Then a shape flew out of the drain and into her face. It moved so fast she couldn’t see what it was; it hit her hard and she fell backward onto the floor. For a second she was too dazed and hurt to move. Then she stood up painfully, joints suddenly throbbing, and felt something on her face.
No. In my nose. Something is in my nose.
She touched her fingertips to her nostrils. Green ectoplasm was dripping out of her nose. Ropes of it. Out of my nose. There is ectoplasm in my body. Oh my god! I’ve been invaded. Then her ear bubbled with thick goo. It streamed down her earlobe. There was so much of it. And more from her nose. Lots more. She paced anxiously around the bathroom.
Got to tell them. Got to warn them. Need help!
Her abdomen contracted hard. Pain seized her. She grabbed her stomach and winced. A plume of ectoplasm spewed from her mouth across the bathroom floor. She doubled over in agony, vomiting again.
And again.
* * *
From the crack beneath the bathroom door, ectoplasm oozed across the room. Then it seeped around the doorframe, climbing up to the ceiling, and ran down the walls. Gallons of it, burbling and puddling. Infecting, eddying … On Kevin’s desk, the old answering machine clicked on:
“Hello. You have reached the Ghostbusters hot line. Please leave your name, number, a description of your apparition, a description of what you were doing at the time of encountering the apparition, and a description of the actual encounter with said apparition…”
20
Erin paced impatiently as the Ghostbusters office line greeting went on and on and on. She remembered when Abby had recorded it, how proud the two of them had been of devising such a painless way to capture anecdotal data. How wonderfully clever of them.
And long-winded.
Finally she heard the beep.
“Abby!” she yelled. “Jesus, shorten that greeting. It’s Erin. Call me back! I think killing himself was just the next step in his plan!”
She hung up, massively frustrated. She’d tried Abby’s cell phone and she didn’t have Holtz’s or Patty’s. She had to get hold of someone who could help avert the Fourth Cataclysm!
Then, out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a familiar face on her TV. It was the mayor. Below his image was a crawl reading “Dinner with the mayor.” It was an NY-Local 1 News broadcast, and the desk anchor was saying, “… Mayor Bradley is meeting with the diplomats at Lotus Leaf on…”
She knew where that restaurant was. She disconnected the call and ran for the door.
* * *
“It’s interesting that we all call you Holtzmann,” Patty said as they collected their cheesesteaks and headed back to headquarters. “Jillian is a nice first name.”
Holtzmann smiled and shrugged. “It started in engineering school. Most of the other students were guys. Shy guys. I think they called me Holtzmann so I’d seem less like a girl.” She mock-shivered. “Because you know a girl is pretty scary.”
“And that’s also why you became a practical joker?”
As Holtzmann pondered her answer, the sweet, heavenly smell of the bag full of food overwhelmed the familiar stench of their run-down neighborhood. “I was an oddball growing up. I think my teachers were actually a little afraid of me. I think outside the box. I’m kind of outside the range of social norms.” She smiled when Patty nodded her head in acknowledgment of the truth to that.
“I’ve always like putting things together. Inventing things. I had the best mentor in college. I really impressed Dr. Gorin when I nearly disintegrated everyone in the classroom.”
“Yikes,” Patty said, laughing. “Like I said, I was pretty normal except for how much I like to read. Studious kids still get teased, you know?”
“I’ve always wanted everyone to have a good time,” Holtzmann said. “I try not to judge people. Abby and I sure had fun in our lab at Higgins,” she said dreamily. “I was so happy when we snagged most of our equipment, and then those Homeland Security guys carried off most of it.”
“Agent Rorke is a hottie,” Patty said with a lilt in her voice.
“Even if he is a jerk,” Holtzmann replied. They grinned at each other.
“You know my uncle runs a funeral home,” Patty said. “That place always gave me the willies. Still does. You’d think that’d scare me off reading ghost stories and such, but I liked ’em.” She cocked her head. “You know, I worked down in the subway for a lot of years. Saw a lot of crazies. But nothing prepared me for what we’ve seen.” She shuddered. “What was in those mirrors, Holtz—I mean, Jillian?”
