Ghostbusters Read online

  “As in ‘seen.’ You know, ‘looked at with your eyes.’ ”

  “Well, I was once at an unexplained multiple high-altitude rockfall.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve heard about the rockfall, Ray. I think you’ve been spending too much time with Egon.”

  Peter Venkman was not the first person to have uttered those words. Throughout his childhood, in the quiet suburbs of Cleveland, Egon Spengler had provoked that reaction more than once. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Egon.” While his friends were indulging in the delights of childhood—cutting school, shoplifting, minor vandalism—Egon Spengler was making a nuisance of himself at the public library, ordering books that the librarians had neither heard of, nor liked the sound of. The Mysteries of Latent Abnormality. Electrical Applications of the Psycho-sexual Drive. Your Friend the Fungus. Astral Projections as an Untapped Power Source. The Necronomicon.

  While his friends were playing pranks and throwing firecrackers. Egon was developing a compact new explosive made of guncotton and chicken dung. He wrapped a fist sized lump of the stuff in aluminum foil, set it atop a waist-high Erector set tower in a vacant lot, and surrounded it with three concentric rings of Plasticville houses stolen from his brother’s Lionel train layout, Then he ran wires to a handcrank generator and, retiring to a makeshift bunker he’d built, set the thing off. He’d been intending only to knock down the houses, but both houses and tower were vaporized, and he’d broken every window in a three-block radius. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Egon.”

  While his friends were going out on dates and fumbling around in each other’s underwear, Egon was observing their mating rituals through binoculars and taking notes. Then—based on a complex formula he had worked out involving ambient temperature, phases of the moon, tidal cycles for Lake Erie, and a dozen other factors—he calculated the exact number of cases of venereal disease that would be reported over the next three months, and posted his findings on the high school bulletin board. “If I catch you around that Spengler kid, you’ve had it.”

  Somehow Egon survived to enter college, then grad school, then the real world, but it never quite affected him. He was always happier in the company of other mavericks like Stantz and Venkman than with the educators and businessmen with whom he was eventually forced to deal. He was always more at home with the arcane, the bizarre, the scientifically disreputable. Today he was at home with a table.

  Venkman and Stantz found him sitting beneath a heavy oak reading table in the library’s Astor Hall, listening to the wooden underside with stereo headphones connected to a stethoscope. As usual, there was a large area around Egon totally devoid of people, and several patrons were peering warily at him from behind their books and newspapers. Even in New York, few people listened to tables.

  Venkman motioned to Stantz to hand him the heavy copy of Tobin’s Spirit Guide, then rapped softly on the table. Egon froze, instantly alert, his wild eyes swinging from side to side. Oh boy, Venkman thought, this is wonderful. Any credibility we might have established with these people was officially shot down. He rapped his knuckles on the table again.

  “Egon?”

  Egon adjusted the control on his headset and peered closely at the table bottom, the rims of his glasses scraping the wood. Venkman slammed the spirit guide down on the top.

  “Gnnaaauuuhhhh!”

  “Egon, come out of there.”

  Egon Spengler adjusted his glasses and goggled up at Venkman. “Oh! You’re here.”

  “What have you got, Egon?”

  Spengler clambered to his feet. “This is big, Peter. This is very big. There’s definitely something here.”

  Venkman rubbed his temples. The day had started so well. “Egon, somehow this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head. Do you remember that?”

  “That would have worked . . .”

  Spengler’s explanation was cut short by the arrival of an unhappy-looking man in a rumpled suit. Venkman shook his offered hand.

  “Hello, I’m Roger Delacourte, head librarian. Are you the men from the University?”

  “Yes,” Venkman replied, all business. “I’m Dr. Venkman and this is Dr. Stantz. You’ve met Dr. Spengler . . .”

  Delacourte nodded. “Thank you so much for coming. I’d appreciate it if we could take care of this quickly and quietly. You know . . .”

  “I understand.” Venkman said soothingly. “Now, if we could see the woman who first witnessed the apparition . . .”

  “Certainly.”

