by Ed Naha
Ghostbusters II
Ed Naha
Ed Naha
Ghostbusters II
"The universe is full of
magical things patiently
waiting for our wits to
grow sharper."
— EDEN PHILLPOTTS
"Spengler, are you serious
about actually catching
a ghost?"
— DR. PETER VENKMAN
1
A bright winter sun blazed down onto the streets of Manhattan as Dana Barrett struggled with two sagging bags of groceries while at the same time pushing a baby carriage.
Long-armed and lithe in figure, Dana was able to balance the bags in her arms while still maneuvering the carriage in a straight line.
Pausing for a moment, she took a deep breath of crisp air. She loved New York. It was the city's air of excitement, of life that appealed to her. As she contin ued walking, she thought about how her life had changed in the last four years. How many women could say that they'd been a struggling cellist, been attacked by a devilishly possessed chair, been transformed into an ancient demon, and, finally, become a mother of a bright-eyed baby named Oscar—all in the few years since she'd moved to the Big Apple?
Not many, she figured. At least not many who were allowed to roam the streets without a straitjacket.
Dana wheeled her baby up to the front of her
building on East Seventy-seventh Street. At curbside, a car was being hoisted up by a city tow truck while the driver screamed, red-faced, at the parking-enforcement officer. The man was threatening to do something to the cop that dogs usually reserved for hydrants.
Dana clutched the grocery bags, trying desperately to dig her keys out of her purse.
Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed that Frank, her building's superintendent, was leaning against a wall, pretending not to notice Dana's dilemma. Typical, she thought. Frank was the sort of fellow who lived in the future. If something needed repairing, he'd put it off until tomorrow, or next week, or, if it was really important, next month.
Dana turned and smiled sweetly at Frank. "Frank, do you think you could give me a hand with these bags?"
The unshaven, middle-aged man shrugged. "I'm not a doorman, Miss Barrett. I'm a building superintendent."
Dana resisted the temptation to hurl a few choice canned goods at Frank's head. "You're also a human being, Frank."
Frank considered this point. Yup, he was. Reluc tantly he walked toward Dana. "Okay. Okay. It's not my job, but what the heck. I'll do you a big favor." With a grunt he took the sagging grocery bags out of Dana's arms.
"Thank you, Frank, you're a prince."
"Better." Frank grinned. "I'm a super,"
Dana set the wheel brakes on the baby carriage and rummaged through her purse. "I'll get the hang of all this eventually," she muttered.
Frank leaned over the baby buggy and began mak ing funny faces at little Oscar. "Hiya, Oscar. What do you say, slugger?"
Oscar regarded the crazy person above him with a great deal of disinterest. The baby couldn't figure out why most adults acted goofy when they were around him. Little Oscar sighed and concentrated on his paci fier.
Frank didn't notice. "That's a good-looking kid you got there, Ms. Barrett."
Dana found her keys at the very bottom of her purse. Typical. "Thank you, Frank."
Dana turned to her superintendent. "Oh, and are you ever going to fix the radiator in my bedroom? I asked you last week."
Frank blinked in astonishment. "Didn't I do it?"
Dana flashed him a patented grin. "No, you didn't."
"Okay," Frank said, still holding the soggy bags. "That's no problem."
"That's exactly what you said last week."
Frank thought hard about this. "Phew! Deja vu."
While Dana and Frank stared at each other, little Oscar's baby carriage began to shake and rock, as if being cradled by unseen hands.
The wheel brakes unlocked themselves.
Dana, still smiling stoically at Frank, reached for Oscar's carriage. "You wouldn't mind carrying those bags upstairs, would you, Frank?"
"Well... actually ..." Frank began.
As Dana extended her hand for the carriage, the carriage moved forward, just out of her reach. Dana glanced at the carriage suspiciously, as it came to a stop two feet before her.
She walked over to the buggy and tried to grab it again. The buggy shook and shot out of Dana's reach. This time it didn't rumble to a halt. It rolled merrily down the block, little Oscar inside, clapping and chirping with glee. This was fast. This was fun.
