbishop of the diocese of New York, Rabbi Korngeld, the regional director of the EPA, General Petersen of the National Guard, the city comptroller, the corporation counsel, three city bureaucrats whose names and positions he’d forgotten, several state officials, officers of the Coast Guard and Navy, and the chief agent of the FBI’s New York office—all of them talking at once, most of them trying to talk to him. I have such a headache, he thought. Just once a crisis shouldn’t give me a headache.

Mackay, his point man, stepped into the office. “The Ghostbusters are here, Mr. Mayor.”

The room fell instantly silent as Mackay ushered the four men into the room. Well, they don’t look like monsters, Hizzoner decided. Just average New York crazies. The simple solution would be to dismiss them as frauds, toss them into Riker’s Island, and feed the key to a sea gull. Of course, that wouldn’t explain the thing that came through the wall of my shower this morning. He stood up and placed his palms on the desk.

“Okay, the Ghostbusters.” They nodded respectfully. “And who’s Peck?”

A thin, angry-looking man in a tight suit pushed his way forward. Hizzoner disliked him on sight. He looked like the mayor’s high school biology teacher, and Hizzoner had flunked frog dissecting four times.

“I’m Walter Peck, sir. And I’m prepared to make a full report.” He withdrew a fat sheaf of papers from his briefcase and dropped them on the desk. Typical, Hizzoner thought. The city’s falling apart and this ringding brings me a term paper.

“These men are complete snowball artists. They use nerve and sense gases to induce hallucinations. The people think they’re seeing ghosts and call these bozos, who conveniently show up and get rid of the problem with a fake electronic light show.”

The mayor looked sharply at Venkman. “You using nerve gas?”

Venkman shook his head emphatically. “The man is a psychopath, Your Honor.”

“Probably a mixture of gases, no doubt stolen from the army . . .”

“Baloney!” Stantz cried, then favored the archbishop with an embarrassed smile. Peck charged on.

“. . . improperly stored and touched off with those high-voltage laser beams they use in their light show. They caused an explosion.”

Venkman looked ready to start talking again, but Hizzoner raised his hands for silence. He looked imploringly at his staff.

“All I know is, that wasn’t a light show we saw this morning,” the fire commissioner said. “I’ve seen every form of combustion known to man, but this beats me.”

The police commissioner’s argument was more telling. “And nobody’s using nerve gas on all the people that have seen those . . . things all over the city. The walls are bleeding in the Fifty-third Precinct. How do you explain that?”

The mayor couldn’t, but had no intention of asking either Peck or the Ghostbusters, at least not yet. He turned to the archbishop. “Your Eminence?”