  “You stay here and keep tabs on it, Egon,” Venkman suggested. No sense in shocking this poor woman twice in one day.

  Alice Melvin had been made comfortable, which is to say that she had been stretched full-length on the couch in Delacourte’s office and was being tended by several of her colleagues. However, she seemed far from relaxed. Her body was stiff and severe, and little tremors passed through her limbs. Delacourte shooed the other women away and made introductions. While the woman related her experience with the card catalogue and the books, Stantz grew increasingly excited, until Venkman made him sit down, shut up, and take readings. Ray Stantz subsided behind the peeps and clicks of his apparatus. While he directed probes and counters at the librarian, Delacourte, and various inanimate objects in the office, Venkman tried to make some sense of the woman’s story, but it all boiled down to the fact that they would have to go into the stacks and look for the blasted thing. The woman didn’t look like a loony, but appearances can be deceiving. Spengler hadn’t seemed that crazy on first meeting either, and Stantz usually fooled most people, but nowadays you couldn’t tell. He decided to steer the questions around to credibility.

  “Did the thing have two arms and legs, or what?”

  Alice Melvin remained staring at the ceiling. “I don’t remember seeing any legs, but it definitely had arms because it reached for me.”

  “Arms! Great! I can’t wait to get a look at this thing.”

  “Cool it, Ray.” Venkman set down his pad and pencil. He smiled reassuringly. “All right, Miss . . . Melvin. Have you, or has any member of your family, ever been diagnosed as schizophrenic or mentally incompetent?”

  “Well, my uncle thought he was St. Jerome.”

  Stantz and Delacourte looked at each other. Venkman smiled again. “I’d call that a big ‘yes.’ Do you yourself habitually use drugs, stimulants, or alcohol?”

  “No,” Alice Melvin replied shakily.

  “I thought not. And one last thing. Are you currently menstruating?”

  Delacourte turned several shades of red. “What’s that got to do with it, Dr. Venkman?”

  “Back off, man! I’m a scientist!”

  Delacourte, outraged, turned to Stantz for support, but he only nodded sagely and ran an ionization meter up and down the man’s tie. Alice Melvin did not seem offended.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Delacourte. He is a doctor . . .”

  “Well, I never . . .”

  “Just answer the question, Miss.”

  But Venkman got no answer, for at that moment the door flew open and Spengler raced in. “Hurry. It’s moving!”

  The two followed Spengler down the darkened corridors leading into the stacks, as only Spengler could make sense of his complicated, primitive equipment. Every so often he would stop, observe the pattern of blinking lights on the plasmatometer, then indicate a new direction. Stantz was as excited as a kid with an armful of new toys, but for Venkman the thrill was rapidly wearing thin.

  “You sure you know where you’re going, Egon?”

  “Shhhhhh.”

  They reached a spiral iron staircase and tiptoed down into the dimly lit basement. Corridors stretched away in all directions, flanked by steel shelving covered with books. In the distance some piece of machinery—a water pump most likely—was softly humming. Spengler stopped short.

  “My God, look!”

  The floor was covered with books and catalogue cards, tumbled and strew
n in all directions. An overturned cart blocked one aisle. Venkman experienced a sudden chill. Loonies I can ignore, but there are books all over the floor. Those are real. Spengler pocketed the plasmatometer and held up a black teardrop-shaped device with wings. He called in an aurascope. Venkman thought it looked like it had come from one of those sex places on Forty-second Street, but the lights on the thing’s upper surface immediately began to blink. Spengler let out a thrilled squeal.

  “Through here. Careful.”

  They worked their way slowly toward the catalogue cabinets, the piles of Dewey cards getting thicker on the floor. Venkman tried not to think about the possibility that they’d actually found one this time. That they were way in over their heads. Stantz passed him a plastic Petri dish.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Specimens.”

  Specimens? He considered trying to fold a file card into it, then gave up and slipped the dish into his pocket. Spengler halted and raised one hand.

  “Will you look at that?”

  “What?” The three crowded together and peered at the card files.