Dana fought back the urge to emit a shriek. She continued to plunge forward through the crowds of pedestrians, shambling about the streets of Manhattan.
Behind her, a befuddled Frank still stood, holding the leaking grocery bags. "Uh..." he considered. "Ms. Barrett? What should I do with these bags?"
Dana decided not to tell him what to do with the bags. She sprinted after the runaway carriage.
Little Oscar raised a tiny fist as his baby buggy zoomed down the Manhattan street.
The baby giggled happily, watching the Upper East Side zip by.
Dana jogged, awestruck, after the baby carriage.
She shouted to everybody, anybody, for help. "Please," she screamed. "Please help my baby! Please help him!"
Several passersby tried to reach out and stop the runaway buggy. Every time they did so, the carriage deftly swerved out of the way, leaving the would-be rescuers stunned in its wake.
Little Oscar continued to giggle as the baby car riage picked up speed and zigzagged like an Indy 500 race car.
Dana continued to gallop forward. The baby buggy seemed to have a life of its own. Dana yelled for help. One burly man tried to tackle the baby carriage and found himself being lifted and thrown over it by some unseen force.
In the speeding baby buggy, baby Oscar clapped his hands with glee. Zoooooom, he managed to gurgle. Zooooooom.
The buggy tilted and whirled past everyone on the street.
The buggy headed for a crosswalk.
Cars, trucks, and buses zipped through the congested intersection ahead.
Dana watched in horror as a city bus glided across Seventy-seventh Street. Effortlessly the baby buggy sailed over the curb and into the intersection.
The carriage was speeding toward the front of the bus.
Dana took a deep breath and, tilting her head down, sent her long legs pumping toward the intersection like an Olympic sprinter.
Inside, baby Oscar watched in fascination as the large vehicle zeroed in on the buggy.
The bus driver, spotting the runaway carriage, twisted the steering wheel before him frantically.
The baby carriage came to a dead stop in the middle of the street.
The bus driver, still pawing the wheel, managed to send the vehicle swerving around little Oscar, missing him by inches.
Car horns blared and brakes screeched as Dana leapt into the busy intersection, quickly snatching Oscar out of the buggy.
She held the baby tightly in her arms and stared at the baby carriage.
The carriage seemed normal—now.
It stood in the center of the intersection, immobile.
To the casual passerby it appeared to be just another carriage.
Dana backed away from the buggy, Oscar in her arms.
She knew better.
2
A slim, elegant 1959 ambulance tooled up Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. On the side of the vehicle was painted a portrait of a ghost, surrounded by a red circle with a crimson slash drawn through it. "No Ghosts."
The vehicle bore the license plate ECTO-1 and was, in fact, the Ghostbusters' emergency vehicle.
/>
Inside Ecto-1, a very tired Ray Stantz helmed the steering wheel while a very bored Winston Zeddemore rode shotgun. Both wore their official Ghostbusters jumpsuits, and both were ready for trouble.
Stantz guided the vehicle around potholes. A tall, baby-faced man with a haircut that could only be de scribed as New Wave groundhog, Stantz rubbed his eyes occasionally, trying to get the red out.
As a light turned green ahead, he gave Ecto-1 the gas. The car produced a sound that sounded like a yak in a blender.
Big, burly, and black, Winston Zeddemore slid
deeper into his seat. He was beginning to hate this work. A lot.
"How many did she say there were?" Winston asked.
Stantz peered into the bus-fume-laced street before him. "Fourteen of them," he said in a monotone. "About three and a half to four feet high."
Winston heaved a sigh. "I don't think I can take this anymore, man. All the crying and the biting! The screaming and the fighting! It's starting to get to me, Ray."
Stantz nodded grimly. "I know it's rough, Winston, but somebody's got to do it. People are counting on us. Who else are they going to call... Bozo the clown?"
