Gone But Not Forgotten
by Setcheti
The M7 Anniversary Challenge: This is a challenge of SEVEN elements. The
challenge must address the following things, they can be major plot points, or
just minor details, but you gotta do them all:
1) it must include an anniversary
of some sort
2) someone must face some sort of a challenge
3) it must combine two of the previous challenges: January (AU) & May (Supernatural
Being)
4) it must contain five of the following words: fishy,
lonesome, loathsome,
leak, pop.
5) it must contain only ONE of the following and the item should be
important to the story: an abandoned rickshaw
6) at some point, at least one of the guys....must
sing. (the PJL theme is “Born to be a Winner”)
7) none of the guys get hurt -- physically
OR emotionally
Disclaimer: I don’t own
the boys and it isn’t my intention to infringe on the rights of those who
do. Ghostbusters, Inc. is an OPEN AU
created by me, anyone can play that wants to.
Be warned, this story is rated
PG-13 and includes references to the events of 9/11 and other content that some
readers may find disturbing. Please, if you are very sensitive or were deeply and personally
affected by the bombing of the
It had been a long day and an even longer night for the seven
Ghostbusters, and for once even Vin and Josiah slept long into the next morning. Around
“Think I liked it better when he sang country western,” Vin agreed,
sitting up and stretching. He watched
lazily as Nathan got out of bed and started doing calisthenics. “Aw Nate, just skip it this morning, would ya? Just seein’ you do that is makin’ me tired.”
“Wouldn’t be if you’d get your lazy butt up out of bed and join me,”
the biophysicist countered. “You’d all
feel a lot better if you’d…”
“Shut up, Nathan,” Josiah rumbled without heat from the depths of his
pillow.
“Just because you see fit to torture yourself each morning does not
mean the rest of us need engage in similar masochistic pursuits,” Ezra
observed, rolling over and fixing a sleepy green eye on the standing man. “And since you are so full of energy this
morning, perhaps you should be the one to make the coffee.”
That idea was enthusiastically seconded by the others, but before
Nathan could do more than splutter indignantly the spirited song echoing out of
the bathroom was replaced by indignant cursing and Buck came stamping back into
the bunkroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Hey, someone go down and check the mains, we
ain’t got no water!”
“What do you mean, no water?” Chris demanded, sitting up himself. “Dammit, I paid that bill…”
“Not like that,” the engineer assured him. “Pipes didn’t pop when I tried to turn on the
shower, they would have if we’d been cut off.
I’m more worried we’ve got a big ol’ leak someplace…like the basement.”
Five sets of bare feet hit the worn wooden floor; the containment unit
was in the basement.
Less than five minutes later seven men in various states of undress and
equal levels of panic were standing in the basement – thankfully on a dry
floor. But the moments earlier fear of a
broken pipe had been supplanted by utter horror at the sight of the
electrically dead containment unit. They
were looking at it with flashlights, no less, the electricity all over the
firehouse apparently having gone wherever the water had. “This can’t be,” JD said, shaking his
head. “I’ve done the calculations a
hundred times, this thing should have blown sky high by now. Even a semi-controlled containment breach
would probably take the roof off the building…”
“Most likely the top two floors too, at this point,” Buck agreed. He’d traded his towel for a pair of sweats
and then slid down the firepole to catch up with the others. “Boys, I don’t like this one little bit.”
“I’d say that feeling is unanimous,” Ezra drawled. He checked the gray-noise generator at his
hip again, infinitely reassured by the pale green glow from its LED display
that showed him it was still almost fully charged. “Perhaps we should attire ourselves more
appropriately and investigate the situation.”
“Yeah.” Chris splashed his
flashlight beam around the basement one last time before stalking back up the
stairs. He stopped at Nettie’s desk and
tried the phone. The fact that it was
dead didn’t really surprise him. “All
right, everyone back upstairs. We’ll get
dressed and eat something and then we’ll see what’s up.”