  The file drawers were in all manner of disarray; some in, some out, some on the floor, which was knee-deep in file cards and . . . paste? No, some sort of gluelike substance. It was everywhere; bubbling and oozing in streams from the drawers, speckling the books, dropping in stringy blobs from the ceiling. Venkman fumbled the Petri dish from his pocket, then stopped, not sure how to go about it. Stantz and Spengler were huddled together, whispering.

  “. . . incredible, a plasma flow of this magnitude . . .”

  “. . . hasn’t been anything like it since the Watertown Pus Eruption in 1910. This is making me very excited . . .”

  This is making me very sick, Venkman said to himself. He turned the Petri dish sideways and managed to capture a quantity of the discharge, then snapped the top on it. It still got all over his hands. Just what I need, cosmic boogers.

  “Come on, Peter . . .”

  Venkman tried to wipe his hands off on the cabinet, then on the remaining books, finally settling for the tail of Ray’s sport coat. He caught up with Spengler at the end of the corridor and passed him the specimen.

  “Here, Egon. Your mucus.”

  But Egon was staring at an eight-foot pile of books standing against one wall. They teetered gently but did not topple. Again Stantz and Spengler went into a huddle.

  “What do you make of that?”

  “Classic. Symmetrical book-stacking. Like the Library of Alexandria Incident . . .”

  “Sure,” Venkman added. “It’s obvious. No human being stacks books like that.” He grabbed Spengler by the arm. “The ghost, Egon. Where is it?”

  “Right.” He held up the aurascope. “This way.”

  Halfway down the passageway a book jumped off the shelf and flew at Venkman. He caught it neatly. It was a copy of The Shining. Real nice.

  A few steps later the hair went up on the back of his neck. Spengler turned and held up the little detector, its bat wings now extended outward, their miniature bulbs blinking rapidly. The device was emitting a low hum. Spengler pointed wordlessly. Stantz and Venkman nodded and pointed back. Their meaning was clear. You go first. Swallowing a lump the size of his fist, Spengler leaned out and peeked around the corner. A second later he slipped back and nodded.

  “It’s here.”

  “What is it?” Stantz asked.

  “What do you think it is? It’s a ghost. See for yourself.”

  The three tiptoed quietly into the hallway and looked on in amazement, There, floating about four feet off the floor between the stacks, was a glowing ethereal presence, a swirl of colored lights bobbing among the books. Stantz attempted to raise yet another instrument, but Venkman slapped it down. “No sudden moves,” he whispered, not knowing if the ghost even registered their presence, but unwilling to take chances. Spengler slowly closed his gaping mouth.

  “Look. It’s forming.”

  The light swirled in tighter and began to take on a definite shape, that of a somewhat portly torso, the essence still vaporous where the arms, legs, and head should be. The lines of two large, sagging breasts began to emerge.

  “What is it?” whispered Stantz.

  Venkman shrugged. Whatever it was was hardly threatening in this state. “It looks like a pair of breasts and a pot belly.”

  Stantz very slowly raised his camera and began to take infrared photos. Spengler toyed with the aurascope. A head and arms began to take shape.

  “It’s a woman,” Spengler gasped.

  It was. The apparition had taken on the form of a matronly, somewhat elderly woman, complete with a bun of silver-green hair and a dress of the style popular around the turn of the century. She was reading a book. Venkman noticed that there were still no legs connecting the phantasm to the floor, but he wasn’t in the mood to quibble about it. This was pretty amazing.

  “Nice goin’ Egon,” he whispered.

  Stantz snapped another picture, then moved to switch cameras. Their subject had still taken no notice of them. “I told you it was real.”

  “Yes, you did, Ray. So, what do we do now?”

  Stantz shrugged. “I don’t know. Talk to it.”

  Venkman nodded. Why not? He took a step forward, the other two moving in behind him. The phantom still hovered silently in the air. “What do I say?”

  “Anything. Just make contact,” Stantz replied, snapping pictures as fast as he could work the camera. Venkman squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and cleared his throat.