A thin smile played across Stantz's lips. "I ... don't ... think ... so."
Stantz guided the car into a parking space before a carefully restored old brownstone. Gritting his teeth, he marched out of Ecto-1 and strode to the back of the refurbished ambulance. He popped open the back hatch and produced two large, bulky proton packs attached to neutrona wands—ghostbusting guns hooked up to power-generating backpacks.
Winston and Stantz, grim-faced, shouldered their weapons in place and marched up to the building, their eyes darting this way and that.
They stopped before the front door. Stantz pressed a buzzer. "Who is it?" a female voice squawked over the intercom. "Ghostbusters," Stantz said coolly. "We have a job to do here."
The woman sighed over the intercom. In the background could be heard wailing and screeching voices.
"I'll say," the woman said. "Come on in. It's Apart ment 1-B."
Stantz and Winston exchanged determined looks as
they entered the building and walked down a dimly lit, cavernous hallway, proton packs strapped firmly in place.
"This could be a rough one," Stantz stated.
"I know it," Winston agreed. "I heard."
They paused before the door.
"This is it," Stantz declared.
Winston nodded. "This is it."
Stantz made a move to reach for the knocker on the door. Before he had a chance to grasp it, the door was flung open. A birdlike woman with blue-gray hair and what appeared to be makeup left over from an Earl Scheib paint job greeted them nervously.
"They're in the back!" she gasped. "I hope you can handle them. It's been like a nightmare!"
Stantz and Winston exchanged knowing glances. Winston nodded and his jaw tightened. "We'll do our best, ma'am."
"Oh, thank you," the woman gushed. "They're right in here."
The tiny woman led the two Ghostbusters through an expensively furnished home. She stopped in front of a pair of opened French doors, leading into a vast living room.
Ray Stantz and Winston paused before the door. They carefully adjusted their equipment.
"Ready?" Stantz asked, sweat trickling down his forehead.
"I'm ready," Winston declared, straightening him self up to his full six-feet-plus height.
"Let's do it!" Stantz whispered.
The two men strode past the French doors and marched into the living room.
"Oh, my God!" Winston said.
"It's worse than I thought!" Stantz gulped.
Over a dozen children—short, birthday-cake- stained, and all between the ages of seven and ten— descended upon the two helpless men.
"Ghostbusters!" they screeched.
"Yeah!" others shouted.
Stantz glanced around the room. Tables were set with party favors, dripping with left-over ice cream and birthday cake. The place was scattered with discarded toys and games. Several exhausted parents were strewn across sofas. They glanced at Stantz and Winston as they entered the room. They made eye contact. Their eyes said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
Winston winked at the parents and faced the horde of ice-cream- and cake-stained short people before him. "How you doin', kids?" he asked.
A freckle-faced kid with a big belly glared at Win ston. "I thought we were having He-Man."
To stress the point, the mean little kid brought his right leg way back and kicked Stantz in the shin. Stantz smiled and, after making sure no parents were watching, reached down and grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt. He smiled at the little boy. "I'll be watching you," he growled. "Remember that."
He dropped the kid back onto the floor and turned to Winston with a wink. "Song?"
Winston reached into his utility belt and switched on a tiny tape recorder, which began belting out the Ghostbusters' theme song. Stantz and Winston began gyrating, singing, and bopping to the music.
Who you gonna call?" they crooned.
"He-Man," the kids replied.
Stantz and Winston glanced at each other, not breaking stride.
"It's gonna be one of those gigs," Winston hissed.
"Keep singing, we need the money," Stantz said, breaking out into the Twist.
A small eternity later, Stantz found himself sur rounded by drippy-nosed children. He was trying to keep them amused by recounting the Ghostbusters' finest hour. "So," he continued, "we get up to the very top of the building, and yep, sure enough, there was a huge staircase with those two nasty terror dogs I told you about. And guess what?"
"They were guarding the entrance," the wise-guy kid said with a sigh.
