Ghostbusters Read online

  THEY’RE HERE

  TO SAVE THE WORLD.

  The pictures hit the morning editions of every paper in New York, and by evening had spread halfway around the world. The three of them standing proudly in front of the Sedgewick, captioned “GHOSTBUSTERS!” or “GHOSTBUSTERS?” depending on the editorial slant. Ray Stantz holding the smoking trap aloft. “WE GOT ONE!” The Ectomobile. GHOSTBUSTERS!! screamed the Rupert Murdoch papers. BOFFO BIZ FOR SPOOK KOOKS, cried Variety. A STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN THE GARMENT DISTRICT, indicated a cautious Wall Street Journal, but The Village Voice kicked out the jams and ran a Feiffer caricature on the front page. Within six hours no one was talking about anything else.

  BILL MURRAY DAN AYKROYD

  SIGOURNEY WEAVER

  COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS

  AN IVAN REITMAN FILM

  A BLACK RHINO/BERNIE BRILLSTEIN PRODUCTION

  “GHOSTBUSTERS”

  ALSO STARRING HAROLD RAMIS RICK MORANIS

  MUSIC BY ELMER BERNSTEIN

  “GHOSTBUSTERS”

  PERFORMED BY RAY PARKER, JR.

  PRODUCTION DESIGN BY JOHN DE CUIR

  DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY LASZLO KOVACS, A.S.C.

  VISUAL EFFECTS BY RICHARD EDLUND, A.S.C.

  EXECUTIVE PRODUCER BERNIE BRILLSTEIN

  WRITTEN BY DAN AYKROYD

  AND HAROLD RAMIS

  PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY IVAN REITMAN

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  GHOSTBUSTERS™

  Copyright © 1985 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A TOR Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  8-10 West 36 Street

  New York, N.Y. 10018

  First TOR printing: August 1985

  ISBN: 0-812-58598-4

  CAN. ED.: 0-812-58599-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  GHOSTBUSTERS:

  THE SUPERNATURAL SPECTACULAR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  for Mom and Dad

  1

  How much there is in books that one does not want to know . . .

  —John Burroughs

  It was a bright sunny day in early autumn, one of those days New Yorkers dote on, take pictures of, and point out to their country cousins as an example of the city at its best. The city after summer, after the pavements stop frying. The city not yet locked into the icy streets and frozen dog-wastes of winter. A picture-postcard day, a day to write home to Cincinnati or Scranton or Tullahoma about, and every New Yorker with an excuse was out of doors, clogging the sidewalks, slowing traffic, frightening the pigeons. Tour buses, hot dog vendors, street musicians, flower sellers; all had noticed an increase in trade. People were more cheerful. There was an excess of happy normalcy in the air.

  The sun had risen that morning—as it did every morning—by bubbling up out of Long Island Sound, climbing over the Chrysler Building, and casting its warmth down on midtown Manhattan. By dusk it would be finished and sliding quickly toward the Jersey marshes. If it sent down its warmth anywhere else, New Yorkers were not aware of it, and cared less. It was here, and it felt good. That was enough.

  Two men who particularly reveled in the sunlight that September day were Harlan Bojay and Robert Learned Coombs. Bojay had once been a jockey, until, at the age of twenty-four, he had inexplicably gained forty-five pounds and four inches in height, which finished forever his dreams of winning the Triple Crown. This had been some thirty-five years ago, and Bojay had been unemployed since. His partner, Coombs, a taciturn Oklahoma Indian, had come to New York to make his fortune as a singer. He had drive, ambition, daring, pizzazz; everything in fact but a voice. And so, Harlan Bojay and Robert Learned Coombs were now partners in leisure, philosophy, and life.

  They sat beneath the great jaws of a stone lion guarding the Fifth Avenue entrance to the New York Public Library, passing a bottle of Chateau Plain-Wrap back and forth and discussing the nature of existence.

  “Robert, my lad. Have you ever been in there?”

  “In there? In the library? Sure, I guess so. Coupla times.”

  “Wonderful things, books . . .”

  “Right.”

  “But dangerous, exceedingly dangerous. Lots of dangerous things in books . . .”

  Coombs was nonplussed. Once again Bojay had run off with the thread of the conversation. “Dangerous? You mean like guys who cut the centers out and hide guns an’ dope an’ stuff inside?”

  Bojay snorted in exasperation. “I’m speaking of ideas, you melonhead. Dangerous ideas, ideas and philosophies.” He took a long draw on the wine. “Dangerous ideas . . .”

  Coincidentally, less than a hundred feet away, Alice Melvin was thinking exactly the same thing, for an entirely different reason. Like Bojay and Coombs, she, too, had had big dreams, and like them she had come to New York to make them come true, but fate had once again taken down the roadsigns and painted out the center line. Instead of becoming a fashion designer, she was, at the age of 29, working in the New York Public Library. Stout and plain, any sort of meaningful social life had eluded her, and she’d become an exile in her own mind and a prisoner of her fantasies. The last man who had gone home with her had left in the morning with her VCR, and she’d given up trying, grimly resigned to a life in the stacks, moving books about, gaining wisdom and greatness through osmosis, hoping to return in the next life as Lonnie Anderson. That is, until she had discovered the incunabula.

