by Nancy Holder
Patty gave her a look as if to say “Where’d you get those?”
“Just a little bonus I gave myself,” Holtzmann told her. “I’ll whip you up a set if we manage to not die right now.”
Patty sent another ghost crashing into the crowd of surrounding ghosts, knocking them off their feet. The mob of spirits hesitated as they picked themselves up from the street. Instead of regaining their courage, they seemed to have lost it. The remaining winos, hookers, and purse snatchers shrank back, scared of the Ghostbusters.
Abby looked at the cowering ghosts, completely charged up. “All right! Anybody want a piece of this? Bring it on!”
“Okay, amp it down, tiger,” Erin said. “Miles to go.”
Abby nodded, but then walked totally badass through the crowd of ghosts toward the Mercado building as Erin and the Ghostbusters followed her. The ghosts made way for them, and as the evil spirits melted back, they looked very intimidated.
Approaching the Mercado, the Ghostbusters filed through the frozen ranks of police and National Guard. They had not moved a muscle; all were locked in what looked like the famous John Travolta disco pose, finger pointing up into the air. Right out in front were the two Homeland Security agents, even more tight-lipped than usual.
“Seems odd,” Abby said.
Odder still, Erin could see the eyeballs of Hawkins and Rorke moving in their rigid faces, tracking them as they passed.
A familiar roar from behind made her whirl around. Slimer tore past them in ECTO-1, and a group of partying ghosts had piled into the coffin compartment and clung to the roof of the car. They sang and yelled drunkenly as Slimer sped off.
“Well, at least somebody’s having a good time,” Abby said.
When they reached the closed doors to the Mercado’s lobby, Erin noticed a crack in the ground directly underneath them; the crack pulsed with unnatural light.
“All right, stay back,” Abby said, lifting up her proton wand to fire at the door.
Before she could do that, the doors slowly, eerily opened for them. Clouds of smoke rolled out of the lobby onto the sidewalk. It smelled like a mixture of burning hair and sulfur. The Ghostbusters wrinkled their noses—and went in.
The lobby had been transformed since Erin had last seen it. Everything was covered with ectoplasm: walls, stairs, furniture, and floor. Erin took a step and immediately slipped and fell, butt-planting in a puddle of slime. She got to her feet without comment; there were more pressing matters. A whirlpool of evil energy was slowly churning in the middle of the floor.
“All right, let’s get down to the basement,” Abby said. “We’ll start by turning off his little experiment.”
As they started over to the basement stairwell door, a grand piano shot past them, its lid propped up. Skiing on the goo on the floor, it crashed into doorway, completely blocking it, and the lid came down with a bang.
Erin shuddered as the keys began to move of their own accord, tinkling out an inappropriately merry tune.
All heads cranked around at movement from the lobby’s grand staircase, behind and above them.
Erin looked up and saw a glowing, shirtless figure. It was Kevin, and it wasn’t. He was much paler, his face was drawn, and there were circles under his ferociously beaming eyes.
“Kevin?” Abby said.
“Is this what this thing’s name is?” It was Kevin’s voice, only roid raging. “He seemed more like a Chet to me. I see there’s five of you now.”
Abby, Holtzmann, and Patty looked as confused as Erin felt, then they all saw the Mercado tenant standing next to them, his eyes bugging, jaw dropped.
“Who are you?” Erin said.
“I was napping, I just came down to get my mail—”
“Get out of here!” Abby said.
The tenant ran out the front doors. A second later they heard him scream outside.
“Probably should’ve given him a heads up as to what’s out there,” Patty said.
“Well, you’ve had a long journey,” Rowan-as-Kevin said. “You look winded. Have a seat.”
From all corners of the trashed lobby, chairs slid over the slime and came to a stop behind the Ghostbusters. As Holtzmann slowly sat down, her chair pulled out from under her. She dropped to the ground on her backside with a muffled “Ooooof.”
Kevin/Rowan chuckled and his blue eyes flashed.
“I appreciate the joke,” Holtzmann said as she struggled up. “It’s a classic.”
