Work Text:
First published in Our Favorite Things 21 (2005)
“So where did they go?” Peter asked between puffs of breath. I didn’t look over but I knew exactly what I’d see: Peter looking up from where he stood bent over, propping his hands on his knees, his eyes aglow with the chase. Perhaps Ray was the only one who was so vocal about it, but the fact is we all enjoy the hunt.
“Yeah, Egon, how come they keep disappearing like that?” That was Winston, practical as always, scanning the room as he asked.
I didn’t answer, engrossed in sorting out the readings I was getting. Besides, Ray was the one carrying the PKE meter. I was using the new coulombmeter I’d just finished, and the measurements I was getting were fascinating. There had to be a paper in the electrical charge of ectoplasmic—
“Looks like they just went through the ceiling. I think I saw some stairs back there.” Ray’s voice.
“Right, Ray, I’m gonna go lug this pack up a couple of flights of rickety stairs just so the ghosts can come back down again the easy way. For all we know, this is their version of the Ghostbusters Exercise Program.”
I hid a smile.
“Well, gee, Peter, would you rather wait until they come back down?” Ray sounded disappointed, I noted as I switched to record mode.
“Yes,” Winston and Peter said in chorus, as if they’d rehearsed it.
A spike in the readings was the first sign I had of trouble, almost like a shadow of an extra reading, and even as I frowned at the meter, trying to discern the problem, there was a pop of sound inside the meter and a quiet sizzle. Not good.
Peter seemed to appear at my elbow, although how he’d noticed anything, I had no idea. A second later he’d grabbed the meter out of my hand and threw—threw!—it halfway across the room into a pile of tarpaulins.
I glowered at him. He, of course, took no notice. “Blowing up machines is fine, Egon. Blowing up one of us is a no-no.” He shook his finger at me as a mother would at a child, although my mother had never been so patronizing. I pressed my lips together, trying not to lose my temper.
“Peter—” I ground out, already failing.
Another pop, this one loud enough that I could hear it from where I stood, and then my brand-new meter released a shower of sparks and quietly died on its tarp bed. I stared in surprise first at it, then at Peter. He was still smiling, but it was no longer smug, just sympathetic. And, in his eyes, a quickly fading and well-masked moment of worry. For me.
“You’ll build a better one next time, Spengs,” Peter reassured me warmly, and then moved off to confer with Winston about what to do next.
My inchoate flare of temper dissipated. Peter could do that to me effortlessly, and I’d never figured out how.
Ray sidled up, his face frank with empathy. “Aw, Egon, I’m sorry. It looked like maybe the wiring got overloaded—I bet you were getting stronger readings than you’d expected.”
My enthusiasm returned, as it couldn’t help but do in Ray’s presence. “Indeed. The red ghost was giving off considerably positive electrical charge.”
“We can take another look at the specs tonight—I bet we can fix it so that it can handle higher feedback.”
I nodded. “I’m certain we can, Ray, thank—”
With a sudden, hair-raising screech, the reasons for our presence there, a trio of multi-colored ghosts, swooped down through the ceiling and dove for us.
I forgot about the meter and grabbed for my thrower. The chase was on again.
And none of us noticed the wisp of color and form that had been hovering in the far corner and then faded out of sight.
As soon as we’d showered—minimal affairs for the rest of us but considerable for Peter, who had three hues of slime to wash out of his hair and clothes—Ray and I quickly regrouped in the lab to take apart the coulombmeter and attempt to fix it. Peter has often said we lose all track of time and the outside world when engaged on a project thus, but he’s mistaken. I’m quite aware of the passing of time, I merely am unconcerned. It was Peter’s turn to cook that evening, anyway, and my laundry duty could wait until the meter was fixed, so there was no reason not to concentrate on the meter. Besides, Peter has a tendency not to see the scientific possibilities of such equipment, interested mostly in any possible monetary gain from them. On the way home, I’d casually mentioned a few figures for patent and research grant potentials, and that was all it took. Neither Peter nor Winston bothered us all afternoon.
Not until dinnertime, which I’d been smelling for the last twenty minutes and both Ray’s and my stomach were already hungrily and loudly responding to. It’s odd—in school I often worked through meals and never even realized it nor missed them. Now…well, I doubt my appetite had changed. There were other incentives, though: friends who came and dragged you downstairs if you waited too long, lively conversations around the table, the companionship of sharing a meal. It is amazing what such seeming distractions can do to enhance one’s enjoyment of food. It makes even Ray’s questionable cooking almost enjoyable.
“Egon, Ray, you’ve got one minute to get down here before I’m coming up after you two!”
It was Peter’s second call, and Ray and I exchanged an amused look before making an exaggerated rush for the door. We both knew how…creative Peter could be in getting someone’s attention. Last time, it had involved Slimer, a bag of marshmallows, and a considerable amount of motor oil. I had to shower before dinner that night.
There was no need for threatening this evening, though; the smell from the kitchen was remarkably enticing in itself. Beef stroganoff, I had already determined before reaching the dining room table, where Winston sat quietly reading and waiting for us while Peter puttered in the kitchen. We’d just taken our seats when he reappeared with the bowl of noodles piled high with beef and sauce. Carbohydrate heaven.
“So, how’s the meter going, guys?” Winston asked as we all served ourselves.
“Pretty good—we just have to replace some of the wiring and reroute a few circuits. I think the electrical charge was just too much for it,” Ray explained from next to me.
“And this is going to help us on busts…how, Egon?” Peter asked around a mouthful of food. Typical.
“The more we know about the structure and properties of ghosts, Peter,” I said patiently, “the better we can design our equipment to detect and trap them. Within the next few years I would like to miniaturize both the packs and the traps for easier transport and use, and this is one more step in that direction.” I finally took the bite that had sat on the fork tantalizingly close to my mouth while I talked. It was as good as it smelled, creamy and savory.
“Well, I’m all for smaller packs—every time we’re running up and down steps, I’m sore the next day.”
“You’re just getting old, Pete,” Winston teased with a grin.
“Hey, let’s not forget who the old man is at the table here,” Peter shot back gamely.