Half and hour later he was unlocking the triple deadbolts that secured
their front door against the bad elements that inhabited the rough neighborhood
they lived in, but when he pulled the steel door open he was greeted by what
looked like an abandoned street. Cautiously
he stepped outside, followed by the other six men, and looked around in
confusion. The city was silent. No horns honking, no engines running…no
people at all to be seen, and the streets were empty. Ezra looked around, and then slowly reached
up and detached his headset, waving away the hands that tried to stop him. His green eyes widened. “They’re…they’re gone. I can’t hear anything, anything at all.”
Chris frowned. “So we know
everyone’s not dead, that’s something.
Keep your unit handy though, Ezra, just in case. And I think we should suit up and get the
packs before we go any farther.”
“If they’re still workin’,” Buck said unhappily. “The meters might or might not be either, we
should probably check everything before we leave.” He darted back inside and reappeared a few
minutes later with a PKE meter. The
indicators were lit up, but the needle on its colored gauge was flat and
still. Buck slapped the side of it a few
times and changed some settings but the needle never moved and he finally shook
his head. “Nope, it’s got power but it’s
not pickin’ anything up – not even us.
These aren’t gonna do us any good.”
“Lucky thing Ezra’s here, then,” Vin observed. He was frowning too. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to
test the packs, though, not until we know exactly what’s goin’ on. What could cause somethin’ like this?”
JD had taken the non-functioning meter from Buck and was tinkering with
it but getting no more results than the engineer had. “At first I thought it might have something
to do with…with what happened a year ago,” he said, stammering a bit and not
looking at Ezra. “But that anniversary
was weeks ago.”
The psychologist sighed; his associates still tended to tiptoe around
the subject of September 11when he was around.
“It had occurred to me that the two events might somehow be connected as
well,” he offered evenly. “ But as you
say, the dates do not match. And that
still would not explain why
“If we’re even in the real city,” was Vin’s comment. “If this is a setup, we could be playing on
someone else’s turf right now and just not realize it.”
“Or something could be manipulating our perceptions.” Ezra didn’t look at all happy to have
mentioned that idea, and no one else looked happy to have heard it. “Which would be a very persuasive argument
for Mr. Tanner’s suggestion that we not test the proton packs. But if this…emptiness is merely an illusion,
I will most likely be the first to realize it.”
Nathan shot him an alarmed look, but Chris spoke up before the
biophysicist could say anything. “Either
way, all that means is someone or something is going to an awful lot of trouble
to get our attention,” he mused. “There
has to be something here we’re missing.
Does anyone remember if something happened right around now a year ago?”
For a few long moments no one spoke, and then Josiah sucked in a sharp
breath that brought everyone’s head up.
“Now I remember – today is an anniversary, brothers.” His light blue eyes went bleak. “I remember, I was down at the mission when
they announced it; I believe it was today that they…that they called off the
search for survivors at ground zero.”
The men all looked at each other.
“Angry ghosts?” Buck put forward.
“There were plenty of those,”
Ezra concurred. “But I certainly don’t
hear any of them now. Could some sort of
magick be involved, perhaps something entered into by an angry relation of one
of the deceased to exact revenge?”
“It’s possible,” Josiah said, but he was shaking his head. “But a spell that could do something like
this would almost certainly require a summoning, a higher level spirit if not
an archdemon, and it would have lit up every sensor we had coming in. I don’t think we’re dealing with magick.”
“Well something had to do this,” Chris stated. “And we have to find out what it was and get
rid of it. Okay, leave the meters, take
the packs but don’t activate them, and Josiah you bring your kit just in case
and Vin, I want you to bring your rifle for the same reason. We don’t know if this phenomenon is just
local or if it really is the whole city so I’d say the first order of business
is to go for a little walk around town.”
If just stepping outside the firehouse into the silent street had been
eerie, walking down the empty streets was downright frightening. No lights or sounds came from the buildings
they passed, it was like wandering through a gigantic ghost town – only minus
the ghosts. There were no signs of
disarray anywhere, no wrecks or broken windows or signs of fire, no bodies or
blood trails. A few blocks from the
firehouse they passed one of the back street entrances to
They had gone less than half a block past it when JD suddenly stopped
and looked back. “Hold on a minute,
guys, something isn’t right here.”