“I have to compliment you,” Kevin/Rowan said. “I’m surprised you made it this far. You’re intelligent, courageous, and I’m impressed. I’m willing to let you remain as my sex companions.”
“I’m willing to shove my foot up your ass,” Abby said.
“I saw your grandmother on the other side,” Kevin/Rowan told her. “I kicked her in the face.”
“Yeah, listen,” Abby said. “I know you’re real cozy in the form of Kevin, but time to hop out. We like him.”
“Yeah, he just started figuring out our phones!” Holtzmann added.
“As you wish,” Kevin/Rowan said.
Rowan exited Kevin’s body in a flash of vapor. Kevin was left unconscious; his body began to go limp and crumple, toppling forward. Erin and the others raced up the stairs and caught him as he fell, but were off balance and couldn’t hold him. All five of them tumbled down the stairs, landing in a tangled heap on the lobby floor.
“What form would you prefer I take?” Rowan’s voice said as they regained their wits.
“Nothing fancy,” Holtzmann said. “Just keep it simple.”
“I’ll tell you what I prefer,” Patty said. “A nice little friendly ghost. Like in a sheet.”
“Oh?” Rowan said.
Before their eyes he transformed into a smiling white cartoon ghost. It looked very happy and nonthreatening.
“Is this what you want?” Ghost Rowan said. “Adorable clip art?”
“Yes,” Patty said, clearly relieved. “I have no problem with that. Thank you.”
Ghost Rowan’s smile remained, but the expression in his eyes—which shifted from happy to way, way too happy—made it seem suddenly sinister.
“I don’t know,” Erin said. “That looks a little murdery to me.”
The smile was so happy and so frozen that it indeed looked murdery.
“Hmmm,” Abby said. “It is starting to feel different.”
“This works for me,” Ghost Rowan said.
And with that, the ghostly form began to grow larger, the sinister look so pronounced there was no denying it.
“All right,” Patty said, “I didn’t know this was going to be a development.”
Ghost Rowan grew bigger and bigger, towering over them. Erin and the others started backing up—memories of being squashed by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man were still quite raw.
“This isn’t good,” Abby said.
When Ghost Rowan shoved his cartoon hands toward them, it was like being hit by a Category 6 hurricane; the blast of 175-mile-per-hour wind blew them off their feet and through the open doors.
Sailing backward out the lobby entrance, they landed on their proton packs and, shooting showers of sparks, skidded at high speed across the pavement. Helplessly, they slid into the front line of agents, soldiers, and cops. Like dominoes, the frozen figures toppled into one another and fell to the ground.
“Strike!” Rowan said, mixing metaphors.
When he laughed again the hurricane returned and there was a shrill crash. Erin looked up to see every window blown out of the Mercado, shattering sheets of glass followed closely by furniture and personal belongings. The accumulated junk of all the building’s tenants smashed down onto the sidewalk and everything was dusted in glittering fragments—it was a massive, simultaneous eviction.
Then the whole building began to shake, and with it the sidewalk they were lying on. As they tried vainly to scramble to their feet, the Mercado itself exploded, disintegrating into an immense swirling cloud of dust and debris. Ter
rifying cartoon ghost Rowan emerged as if from a cocoon, out of the middle of the churning chaos—he was bigger than a skyscraper! Terrifying Ghost Rowan roared down at them.
“Run!” Erin cried.
They jumped up and ran with the gigantic ghost in hot pursuit. Erin ripped a page from the few action films she’d seen, turning around and backpedaling while firing her proton pack at it. The beam hit Ghost Rowan in the side, lighting up ten stories of his happy spirit body. He let out a scream of pain and stopped, bent over clutching the ectoplasm-leaking wound.
Seizing the moment, the Ghostbusters raced for the next corner, then cut down a narrow alley and hid behind a Dumpster.
“My man was taking some real creative liberties with what we agreed upon,” Patty said, puffing for breath.
The ground shook as Ghost Rowan approached. They crouched lower and flattened against the wall as he appeared at the mouth of the alley. Erin only got a glimpse of him, because thankfully he didn’t stop and look their way, but that was long enough to see his cartoon sheet was badly scorched and he was limping along and snarling like a zombie—a fifteen-hundred-foot-tall zombie! As he passed, his foot came down on top of a parked car and crushed it like an aluminum can.