“Yeah, I wasn’t even born yet when—”
“Don’t say it, Ray,” Winston pointed his fork threateningly.
Ray put up his hands in a show of innocence, but I swallowed a smile at the mischief and joy that sparkled in his eyes. And caught Peter’s gaze just as he glanced away from Ray, having seen the same. My oldest friend gave me a fond smile and a wink before returning his attention to his food.
This was happiness, it struck me as it sometimes did, usually during these mundane everyday moments. Naturally, there is great joy in a new discovery, in accomplishments and awards, and I’d known those, too. But this simple pleasure of sharing a meal with my closest friends, listening to their banter, knowing I belonged there—it beat them all.
I would hang on to that memory with all my strength during what those next days brought.
“Down, Egon!”
I obeyed Winston’s command instinctively, dropping to the floor while a sizeable mass whistled through the air above me. Ghosts striking you didn’t necessarily hurt, but they did leave you thoroughly chilled and slimed, and the bigger ones like this could knock you over. I scrambled back to my feet and waved a hand quickly at Winston, both thanks and reassurance that I was well.
The bust was a standard one, several troublesome Class Fives in a department store. Not particularly dangerous nor demanding, except that there were five of them and only four of us, and they did seem to like the odds. Peter was over in Sporting Goods trying to find a ghost that liked to hide, while Winston was in the nearby Gardening department shooting, it sounded to me, more trash cans than ghosts. Ray was still nearby, stalking the remaining trio with me through the Outerwear section, but if we didn’t manage to herd them together soon, we’d be down to one-on-one, which isn’t enough for most Class Fives.
“Gooper heading your way,” Peter called from behind us, and I turned just enough to track his arriving ghost, thankfully heading toward Ray’s and my three. Perhaps we would be able to collect them, after all.
Ray’s beam finally pinned a ghost that shot up from behind a rack of coats, and I quickly added my thrower to his. Peter snagged one rising up from a large container of hats at the same time, and the trap sucked them both in at once. Finally. I dragged the back of my arm over my perspiring forehead and then took a glance at the PKE meter. Two down, three to go, but it looked like even Winston’s was finally converging on us.
“What readings are you getting?” I called over to Ray, who was also squinting at the meter he held, our revised coulombmeter. I saw him adjust the tuning knob and frown.
“A lot of positive charge—I think some of it even got stronger when they got sucked into the trap.”
My thoughts immediately took off. Stronger when they were in the traps—feeding off the power of the trap, maybe? Had we ever measured the strength and readings of a ghost just before and just entering a trap? Perhaps we could devise some method of providing negative charge—
“Not now, Egon,” Peter yelled to me from the left, jarring me off that fascinating path. Of course, the bust. New findings, regrettably, would have to wait, and I fired at the ghost that darted into the aisle in front of us, missing.
“Heeeere’s Johnny,” Winston called, joining us from the right, his ghost swooping in to join its confederates as they dove back behind a display of scarves and gloves.
“Gloves! Why do they put this stuff out now, anyway—Fall just started. We haven’t even had a frost yet.” Peter with his usual non sequiturs. “Egon—”
“I’ve got it, Peter,” I called, pinning the ghost just as it flew toward me. Two other beams joined mine a fraction of a second later, and then only two ghosts remained. “Another strengthening reading?” I asked Ray, who quickly snatched up the meter again to check.
“Not as much. I guess it’s not the same with all ghosts.”
“Hey, Spengs, you sure that gizmo’s safe now? Last time it almost fried your hands.” Peter dove to his stomach as two ghosts converged where he’d been standing, and Winston and I snagged them together between our beams. Peter flipped over on his back and added his from where he lay on the floor.
I would have given him a disapproving frown if he’d been free to see it. “Of course I am, Peter. I would hardly let Ray use it if I hadn’t made certain.” In fact, I’d wanted to be the one to carry it, especially with the readings Ray was getting, but he’d been so fascinated by the findings, I’d found myself offering to let him take it this bust.
Slowly, fighting our beams the whole way, the two remaining ghosts slid into the trap.
The only sound for a moment was our heavy breathing.
“Hey, next time we do this, let’s try to get the goopers over into Women’s Lingerie,” Peter panted.
Winston snorted, and I was about to retort when my meter flickered. A reading flared for a moment, faded, flared again and then disappeared. I frowned, tweaking the controls. The PKE version of that same shadow overlay as before? But there was nothing now.
And then the coulombmeter in Ray’s hand shrieked.
There is that moment when you know you are on the brink of calamity, and yet there is nothing to be done about it, no time to yank yourself back, you just stare into it with horrifying certainty and wait for it to pull you in. I stood there on that precipice for a heartbeat of a moment.
And then fell.
Peter and Winston saw it, too, but tried anyway, Peter yelling something, Winston darting toward Ray. But I knew they would be too late, just as I knew what would happen.
There was a spray of sparks, just long enough for Ray to exclaim, and then the white concussion of an explosion, battering me to the floor.
Winston was close enough to be knocked down, as well. Peter kept his feet somehow, frozen momentarily in place as we all looked at Ray.
Ray lay crumpled at the base of twisted metal shelves, still and bloodied.
I think I cried out. I’m still not sure.
“I’ll call 911,” Winston yelled, and ran, his footsteps pounding through the floor, vibrations rising into my rooted feet.
“Ray,” Peter’s voice was a whisper in comparison, but it cut a lot deeper. And then we were both moving, converging on the motionless body of our friend.
I fumbled for a pulse, my vision blurring when I found it, and knew it to be too fast. “He’s alive, Peter,” I murmured.
“C’mon, Ray,” Peter was pulling up his eyelids, checking responses. I wondered why he was starting with that, when I realized the trickle of blood trailing down the side of Ray’s face came from his ear.
True panic lanced through me. “Peter,” I faltered.
“I think he cracked his skull,” Peter said tersely. He grabbed my hand and jammed it into the slight wedge of space under Ray’s jaw. “Keep his head still. He might have a spine injury, too.”