As one the other men turned to look back the way they’d come. Vin shrugged.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Yes, you do – you just don’t realize it,” Ezra said suddenly. He stepped up beside JD and squinted back
down the street. “That vehicle we just
passed…”
“It’s a rickshaw, so?” Chris
demanded irritably. “There must be
hundreds of the damn things down here…”
“But there aren’t, don’t
you see?” JD interrupted him excitedly.
“That’s what’s fishy about it! There
should be lots of them down here, but
there should also be cars and bikes all over the place and these streets are
empty…”
“Except for a single rickshaw.”
Josiah had caught on. “It can’t
be a coincidence, brothers.”
“It could be a sign that we’re in the right place,” Ezra agreed. “Or it could be a trap of some sort, a play
on our curiosity.” He took another step
forward and shut his eyes, listening…and after a long moment opened them again
and shook his head. “Nothing. It’s still as silent as a grave.”
Buck essayed a shudder that was only partially faked. “Bad word choice there, Ez.”
“A step to one side,” Vin said suddenly. Everyone stared at him, uncomprehending, and
he blushed. “Maybe we went somewhere but
we didn’t, that’s what I mean; not forward or backward, just a step to the
side. I was thinking about something the
professor in class said last week about alternate universes.” He ignored Nathan’s snort. “The theory is that some of them could be so
close to us that it would only take a very minor shift in space/time to step
into one…”
“Or a relatively minor alteration of perception,” Ezra concurred,
nodding and looking around. “So by your
theory, it is possible the rickshaw is here because the rickshaw driver was
also shifted and carried his vehicle along with him.”
“Which could mean he had something to do with it,” Chris said. “So if we can find him we can find out what’s
going on and fix it. I guess that mean’s
we’ve just narrowed our search to
If the main streets had been unnerving in their emptiness, the barren
streets of Chinatown were downright eerie; it was a section of the city that
didn’t look like the rest of New York to begin with, its streets narrow and it’s
buildings alien, signs bearing beautiful but unreadable characters and strange,
stylized images staring down at them as though defying translation. When the inhabitants were in residence the
babble of dialects was broken just often enough by a spate of English to
reassure the hearer he was still in his own country, but in the absence of that
it was easy to lose one’s sense of place.
The feeling only reinforced the jumpiness of the seven Ghostbusters as
they prowled slowly through the district looking for any sign of the rickshaw
driver who hopefully was the key to their mystery.
It took a while – about two hours as Vin reckoned it for them using the
position of the sun since no one’s watch was working either – but finally
Nathan spotted something glittering on the narrow sidewalk and called loudly
for the others, the sound of his own voice echoing in the empty air making him
wince. He stopped JD, Chris and Buck
from trying to pick up the fallen necklace, though. “Unless one of you knows what that symbol
means, I think we should wait for Josiah before anyone touches the thing,” he
cautioned.
Josiah came panting up with Ezra right behind him a few moments
later. “Didn’t hear you, Nate,” he
apologized. “I was in kind of a dead
area, Ezra came and got me.” He looked
down at the necklace, walked around it and then squatted down beside it. Finally he scooped it up in his hand and
stood again. “I think this is a
protective charm,” he said. “This is the
symbol for Chang Tao Ling, Taoist god of the afterlife.”
“So what was it supposed to be protection against?” Chris asked. “And why isn’t whoever it was still wearing
it?”
“He might have thought it wasn’t working or wasn’t necessary anymore,”
Josiah answered.
“It looks like the chain was ripped off his neck,” Vin added, pointing at
the dangling ends. “Could have torn it
off himself, or someone else could have done it.”
“I’d guess that he did it himself,” Ezra observed. “Had someone else removed it against the
owner’s will, no doubt he would have pursued that person in an attempt to
retrieve it – see how the metal is worn in spite of the fact that it appears
fairly new? This is probably the latest
in a long line of such talismans, worn continuously until they break and then
replaced with another. You can even see
a bit of soap residue there on the edge, indicating that it was not even
removed for bathing purposes.”
