by Ed Naha
Stantz slammed the phone down.
"Who was that?" Egon asked.
"Some crank"—Stantz sighed—"looking for goat hooves. Come up with anything?"
Spengler cradled a book in his hands. "This one is interesting. Berlin, 1939. A flower cart took off by itself and rolled approximately half a kilometer over level ground. Three hundred eyewitnesses."
Ray Stantz took a toxic puff of his pipe. "Hmmmm. You might want to check the A.S.P.R., volume six, num ber three, 1968-1969, Renzacker and Buell, Duke University, mean averaging study on controlled psychokinetics ."
Spengler nodded enthusiastically. He had missed working with Ray. "Oh, yes. That's a good one."
The front door suddenly flew open, sending the tiny bone chimes above it clanking. Peter Venkman strode in, wiggling his eyebrows at Ray. "Oh, hello, perhaps you could help me. I'm looking for an aerosol love potion I could spray on a certain Penthouse Pet that would make her unconditionally submit to an un- usual personal request."
Stantz continued to brew his tea. "Oh, hiya, Pete."
Venkman walked up to the counter. "So, no goat hooves, huh?"
Stantz was stunned. "I knew that voice sounded familiar. What's up? How's it going?"
"Nowhere... fast," Venkman replied, staring at the piles of old books around him. "Why don't you lock up and buy me a sub?"
Ray was bad at being evasive, but he gave it his best shot "Uh, I can't. I'm kind of working on something."
Spengler chose that moment to step out from behind the stacks of books on the paranormal.
Venkman extended his arms in a mock embrace. "Egon!"
"Hello, Venkman." Spengler frowned.
Venkman trotted over to Egon and put an arm around the man's shoulders. "How've you been? What are you up to? You never call, Egon. Shame on you."
"You don't have a phone," Spengler replied logi cally.
"Oh, yeah, right." Venkman nodded. "Well, I'm ne gotiating with AT&T right now. So how's teaching? I bet those science chicks really dig that big cranium of yours, huh ?Ooooh."
"I think they're more interested in my epididymis," Spengler answered.
Venkman flinched. "I don't even want to know what that is."
Venkman strolled behind Ray's counter and, reaching into a mini-fridge, removed and popped open a beer. He began guzzling it.
Stantz was clearly nervous having Venkman in the store. "Oh, uh, your book came in, Venkman." He reached behind the counter and produced a large pa perback. "Magical Paths to Fortune and Power."
Venkman took the book and began rifling through the table of contents. "Hmm. Interesting material here. Money. More money. Even more money. See: Donald Trump."
He glanced at Stantz. "So what are you guys work- ing on?"
Stantz swallowed hard, flashing a nervous look at
Egon Spengler. "Umm, just checking something out for an old friend."
Venkman leaned over the counter. "Who?"
Stantz began to sweat. "Who? It's... just someone we know."
Stantz slumped down on the stool as Venkman stood above him, a twisted smile on his face. "Oh, Ray. I am heartbroken."
"Y-you are?" Stantz gulped.
Venkman shook his head from side to side. "Truly. I have this horrible, awful, terrible feeling that you, one of my oldest and closest friends, are hiding something from me."
Egon rolled his eyes. "Oh, brother."
Venkman, still smiling, reached down and grabbed Ray by the ears. He pulled Ray up off his perch by his earlobes. "Who is it, Ray? Who? Who? Who?"
"Aaaah!" Ray yelled, his ears now extended enough to qualify him for a free pass to Disneyland. "Nobody! I mean, somebody! I mean, I can't tell you!?"
"Who, Ray?" Venkman cooed, his hands still firmly attached to Ray's ears.
"Dana!" Ray blurted. "Dana Barrett.'"
Venkman let go of Ray's ears and smiled. Spengler stared at Stantz with disgust.
"Thank you, Ray." Venkman smiled. "You are one heck of a good friend... and I mean that from the heart."
7
Dana stood in the bedroom door and watched Maria, the young Hispanic woman who provided day-care service for her, feed little Oscar in the kitchen. Everything had seemed to go all right since Oscar's buggy decided to go rock and rolling across town, but still, Dana was worried.