Good God, this couldn’t be happening. I felt distant, dazed, dreaming. I had nightmares like this sometimes, of something happening to one of the guys, and I had the same bitter taste of fear in my mouth when I woke up. But I wasn’t waking up.
“Hang in there, Ray,” I heard Peter whisper under his breath, over and over as he ran his hands down Ray’s torso, limbs. “Hang in there, pal.” An ashen glance up at me. “Ribs, maybe his wrist—I can’t tell for sure.”
I’d been carefully prying open Ray’s fists with my free hand. “His hands are burnt, only first and second degree, I believe.”
His hands. He loved working with his hands. Composed on the surface but suffocating on my fear inside, I glanced around, desperately trying to find something that would help. The shelves Ray had been thrown into only held coiled rubber hoses, completely useless. Just across the aisle was a rack of coats, but they were beyond reach unless I pulled my hand away, and I couldn’t.
“Peter,” I said shakily, nodding to the display as he looked up. “We need to keep him warm.”
Peter always knew what I was thinking even with a minimum of words. A few seconds later we were piling several of the warm winter coats over Ray’s sprawled body, tucking him in up to his neck. Already the skin cupped in my hand felt cool and clammy. Shock was trying to set in.
With my free hand, I grabbed one of the circlets of hose and tried to jam them in under Ray’s feet. Peter again realized what I was doing and lifted Ray’s feet, letting me slide in three of the coils to keep his feet propped. It wasn’t much but it was something.
“C’mon, Ray, wake up for Peter.” Peter was perched in front of Ray again, trying to coax a response from him. But Ray wasn’t responding, didn’t even seem to be there, his usually animate face lax and colorless. Empty, I thought, frightened anew.
“Peter,” I whispered.
“Not now, Egon,” Peter said sharply, not even turning away from Ray.
I stared at his back, stunned into silence by that tone as my fear impossibly sharpened. Surely Peter wasn’t blaming me for…for this accident? Didn’t he know I would have given my own life to avoid it? I frowned, reaching out a shaky hand to Peter’s arm. We needed each other to get through this, to help Ray get through this. It was how we’d always done everything. “Peter, please.”
My fingers barely skimmed Peter’s jumpsuit when he yanked away from my hand, and turned scathing eyes on me. “Don’t, Egon. Just…don’t.” A flare of horrible pain in the green depths. “I know you didn’t want this to happen and you’re hurting, too, but right now I can’t…” He shook his head, hopeless like I had never seen him before, and turned away, back to Ray, who hadn’t yet even stirred.
I stared at him, my mind in limbo, my heart descending into Hell. It had been an accident, a malfunctioning piece of equipment, one Ray and I had both thought safe. How could Peter think I’d been irresponsibly careless?
You sure that gizmo’s safe now?… Blowing up one of us is a no-no.
I felt sick. Peter had been right to worry, and I’d just brushed him off. What did that make me if not irresponsible? I really was to blame, at least in part, for this, for Ray lying…
A rattling behind us announced the return of Winston, trailed by two paramedics and a stretcher. “How’s he doing?” Winston asked immediately, crouching at Ray’s feet.
I rose woodenly, letting a paramedic slide in to take my place, vaguely aware of Peter being pried away from Ray’s other side to let the second EMT in. They worked swiftly, quietly trading information as they labored, but I heard none of it, couldn’t have even told you what gender they were. Peter’s voice was a hot, tightly controlled hum next to me, interspersed by interrogative sounds from Winston. Only once did Peter look up at me. His eyes darted away just as quickly, but I saw the pain and anger in them, and something more, something that almost looked for a moment like…hate.
I didn’t think I could hurt more than I did already, but I was wrong.
The paramedics picked Ray up with practiced ease, his neck already braced in a collar, a back-board against his upper body, and laid him onto the gurney. Winston moved in to help them cover him with a blanket.
“One of you want to go with us?” one of the paramedics turned to us.
They only asked when it was serious, I knew, and bit the inside of my lip from giving voice to my anguish. That had never been my way, to display my feelings, but the three men around me had learned how to read me in spite myself. But one of them was unconscious, seriously injured, another was completely preoccupied with helping him, and the third…Peter wouldn’t even look at me anymore, his face set in the way I also knew how to read, bravado in the face of terror. It was the same look I’d imagined was on his face when Nexa took the three of us away, leaving him alone. He wasn’t alone now, Winston and I were right there…but even as I lifted my hand again toward Peter, I pulled it back. Maybe we were there, but there was a chasm between us even I could see.
No, there was no one there to see how I felt underneath the dispassionate guise.
“I’ll go,” Peter said quietly, and trailed the gurney out without a glance back.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t still breathtakingly painful.
Winston turned to look at me. “Egon…” His eyes slid away, not condemning as Peter's had been, but uneasy. He felt it, too.
I did this.
Oddly, it calmed me, making me finally aware of where I stood and what I had to do. “Someone should go tell Janine,” I said with remarkable composure.
“We can call her from the hospital,” Winston offered, still not quite meeting my gaze.
I was grateful for even the smallest kindnesses now, because I don’t think I could have borne the disgust of two of my closest friends, but at the same time even that stung. “No,” I shook my head, fixing my eyes safely on a nearby rack of jackets. “She should hear it in person. You take Ecto and proceed to the hospital—I’ll take a taxi and we’ll meet you there.”
A hesitation, then a reluctant nod. And Winston patted my arm before walking out past me.
I winced. Long after Winston’s footsteps died away, I was still standing there in the silent store, staring at the smears of blood on the tile floor. The site of the Ghostbusters’ last stand; how ignominious was that?
And agonizing.
Slowly, I turned and walked away.
A small crowd had collected with the arrival of the ambulance, but no one seemed to notice as I slipped out from behind the building and went up the street to flag down a taxi. Nor did the taxi driver seemed surprised to see a Ghostbuster in full uniform and pack, although he did talk the whole way to the firehouse about how his children were fans of ours or…something. Peter would have enjoyed chatting to him, if Peter hadn’t been on his way to the hospital with Ray just then. Riding along in case Ray died on the way, I thought with another knife of pain, and for the first time I had to pinch my eyes to keep them from overflowing. How had things gone bad so quickly? The meter had worked. Ray and I had both checked and double-checked it. There had been no reason for it to overload, let alone so explosively.