  There were many locked and private collections of books at the main branch, and she’d had keys for some of them, but one day at the main desk she’d picked up the wrong set of keys by accident. At least she told herself it was an accident. She had then proceeded to try a few doors that had been closed to her. Behind one of them, in a collection of European popular incunabula, she had discovered a book of woodcuts depicting sexual positions and concepts she’d not dreamed existed. They were crude in comparison to better works of both the period and the subject, but they touched a chord deep in Alice Melvin.

  On that sunny September day, deep in the stacks where no sunlight ever reaches, Alice Melvin was reshelving books, working her cart slowly along the aisles near the card catalogue. As she turned over each title, checking the numbers on the spine, she failed to notice the vaguest hint of an odor on the air, a sickly sweetness that seemed to waft at right angles to her path, drifting toward the endless rows of card files.

  Alice’s mind was only half on her job. Part of her attention was fixed on the books themselves, their titles, the esthetic effect on her imagination. When the first of the card catalogue drawers began to slide soundlessly open, her mind was miles away, traveling hopefully through a series of renderings on Hellenic pottery themes.

  Alice had just discovered a truly provocative illustration, when something landed in front of her on the cart. If was a catalogue card. Had it fallen from an upper shelf, or was it the work of some prankster? She turned angrily, then froze.

  Dozens of drawers had opened in the long line of cabinets, and millions of carefully indexed cards were shooting into the air, caroming off the stacks, and settling and swirling in great blizzards to the floor. As she watched in horror, more drawers began to op
en, more cards exploded into the air.

  Alice Melvin’s jaw worked convulsively; she turned, and ran. Not pranksters, her mind supplied. Definitely not pranksters.

  At the end of the row she halted to catch her breath. Report, she realized. I must report this to someone. Carefully, tensely, she tiptoed down a parallel aisle, heading for the stairwell to the floor above, yet keeping as far from the card catalogue as possible. Through the ranked books she could still hear cards spewing into the air. Little piles had even drifted into the intersections, and she hurried past them, lest one of them reach out and grab her by the ankle. As she made her way along the last group of stacks, something crashed to the floor behind her and she leapt into the air.

  No, I’m too young to have a heart attack, she thought. She turned, and saw a large book lying in the aisle. Another was wobbling on a shelf to her right. And as she watched, a third launched itself into the air and drifted across the space, neatly reshelving itself on the other stack. Then another, and another, and suddenly dozens of books were in motion, crossing back and forth across the aisle like rush-hour pedestrians. It was too much for her.

  “No!” she cried. “I won’t do it again, I promise. I’ll never look at another dirty picture . . .”

  And at that instant she turned the final corner and came face to face with the thing. They heard her scream all over the building.

  2

  There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.

  —Laurence Sterne

  Dr. Peter Venkman loved his work. He often said it to himself in precisely those words. “I love my work. I’m not always quite sure what it is, but I do love it. I love getting up in the morning. I love coming down to my lab in the basement of Weaver Hall. And I love getting paid by Columbia University for doing whatever it is that I do.” In fact, he often considered that a large part of what he did, perhaps the major part, consisted of just that: the search for identity, for purpose, for the meaning of just what it was that he did do. God, I love psychology. It’s so wonderfully . . . formless. You can get away with anything.

  He smiled warmly at his two subjects. “Scott, Jennifer, are we ready?”

  Jennifer favored him with a coy look and a quick anxious breath that made her breast rise and fall. She was convinced that Peter Venkman was a genius, or she soon would be. God, I love teaching, Venkman decided. He turned to Scott.

  “Okay, partner?”

  Scott Dickinson nodded nervously, his mouth pumping away on a quid of gum. He smiled crookedly at Brenda, who froze him right out. Venkman pulled a card out of the Zener deck and held it up.

  “All right, what is it?”

  Scott set his jaw and concentrated, but Venkman could tell that part of his attention was on the copper cuff strapped to his wrist, its wires running to the control box on Venkman’s side of the table.

  “A square?”

  “Good guess,” Venkman replied, “but no.” He turned the card over. It was a star. “Nice try.” He pushed a button, sending a mild shock through the boy. Dickinson twitched, but smiled gamely.

  The next card was a circle. “Okay, Jennifer. Just clear your mind and tell me what you see.” She did, chewing on one adorable finger.

  “Is it a star?”

  “It is a star! That’s great. You’re very good,” Venkman said enthusiastically, burying the card in the deck and extracting another. A diamond.

  “Scott?”

  Scott rubbed his wrist nervously. “Circle?”

  “Close, but definitely wrong.”

  This time Scott gave a little whimper. Venkman ran through a few more cards, letting Scott get only one right, watching the boy’s growing impatience, his fear of the electric punishment. He even inched the current up a little. The monkeys had been able to take it, it shouldn’t have any effect on a sophomore business major. And if it did, who would notice? Besides, it was time to wind up this phase anyway.

  “Ready? What is it?”

  Jennifer licked her lips excitedly. “Ummm, figure eight?”