Stantz tried not to strangle the little beastie. "Exactly." He smiled. "They were guarding the entrance. Well, at this point I had to take command, so I turned to the boys and I said, 'Okay, 'Busters, this is it. Fire up your throwers and let's toast that sucker!' "
The mean little kid wasn't impressed. "My dad says you're full of crap."
Stantz's eyes almost left his head. "Well, a lot of people have trouble believing in the paranormal," he offered.
"Naah," the kid continued, "that's not it. He says you're full of crap and that's why you went out of business."
Stantz flashed a smile of the sort usually used by bodybuilders hiding a groin injury. "He does, eh? I see."
Stantz snapped his fingers, getting up from the crowd of children. "Hey! How about some science? Did you ever see a hard-boiled egg get sucked through the mouth of a Coke bottle?"
The kids nodded in unison. "Yeah," they said.
"A lot," the mean little kid added.
Winston sat in a corner and shook his head. "Oh, man," he said, then sighed.
After Stantz had pummeled every Mr. Wizard trick
into the carpet, the weary Ghostbusters packed up their gear and trudged out of the building.
Stantz popped open Ecto-1's back hatch and tossed his equipment inside. Winston neatly knuckle-balled his into the auto.
"That's it, Ray," he swore. "I've had it. No more parties. I'm tired of taking abuse from overprivileged nine-year-olds."
"Come on, Winston," Stantz wheedled, trying to look on the bright side of things. "We can't quit now. The holidays are coming up! It's our best season!"
The two men got into the car. Stantz attempted to get Ecto-1 moving. He cranked the ignition key. The car made a sound that resembled an elephant in heat. The engine refused to turn over. Winston gazed out of the windshield at nothing in particular.
"Give it up, Ray. You're living in the past. Ghostbust ers doesn't exist anymore. In a year these kids won't even remember who we are."
Stantz plowed a hand through his groundhog hairdo before cranking the engine again. Snork! the engine declared before dying. "Ungrateful little yuppie larvae," Stantz muttered. "After all we did for this city!"
Winston offered a dry
cackle. "Yeah, what did we do, Ray? The last real job we had, we bubbled up a hundred-foot marshmallow man and blew the top three floors off an uptown high rise."
A dreamy smile played across Stantz's face. "Yeah, but what a ride. You can't make a hamburger without chopping up a cow."
Stantz turned the ignition key again. Ecto-1's engine roared to life. Then it began to grind its gears. Then, apparently, it began playing a game of last tag with itself. Stantz couldn't believe his ears as, clunkity-clunk- clunk, the engine began tossing off twisted little bits of
itself onto the street beneath it. A massive cloud of black smoke mushroomed from the back of the car. Stantz gaped at the dashboard as every "danger" indicator lit up and Ecto-1 sputtered, shuddered, spat, and died.
Winston gave him an I-told-you-so look.
Ray Stantz considered the situation and reacted in an adult manner. He began to bang his forehead onto the steering wheel.
"You're going to hurt yourself, Ray," Winston offered.
"I know," Stantz said, slamming his forehead, again and again, onto the wheel.
"Want me to call Triple A?" Winston asked.
"Either that or a brain surgeon," Stantz replied.
Winston eased himself out of Ecto-1. "I'll see who answers first."
3
Legend has it that even as a child, Peter Venkman was incapable of a sincere smile. The farthest he could go was a heartfelt smirk. In high school he was voted Most Likely to Become a Used-car Salesman or a Game-show Host. Venkman never cared. He knew he had it within himself to achieve greatness. And if he didn't find it within himself, he knew he could probably pick it up somewhere at a discount.
He'd been great once. A bona fide Ghostbuster.
Now, the fellow with the twenty-four-hour smirk, the cocky attitude, and hair that looked like it had been dried by a Mixmaster sat in the tiny TV studio given to him by WKRR, Channel 10, in New York.
He sat passively in his host's seat, gazing out on an audience filled with polyester leisure suits and dresses that resembled designs lifted from Omar the tent maker.