Ghostbusters Read online

  But Venkman wouldn’t buy it. “Sure, this is bigger than the microchip. They’ll probably throw out the entire engineering department and turn the building over to us. We’re probably the first serious scientists to ever molest a dead old lady.”

  Spengler stepped between the two, adjusting his pace to theirs. “I wouldn’t say that the experience was completely wasted. Based on these new readings, I think we have an excellent chance of actually catching a ghost and holding it indefinitely.”

  “Then we were right,” Stantz said enthusiastically. “This is great. And if the ionization rate is constant for all ectoplasmic entities, I think we could really clean up—in the spiritual sense.”

  But Venkman had stopped, his mind reeling. The beginnings of an idea were forming in his agile mind. Why, there could be opportunities in this; for advancement, for scientific discovery and recognition . . . For money. But could they get the university to go along with it? He hurried to catch up to the two.

  “Spengler, are you serious about actually catching a ghost?”

  Spengler turned a stony expression toward his friend. “I’m always serious.”

  “Wow!” Venkman said softly. He glanced at Stantz, who grinned. Spengler just nodded solemnly.

  “It can be done.”

  Venkman reached into his pocket. “Egon, I take back every bad thing I ever said about you. Here.” He held up a candy bar. Egon smiled delightedly and reached for it, but Venkman pulled it back. They looked at each other for a moment, then Venkman pressed it into his hands. “You earned it . . .”

  “Baby Ruth,” Spengler said reverently, ripping off the paper and cramming it into his face. “Gooomph!”

  They passed into the familiar dark confines of Weaver Hall, talking excitedly, making their way past knots of students and an antlike stream of men carrying equipment.

  “If you guys are right, if we can actually trap a ghost and hold it somehow, I think I could win the Nobel Prize.”

  “C’mon, Peter. If anyone deserves it, it’s Spengler and me. We’re doing all the hard research and designing the equipment.”

  “Yeah, but I introduced you guys. If it wasn’t for me, you never would have met each other. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Uh, Ray. Those guys are coming out of our lab. That’s our equipment!”

  Dean Yaeger was standing in the doorway, watching with great satisfaction as a workman scraped the names of Venkman, Spengler, and Stantz off the door. Venkman hurried up to him.

  “I trust you are moving us to a better space somewhere on campus.”

  Yaeger, an overfed career hack with a ratty Joseph Goebbels smile, stared coldly at him. “No. We’re moving you off campus. The Board of Regents has wisely decided to terminate your grant. You are to vacate these premises immediately.”

  “This is preposterous! I demand an explanation.”

  “Fine.” Yaeger smiled again, favoring Venkman with all the warmth of a state executioner. “This university will no longer continue any funding of any kind for your group’s . . . activities.”

  “But why? The kids love us.”

  The workmen and janitors had stopped looting the lab long enough to watch the little drama, their arms full of rheostats, vacuum chambers, and oscilloscopes. Stantz and Spengler stood close behind Venkman, less in support than in the gut feeling that the mob might turn and rend them on the spot. But Yaeger was just warming up,

  “Dr. Venkman, we believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some kind of ‘dodge’ or ‘hustle,’ Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You’re a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman, and you have no place in this department or in this university.”

  “I see.”

  Stantz poked Venkman in the ribs. “You said you floored ’em at the Regents meeting.”

  Venkman put a hand on Stantz’s shoulder and shook his head sadly. “Ray, I apologize. I guess my confidence in the Regents was misplaced. They did this to Galileo too.”

  Yaeger’s rodent smile broadened. “It could be worse, Dr. Venkman. They took the astronomer Phileas and nailed his head to the town gate.”

  That makes me feel so much better, Venkman decided.

  The sun was setting on the campus and, so it seemed, on their careers. Spengler had gone off to find a phone to break the news to his mother. Stantz and Venkman, having no living parents, lounged on a sidewalk bench, marking time. Stantz shook his head sadly. He had given up being angry at Venkman, at Yaeger, at the university, and now despair was setting in.