  Nothing.

  “Uh . . . hello. I’m Peter.”

  This time she turned in his general direction and seemed to look right through him. “Where are you from? Originally?”

  The apparition put a finger to its lips and mimed a shushing sound, then went back to its spectral hook.

  “Ray, the usual thing isn’t working. Think of something else.”

  “Okay, okay,” Stantz whispered. “I got it. I know what to do. Stay close to me. I have a plan.”

  Stantz edged forward, shifting from foot to foot, the others keeping close behind him. Venkman’s mouth was dry. He realized that he hadn’t been so frightened since he was a kid. Spengler’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Stantz paused when they were barely three feet from the woman. “Okay, now everybody do exactly as I say. Ready?”

  Venkman and Spengler nodded.

  Stantz tensed to spring. “Okay . . . get her!”

  He flew forward, his arms reaching around the ghost. She was, of course, not there, and Ray Stantz hit the bookcase, bounded back, and went down on top of Venkman and Spengler, who had run into each other. The ghost reformed a few feet away and exploded upward and outward in a rush of air into the form of a hideous demon, claws outstretched, coming toward them, They stumbled back, smelling the horrible breath of the thing, feeling the heat as it screamed forth a single word.

  “QUIET!”

  On the steps out front, Harlan Bojay and Robert Learned Coombs were getting ready to move along. The day was waning and they had lost the sun, the drop in temperature portending the approach of winter’s chill. Bojay shook himself loose from his perch and staggered up, a day of inactivity and half a bottle of wine having taken their toll, when the front doors of the library flew open and three men came tearing out, pursued by the chief librarian, Delacourte. Bojay knew who he was because the man had hassled him more than once, but something had kept him busy this day because Bojay and Coombs had remained unmolested. Bojay drew back behind the stone lion to listen as Delacourte caught one of the men by an arm. “Did you see? What was it?” he cried, but the other man broke free, shook his head, and ran, calling over his shoulder. “We’ll get back to you.” After a moment Delacourte headed back into the library, looking very much like a man summoned to witness an execution. Perhaps his own. Bojay shook his head. Curious town, he thought, and getting curiouser by the moment.

  Then something caught his eye and he moved out to se
e what it was. A small curved and rounded black object on which lights flashed. He picked it up carefully. It had obviously been dropped by one of the running men. He listened, for it made a humming sound, but he could find no button, switch, or trigger. Very strange. Coombs moved up to his shoulder to look at the artifact.

  “Whatcha got there, Harlan?”

  “I honestly do not know, my friend. A cunning device of some kind. A mechanism, an artifact, a construction.”

  “Do you think we can get anything for it?”

  Bojay smiled. “At least a bottle of wine.”

  3

  Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it.

  —Douglas Jerrold

  It is over seventy blocks from the New York Public Library’s main branch to Columbia University, and it seemed to Venkman that it took him at least half that distance to get Stantz and Spengler stopped and settled down. They bundled into a taxi and rode uptown in silence, none of them feeling like speaking. The taxi driver frowned, knowing that three sourpusses like that wouldn’t be much good for a tip, but Stantz had regained his usual cheery composure by the time they arrived and the cabbie did better than he had figured. As he headed off for his next fare, the three trudged back across campus, falling into their old ways. Stantz babbled happily. Spengler worked calculations on his pocket computer. Venkman wondered how difficult it would be to get them both committed, ghosts or not.

  “It really wasn’t a wasted experience,” Stantz said doggedly. “I mean, you can’t expect results from every experiment, can you?”

  Venkman was having none of it. “I can expect to survive them, can’t I? I mean, that thing almost killed us.”

  Stantz shrugged, plainly embarrassed. “Hey, Peter. It was only a ghost. Come on, you know there’s an element of risk in the scientific method.”

  “Yeah? Yeah? ‘Get her’? That was your whole plan? You call that science?”

  “Hey, I guess I got a little overexcited. Wasn’t it incredible? I’m telling you, this is a first. You know what this could mean to the university?”