Ghostbusters - The Original Movie Novelizations Omnibus E-Book

Richard Mueller

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

For the first time in a beautiful new edition, this omnibus will collect together the original official novelizations of both Ghostbusters 1 and 2.Relive the classic Ghostbusters stories with the original movie novelizations reprinted for the first time since 1980s.When Dr. Peter Venkman and his colleagues are kicked out of their prestigious academic posts, they start a private practice as professional ghost-catchers. At first unsuccessful, their fortunes turn when the skeptical Dana Barrett apartment becomes the entryway for ghastly ghosts and goofy ghouls hellbent on terrorising New York City.***After waging a war on slime that cost New York City millions, the Ghostbusters find themselves out of business until an ancient tyrant, preparing a return to the Earthly domain, sets his sights on Dana Barrett's baby as the new home for his wicked soul!

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Ghostbusters

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Ghostbusters II

Dedication

I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

II

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

III

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

BILL MURRAY DAN AYKROYD SIGOURNEY WEAVER

THE SUPERNATURAL SPECTACULAR

COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS

AN IVAN REITMAN FILM

A BLACK RHINO/BERNIE BRILLSTEIN PRODUCTION“GHOSTBUSTERS”

ALSO STARRING HAROLD RAMIS RICK MORANIS

MUSIC BY ELMER BERNSTEIN

“GHOSTBUSTERS”PERFORMED BY RAY PARKER, JR.PRODUCTION DESIGN BY JOHN DE CUIRDIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY LASZLO KOVACS, A.S.C.VISUAL EFFECTS BY RICHARD EDLUND, A.S.C.EXECUTIVE PRODUCER BERNIE BRILLSTEINWRITTEN BY DAN AYKROYD AND HAROLD RAMIS

COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTSAN IVAN REITMAN FILM

BILL MURRAY DAN AYKROYD SIGOURNEY WEAVERHAROLD RAMIS RICK MORANIS

GHOSTBUSTERS II

ERNIE HUDSON ANNIE POTTS MUSIC BY RANDY EDELMANEXECUTIVE PRODUCERS BERNIE BRILLSTEINJOE MEDJUCK MICHAEL C. GROSSWRITTEN BY HAROLD RAMIS AND DAN AYKROYDPRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY IVAN REITMANA COLUMBIA PICTURE RELEASE

NOVELIZATIONS BY RICHARD MUELLER & ED NAHA

GHOSTBUSTERS WRITTEN BY DAN AYKROYD & HAROLD RAMISDIRECTED BY IVAN REITMAN

GHOSTBUSTERS II WRITTEN BY HAROLD RAMIS & DAN AYKROYDDIRECTED BY IVAN REITMAN

TITANBOOKS

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GHOSTBUSTERS:THE ORIGINAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS OMNIBUS

Print edition ISBN: 9781789094664

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789094770

Published By Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London. SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: April 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

GHOSTBUSTERS™

Copyright © 1985, 2020 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

GHOSTBUSTERS II™

Copyright © 1989, 2020 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

GHOSTBUSTERS

A NOVEL BY RICHARD MUELLER

BASED ON A MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN BY

DAN AYKROYD & HAROLD RAMIS

BASED ON THE CHARACTERS CREATED BY

DAN AYKROYD & HAROLD RAMIS

AN IVAN REITMAN FILM STARRING

BILL MURRAY, DAN AYKROYD,SIGOURNEY WEAVER, HAROLD RAMIS,RICK MORANIS

For Mom and Dad

1

How much there is in books that one does not want to know…

- JOHN BURROUGHS

It was a bright sunny day in early autumn, one of those days New Yorkers dote on, take pictures of, and point out to their country cousins as an example of the city at its best. The city after summer, after the pavements stop frying. The city not yet locked into the icy streets and frozen dog-wastes of winter. A picture-postcard day, a day to write home to Cincinnati or Scranton or Tullahoma about, and every New Yorker with an excuse was out of doors, clogging the sidewalks, slowing traffic, frightening the pigeons. Tour buses, hot dog vendors, street musicians, flower sellers; all had noticed an increase in trade. People were more cheerful. There was an excess of happy normalcy in the air.