“See, that’s just off-brand,” Patty said as the ground-shaking thuds grew more and more faint.
“What do we do now?” Erin said.
“We need to get back there and fire into the portal with more power,” Abby said. “If we can do that, then it could cause a reverse reaction.”
Ghost Rowan wailed in the distance, still looking for them. It sounded like he was flipping cars and tearing buildings apart—Godzilla style.
“More power?” Erin said. “Do we not have our packs set to max now? Because it does feel like this would be the time for that!”
“We’re at max,” Holtzmann said. “Rowan’s got everything too energized. Which is why I suggest the following … Now, it’s a little risky. It’s called ‘crossing the stream.’”
“The thing that was so powerful our atoms could implode?” Erin said. “That’s ‘a little risky’?”
Patty looked around the corner and reported back that Ghost Rowan was turning his head in a full circle like an owl scouring the intersecting streets for any sign of them.
“I mean, he’s really just doing his own thing now,” Patty said.
“Holtz is right,” Abby said. “If successful, it could cause a reverse reaction that would pull any ionized ectomatter back into its dimension of origin.”
“And if it’s not successful,” Erin said, “then this is most likely not only a suicide mission but one that involves the most painful death conceivable of all time.”
“That’s definitely a downside,” Abby said.
“Well, we don’t have much of a choice, do we?” Erin said.
They dashed out of the alley and retraced their steps to what had once been the front of a Manhattan landmark. There was virtually nothing left aboveground. The lobby floor had disappeared, revealing the cyclonic supernatural portal below. Awestruck and disoriented by the rotation, Erin stopped short, lost her balance on some rubble, and for a terrible second leaned out over the edge of the maelstrom. The power emanating from it withered her and made her knees go soft. Holtzmann grabbed the collar of her uniform and quickly pulled her back to safety.
“Okay,” Abby said, “fire them up!”
With their customary whine, the packs powered up, and all four Ghostbusters discharged their wands into the spinning portal. As Erin aimed her beam she saw Ghost Rowan down the street—a hundred stories high, he was hard to miss—and at the same moment he spotted her. Ghost Rowan started lumbering toward them like a maniac skyscraper.
“He’s coming!” Erin said. “Cross them up!”
He was already on the far edge of Times Square.
Erin entangled her beam with Abby’s, Holtzmann’s, and Patty’s. With a tremendous jolt four beams became one, and everything began to shake. Their arms. Their legs. Their heads. And the focal point of the beam shook as well, but straining, they managed to keep it near the center of the whirlpool. A fraction of a second later the portal lit up like Christmas in hell, but it didn’t reverse.
“The portal’s too strong,” Abby said as they quickly stood down. “We still don’t have enough power to reverse it.”
“How do we get more?” Erin said.
“We need to one-eighty the polarity with a high-concentration electron blast,” Holtzmann said. “We just need my negative-charge containment canisters.”
“Where are they?” Patty said.
At that instant ECTO-1, still driven by the hearse-jacking Slimer, sped around the corner and raced toward them. A gaudy female Slimer was hanging all over him. There were even more drunken ghosts hanging off the car, which swerved wildly.
“On top of our car,” Holtzmann said.
“Erin, remember how we used to flush cherry bombs down the toilet in high school?” Abby said.
“Just light ’em up and toss ’em in?”
As they watched the oncoming car, Slimer veered with one hand on the wheel and the other squeezing Slimer babe, this to avoid the looming portal. The unsmooth move sent the hearse into a four-wheel skid, which the drunken passengers cheered.
“Yep,” Abby said. “Let’s narrow the target.” She pointed with the business end of her proton wand, indicating a pair of streetlamps across the street from the portal. No other instruction was needed. They took aim and fired at the bases of the streetlights. When the beams hit the bottoms of the lamp poles, they exploded, and the streetlights crashed down across the road next to the portal.