How much force had it taken to throw Ray back like that? My mind calculated it unwillingly. Enough to do serious damage to a human body, certainly. Peter had mentioned broken ribs, possibly his wrist. And his skull…that could result in a coma or brain damage. I covered my face with my hand. A brain-damaged Raymond would almost be worse than a dead one. That brilliant mind gone, the bright personality…my friend.
I might have wept a little in that dark back seat, while the taxi driver nattered on obliviously.
And then we were pulling up in front of the firehall, and I had to pull myself together again, one more time. I stuffed a handful of bills into the driver’s hands and then trudged to the door, lingering briefly with one hand on the doorknob before I turned it and went in.
Janine already knew something. I saw it in her eyes as she looked up, as well as relief at seeing me. She was always relieved to see I was uninjured, even though I knew she cared about all four of us. This would upset her greatly, and I steeled myself for her pain, too.
“Egon!” She was on her feet, circling her desk. “What’s going on? A reporter just called to find out which one of you guys went to the hospital. Are you okay?” She reached me and put a hand out and I…I jerked back.
Janine went pale.
“Is it…did one of the guys…?”
I jumped in before she was forced to say it. “Ray’s been hurt, badly.”
She sucked in a breath. “Oh, no.” Then she lifted her chin, already fighting back with the spirit I had always secretly admired in her. “How bad is it? Is he going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, and looked away, trying to find the words. This was Peter’s strength, not mine. “Janine…” I faced her again; she deserved that. “The meter exploded, the one I fixed.”
I saw her flinch, a moment of anger…and then a surprising wash of sympathy. “Egon, you don’t mean…you don’t think this is your fault, do you?”
I took a breath to steady myself. “Peter had asked me if the meter was safe and I assured him it was. I was even annoyed he doubted me. And this meter wasn’t necessary to our work, Janine, it was merely something that interested me.” I made a bitter sound. “My curiosity may well have cost Ray his life.”
She frowned at me, anger returning as I’d expected, but not for the reason I expected. “Egon, you listen to me. You and Ray both worked on that meter, and you both thought it was safe. And you wouldn’t have come up with it in the first place if you didn’t think it was important. This is what you guys do, and sometimes it’s risky, Ray knows that. He also knows you’d never risk his life on purpose. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t’ve traded places with him in a second. This was just a stupid accident.”
I’d be lying if I didn’t say her words helped a little, if for nothing else than for not having to carry someone else’s blame. But I also wasn’t ready to hear it, nor to be exonerated. The fact was that I had invented the meter, built it, tested it, decreed it safe to use. The fact that Ray had helped was irrelevant. Certainly he wouldn’t be agreeing now that it was safe, even if he could. Besides, whatever my intentions, I had placed a friend at unnecessary risk and he had been hurt. Possibly even killed. Peter had thought as much, and even Winston hadn’t been able to avoid that conclusion. Regardless what the outcome would be now, that was something I would have to live with the rest of my life.
But at least I would live. Ray might not even have that option.
I looked down at Janine and managed a smile, I don’t know how. “You’re right,” I lied with my every muscle. “But that doesn’t matter now—we must be there for Ray.”
She sniffed and nodded. “So what are we standing around for? Let’s go.” She started toward the door.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll need your purse. You’ll have to drive yourself over, Janine—I need to…pick up a few things upstairs first.” That lie came more easily.
She stared at me, even as I shied away from her gaze. “I can wait for you,” she said slowly, as if trying to figure out what I think her subconscious already had guessed.
She knew me too well, and I was determined for her not to realize it. I started purposefully toward the stairs. “I would appreciate it if you would go ahead. I’ll require some time to assemble what I need and as many of us as possible should be there in the meantime.”
She didn’t move, watching me keenly, I could feel it. Someone still saw me, apparently, and it brought a fresh but comforting pain. “Egon…”
I turned at the bottom of the stairs, confident now there was enough distance between us that she would not see my intention in my eyes. “Please, Janine,” I said firmly.
Janine finally nodded. “All right. But if you don’t come soon, I’m gonna send Slimer after you.”
Even that shopworn threat sent a pang through me. “I understand,” I said quietly. I wouldn’t lie any longer.
She looked at me one more moment, then went and got her purse and walked out the front door with her head held high. And I loved her just then.
But that might have been because I was suddenly completely alone, for the first time in nearly ten years.
I walked up the spiral stairs with heavy steps and an even more leaden heart.
I stopped on the second floor, glancing into the kitchen, gaze lingering longer on the living room. Had it been just two days ago that we’d sat at the table, laughing and talking over pasta? The good memories that room held were countless, even the ones that came from bad memories: late night creature features taken in with Ray as he worked through some bad dreams, old Westerns on tape with Peter during his bouts of insomnia, mysteries to take Winston’s mind off emerging war memories. Sometimes just being together, healing in each other’s company, crying on each other’s shoulders during a few particularly bad times. The key was always being together.
I kept climbing the stairs, alone.
On the third floor, I crossed to the door of the bunkroom and stood in the doorway. I should pack some clothes, I considered, some of my belongings. It didn’t seem important, but I moved ahead automatically, gathering a duffel bag from the closet and stuffing some clothes into it. At the nightstand beside my bed, I hesitated, looking at Peter’s paperback carelessly propped open on it, the glass of now-flat ginger ale he’d left next to it. With my nightstand between our beds, it often ended up as cluttered with his things as with mine. I set my jaw and opened the drawer, taking out my spare glasses and I don’t know what else, also shoving them into the duffel. The picture of the four of us that sat on top of the nightstand I looked at for a long minute but then finally left there. And without glancing to the right where Ray’s bed sat with its assortment of stuffed animals, I walked out of the room and across the hall into the lab.
This was my room more than the bunkroom was, the space that most felt like home in all the firehall. I had found many joys here, and buried many sorrows. And probably would have lived here if not for Peter’s sometimes dragging me out to partake of what he called “life.”