The sun had risen that morning—as it did every morning—by bubbling up out of Long Island Sound, climbing over the Chrysler Building, and casting its warmth down on midtown Manhattan. By dusk it would be finished and sliding quickly toward the Jersey marshes. If it sent down its warmth anywhere else, New Yorkers were not aware of it, and cared less. It was here, and it felt good. That was enough.

Two men who particularly reveled in the sunlight that September day were Harlan Bojay and Robert Learned Coombs. Bojay had once been a jockey, until, at the age of twenty-four, he had inexplicably gained forty-five pounds and four inches in height, which finished forever his dreams of winning the Triple Crown. This had been some thirty-five years ago, and Bojay had been unemployed since. His partner, Coombs, a taciturn Oklahoma Indian, had come to New York to make his fortune as a singer. He had drive, ambition, daring, pizzazz; everything in fact but a voice. And so, Harlan Bojay and Robert Learned Coombs were now partners in leisure, philosophy, and life.

They sat beneath the great jaws of a stone lion guarding the Fifth Avenue entrance to the New York Public Library, passing a bottle of Chateau Plain-Wrap back and forth and discussing the nature of existence.

“Robert, my lad. Have you ever been in there?”

“In there? In the library? Sure, I guess so. Coupla times.”

“Wonderful things, books…”

“Right.”

“But dangerous, exceedingly dangerous. Lots of dangerous things in books…”

Coombs was nonplussed. Once again Bojay had run off with the thread of the conversation. “Dangerous? You mean like guys who cut the centers out and hide guns an’ dope an’ stuff inside?”

Bojay snorted in exasperation. “I’m speaking of ideas, you melonhead. Dangerous ideas, ideas and philosophies.” He took a long draw on the wine. “Dangerous ideas…”

* * *

Coincidentally, less than a hundred feet away, Alice Melvin was thinking exactly the same thing, for an entirely different reason. Like Bojay and Coombs, she, too, had had big dreams, and like them she had come to New York to make them come true, but fate had once again taken down the roadsigns and painted out the center line. Instead of becoming a fashion designer, she was, at the age of 29, working in the New York Public Library. Stout and plain, any sort of meaningful social life had eluded her, and she’d become an exile in her own mind and a prisoner of her fantasies. The last man who had gone home with her had left in the morning with her VCR, and she’d given up trying, grimly resigned to a life in the stacks, moving books about, gaining wisdom and greatness through osmosis, hoping to return in the next life as Lonnie Anderson. That is, until she had discovered the incunabula.

There were many locked and private collections of books at the main branch, and she’d had keys for some of them, but one day at the main desk she’d picked up the wrong set of keys by accident. At least she told herself it was an accident. She had then proceeded to try a few doors that had been closed to her. Behind one of them, in a collection of European popular incunabula, she had discovered a book of woodcuts depicting sexual positions and concepts she’d not dreamed existed. They were crude in comparison to better works of both the period and the subject, but they touched a chord deep in Alice Melvin.

On that sunny September day, deep in the stacks where no sunlight ever reaches, Alice Melvin was reshelving books, working her cart slowly along the aisles near the card catalogue. As she turned over each title, checking the numbers on the spine, she failed to notice the vaguest hint of an odor on the air, a sickly sweetness that seemed to waft at right angles to her path, drifting toward the endless rows of card files.

Alice’s mind was only half on her job. Part of her attention was fixed on the books themselves, their titles, the esthetic effect on her imagination. When the first of the card catalogue drawers began to slide soundlessly open, her mind was miles away, traveling hopefully through a series of renderings on Hellenic pottery themes.

Alice had just discovered a truly provocative illustration, when something landed in front of her on the cart. It was a catalogue card. Had it fallen from an upper shelf, or was it the work of some prankster? She turned angrily, then froze.

Dozens of drawers had opened in the long line of cabinets, and millions of carefully indexed cards were shooting into the air, caroming off the stacks, and settling and swirling in great blizzards to the floor. As she watched in horror, more drawers began to open, more cards exploded into the air.

Alice Melvin’s jaw worked convulsively; she turned, and ran. Not pranksters, her mind supplied. Definitely not pranksters.