When her front doorbell chimed, she instinctively knew that help was on the way.
"I'll get it, Maria," she said, rushing toward the door and flinging it open. Outside, in the hallway, were Ray and Egon.
"Ray," she said, hugging the tall Ghostbuster. "It's good to see you. Thanks for coming."
Stantz was slightly embarrassed. "No problem. Al ways glad to help ... and hug."
"Hi, Egon," she said, shaking the bespectacled scientist's hand. She let them into her tastefully fur nished apartment and was about to close the door when she heard a familiar voice.
"Hi, Dana."
Dana gulped, suddenly feeling as if she had a few hamsters doing treadmill tricks in her stomach.
Peter Venkman stepped into her doorway, wagging a "naughty, naughty" finger in the air. "I knew you'd come crawling back to me."
Dana found herself smiling, in spite of her shock. She was always both amazed and amused at how quickly Venkman's mouth formed words. She often wondered if his brain ever had the time to catch up. "Hello, Peter," she said with a sigh.
Venkman stepped inside the apartment. "You know, Dana. I'm very, very hurt that you didn't call me first. I'm still into all this stuff, you know. In fact, I'm considered an expert. Haven't you ever seen my TV show?"
"I have." Dana nodded coolly. "That's why I didn't call you first."
Venkman clutched his heart, as if mortally wounded by an arrow. He gazed at the ceiling. "I can see that you're still very bitter about us," he said.
Then he added with a shrug, "But in the interests of science I'm going to give it my best shot. Let's go to work, boys."
Stantz and Spengler rolled their eyes. It seemed just like old times ....nfortunately. The two former Ghost-busters produced their small PKE measuring devices, hand-held creations that looked a tad like electric razors with wings. They carefully passed the monitors over and around little Oscar before checking out the rest of the apartment for any residual psychokinetic energy.
Venkman, leaving the others to handle the hardcore science, thrust his hands in his pockets and de cided to give himself a tour of Dana's apartment.
He nodded as he checked out the furniture. Pretty nice. It sure beat the raunchy stuff he was using right now. He gazed meaningfully at Dana's plush couch. Up
until last week he had been using a series of packing crates to sit on. It must be nice not to get splinters sitting on a couch.
"So," he said casually, "what happened to Mr. Right? I hear he ditched you and the kid and moved to Europe."
"He didn't 'ditch' me," Dana said, bristling. "We had some ... problems. He got a good offer from a company in England and he took it."
Venkman held his smile. "He ditched you. You should've married me, you know."
"You never asked me," Dana shot back. "And every time I brought it up, you'd get drowsy and fall asleep."
Venkman seemed shocked. "Hey, men are very sen sitive, you know. We need to feel loved and desired too."
"Well"—Dana smiled thinly—"when you started introducing me as 'the old ball and chain,' that's when I left."
Venkman saw the logic in this. "I may have a few personal problems," he admitted, "but one thing I am is a total professional."
He marched meaningfully across the room to Spengler. Egon had little Oscar sprawled on the couch and was in the middle of taking a complete set of body and head measurements of the lad, using a tape measure and calipers. Venkman was intrigued.
"What are you going to do, Egon? Knit him a snowsuit?"
Spengler ignored the remark and handed Venkman a small jar. "I'd like to have a stool specimen," he muttered.
>
"Yeah, you would," Venkman agreed. "Is that for personal or professional reasons?"
Spengler shot Venkman a look that equaled the phrase zip it. Venkman withered into silence. He gazed
down at little Oscar. He had never seen a baby so close- up before. He tilted his head down at the boy. Was the kid smiling at him?
He picked up the baby in his hands. "Okay, kid. Up you go."
He held the giggling baby over his head and pressed his nose into the baby's belly, making the baby laugh even more.
"He's attacking!" Venkman cried. "Help! Please, somebody help me! Get him off! Quickly! He's gone completely berserk."
Ray and Egon sighed and smiled, continuing their readings of the house. Dana was mildly surprised at Venkman's latent daddy prowess.
"What do you think?" she asked him as Venkman continued to clown with the baby.
"There's no doubt about it," Venkman said, staring into the boy's cherubic face. "He's got his father's looks. The kid is ugly ... extremely ugly. And smelly."