Josiah broke back into the discussion.
“Chang Tao Ling was also head of the heavenly Ministry of Exorcism,
brothers,” he rumbled. “This could
explain why we’re still here, and why the containment unit is still intact even
without power; the Ministry was said to keep exorcised spirits in jars in the
basement of their temple.”
“So this guy may have figured we were just his kind of people and left
us alone,” Buck snorted, shaking his head.
“Was he dangerous, Josiah?”
“Well, he’s usually depicted as a warrior brandishing a sword riding on
the back of a tiger,” the ex-priest shrugged.
“And he supposedly defeated five poisonous animals and then created the
elixir of life from their venom and drank it to ascend to heaven. I wouldn’t have said he’d be dangerous to
anyone who wasn’t possessed, though.”
Chris’ eyes narrowed. “You think
this rickshaw driver may have been possessed?”
“I wouldn’t think it likely, but again it’s possible.” Josiah shrugged again. “We have so many spirits in residence in New
York now; the ones that were already here, the ones created last September and
the ones that have been drawn here by the strong presence of the mass over the
city, so it’s hard to guess what we could be dealing with in that department. But I agree with Ezra, the condition of the charm
would suggest that the wearer was seriously committed to his beliefs so
something extraordinary must have happened for him to rip it off and throw it
away.”
“We’ll just have to find him and ask him then, won’t we?” Vin had been looking at the dirty sidewalk,
going over in his mind the way the broken chain had lay. “I think he went down that way,” he said,
pointing. “We should be lookin’ for a
door standing open or something like that, this guy was in a hurry to get
somewhere.”
“Let’s get looking, then,” Chris ordered. This time the seven Ghostbusters stayed
together, but luckily their suspect hadn’t gone far; an open door in a nearby
alley led them down a narrow dark hallway to another open door, this one
leading into a tiny two-room apartment that smelled nauseatingly of old cooking and incense. Dilapidated furniture, part Asian, part
dumpster-discovery crowded the cramped space, and against one wall sat a box
mostly covered by a of dingy piece of
Chinese brocade and topped with burning candles and incense in holders of cheap
polished brass. A faded lithograph of an
armored warrior riding a tiger sat in the center and lined up neatly in front
of it were five small statues representing a scorpion, a snake, a centipede, a
spider and a toad, each one marked with a character that had obviously been
painted on with blood. Offerings of rice
and wine and other tidbits were laid out in front of it all along with a
scattering of coins and what looked like an assortment of small rocks which had
also been dotted with rusty dark blood.
It was obviously an altar, and Josiah stepped to the forefront with a
frown. “What religion is that, Josiah?”
Chris asked impatiently when the older man didn’t say anything. “Looks kind of like Santeria…”
“This isn’t Santeria,” the ex-priest said immediately, going down on
one knee for a closer look, careful not to touch anything. “There are similar elements, yes, but what
we’re seeing here is something…different but the same. See, that picture is of Chang Tao Ling, just
like the charm we found.”
“I believe what Mr. Sanchez is trying to say is that we may have just
stumbled onto a heretofore undocumented syncretic religion,” Ezra elaborated. “
“Syncre-what?” Nathan wanted to know.
“The bastard offspring of native religion and overzealous missionaries,”
Josiah answered heavily, getting back to his feet but not taking his eyes off
the altar. “The indigenous people
threatened by the Church ‘convert’ enough to mollify those in power and then
keep their own beliefs alive by submerging them beneath the trappings of
Catholicism, disguising gods as saints and adapting sympathetic magic to the
new symbolism. The most commonly known
ones are based on African and South American beliefs, it looks like this one
has its roots in
“Is that a bad thing?” Chris asked him.
“Santeria and Voodoun are usually pretty innocuous but they have their
dangerous sides…”
“We may be seeing the dark side of this religion, yes,” Ezra said distractedly
before Josiah could open his mouth. “The
purportedly vanquished animals are in a position to receive the offerings, not
positioned as offerings themselves. And
they have each been marked with a symbol in blood, not simply splattered with
it.” He rubbed his temple with one hand,
frowning. “Gentlemen, have any of you noticed
that the candle flames are not melting any wax?”