At the end of the row she halted to catch her breath. Report, she realized. I must report this to someone. Carefully, tensely, she tiptoed down a parallel aisle, heading for the stairwell to the floor above, yet keeping as far from the card catalogue as possible. Through the ranked books she could still hear cards spewing into the air. Little piles had even drifted into the intersections, and she hurried past them, lest one of them reach out and grab her by the ankle. As she made her way along the last group of stacks, something crashed to the floor behind her and she leapt into the air.

No, I’m too young to have a heart attack, she thought. She turned, and saw a large book lying in the aisle. Another was wobbling on a shelf to her right. And as she watched, a third launched itself into the air and drifted across the space, neatly reshelving itself on the other stack. Then another, and another, and suddenly dozens of books were in motion, crossing back and forth across the aisle like rush-hour pedestrians. It was too much for her.

“No!” she cried. “I won’t do it again, I promise. I’ll never look at another dirty picture…”

And at that instant she turned the final corner and came face to face with the thing. They heard her scream all over the building.

2

There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.

- LAURENCE STERNE

Dr. Peter Venkman loved his work. He often said it to himself in precisely those words. “I love my work. I’m not always quite sure what it is, but I do love it. I love getting up in the morning. I love coming down to my lab in the basement of Weaver Hall. And I love getting paid by Columbia University for doing whatever it is that I do.” In fact, he often considered that a large part of what he did, perhaps the major part, consisted of just that: the search for identity, for purpose, for the meaning of just what it was that he did do. God, I love psychology. It’s so wonderfully… formless. You can get away with anything.

He smiled warmly at his two subjects. “Scott, Jennifer, are we ready?”

Jennifer favored him with a coy look and a quick anxious breath that made her breast rise and fall. She was convinced that Peter Venkman was a genius, or she soon would be. God, I love teaching, Venkman decided. He turned to Scott.

“Okay, partner?”

Scott Dickinson nodded nervously, his mouth pumping away on a quid of gum. He smiled crookedly at Jennifer, who froze him right out. Venkman pulled a card out of the Zener deck and held it up.

“All right, what is it?”

Scott set his jaw and concentrated, but Venkman could tell that part of his attention was on the copper cuff strapped to his wrist, its wires running to the control box on Venkman’s side of the table.

“A square?”

“Good guess,” Venkman replied, “but no.” He turned the card over. It was a star. “Nice try.” He pushed a button, sending a mild shock through the boy. Dickinson twitched, but smiled gamely.

The next card was a circle. “Okay, Jennifer. Just clear your mind and tell me what you see.” She did, chewing on one adorable finger.

“Is it a star?”

“It is a star! That’s great. You’re very good,” Venkman said enthusiastically, burying the card in the deck and extracting another. A diamond.

“Scott?”

Scott rubbed his wrist nervously. “Circle?”

“Close, but definitely wrong.”

This time Scott gave a little whimper. Venkman ran through a few more cards, letting Scott get only one right, watching the boy’s growing impatience, his fear of the electric punishment. He even inched the current up a little. The monkeys had been able to take it, it shouldn’t have any effect on a sophomore business major. And if it did, who would notice? Besides, it was time to wind up this phase anyway.

“Ready? What is it?”

Jennifer licked her lips excitedly. “Ummm, figure eight?”

Venkman buried the triangle. “Incredible! That’s five for five. You’re not cheating on me, are you?”

“No, Doctor. They’re just coming to me.”

“Well, you’re doing just great. Keep it up. I have faith in you.” He considered stroking her leg under the table with his foot, see how she’d react, then rejected it. Might get Scott’s leg by mistake. He smiled thinly at the young man.

Scott Dickinson’s own smile had slipped a few notches since they’d started. He let out a noisy breath, his tongue flapping on his uppers, and sniffed loudly.

“Nervous?”

“Yes. I don’t like this.”

“Hey, you’ll be fine. Only seventy-five more to go. What’s this one?” Wavy lines.

“Uh… two wavy lines?”

No, you don’t. Venkman buried the card. “Sorry. This just isn’t your day.”

This time the kid’s knees came up against the table and his gum popped out and skittered across the floor. “Hey! I’m getting real tired of this.”