Venkman grinned at the baby and jiggled him. The baby whooped with glee. "You stink, baby. It's just horrible. "You are the stinkiest baby I ever smelled."
He turned to Dana. "What's his name?"
"His name is Oscar."
Venkman flashed a sad smirk at Oscar. "You poor kid."
Dana finally lost her patience with Venkman's kid ding. "Peter, this is serious. I need to know if you think there's anything unusual about him."
Venkman held Oscar directly in front of him. "Hmm. Unusual? I don't know. I haven't had a lot of experience with babies."
"Sample?" Spengler reminded him from across the room.
"Right." Venkman nodded.
Venkman laid the baby down on the couch and attempted to remove its little sleeper. He wasn't sure whether to pull it down over the child's feet or up over its head. Oh, well, he figured. He had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.
Dana snatched the jar away from him. "I'll do it," she snapped.
"I'll supervise." He smiled.
"You'll do no such thing," she said.
"Right." Venkman nodded, seeing Oscar's diaper. "I'll do no such thing."
Venkman strolled into Oscar's nursery, where Ray Stantz was carefully monitoring every piece of furniture and every toy for traces of psychokinetic energy. Venk man sidled up to Ray. Ray rubbed his groundhog hair, puzzled.
"Well, Holmes," Venkman asked. "What do you think?"
"It's an interesting one, Pete. If anything was going on, it's totally subdued now."
Egon Spengler entered the room, similarly con fused.
. Venkman recognized the look. Intense concentra tion. "What now, brainiac?"
"I think we should see if we can find anything abnormal on the street," he said.
Venkman nodded. "Finding something abnormal on a New York street shouldn't be too hard."
Moments later Dana Barrett was leading Stantz, Spengler, and Venkman down East Seventy-seventh Street, carefully retracing the route Oscar's baby buggy had taken after it developed a mind of its own. Stantz and Spengler worked in silence, monitoring the PKE valences from the pavement and the buildings.
Venkman ignored them, chatting up Dana as he gazed up and down the street. "Brings back a lot of sweet memories, doesn't it?" he said, waxing nostalgic.
He pointed to several points of interest. "There's our old cash machine. And the dry cleaners we used to go to. And the old video store."
Venkman heaved a phony sob and wiped a nonex istent tear from his eye. "We really had some good times, didn't we?"
"We definitely had a moment or two," Dana said. She suddenly stopped at the intersection and pointed to the middle of the street. "That's where the buggy stopped."
Venkman stared at the street. "Okay. Let's take a look."
Venkman stepped out into moving traffic, ignoring the don't walk sign and the cars whizzing around him. He held up his arms and began rerouting traffic like a cop would.
"Okay, buddy," he said sternly. "Slow it down. And you? Back it up. Aha! Caught you. Simon didn't say 'Back it up.'"
He motioned for Dana, Stantz, and Spengler to join him in the middle of the street. "Okay, kids. It's safe to cross now."
Stantz was the first to arrive. "Is this the spot?"
Dana extended a finger. "A little to the left."
Stantz moved his PKE monitor slightly.
"Right there!" Dana exclaimed. "That's where it stopped."
Stantz read the meter. "Nothing," he said, puzzled. "Not a trace."
Spengler lapsed into his more intense concentra tion mode. "Why don't we try the Giga meter?"
"What's that?" Venkman blinked.
Traffic was at a standstill for blocks now. Venkman ignored the honking cars and screaming drivers.
"Egon and I have been working on a gauge to measure psychomagnetheric energy in GEVs," Stantz explained. "Giga electron volts."
"That's a thousand million electron volts," Spengler clarified.
Venkman nodded sagely. "I knew that."
Spengler reached into his small carrying bag and removed the small machine he had demonstrated for Dana earlier in his lab. He passed the small device over the spot in the street where little Oscar's buggy had come to a sudden stop. Egon's eyes grew wide as the machine began to click wildly, and the GEV indicator shot into the red zone and stuck there.
Stantz gazed over Egon's shoulder, gaping. "I think we hit the honey pot, folks. There's something brewing under the street."