“You can call me Holtz,” she said. “I’m so used to it now that if you called me Jillian I probably wouldn’t realize you were speaking to me.” Her smile faded. “I know. What we saw today … it had to be hell, I think. Someplace where angry ghosts are contained, or imprisoned. They wanted to come back here to wreak revenge, I suppose.” She blew the air out of her cheeks. “Now they were scary.”
“Amen,” Patty said earnestly. “Thank God it’s over.”
“It occurred to me that he might have planted devices in other places,” Holtzmann said. “But that machine appears to have been the instrumentality required to break down the barrier. It’s shut down now. But someone else could try again, you know?” She looked at Patty. “That’s why I’m sticking around. That plus the working-for-free part.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t get enough of that.”
Patty chuckled. “That’s what I like about you, Jill—Holtz. You’ve got a sense of humor.” Her amusement faded. “Unlike some folks.”
“I do enjoy pushing the buttons of uptight people,” Holtzmann admitted. “Especially Erin.”
“Do you think she’ll come back?” Patty asked.
“I don’t know,” Holtzmann replied. “I mean, where else does she have to go?”
When they reached the door of the restaurant it opened easily and Holtzmann made a note to remind Abby to lock it when she was in there by herself.
They set down the food and Holtzmann looked around. Everything was as they’d left it. The bathroom door was shut.
“Abby,” Patty called. “We got you a sandwich because we don’t want you picking off of ours. Come and get it.”
There was no answer.
Holtzmann called to the bathroom door, “Hey, Abby, you in there?” She walked to the door and tapped on it. “Abby? Everything all right?”
Just as she made a fist to knock, the door opened. Abby stood there with a slightly blank look on her face.
“Hey,” Abby greeted her.
“You okay?”
“I’m quite well,” Abby said pleasantly.
“Well, good,” Holtzmann countered.
Abby walked off.
Holtzmann shrugged. She said to Patty, “Not our best back-and-forth.”
She and Patty unwrapped their cheesesteaks and sat down to eat. Holtzmann looked over as Abby crossed to the far wall where their proton packs were hanging. The absence of Erin’s pack poked a big hole in the symmetrical arrangement.
Abby walked over and picked up a long metal pipe. She looked down at it, weighing it in her hands.
“I found that in a Dumpster yesterday,” Holtzmann told her. “Figured I could use it for a new idea I’m playing with. Proton shotgun. Awesome, huh?”
She hoped the idea would cheer Abby up. Make her see that their ghost-busting days were not over, far from it.
Abby sauntered back over to the proton packs and removed their protective housings. Holtzmann watched, intrigued, wondering what the heck she was doing. Maybe she had come up with some cool new modification. Holtzmann was about to ask her, when suddenly Abby reared back and started beating the proton packs with the pipe, seriously wailing, throwing all her weight into it. It sounded like a blacksmith pounding on an anvil. Parts were breaking off and flying everywhere.
“What are you doing?” Holtzmann cried.
She ran over and grabbed Abby’s arms, squeezing hard until Abby let go of the pipe.
It clattered against the floor and rolled away. Abby grabbed Holtzmann by the throat; her feet crunched on broken bits of the proton packs. Then, seemingly with no effort at all, Abby just lifted her up into the air by the neck.
How is she doing this? Why is she doing this? Holtzmann thought as she struggled, both hands prying against Abby’s superhuman grip. Then Abby thrust Holtzmann’s entire body through the window. The glass shattered outward and Holtzmann found herself dangling two stories up. Her windpipe was cut off and the world was turning shades of gray and yellow, fading to black. Abby was going to kill her!
This is not Abby, she realized. This cannot be Abby.
“Oh my god, you guys aren’t playing a game, are you?” Patty cried, rushing at Abby from behind.