  “This is a major disgrace. Forget M.I.T. or Stanford now. They wouldn’t touch us with a three-meter cattle prod.”

  “You’re always so worried about your reputation. We don’t need the university, Ray. Einstein did his best stuff while he was working as a patent clerk. They can’t stop progress.”

  Stantz somehow did not find that reassuring. “Do you know what a patent clerk makes? I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, and we didn’t have to produce anything! I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results or bingo, you’re out on your keester. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there.”

  But Venkman did know what it was like. So, it’s tough. So, they don’t know us. Yet. Which means there’s room—for vision, for experimentation, for three guys with genius and a dream. And an idea no one has ever had before. Yes, yes, yes. He turned and grabbed Stantz by the arm.

  “Let me tell you, Ray, everything in life happens for a reason. Call it fate, call it luck, karma, whatever, but I think that this is our moment. I think we were destined to be kicked out of there.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “To go into business for ourselves!”

  Stantz’s jaw dropped, then he closed it, tilted it to one side, and let loose a low hum. Venkman grinned.

  “You‘re thinking. That’s a thinking sound you’re making. I know that sound. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. That costs money. And the ectocontainment system we have in mind will require a load of bread to capitalize. Where would we get the money?”

  “Ray, trust me.”

  4

  The usual trade and commerce is cheating all round by consent.

  —Thomas Fuller

  Ray Stantz was very distressed. Of the three, he was the product of the most normal childhood, having been raised on Long Island by his doctor father and housewife mother. He had an older brother (Air Force officer in the Middle East) and a younger sister (journalist in California). Brother Carl was married, sister Jean was divorced. Carl was a Republican, Jean a Democrat. Carl had two sons in the Boy Scouts, Jean a daughter in ballet school. Carl drank heavily and was a Sustaining Member of the National Rifle Association, Jean was a feminist with two lovers, one of each sex. Carl and Jean did not speak to each other. And neither spoke to Ray.

  This state of affairs had begun some three years ago during a family reunion at the ancestral home in Islip. Carl’s family had flown in from his base station in South Carolina, and Jean and her daughter from San Francisco. Everyone had arrived on time except Ray, who had been late driving the thirty miles in from New York because Peter Venkman had borrowed his car to romance a graduate assistant and had gotten it stuck in a mud flat near Greenwich, Connecticut. By the time Venkman had extricated the old station wagon (now covered in drying, salt-flat slime) and returned it to Ray, Stantz had already missed dinner with the family and was chafing to leave. He was on the point of calling a cab when his car sputtered up in front and Peter jumped out into the street, braying, “Ray! Get your butt down here. You’ll be late.” He was on the way out of town, with Venkman at the wheel, before he thought to ask: “Peter, why are you driving? This is my car.” Venkman shrugged. “I’m a better driver, I know the roads, and I can get you there on time . . .”

  “Dinner was two hours ago.�
�

  “. . . and I need to borrow your car again.”

  Stantz pondered that for a moment, then decided that—as much as he hated to let Venkman use the car again after he had covered it in mud the first time—Peter’s presence would be a good excuse for his own lateness. Venkman agreed to have the station wagon washed and return it with a full tank. Stantz decided that he was pretty clever, turning the reason for his lateness into its own alibi. It had a scientific neatness that appealed to him, like a Mobius loop. He had not reckoned on two things: that his parents would offer the hospitality of the house to Peter Venkman, or that his sidekick would come down with a case of instant hots for his sister Jean. Peter then proceeded to destroy the weekend.

  The senior Dr. Stantz plied Peter with alcohol while encouraging him to talk about their work in parapsychology, a subject that brother Carl held in equal repute with Communism and homosexuality. Doc Stantz asked, Peter talked, Carl sneered, and Jean—unbelievably—seemed attracted to the disreputable and energetic Peter Venkman. This didn’t worry Ray. He had met Jean’s first husband, a classics scholar and part-time beet farmer—a combination considered perfectly acceptable in California—and figured that she could take care of herself. When he’d gone up to bed, Peter was still holding forth. Carl had caught up with him in the hall.