As if on cue the steady yellow flames flickered and flared green,
shooting up toward the ceiling but having no visible effect on the cracked
plaster. The Ghostbusters backpedaled as
far as they could in the small space, instinctively pulling out their throwers
and switching them on…
…And nothing happened. The seven
men looked at each other in dismay as the small statues began to twitch and
grow, and Buck quipped, “Well, it looks like this one’s gonna be a bit of a
challenge. Go get ‘em, Chris, we’ll be
right behind you.”
“I’m open for suggestions,” Chris shot back, not taking his eyes off
the five loathsome creatures swelling in front of him, their jaws, stings
and/or fangs dripping venom that hissed and smoked when it made contact with
the floor. “Or I guess I could just
order you to get them, couldn’t I?”
Just when he was about to start ordering everyone to get out of the
room, though, the monsters began to clamber up onto each other instead of
attacking. They twisted and writhed and
wrapped around and over each other until they were stacked and wrapped into a
tall heap, and then they began to sink into each other, the individual outlines
shifting and blurring and changing…until the warrior-priest from the altar
stood there, sword in hand. “Why do you
disturb the
The seven men looked at each other.
“What did you do to the city?” Chris countered. “Where are all the people?”
“They were noisy; I moved them aside where their lack of harmony would
not disturb me.” He looked over the men
and gestured regally at Ezra. “This one
surely appreciates the silence.”
“The din they make is preferable to the silence of a barren, empty
city,” Ezra replied. He cocked his
head. “Did the rickshaw driver summon
you?”
“It was not me he summoned,” was the surprising answer. “He desired the elixir of life.”
“He was summoning the five poisonous beasts to get the venom, then,”
Josiah murmured, a sad look crossing his face.
“And did he receive it?”
“He received what he asked, although not what he wanted.” The spirit gestured again, and a door they
had rightly guessed led to the bathroom flew open…to reveal the corpse of a
Chinese man of indeterminate age, his face and limbs contorted by agony and
greenish-blue slime dripping from his burned and blistered mouth. “The easy path to heaven was not so easy as
he had hoped. He was unworthy.”
“You have to defeat the beasts, not just steal their venom,” Josiah
explained to the others in an undertone.
“If you ‘earn’ the venom it won’t harm you.”
“I’d say this guy didn’t earn it, then,” Buck said, doing his best to
force down the bile that had risen in his throat at the gruesome sight; the
others were doing the same. “So now
what?”
It was the spirit who answered him.
“Now you leave my temple,” he boomed.
“I have answered your impertinent questions but I am weary of you
now. I am the god of this world and I
command you to leave me and go about your business. Be grateful I have spared you and depart.”
And with that he disappeared and the candle flames shrank back down to
small yellow flickers. “We probably
ought to do as he says, for the moment,” Chris said thoughtfully, nodding his
thanks when Buck hurried across the room to slam shut the bathroom door;
everyone relaxed slightly once the gaping corpse was hidden from view. “Sounds like you were right though, Vin; he
just moved everyone a step to one side.
We’ll have to figure something out, but at least there’s only one of
him…”
There was a murmur of agreement, through which Ezra’s decisive ‘No’ cut
like a hot knife through butter.
Everyone stared at the psychologist in surprise, but he didn’t back
down. “No,” Ezra insisted. “There isn’t just one. There are five spirits here and none of them
are Chinese.”
Josiah stepped closer to Ezra.
“You can hear them?”
“Vaguely,” was the answer. “Like
a reverberation in the voice of the ‘god’ we were just speaking with, and now
the merest of whispers here and there. I
can feel such a mix of emotions from them, though – I even sensed a trace of
regret for the rickshaw driver’s demise.
I don’t think they meant to kill him.”
“They…?” Larabee scowled. “The ‘five poisonous beasts’?”
“That would make sense,” Josiah rumbled, nodding. “If they aren’t Chinese they might not have
known that they couldn’t just give him the venom – but he
knew, on some level, and so it killed him.”