When Abby let go of Holtzmann, she started to fall and her life passed before her eyes: the joy of detonating her first explosive device. The excitement of her first kiss, which coincided with detonating her first explosive device. The prototype nuclear-powered skateboard … Then her full weight fell on her arm, practically dislocating it from the socket, and she realized she wasn’t falling anymore, she was swinging against the side of the building—Patty had reached out the window and grabbed hold of her hand. With her left arm, Patty slap-punched Abby in the chest, bouncing her off the wall. Holtzmann scrambled, scraping her toes against the building’s masonry, trying to gain a foothold, as Patty strained to pull her back in through the window. Holtzmann was level with the ledge when Abby jumped up and rushed them again.
Holtzmann looked on helplessly as Abby and Patty had the world’s most awkward catfight. Open-hand slapping, pushing and missing, shoving and missing. Even though Patty was much bigger, she was at a serious disadvantage because she was still holding on to Holtzmann’s wrist, fighting with her left hand, and she wasn’t possessed by a ghost demon.
Holtzmann couldn’t see it ending any way but badly.
Then, as Abby lunged again, Patty caught her behind the heels with a kung-fu leg sweep and cleanly flipped her onto her back. Abby hung in the air for a frozen instant, as if floating. Using her own momentum, Patty yanked Holtzmann headfirst through the window, let go, then spun and jumped on Abby before she could get up from the floor. She leaned over Abby as Holtzmann choked and gasped for air. Cocking back her arm, Patty bellowed, “Get out of my friend, evil spirit!”
Patty smacked Abby across the face hard with her open hand, making her head snap to the side. Even Holtzmann saw stars—
No, not stars, she realized.
It was the ghost of Rowan, exploding out of Abby. The sudden emergence created a sonic boom so loud that the rest of the windows shattered and the entire building shivered like they were caught in an earthquake.
Ghost Rowan was horrifying to behold, even more so since Holtzmann had seen him when he was alive. The transition to spirit had amplified his least attractive features and made her wonder, Am I going to look that hammered after I’m dead?
With a deafening snarl, the freed ghost shot out the window as Patty and Holtzmann looked on in shock. He became a black dot against the sky that shrank and shrank, until it finally vanished in the distance. Holtzmann was still rubbing her bruised throat as Abby came to, a bewildered expression in her eyes as she saw Patty on top of her. She touched her own cheek and cried, “Yeeeooowwch!”
Reacting instinctively, Patty smacked her across the face again. Abby flailed her arms at her. “Stop! It’s me! What part of ‘yeowch’ didn’t you understand?”
“Hey, guys! Check it out!” a voice filtered through the broken-out window.
Holtzmann and Patty leaned out the window as Abby struggled to get to her feet.
It was Kevin, calling up to them from the street. Dressed in a subway uniform like a Ghostbuster, he stood beside a junky old motorcycle that had been painted white and decorated with decals, a biohazard warning with a little pink heart in the center, red triangle showing radiation turning one person into a skull and another running away, with exhaust flames added in marker, and a Ghostbusters logo was affixed to the gas tank. A proton wand and a laser had been taped to the handlebars, and a license plate identified the poignantly close-but-no-Ghostbuster-cigar contraption as ECTO-2. Kevin was more excited than Holtzmann had ever seen him.
“I figure you’re going to need my help,” Kevin shouted to them. “I just need my proton pack, if you could—”
Abby scrambled to the window, looked up, and pointed into the sky. High above them, the ghost of Rowan was circling, just as that ghost had circled above the crowd at the theater. The evil spirit appeared to spot Kevin below, because it banked a tighter turn, craning its neck downward. It folded up, stooping like a hawk, and dive-bombed Kevin just as Abby yelled down to him, “Kevin, get inside!”
Kevin still didn’t see Rowan’s onrushing ghost; he was looking in the wrong direction. Crestfallen at yet another rejection, he pouted and said, “I really don’t appreciate being yelled at like that. It’s emasculat—”
His words were cut off as Ghost Rowan slammed into him and disappeared inside. Kevin’s face instantly went blank. Or blanker. A second later, the lights turned back on behind his eyes. When he examined his arms and body, he seemed awestruck at his state of buff. Then he looked up at the three Ghostbusters in the gutted window frame.
“Thanks for the upgrade,” he said. It was Kevin’s voice, but it sounded weird, otherworldly. “This will be very helpful.”