My smile was bittersweet as I surveyed the room. It had been that way from the beginning, my concentration on my studies and experiments coming up against Peter’s determination that I go forth and experience the rest of the world. And he usually won, dragging me to all manner of “experiences,” of which I enjoyed a surprising number. It took less coaxing now for me to join them, for I’ve long accepted there is more to life than what I could quantify in a laboratory, but without Peter’s first attempts, this would have been my whole world, and I never would have known what I was missing.
And if I were without him now, and without Ray and Winston, would it go back to being my world? Not inconceivably. Science had always been my comfort and escape when I had nothing else. But this time I would know too well what I was missing.
I crossed with slow, silent steps to my worktable, and reached out a trembling hand to the half-melted wire that sat there. A wire we’d stripped from the meter not forty-eight hours before, Ray and I working side by side. Perhaps the last time we would do so, and because of something as unimportant as a malfunctioning piece of equipment, something I had missed.
Fury took control of me like a creature with its own will. I turned with a cry and lashed out at the closest thing to my own self that I could hurt. I swept the glassware off the nearest table with one motion, and unquenched, I went on to the next one, upending my beloved mold collection. Then back to the workbench. It didn’t hold much, but I sent it crashing to the floor, too, followed by the neat stacks of papers and files that sat by my computer. Destroy, end, punish…
And still it wouldn’t bring Ray back, nor erase the revulsion in Peter’s eyes and awkwardness in Winston’s, nor ease the guilt and anguish that threatened to tear a hole in my heart with its weight.
Chest heaving, I sank to the ground and raged in silence at the unfairness of it all.
I stayed there until I was spent. And then I dragged myself to my feet, took the duffel bag in hand again, and went back downstairs. I hadn’t even taken my pack off.
The phone started to ring as I reached the front door, and I looked back at it for a moment, wondering if it was Janine or one of the guys calling to see if I was on my way, calling with news about Ray. Either way, I didn’t think I wanted to hear it. I shook my head and walked out.
Yes, I was on my way. I just had no idea to where.
It was nighttime before I looked up and found myself in the Bronx, standing in front of a cheap motel. The “vacancy” sign sputtered in neon above me, the only remotely inviting aspect of the rundown building. But I wasn’t feeling fastidious. I was exhausted, my shoulders aching from carrying the pack, my feet worn from walking. Besides, as low as I’d sunk, I still didn’t have a death wish, and strolling around the Bronx in the dark was not conducive to a long life. I went inside.
I don’t believe the man at the desk even looked up at me during our entire transaction, but then, I didn’t pay him much attention, either. To my question about a telephone, he jerked a finger toward a payphone at the far end of the room, and that was all I thought about as I tendered my credit card and collected the room key.
Well, almost. I couldn’t help remember Peter insisting I carry a credit card, saying I was too absent-minded to make sure I always had money on hand. Indeed, my wallet was nearly empty of cash, but I sorely doubted he’d envisioned this purpose.
I strode over to the payphone, then suddenly faltered as I fed it a quarter. If the news was bad…if Ray hadn’t survived the day…
For once, I was completely incapable of completing a thought.
The tattered phone book provided the number, and I dialed with shaking fingers.
I didn’t even listen to the salutation. “I’d like to find out how a patient, Raymond Stantz, is doing,” I said with a steadiness that took all my willpower.
“Just a minute.” There was the sound of keys tapping, paper rustling, a distant conversation. I died a little with every second that passed. “Here we are. Mr. Stantz is in the ICU—would you like me to transfer you there?”
I was rent in two. Ray was alive. And he was seriously injured. Talking to the nurse at the ICU would tell me more…but it could also tell me too much. If he were dying, what would I do? Go and risk the rejection of my friends, to try to sit with a friend who would not have been there if not for me? Or sit here, across town, and wonder when the end would come?
Sometimes it was better not to know. Hope still had a voice then.
I cleared my throat. “No, thank you,” I said, and hung up.
I went upstairs to my room with carefully steady steps, and not even noticing what manner of room I was in, went immediately to bed.
And began to toss and turn.
When I closed my eyes, I could see the explosion again, Ray thrown violently into the shelves, the light fading to reveal his slumped body. When I opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling, I could hear Peter’s voice, condemning me even when it tried not to. At this rate, I would go mad before dawn.
I turned the light on again, sat up, and reached for the duffel bag.
After destroying my lab, before walking out, a moment of clarity—or perhaps desperation—had led me to take the coulombmeter’s schematic and cram it into my bag. I pulled it out now and, reaching for my glasses, I dragged the small table by the window over to the bed and spread the diagram out on it. There was no chair, but I sat on the edge of the bed without a second thought and was soon immersed in my study.
Something had gone wrong, something I had missed. It wouldn’t bring Ray back, wouldn’t do a bit of good where my friends were concerned, to find out what it was. But maybe it would at least bring me some peace.
And, failing that, it was something to keep my mind off what was going on in the hospital miles away.
Something tickled my toes.
“Not now, Peter,” I murmured, and started to descend back into sleep.
No, something was crawling over my toes.
I jerked awake, sending a particularly repulsive cockroach flying across the room. It landed in a patch of sunlight and instantly skittered under the nearest baseboard in panic.
Squelching a shudder of revulsion, I looked up from the table where I had sprawled in ungainly sleep, and remembered. The sunlight suddenly seemed to dim.
A squint at my watch revealed it to be nearly eight in the morning. Close to a dozen hours since I’d called the hospital, I realized. There should be news by now. And as much as it scared me, I had to know.
I pulled my pants and suspenders on, dug out another quarter, and hurried down to the lobby to call.
Ray had survived the night, still in the ICU, but there was one piece of new information I clung to like a shipwrecked survivor: he was listed in fair condition. Not good, but not critical, either, and I was nearly overwhelmed even by that cautious bit of good news. I dashed a hand across my blurry eyes as I hung up the phone and went out to answer the call of my growling stomach, briefly buoyed.
But the wilted Egg McMuffin recalled again the scene around the dinner table earlier that week, killing my appetite and dashing my moment of joy. It was with renewed heaviness I trudged back to my room.