  Venkman buried the triangle. “Incredible! That’s five for five. You’re not cheating on me, are you?”

  “No, Doctor. They’re just coming to me.”

  “Well, you’re doing just great. Keep it up. I have faith in you.” He considered stroking her leg under the table with his foot, see how she’d react, then rejected it. Might get Scott’s leg by mistake. He smiled thinly at the young man.

  Scott Dickinson’s own smile had slipped a few notches since they’d started. He let out a noisy breath, his tongue flapping on his uppers, and sniffed loudly.

  “Nervous?”

  “Yes. I don’t like this.”

  “Hey, you’ll be fine. Only seventy-five more to go. What’s this one?” Wavy lines.

  “Uh . . . two wavy lines?”

  No, you don’t. Venkman buried the card. “Sorry. This just isn’t your day.”

  This time the kid’s knees came up against the table and his gum popped out and skittered across the floor. “Hey! I’m getting real tired of this.”

  “You volunteered, didn’t you? Aren’t we paying you for this?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know you were going to be giving me electric shocks. What are you trying to prove?”

  Venkman shrugged softly. “I’m studying the effects of negative reinforcement on ESP ability.” Dickinson leaned across the table and pulled off the electric cuff. “I’ll tell you the effect. It bugs me.

  “Then my theory is correct.”

  “Your theory is garbage. Keep the five bucks. I’ve had it!” He slammed the door hard enough to rattle the glass, leaving Venkman and Jennifer alone in the lab. Venkman shook his head sadly.

  “That’s the kind of ignorant reaction you’re going to have to expect, Brenda, from people jealous of your ability.”

  Jennifer smiled bravely. “Do you think I have it, Dr. Venkman?”

  Venkman jumped as something touched his ankle. Her foot. He favored her with his shyest, most boyish smile.

  “Please. Peter.”

  “Okay . . . Peter.”

  He leaned forward across the table and took her hands in his. “Definitely. I think you may be a very gifted telepath.”

  At that moment his arm came down on the button, sending a soft jolt through both of them. Jennifer jumped back, her sharp breath once again lifting her breasts. Ah, the wonders of modern science.

  Suddenly the door to the lab flew open and Ray Stantz hurried in. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, just ran to the storage bins and began pulling out equipment. Venkman noticed that someone had once again defaced the door. Written in red—in what was supposed to pass for blood, no doubt—were the words VENKMANN BURN IN HELL. His name had been misspelled.

  He waited a moment, then sighed.

  “Ray. Excuse me, Ray?”

  “Yeah, Peter . . .”

  “Ray, I’m trying to have a session here.”

  Stantz pulled his head out of the parts bin, his eyes wide and wild with excitement. “Sorry, you’ll have to drop everything. We got one.”

  Jennifer was looking at Stantz as if he had just fallen off the surface of the moon. Good thing he didn’t bring Egon, Venkman thought. He touched her hand.

  “Excuse me for a minute.”

  Stantz was plugging battery grid analyzers together when Venkman grabbed him by the arm. “Ray, I’m right in the middle of something here. Can you come back in an hour?”

  Stantz put a finger to his lips, then dragged him back behind the bins.

  “Ray, I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “Peter, at one-forty this afternoon at the main branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, ten people witnessed a free-roaming, vaporous, full-torso apparition. It blew books off shelves at twenty feet away, and scared the socks off some poor librarian.”

  Venkman thought of beautiful Jennifer, and weighed the thought of her against the clear call of scientific exploration. “T
hat’s great, Ray. I think you should get right down there and check it out. Let me know what happens.”

  Stantz handed him a valence meter and slipped the strap of a heavy duty tape recorder over his head. “No. Peter. This is for real. Spengler went down there and took some PKE readings, Right off the scale. Buried the needle. We’re close this time, I can feel it.”

  So can I, Venkman sighed, but it looks like I’m not going to feel it now. “Okay, just give me a second here. And take this stuff . . .”

  He slipped up behind the girl, placed a hand on each shoulder, and smiled sadly. She looked up at him as if . . . as if . . . Oh, the things I do for science.

  “I have to leave now, but if you’ve got the time I’d like you to come back this evening and do some more work with me, say . . .”

  ’Eight o’clock?”

  Venkman laughed delightedly. “I was just going to say eight. You’re fantastic.”

  “Until then . . .”

  Fantastic.

  The cab let them off in front of the library. Venkman made sure that Stantz paid the driver, then helped him bundle his equipment out onto the sidewalk.

  “Help me carry this.”

  “Sure, Ray.” Venkman picked up a plasmatometer about the size of an electric razor. “You got the rest of that?”

  “There’s something happening, Peter, I’m sure of it,” Stantz said, struggling to his feet with a double armful of gear. The tape recorder around his neck made him look like a pack animal. “Spengler and I have charted every psychic occurrence in the tri-state area for the past two years. The graph we came up with definitely points to something big.”

  “Ray, as your friend, I have to tell you that I think you’ve really gone around the bend on this ghost stuff. You’ve been running your butt off for two years, checking out every waterhead in the five boroughs who thinks he’s had an experience. And what have you seen?”

  “What do you mean by seen?”