Dana gulped, glancing at Venkman. "Peter," she said, her voice trembling. "Do you think maybe I have some genetic problems or something that makes me vulnerable to these supernatural things?"
Venkman put a reassuring arm around her shoul ders. "You mean like the time you got possessed and turned into a monster terror dog? Naaaah. Not a chance. Total coincidence."
He smiled at Stantz and Spengler. "Am I right?"
Stantz and Spengler looked first at each other, and then at Venkman. They were clearly not buying the coincidence theory.
"I said," Venkman repeated, " 'Am I right?' "
"Oh, yeah," Stantz nodded.
"Sure," Spengler agreed.
Venkman led Dana, Spengler, and Stantz back to the curb. He faced the frozen traffic behind him. "Gentle men!" he called. "Start your engines."
Within seconds, traffic on East Seventy-seventh Street was as frantic as usual. The New York street once again looked perfectly normal ... for now.
8
The late-afternoon sun shed an orange glow on the Manhattan Museum of Art as dusk began to fall. Cheerful security guards ushered the last guests out of the vast museum complex while other workers shut the museum's huge glass doors for the day.
In the back of the museum, in the restoration studio, wiry Janosz Poha didn't notice the time.
He continued to work on the gigantic painting of Vigo, one of the cruelest dictators in the history of the Western world. He was disturbed momentarily by Rudy, one of the museum's security guards. Rudy was a third-generation New Yorker, an Irishman whose father and grandfather had been cops. He'd always loved art, so he managed to combine his two callings by becoming an "art cop."
Rudy, making his early-evening rounds, looked up as Janosz worked carefully on restoring the ugly paint ing. Rudy didn't exactly know art, but he knew what gave him the willies. That painting gave him the willies.
"Oh, hello, Mr. Poha." Rudy smiled. "You working late today?"
Poha attempted a carefree grin. It looked as if he had just backed into a live wire. "Huh? Oh, yes, Rudy. I'm working on a very important painting."
Rudy looked at the canvas. Spook-house stuff, if you asked him. Still, Poha was supposed to be a pretty bright young guy. "Just be sure to sign out when you leave," he said, turning his back on the portrait of the mighty warrior.
Janosz went back to his restoration work. High above him, the eyes of Vigo of Carpathia slowly flickered to life. Vigo stared
down at the tiny mortal working far below his eyes. An evil grin twisted across his lips.
Janosz, unaware that he was being watched, once more raised his brush to the canvas. He screamed in terror as a powerful bolt of blood-red, crackling energy hit the brush full blast. The bolt of power shot through the brush and wormed its way through Janosz's body, forcing the confused artist to his knees.
Groggy from the sudden charge, Janosz gazed up at the visage of Vigo.
He rubbed his eyes in disbelief.
The entire painting seemed to come alive.
Vigo slowly lowered his massive head and sneered at the cowering collection of flesh and blood trembling before him. "I am Vigo," he announced in a voice that resonated like thunder, "the Scourge of Carpathia, the Sorrow of Moldavia. I, Vigo, command you."
Janosz was mesmerized. "Command me, Lord," he whispered.
Vigo smiled at his newfound servant. "On a moun tain of skulls in a castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood. Twenty thousand corpses swung from my walls and parapets, and the rivers ran with tears."
Janosz nodded dumbly. Yes, that sounded like Vigo's hometown, all right.
"By the power of the Book of Gombots," Vigo thundered, "what was will be, what is will be no more! Past and future, now and ever, my time is near. Now is the season of evil. Find me a child that I may live again!"
Two jagged streams of crimson energy emerged from Vigo's baleful eyes and swirled down toward hap less Janosz. Janosz tried to scream but could not. He tried to move but could not. The bolts of energy smashed into Janosz's eyes, sending the cowering man sinking farther down onto the floor.
His consciousness swam.
He found himself getting to his feet.
He stared at the painting of Vigo. It was quiet now. Janosz clenched his teeth. He felt new confidence. New power. He had been given a command.
He knew what to do.
He knew how to make Vigo happy.
He knew how to make Vigo powerful.
And if he was a very good servant, perhaps he, too, would share in Vigo's glory.