I would have derided Peter as being fanciful had he expressed such a thought, but the schematic on the table seemed to mock me as I walked through the doorway. I had examined every single circuit the night before, every connection, every component. There was no mistake. Any electrical system could overload given enough input, but by my calculations it would have taken several Class Elevens to do so, if they even had electrical charges relatively higher than those we’d recorded from the Class Fives. There had certainly been no such entities present, so…perhaps an outside source of electrical charge? Something else the meter had picked up besides the ghosts? In a power plant maybe, but in a department store? I discarded the possibilities as quickly as they arose. Nothing.
Nothing. Ray had been hurt for nothing.
Scowling, I grabbed the schematic and crumpled it into the ball of useless trash that it was. Science had always reassured me with its steadiness, its immutability. One could always, always rely on it, unlike unpredictable human beings, and I had expected to find my answer there this time, too. But it wasn’t in that piece of paper, or the ruined meter, or the principles on which I’d built it. In truth, I would have traded every bit of science I knew just to be back with my friends and to have them all right. They had never disappointed me, either, not like the crushed paper in my hand. I raised my hand to hurl the offending object across the room.
And froze.
An outside source. Something like that shadow reading I’d picked up just before the meter exploded?
I dropped the piece of paper and lunged for my notebook.
Class Fives all had similar readings within the expected range for their class. And all five of the ones from the department store had registered before we’d trapped them; I remembered the separate patterns. I’d dismissed the shadow then as another ghost briefly materializing: sometimes other spirits were drawn to the energy of a bust, at which point we either trapped them or they realized their danger and left on their own. There hadn’t been time to analyze the extra reading then, although I remembered the momentary thought that it was strange. But then it vanished and the coulombmeter exploded and readings ceased to matter. What if they did matter, though?
I sketched the wavelength from memory. Yes, it was odd. Not much more powerful than a Class Five reading, but completely dissimilar in shape, skewing toward the negative x-axis and spiking in a completely different place. Another form of a Class Five, then, one we didn’t usually see, most likely from the Netherworld. But what had it been doing at the store, and why so briefly?
“Think, Egon,” I murmured. I had seen that reading before, not long ago…yes, during our first trial of the coulombmeter. It had shown up before the meter had overloaded then, too, although it had been fainter and hadn’t faded in and out like it did the second time. The same Class Five visiting two different busts? It wasn’t likely to be accident. More like stalking us. Watching.
Seeing the meter overload, and then reappearing later just before the meter exploded. Fading in and out…deliberately approaching to make the meter overload again?
I shook my head. Surely that wasn’t it. Those ghosts that know who we are don’t like us, but they don’t usually have the drive or intelligence to actually plot revenge. In all our years of busting, very few had ever done so, and they were usually controlled by higher-level entities. Like…
I suddenly shivered, my skin prickling with goose bumps.
Barely a year before, we’d been attacked by another ghost with a vendetta. It had collapsed a building on Peter and me, trapping me, nearly killing Peter. The memory still chilled me. It had been more cunning than most ghosts, in part because it was working for a Netherworld demon by the name of Chikar, a demon who wanted the four of us dead. It hadn’t succeeded then, and while we knew there was the possibility of it trying again, no attack had been forthcoming, and we couldn’t live our lives in fear. Life had returned to normal as Peter healed, and I’d almost forgotten about it. But this?
I frowned. What were other hypotheses that would fit the facts? A new form of Class Five that was just starting to appear in the city? But I was fairly certain the two readings had been of the same being. Perhaps it was coincidence it had showed up at two different busts? They weren’t greatly spaced apart locations; it was possible. But how likely was it that it would appear only briefly both times, and both times before the meter overloaded? Perhaps its mere presence caused the meter to overload, in which case the explosion truly was an accident, an unintended result of the entity simply being present. But then why the fading in and out? And, again, why would it show up twice just long enough to affect the meter? Nothing else made sense.
Of course, I did not have all the facts yet, either. I hadn’t seen this shadow entity; perhaps the readings truly had somehow come from the Class Fives we trapped, perhaps in some sort of conjunction with the coulombmeter. Ray had said the traps strengthened some of the ghosts’ electrical charges. Perhaps they somehow caused the new reading, too.
I didn’t see how that was possible, but it was as much of a leap as a vengeful entity working under Chikar or some other demon. There was only one thing to do: test the theory. And for that I would need a PKE meter.
There were plenty of them at the firehall, of course. But Janine might be back there by now, or one of the guys home for a shower and a quick nap. I was not ready to face them, not yet, not without an answer. No, I would just have to make my own meter. There had to be a hardware store somewhere in the area.
I washed up and dressed with new purpose. It still wouldn’t help Ray get better, but at least it was something I could do to restore sense to my world again, and perhaps to right things with my friends. And even if it did not, if I was right and Chikar was behind this, the guys were still in danger. No rift between us mattered then.
One way or another, I vowed fiercely to myself as I went out the door, I would have some sort of answer by the end of the day. Both about the meter, and the safety of my friends. Maybe even, although I hardly dared hope that far, where I stood with them.
I still loved science, but it was no longer enough. Not even remotely.
An old colleague at Columbia lent me the use of his workshop for the day, and I went straight there from the store with a bagful of mechanical parts. By early evening, I had a new PKE meter.
I called the hospital again before I left. No change in Ray’s condition. I was tempted again then to go to the hospital, but I would not allow myself the luxury, nor any sign of the fear I felt for my friend. I had a duty to perform first.
I took a taxi back to the department store instead.
The building had not been reopened since the day before. We hadn’t inflicted much damage on this bust, but there would be slime to clean up and some scorch marks to repaint, not to mention those trash cans Winston had melted into slag. A flutter of police tape on the front door reminded me there would have been an investigation of Ray’s injury, also. And the owners were still probably making sure the ghosts were truly gone in the first place. The building was dark and looked empty, and that was just how I’d hoped it would be.
The manager had given us the code to enter through the loading dock, and I hoped it had not yet occurred to him to change it. I didn’t relish the thought of, er, Breaking & Entering, even with good cause. Winston and Peter were much better at that than I.