  “Where did you dig up that character?”

  “He’s a colleague of mine from the university.”

  “Your ‘colleague’ is a dipstick and a raving lunatic,” Carl said bluntly. “And you’re still a jerk.”

  Ray and Carl had never gotten along, but Ray had never realized how badly things had deteriorated. No wonder Carl never sent a card at Christmas. He thought about saying something conciliatory but he just wasn’t up to it.

  “Well, at least neither of us has to play with guns or fighter planes to prove he’s a man.”

  Before Carl could react, Ray had locked himself in his room and gone to sleep. He reasoned that the worst thing that could happen would be that Carl would climb in through the window and kill him. He hadn’t reckoned on Peter’s persuasiveness or his ingenuity. When he came down to breakfast, Peter, Jean, and Carl’s rental car were missing. Taking stock of the situation, Ray Stantz tiptoed out to his own car and raced back to the city, spending the rest of the weekend hiding at Egon’s apartment, watching Spengler rotate the crops on his rooftop fungus farm. He didn’t go home until he was sure that Carl had returned to South Carolina, and then it took him two hours to get up the courage to listen to his answering machine tape. There were screaming insults from every member of his family, including Jean, whom Peter Venkman had stranded in a motel in Secaucus, New Jersey, after showing her New York by night and God only knew what else.

  He had tried to talk to Peter about it, but his friend denied any wrongdoing, saying that Jean had seemed to enjoy herself and that Carl was a Fascist meat-head, a judgment call that Ray had to agree with. He let the matter drop, but never again loaned Peter anything more valuable than bus fare. Eighteen months later came the shock.

  The 727 carrying Ray’s parents had gone down in the sea on a flight to Puerto Rico. Ray took it well. Dead was dead (even though Egon insisted that there was a good chance that his parents were alive in the Bermuda triangle, and persisted until Ray punched him in the nose), and death was an idea that held few terrors for Ray Stantz. In a way it was a blessing. His parents had been getting on, and he knew that their greatest fear had been of growing old and sickly, succumbing to cancer, Alzheimer’s, or senility. It was the way of nature, and until science found out how to reverse or halt the process, people would go on dying. The shock was the letter from his father, passed on by the executor of the estate.

  Ray,

  There’ll be a distasteful reading of the will, with the three of you glaring and sniffing at each other, but I wanted to tell you in advance that I’m leaving you the house. You should know and prepare, in case Jean or Carl decides to contest the will. It’s not that I think you’re worthier than either of them. It’s because of that Peter Venkman character you brought to the house. I figure that as long as you’ve got friends like him, you’re going to need all the help you can get, so I want you to have some property to fall back on . . .

  To fall back on.

  Stantz had a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach as Venkman carefully guided him out of the headquarters of Irving Trust.

  “You’ll never regret this, Ray.”

  Stantz stared at Venkman, unable to keep the deep sense of guilt off his face. “My parents left me” that house. I was born there.”

  “You’re not going to lose the house. Everybody has three mortgages these days.”

  “But at nineteen percent interest! You didn’t even bargain with the guy.”

  Spengler stuck his head between them. They were all wearing suits, and Spengler looked like an undertaker. “Just for your information, Ray, the interest payments alone for the first five years come to over ninety-five thousand.”

  “Thanks, Egon. I feel so much better.”

  “Will you guys relax?” Venkman cried, grabbing Egon’s calculator away from him. “We are on the threshold of establishing the indispensable defense science of the next decade—professional paranormal investigations and eliminations. The franchise rights alone will make us wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.”

  Stantz considered. “But most people are afraid to even report these things.”

  Venkman smiled slyly. “Maybe. But no one ever advertised before.”

  “Advertised?”

  “A name?”

  “Trust me, Egon. Peter’s right on this one. We need a catchy name, something that people will remember and trust.”