Slimer was in the middle of a lip-lock with Slimette when the poles went down, blocking his intended route. He cut the wheel over to miss the collision without touching the brakes. Big mistake. His ghost eyes grew wide as he realized there was no way to avoid the portal.
The ECTO-1 zoomed up a ramplike piece of tilted cement on the edge of the abyss and went airborne. As the car nosed down toward the spinning eye of the portal, Slimer and his lady friend screamed a duet in the front seat.
“Aim for the silver canister!” Holtzmann said. “Now!”
They blasted their beams into the canister on the car’s roof an instant before it plummeted into the portal. Half in, half out—ba-boom! A blinding flash of light and a shockwave sent the Ghostbusters flying backward. Erin left her stomach on the ground while her body once again arced helplessly through empty space at high speed. This is really getting old, she thought, then hit pavement with a bone-jarring crash and slid out of control on her back.
Shakily, she regained her feet. When she looked up she saw the portal had stopped spinning and changed color. Then it started to turn slowly in the opposite direction, rapidly picking up speed. The ground beneath her rumbled, a howling wind rose up, and the portal started sucking everything incorporeal back toward it. The creepy balloon floats—Potato Nose Pinocchio, the Strong Man, Uncle Sam, Crazy Rabid Chihuahua—went in and vanished down the spinning drain. All the ghosts they had encountered—including Gertrude Aldridge—were sucked past them, windmilling, clawing, and screaming, back into the bottomless pit whence they came. The biggest, baddest ghost of all, Ghost Rowan was clinging desperately to the side of a skyscraper while the lesser spirits he had summoned were vacuumed up like ants.
“It’s working!” Erin said.
Buffeted by the supernatural wind, they watched the incredible number of released spirits tumble by. A creepy clown ghost they hadn’t seen before flew past their heads.
“Glad we didn’t have to deal with that one…” Patty said.
The clown suddenly reappeared above them, fighting wildly hand over hand to hang on and not be swept away. It got right up in Patty’s face, straining to keep its grip.
“Ahhhhh!” she cried.
The suction was too powerful; creepy clown let go, and like a leaf in a hurricane it zipped away so fast it was like it had suddenly disappeared. Ghost Ro
wan was hanging on to the building with both arms, fighting the force.
“He’s too strong,” Erin said. “We can’t close the portal with him still there!”
“I’ll get him in!” Abby said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll get him to chase me into it. Keep firing and hold it open.”
“That’s crazy. How would you make it back?”
Abby ran over and picked up the end of a cable from a winch on the bumper of an overturned fire truck.
“This thing runs pretty long,” she said as she pulled out the cable and tied the free end around her waist.
“That’s insane,” Erin said. “You can’t expect that to work!”
“I gotta try.”
“Abby, no—”
Abby’s expression softened. “Erin, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t done much else besides this. I’ve been wondering what’s on the other side my whole life. And I get a peek!” Looking away, she added, “I’m gonna come back! You just gotta pull the cable. Okay?”
Erin studied Abby’s face. She knew what this moment meant and was suddenly filled with regret.
“Listen, I—” What she wanted to say was, I’m sorry for all my shortcomings as a friend. And I’m grateful, so grateful, that you believed me way back then.
Abby shook her head. “Hey. No need to even say it. All right, let’s do this! Once I’m in there, you just pull me out!”
Abby gave Erin a reassuring smile. As she walked out to the center of the street, trailing her lifeline, Erin, Holtzmann, and Patty cut loose, firing their beams into the portal to hold it open.
“Well, this is a real choice I made,” Abby said. “Isn’t it.”
Erin wasn’t sure who she was talking to, but watched over her shoulder as Abby stepped out into the middle of the intersection, in plain view of Ghost Rowan, and started waving her arms. “Hey!” she hollered.
Ghost Rowan’s head swiveled and his eyes lit up. He saw her, all right.
“Yeah, you, you dumb idiot.”
He swung around the skyscraper like Jack’s giant on the beanstalk or supersized King Kong on the Empire State Building and faced her, glowering. What humanity he had once possessed was gone. Abby was staring into the face of evil incarnate … and evil incarnate was a big honkin’ cartoon ghost.