My chest tightened at the thought. Thank God I had hope our estrangement would soon be ended, because the utter loneliness of my situation was nearly unbearable as it was. I’m not certain when I stopped being a complete introvert, the change stealing over me as gradually as my friendship with the guys had, but at some point I had, and solitude had become highly overrated. Forced solitude was outright painful. Even now, my heart felt heavy, my head swimming, my limbs leaden, and it was not from lack of sleep.
I tightened my grip on my PKE meter, squelched every distracting thought, and crept around the store to the loading dock in the back.
I punched the code in with suspended breath, inexpressibly relieved when the door clicked open. I shut it softly behind me and headed toward the Outerwear department, turning on the PKE meter as I went.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have attempted even such a fact-finding mission without back-up. There was no reason to think the entity was still there; all I was really hoping to find were some residual readings that would confirm my memory and provide me with further readings to study. But the entity was potentially responsible for almost killing Ray, and I knew it was a foolhardy chance to take, even with a proton pack.
That didn’t change my intentions one iota. If there was some clue here as to what had happened to Ray and whether the guys were still in danger, I intended to find it no matter the risk. The danger of losing my friends has long since become a deeper fear than that of losing my life.
But I had no intention of forfeiting either. I still had unfinished business.
The meter remained silent as I went. I adjusted it briefly, wishing again I’d had a chance to test it before coming. Even a minute with Slimer would have been helpful in confirming and calibrating the device, but that was as out of the question as retrieving a meter from the firehall had been. No, I knew I had built it correctly and simply had to trust that knowledge. Trust myself. In the dimly lit store, I smiled sickly at the thought.
I crossed through Jewelry, then Lingerie, which I noticed only as Peter’s tease from the day before came unbidden to my mind at the sight and made my heart constrict. Outerwear was next, and I picked up my pace.
Assuming the meter was working correctly, however, I would still have to face the possibility there were no residuals to record. That would make sense if the entity’s purpose had been to appear only long enough to strike at us, which it had done with startling success. Not only had it badly injured Ray, but it had also turned my friends against me, effectively handicapping us all. Which meant either the Class Five was extremely intelligent, or extremely lucky. Neither possibility was reassuring.
But if it hadn’t been there long enough to leave any trace, what would I do then? Take my theory to the guys? Would they even—
The melted remains of the coulombmeter caught my eye, half buried under the collapsed shelves Ray had slammed into. I hurried over and picked it up, examining it carefully. Most of it had cooled into a misshapen, solid lump, but the access panel was warped and loose. I gently pried it open.
The insides were also melted and charred, as I would have expected from an electrical overload. What I hadn’t expected was the thin layer of melted and congealed slime that coated it.
Fading out and flaring readings. The entity had penetrated the meter and deliberately overloaded it from within, and we’d never even seen it.
The meter suddenly beeped. I nearly dropped it in surprise, but realized an instant later it was the PKE meter clipped to my jumpsuit that was picking up something, not the ruined coulombmeter in my hand. I quickly dropped it back to the floor and snatched up the PKE meter as the volume of beeping rapidly increased.
With mixed relief and tension, I glanced at the screen and saw it at once: the same being as before. And these weren’t residuals. It was still here, and it was getting closer.
I momentarily reconsidered my options. Facing a ghost alone was foolish. Facing an entity that had unknown powers and that I suspected wished me dead was suicidal. But even as I considered departing until I could return with back-up, a mist of blue coalesced before me, squarely in the aisle between winter coats and gardening tools.
I unshipped my thrower, put down the meter, and waited.
Most Class Fives have eyes and a mouth, if for appearances alone. There were no such anthropomorphic characteristics on this entity. It had no form, nothing besides a shifting blue vapor that marked its presence, rippling through shades of color like the shifting play of sunlight on water, now aqua, now amethyst. In other circumstances, I might even have called it beautiful. Now, I was disgusted.
“Alone now it returns.” There was nothing insubstantial about the sibilant hiss that was its voice.
I was beyond surprise that it could talk, let alone recognize me, feeling nothing but a rising anger and the last remnant of my scientific curiosity. “Yes,” I answered tersely. “I would have come sooner if I had known you were waiting for me.”
“Slow, it is.” The entity sounded faintly disgusted. “Unworthy.”
“It is you who are unworthy,” I answered immediately. “Instead of showing yourself, you attack in secrecy.”
Now, a definite ripple of amusement ran through its voice. “Clever,” it corrected me. “Destroy from within.”
I shook my head, hiding a momentary shock of fear at its response. It had indeed come close to destroying us from within, splintering our team when we needed each other most, hurting in spirit those it did not in body. It must have realized after the first time that it could overload the meter and cause it to explode, perhaps simply intending to hurt us that way or perhaps even intelligent enough to realize the division that would cause, but it had definitely overloaded the meter with deliberate malice. And if I’d had any doubts about its intelligence or threat, they had just vanished.
It was time to turn the tables, or I would not get out of this alive to warn the others.
“Not clever enough to come on your own. Who was it who sent you?” I demanded.
It hissed at me, darting closer and then away again before I could raise my thrower. “Arrogant, it is, foolish. Does it not fear?”
“Fear what, you? We trapped five of your kind yesterday with ease.” I gently eased the toggle of the thrower to “on,” and gripped it in both hands.
“Not of kind. Made stronger by the Master.”
Hence the unusual readings, some distant part of me noted. “Your master is a coward,” I spat. “He sends unworthy minions to fight those he dares not face.”
I had expected fury at that, but the entity again seemed almost amused. Which was worrisome in itself. “The Master Chikar, Lord of the Underworld, fears nothing. Foolish, it is, and must die.”
I felt a grim satisfaction at the confirmation of what I’d suspected, even if it also included the announcement of my death. It was not the first time I’d been threatened so by a spirit.
Of course, I hadn’t been alone the other times.
I set my frame, bracing myself, and looked it coolly in the eye. “You’ll find us a little harder to kill now that we know what you are.”
The entity seemed to grow in size, preparing for its attack. “Only one. Alone, it is, and will soon die.”
“He’s not alone,” came a quiet but firm voice from behind me.