“You volunteered, didn’t you? Aren’t we paying you for this?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were going to be giving me electric shocks. What are you trying to prove?”

Venkman shrugged softly. “I’m studying the effects of negative reinforcement on ESP ability.”

Dickinson leaned across the table and pulled off the electric cuff. “I’ll tell you the effect. It bugs me.

“Then my theory is correct.”

“Your theory is garbage. Keep the five bucks. I’ve had it!” He slammed the door hard enough to rattle the glass, leaving Venkman and Jennifer alone in the lab. Venkman shook his head sadly.

“That’s the kind of ignorant reaction you’re going to have to expect, Jennifer, from people jealous of your ability.”

Jennifer smiled bravely. “Do you think I have it, Dr. Venkman?”

Venkman jumped as something touched his ankle. Her foot. He favored her with his shyest, most boyish smile.

“Please, Peter.”

“Okay… Peter.”

He leaned forward across the table and took her hands in his. “Definitely. I think you may be a very gifted telepath.”

At that moment his arm came down on the button, sending a soft jolt through both of them. Jennifer jumped back, her sharp breath once again lifting her breasts. Ah, the wonders of modem science.

Suddenly the door to the lab flew open and Ray Stantz hurried in. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, just ran to the storage bins and began pulling out equipment. Venkman noticed that someone had once again defaced the door. Written in red—in what was supposed to pass for blood, no doubt—were the words VENKMANN BURN IN HELL. His name had been misspelled.

He waited a moment, then sighed.

“Ray. Excuse me, Ray?”

“Yeah, Peter…”

“Ray, I’m trying to have a session here.”

Stantz pulled his head out of the parts bin, his eyes wide and wild with excitement. “Sorry, you’ll have to drop everything. We got one.”

Jennifer was looking at Stantz as if he had just fallen off the surface of the moon. Good thing he didn’t bring Egon, Venkman thought. He touched her hand.

“Excuse me for a minute.”

Stantz was plugging battery grid analyzers together when Venkman grabbed him by the arm. “Ray, I’m right in the middle of something here. Can you come back in an hour?”

Stantz put a finger to his lips, then dragged him back behind the bins.

“Ray, I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Peter, at one-forty this afternoon at the main branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, ten people witnessed a free-roaming, vaporous, full-torso apparition. It blew books off shelves at twenty feet away, and scared the socks off some poor librarian.”

Venkman thought of beautiful Jennifer, and weighed the thought of her against the clear call of scientific exploration. “That’s great, Ray. I think you should get right down there and check it out. Let me know what happens.”

Stantz handed him a valence meter and slipped the strap of a heavy duty tape recorder over his head. “No, Peter. This is for real. Spengler went down there and took some PKE readings. Right off the scale. Buried the needle. We’re close this time, I can feel it.”

So can I, Venkman sighed, but it looks like I’m not going to feel it now. “Okay, just give me a second here. And take this stuff…”

He slipped up behind the girl, placed a hand on each shoulder, and smiled sadly. She looked up at him as if… as if… Oh, the things I do for science.

“I have to leave now, but if you’ve got the time I’d like you to come back this evening and do some more work with me, say…”

“Eight o’clock?”

Venkman laughed delightedly. “I was just going to say eight. You’re fantastic.”

“Until then…”

Fantastic.

* * *

The cab let them off in front of the library. Venkman made sure that Stantz paid the driver, then helped him bundle his equipment out onto the sidewalk.

“Help me carry this.”

“Sure, Ray.” Venkman picked up a plasmatometer about the size of an electric razor. “You got the rest of that?”

“There’s something happening, Peter, I’m sure of it,” Stantz said, struggling to his feet with a double armful of gear. The tape recorder around his neck made him look like a pack animal. “Spengler and I have charted every psychic occurrence in the tri-state area for the past two years. The graph we came up with definitely points to something big.”

“Ray, as your friend, I have to tell you that I think you’ve really gone around the bend on this ghost stuff. You’ve been running your butt off for two years, checking out every waterhead in the five boroughs who thinks he’s had an experience. And what have you seen?”

“What do you mean by seen?”

“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 strewn 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 book.

“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 see 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?”

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.