He scratched his head, puzzled.
“But I have to wonder why he was out in the street working the rickshaw
if he was waiting for them to come to him…”
“I wonder…” Before anyone could
stop him JD had gone back to the bathroom and opened the door, although not all
the way. He stuck his proton rifle inside,
poking at something, and then withdrew it and shut the door again. His face was green but triumphant. “The charm we found out in the street, it
burned him – there’s a round burn mark on his chest. That must be how he knew something was
happening, and why he ripped it off.”
“Good thinking, JD,” Vin approved.
“So if they aren’t Chinese, what are they and why are they here?”
“And what are we gonna do about them without our throwers?” Buck added.
Josiah sighed, and Chris shook his head. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to ask some
more ‘impertinent questions’, so it looks like we’ll be sticking around here
until they come back…
“They never left,” Ezra interrupted softly. “They’ve been listening to our every
word.” The air rustled in confirmation,
and he took a step away from the other Ghostbusters and focused on the empty
space above the altar. “The man who
built this altar, he isn’t here with you.
Did his spirit disperse?”
No, all the voices answered together but not completely in
harmony with each other. The mass…
Ezra shook his head. “We’ve been
worried that might happen, that the pull it exerts might suck in spirits who
are merely passing by – or attempting to pass on. You sound upset about it.”
The mass… they said again.
Pulling…pulling.
Always the pull…even with the altar…
“So that’s it,” Josiah exclaimed softly, resisting the urge to snap his
fingers. “Spirits, did you come from the
mass? Did you break away only to be
trapped by the altar?”
NOOOO! It was a howl
of rage, followed by a babble of denials.
Left us…killed us…broke away together…angry…our
choice to stop…just for us…revenge…revenge…REVENGE!
Ezra didn’t back down from the angry roar. “Who left you, killed you? I would have thought you came from the
“The anniversary,” Josiah said, looking stricken. “Today…the day they called off the rescue
teams. Were you still alive, spirits,
somewhere in the rubble?”
YES YES YES…abandoned…left us…others there…told
us…abandoned…left to die…
“The ‘others’, they were speaking to you, you could see them, touch
them?” Ezra asked gently. A scattered
murmur of affirmatives answered him and he shook his head. “My friends, don’t you see…you were not
abandoned. No one spotted you in the
wreckage and left you to die, none of our instruments alerted us to your
presence and were ignored. Your ‘others’
were ghosts, you were already dead.” The
resultant howl of denial and outrage blew around the seven men like an angry
wind, and the psychologist had to almost shout to be heard over it. “No, listen to me, I can prove it! Show yourselves and I will be able to tell
what killed you.”
The Chinese priest appeared again, floating just where Ezra had been
looking and brandishing his sword threateningly. “It is no longer important; we are the Five
Poisonous Beasts who merge to become Chang Tao Ling! And you seek to trick us, Ghostbuster.”
“No, I don’t,” the psychologist insisted. “And you are not Chang Tao Ling, you are not
a god! The poor fool you killed pulled
you together and gave you this form with his faith, remade you in the image of
his mythology. Think! He was poor and superstitious, a rickshaw
driver for god’s sake, working the streets of Chinatown for next to nothing;
you were, you are, New Yorkers, you surely
remember encountering his kind before.
He built this crude altar and summoned monsters to come save him from
his fear, to elevate him above his wretched, lonesome existence and put him on
a level with the gods themselves.” Ezra
spread out his hands in a non-threatening gesture. “And what harm could I possibly do to
you? Our weapons don’t work, and I’ve
put mine away anyway. Just show me; if I
am wrong you’ve lost nothing, risked nothing, but should I be right perhaps we
can see you released from this delusion you’ve become enmeshed in.”
Dead silence – very dead, and too silent. Then the armored form of the Chinese priest
flickered and fractured, splitting apart like a broken puzzle, and as their
connection was lost each piece slowly shifted back from animal shape to its
original form. Soon five human spirits stood
in front of the altar, every dead, angry eye fixed on the psychologist. “Tell me they didn’t leave me behind to die,”
demanded one, a heavyset man who didn’t appear to have a mark on him. “I was pinned, yeah, but I could feel cool
air on my skin and in my lungs, I knew I wasn’t really buried alive even though
I couldn’t see anything.”