Peter.
I didn’t look, knowing exactly what I’d see, but I did shut my eyes for the briefest of moments in profound gratitude. And an even deeper flush of joy. I opened my mouth to say something, welcome or warning, I’m not certain.
With a rasp of angry sound, the entity dove at me.
I lunged to one side, both to get out of its way and to give Peter a clear short, and heard his thrower fire, the beam coming close enough that I felt the tingle of charged air against my face. The entity was faster, though, shooting up out of the path of the beam.
Which meant it could come down anywhere. I followed the momentum of my dive, throwing myself under the nearest rack of coats, then rolling so that I was facing the ceiling, my thrower at ready.
The mass of swirling blue seemed to disappear just as it reached the ceiling. I risked a glance down the aisle at Peter, taking in the sweatshirt and jeans, the circles under his eyes, the set stance and grim cast to his face. I had no idea how or why he’d come, but I suspected it had been straight from the hospital, and the thought of what he’d left behind there frightened me.
“Peter—”
His gaze, sweeping the room as he searched for the Class Five, instantly flew over to me, and his mouth softened into a near-smile. And then he winked at me. And that one tiny gesture loosened all the tightness in my chest and throat.
“Now it both dies!”
I heard the shrieked threat the same moment the entity formed directly in front of Peter. The amorphous blue had solidified into claws that looked unyielding and sharp, and ectoplasmic or not, I had no doubt they could cut through anything in their path.
Peter was in its path. And it was already diving, too fast for Peter to have time to bring his thrower around to defend himself.
In that fraction of a moment, I stood on the edge of that precipice again, watching disaster strike, feeling my heart stop with fear. But I pushed it back just as vehemently. I was not helpless this time. I refused to be. Perhaps what had happened to Ray hadn’t been my fault, but I would not let it happen to Peter, too.
It was the worst possible angle; if the entity moved aside at the last moment, my beam would strike Peter squarely. I would be killing him myself, then, and the memory of Ray blazed brightly in my mind in that one fragment of a second. But it was the only way, and I refused to lose another friend to helpless inaction.
I aimed and fired in one shot.
The entity screeched like greasy chalk on chalkboard as my beam struck and held it. A moment later, Peter’s joined mine.
“Trap out!” I could hear him call, just barely, from the other side of the proton beams and sizzling blue, and I saw a trap clatter to the floor beneath the pinned entity. I averted my eyes just as Peter activated it, helping guide in our pinned quarry with experienced instinct.
And then the trap snapped shut and there was only silence.
I sagged back to the floor, starting to breathe again. It was a few moments before I was ready to climb shakily out from under the rack of coats. A hand unexpectedly dangled in front of me, startling me briefly. But I accepted it, and was pulled to my feet.
“You okay?” Peter asked sharply even as I rose, anger or worry, I wasn’t certain.
I nodded. “Yes, thanks to—”
But the rest of my words were smothered against Peter’s shoulder as he yanked me closer and threw his arms around me. Worry, then.
And close to ten years of friendship’s worth.
I am not usually given to displays of affection, nor do I usually expect them even from my friends. There are subtler ways to show how one feels, and I had learned many of them over the years. But at that moment, there was nowhere else I would rather have been. The soul-tearing tension in me abruptly died away, and I sagged, holding on to Peter even more tightly than he did to me.
“I’m sorry, Spengs.” It was a contrite sigh next to my ear.
I shook my head. “Completely understandable, Peter. I had designed and checked the meter—I was responsible for—”
Peter pulled away from me, but he held my arm firmly and his other hand was curled around the back of my neck. “Don’t even say it. You weren’t responsible for that any more than the rest of us are for any equipment malfunction. Accidents happen. I was totally out of line blaming you for it.” He shook me lightly. “Ray’s been asking for you, Egon. You belonged at the hospital just as much as the rest of us—you’re family—so the next time you take off like that, let alone get all suicidal and start taking on evil ghosts by yourself…” Peter tried to smile. “Well, I’d threaten to mess up your lab, but you pretty much took care of that, didn’t you.”
I had barely listened at the end, though, caught excitedly on one fact. “Ray’s awake?”
Peter’s grip tightened, pain in his eyes. “He’s been awake a couple of times—he’s gonna be fine. Didn’t you know? The nurses said somebody kept calling to check on Ray and we figured…”
I blinked, then bowed my head. “‘Fair’ doesn’t say much, Peter,” I said quietly, remembering too easily all the hours of not knowing.
There was a second of silence, then Peter pulled me to him again, gently this time, and held on like we were both drowning. Perhaps we had been. But I was just starting to breathe again, if a little weakly.
Peter finally stirred, taking a deep breath of his own.
“You ready to go home now?”
“After we see Ray,” I said firmly.
A soft snort. “Like I said.” He patted me on the back of the head affectionately before letting go and turning away to collect equipment. “Remind me to do my shopping somewhere else next time, huh?”
I suppressed a shiver. None of us would be frequenting this store in the near future. Even with Ray mending, it still held some terrible memories. And one good one. “Indeed,” I murmured.
Peter had reached the trap and bent down to scoop it up, making a face at it. “So, you wanna tell me what all this was about, anyway?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you hear?” My shoulders tightened involuntarily—hadn’t Peter just absolved me from blame?
“Nope, just made it in time for the punchline. I wouldn’t’ve even have come at all except Winston and I thought you might show up here again, and I brought the pack by habit.”
Peter was busy with the trap or he would have reacted to the shock that was certainly on my face. He hadn’t heard. He had no idea the entity had sabotaged the meter deliberately, but he still hadn’t blamed me. Warmth swept through me at the realization, banishing a chill I hadn’t even realized lingered. Chikar remained at large and a danger, Ray would need considerable recovery time, and my lab was a disaster area, but at that moment, nothing mattered as much as the simple realization that my friends, and our friendship, were truly, completely restored to me.
“Egon?” Peter was looking at me with a slight frown.
I smiled. “It’s a long story,” I said, hurrying down the aisle with long strides to join him. “I’ll tell you all at the hospital.”
And we left together.
The ENd