Then he jumped onto the motorcycle, revved the engine, and peeled off, disappearing down the street.
“Oh, that’s not good,” Patty groaned.
No kidding, Holtzmann thought. He isn’t wearing his helmet.
* * *
Beautifully coiffed and formally dressed, Jennifer Lynch sat with the mayor and the diplomats who were his dinner guests, and reflected on all that had happened to her since becoming his assistant. His Honor had insisted that she attend tonight’s gathering to, as he phrased it, “make sure I don’t say anything undiplomatic.” She was the soul of tact—when tact served the mayor’s interests. Sometimes you had to be blunt and tell it like it was—like with the Ghostbusters, for example. What sad and lonely women.
Well, not really. We made that up, she remembered. But not out of whole cloth. The four of them were manless, careerless, styleless, and thanks to her efforts, very likely to stay that way. But she was confident they understood what was at stake. The mayor’s office had to portray them as crackpots. Otherwise, mass hysteria—
Her train of thought was derailed by something moving on the other side of the restaurant’s plate glass windows. It was someone in a tan uniform with orange bands across the chest. Dear lord, she thought, strangling the linen napkin in her lap. One of the Ghostbusters was running around wildly outside. She kept darting forward, pressing against the glass, then darting forward a few steps further down. Jennifer realized with a start that she was looking for a door.
“Oh boy,” she said quietly to Mayor Bradley, nodding her head toward the windows. “Code red.”
When the mayor followed her line of vision, he blanched. “Oh, what the shit is this?”
The woman was still bounding around like a gazelle, banging into the glass, looking for a door. The good news was, she couldn’t seem to figure it out. Amazing. They had saved New York City?
“What is this woman doing?” the mayor murmured.
As Jennifer and His Honor looked on, a couple exited the restaurant, revealing at last where the door was. The Ghostbuster brightened and sprinted toward it before it could swing closed.
“Maybe she just really likes the restaurant,” Jennifer said hopefully.
The Ghostbuster burst into the restaurant and put on the brakes when she spotted Jennifer and Mayor Bradley. Both of them tried to hide their faces behind their menus—great minds certainly thought alike—but it was no go; she ran over to them, face red, eyes wide, waving her arms like a standard-issue Manhattan maniac.
“You have to evacuate the city!” she yell
ed at the top of her lungs.
The diplomats stared at her. His face darkening, the mayor said through clenched teeth, “Don’t say that word. Never say that word.”
Restaurant patrons were looking over now. Jennifer knew it was very likely that at least one of them was recording this with a cell phone.
In a louder, public voice, Mayor Bradley announced, “Ma’am, I don’t believe we’ve met.”
The Ghostbuster leaned closer to the group. Her eyes were practically spinning in their sockets. Was she Karen or Gabby? Jennifer had trouble keeping their names straight.
“It’s not over!” the woman wailed. “It’s just beginning. I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but you gotta send every officer over to the Mercado and you have to shut down the power to the city.”
Jennifer put on her public face. “I’m sorry. As you can see, the mayor is eating right now.”
A loud rumbling erupted outside. The Ghostbuster gasped and put her hands to her head. “It’s starting!” she shrieked with full-on drama.
Everyone turned and looked, including the diplomats. What they saw was a pair of white-liveried and aproned workers straining to wheel an overloaded Dumpster past the window.
“Oh, okay,” the distraught woman said as she realized her mistake. Then she tried to recover the intensity of the moment. “It’s still starting, though.”
Of course the mayor was accompanied with heavy security wherever he went. Jennifer gave the signal for them to cautiously approach, and two plainclothes guards moved up and grabbed the woman from behind.
Mayor Bradley blew out a breath and said, “That took way too long.”
“No!” the Ghostbuster cried. She wasn’t going to go quietly. She grabbed on to the edge of the table. The guards tried to pry her off, but she wouldn’t budge. “No!”
“This is crazy. You’re embarrassing yourself,” Jennifer said in a tight, measured voice. The statement didn’t faze the woman, who clung so tightly to the table that even when the guards pulled her body parallel to the floor she would not be moved.