Ezra stepped closer to the angry spirit, much to the dismay of the
other Ghostbusters and the surprise of the spirit himself. He scrutinized the man and then shook his
head. “That was not air, sir, it was
water, most likely from a broken main.
You were doubtless not conscious enough to experience the panic and
discomfort that normally accompanies drowning, but you felt the pleasant
coolness of the water and interpreted that sensation as a reassuring nearness
to freedom. You died practically
painlessly, it is no wonder that you failed to realize it had happened.” He moved on to the next spirit without
waiting to be asked. “You bled to death,
it looks like an artery was torn. The
two of you beside her were together, correct?”
Two nods accompanied by two surprised looks. “Asphyxiation, gentlemen, probably a gas line
rupture – again, painless and quick. And
you…” He had reached the last man, and
to the surprise of the other Ghostbusters Ezra scowled at the first four ghosts
and scolded, “You should have told him, even death is no excuse for
perpetuating this sort of self-delusion.”
“Should have told me what?!” The
man was young and dressed like a stockbroker, and in any other situation the
look on his face might have been comical.
“What was there to tell, there isn’t a mark on me either, my suit didn’t
even get torn!” He folded his arms
across his chest stubbornly. “And I know
for a fact that I wasn’t in the water, or near any gas lines.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered if you were,” Ezra replied. He glared again and the other ghosts, and
after some shuffling around the heavyset man sighed and shook his head. “Didn’t think he needed to know, we didn’t
mind him being with us…”
“He most certainly does need to know,” the psychologist countered
immediately. “And you, sir, are going to
tell him; I will not do your dirty work for you.”
The ghost sighed again, looking ashamed of himself. “All right, all right. Kid, you…”
He grimaced at the impatient look on the younger ghost’s face. “Whatever did it made a damn neat job of it,
never seen anything like that. Didn’t
you ever wonder why we told you not to worry about your hair, told you just to
forget it?”
“Well I am dead,” the stockbroker
retorted sarcastically. “I believe
someone,” he frowned at the woman, “made mention of the fact that vanity is
more than a little ludicrous in our situation.
So what…” He reached up to pat at
his hair, sliding his hand back…and then he stopped, and his eyes widened. Gingerly he felt around where the back of his
skull should have been. “There’s…there’s
nothing there!”
“Yep, like I said, neat as you please,” the older ghost told him with a
shrug. “Can’t really tell that much from
the front, though.”
The stockbroker nodded, still feeling around. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing at all, it all must have fallen
out. How empty-headed of me not to notice.” He suddenly realized what he’d just said and
giggled, then started to laugh good-naturedly.
“Empty-headed would about be it, wouldn’t it!”
The other ghosts as well as the stunned Ghostbusters saw the humor in
the situation as well and started to laugh as well, and then to everyone’s
surprise the stockbroker started to glow and then faded out with a broad grin
on his face. “Hey, what happened, what
did you do to him!” The older ghost
demanded of Ezra. “You said…”
“I didn’t do a thing,” Ezra corrected,
smiling. “He dispersed on his own, he’s
free now. And once the rest of you let
go of your anger, you will disperse as well.”
The woman looked unsure. “But
the mass…”
“Isn’t here, ma’am,” Vin told her.
“You all moved everything over a step, remember? He went straight home like he was supposed
to, and you will too. Ain’t you ready to
get out of this place?” She smiled,
nodded…glowed. Vin grinned and waved
when she disappeared. “Two down, three
to go. Who’s next, boys?”
That was apparently all the encouragement the two men who had died
together needed; they glowed, high-fived each other, and vanished. The remaining ghost snorted. “Damn, you boys are good – I always thought
you just blasted every ghost you saw into next week.”
“Not the Class Fours,” JD informed him seriously, and then when the
ghost cocked his head in puzzlement amended, “The ones that are people. We only bust those if they hurt someone.”