  “Okay, How about Eclophenomenological Exterminators?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Ray, Egon, I’ll come up with a name . . .”

  The firehouse was in an alley near Mott and Pell, In that area where Chinatown butts up against the city, state, and federal court buildings around Foley Square. Good, thought Stantz. If they arrest us, we won’t have far to go. Venkman was scanning the old structure from several angles, doing the geometry of entrances and exits, escape routes and strongpoints. He glanced at Mrs. Scott, the real estate rep who’d brought him out to see it, figuring ways to get her to knock down the price.

  “Shall we go in?”

  “Assuredly,” Venkman replied. “Lead the way.”

  A sign hung precariously from the brick front: ENGINE COMPANY 93. Stantz gave it a dubious look, then nudged Spengler, who was again tapping buttons on his calculator.

  “You know, we may not have all that far to look for ghosts.”

  “Good,” Egon mumbled.

  The garage bay was knee-deep in dust and discarded equipment. The windows were broken, and here and there tiny red rat eyes peeped from behind a missing board or from a darkened corner. Stantz and Spengler had disappeared into the building’s upper reaches and could be heard stumbling around, kicking over the leavings of a century of firemen. Venkman did a mental estimate on the garage. The engine bay was long enough for an emergency vehicle of some sort and an outer office and reception area, provided no one got excited and drove through it. The basement would serve for equipment storage and Stantz’s containment grid, and they could live upstairs. Venkman took a deep breath and sneezed.

  “Gesundheit, Mr. Venkman.”

  “Thank you. Dust. And that’s Doctor Venkman.”

  The dust didn’t seem to bother her. She probably spent so much time in abandoned buildings that she’d learned to thrive on it.

  “Besides this, you’ve got the basement, a substantial work area in the rear, sleeping quarters and showers on the next floor, and a full kitchen and laundry on the top level. And closets? Has it got closets? It’s ten thousand square feet total.”

  Spengler appeared specterlike in the cellar stairwell, holding up his calculator like a sacramental offering. “Nine thousand six hundred forty-two point five fi
ve square feet, to be precise.”

  Mrs. Scott frowned at Spengler. “What is he, your accountant?”

  “May I present the eminent doctor of physics, Egon Spengler? Mrs. Scott.”

  “I never shake hands,” Spengler said quickly. “Osmotic transference of bacteria. Parasitic corruption, Nasty.”

  “Charmed. I’m sure.” She named bade to Venkman. “So, now then. What do you think?”

  Venkman thought it was perfect, but he had no intention of tipping his hand too soon. “This might do . . . I don’t know. It just seems kind of pricey for a unique fixer-upper opportunity, don’t you think? We’re trying to keep our costs down. You know how it is when you’re starting a new company.”

  “Yes, I know. What are you calling your business?”

  “Ghostbusters,” Venkman said coolly. The name had come to him in the middle of the night, a flash of inspiration, and he was rather proud of it.

  “Oh, well, this place is perfect for it.”

  “Perfect?” Spengler echoed sarcastically. “It needs a new floor, rats have been gnawing the wiring, the plumbing’s shot, it looks like hell, probably in violation of at least a dozen building codes, and the neighborhood’s a demilitarized zone. I think . . .”

  “Geronimo!” rang a scream from above, the fire pole gave a terrible shudder, and Stantz came sliding into view, hitting the floor with an impact that must have given half the rats in the building cardiac arrest. “Wow, this place is great! I love this pole. Can we move in tonight?”

  Mrs. Scott gave Venkman and Spengler a toothy smile. “I think . . .”

  “I think we’ll take it,” Venkman sighed. Stantz, you dingbat, this had better work.

  Janine Melnitz picked her way around the scaffolding and peered into the garage bay. A line of makeshift work lights were strung from the ceiling so that the carpenters who were laying the new floorboards could see to work. She gingerly stepped up to a hairy young man who was wrestling with an immense power cable.

  “Excuse me. Do you work here?”