The heavyset man glanced toward the bathroom, regret on his face. “Not like that, Brother,” Josiah rumbled
gently. “You tried to give him what he
wanted, you had no way of knowing what would happen once he had it.”
“He said…” The ghost kicked at
the floor with one foot, frowning. “Was
kind of hard to understand him part of the time, but what we all got was that
he wanted to become a god so he could undo it all, make it all go away, punish
the people responsible – it was as much what he felt as what he said. Got the idea that he lost somebody there and
didn’t think they tried to hard to get her out, and since that was pretty much
the way all of us were feeling we let whatever it was he was doing here reel us
in, we just went along with it.” He
lifted tormented eyes up to meet Ezra’s.
“If we hadn’t screwed up, if he could have fixed
it…”
“Nothing can fix it.” The words
were flat and final, but there was a wealth of sympathy in Chris’ voice. “Once something’s done it’s done, ain’t no
going back. You just have to keep on
living in spite of it.” He made a face,
embarrassed, when he realized what he’d said.
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, actually I do.” The ghost
smiled. “You’re pretty good guys, you
know that? Not like I’d expected.” He looked a little startled when he started
to glow, and then his grin widened. “You
do good work, too. Sorry for all the
trouble we caused.”
“Made for an interesting day, anyway,” Buck told him, waving off the
apology. “You have a good trip, now.”
“We’ll see, I guess – I’ll tell you the next time I see you!” And with a wave, he was gone.
A distant roar like that of a huge wave approaching filled the air,
growing louder, bearing down on them.
Nathan and Josiah both leaped for Ezra and helped him reattach his gray
noise generator and turn it on as the walls of the room rippled, and then
rippled again…and then the wave broke over them and became the ever-present din
of a crowded, busy city. Ezra cautiously
pulled out one of his earpieces and then quickly put it back in. “They’re back.”
“Most of them, anyway.” Josiah
frowned down at the altar, seeing that the candles were now nothing but cold
puddles of congealed wax and the incense nothing but ash. He leaned over and plucked one of the spotted
rocks out of the mess and held it up to his eyes, then shook his head. “Concrete, I bet he got it from the
rubble. Sympathetic magic that worked a
bit too well.”
Everyone pointedly avoided looking toward the bathroom. Buck pulled out the PKE meter and turned it
on, grinning when it immediately lit up and indicated nothing but residuals
left in the room. “All gone now. We need to do anything about the rest of this
stuff before we get out of here and call the cops, Josiah?”
The ex-preacher shrugged and tossed the little chunk of concrete back
onto the altar. “No, it’s over. Once the practitioner is dead and the spirits
are gone, all it is is a mess. The
police will most likely have an interesting time going over it, though.”
Chris snorted. “They can have
it.” He looked thoughtful, though. “You know boys, maybe we’ve been going about
this the wrong way this past year. We
can’t bust all the ghosts in the mass, and it isn’t going away by itself like
we’d hoped – if anything, it’s getting bigger.
But what if we could figure out a way to encourage some of these spirits
to disperse?”
“Quite a few did during the memorial service earlier this month,” Ezra
agreed. He cocked an eyebrow at
Larabee. “Perhaps if we could isolate
small groups of them with the containment beams, we might be able to talk them
into dispersing – or at least start them on the way toward it. I can try to work on a general approach…”
“And the kid and I can see what we can do to boost the blocking power
of your generator,” Buck put in, a smile breaking across his face. “You boys think this will work?”
“Not quickly or easily,” Ezra temporized, but he was smiling too. “But every little bit will help, and if can
eventually reduce the size of the mass enough…”
“…it should break apart,” Chris finished for him, nodding. “Well, I don’t know about all of you but I’m
ready to get out of here and go home.
Let’s call the cops from outside, I don’t really want to get stuck here
answering questions if we can help it.”
He herded the other Ghostbusters out ahead of him, pulling out his cell
phone as he followed them. “Gotta remember
that guy,” he murmured to himself as he dialed the police. “Owe him a pat on the back when we see him
again. Looks like he may have fixed
things some after all.”