"This," said the ominous voice, "has gone on long enough."

"Why?" asked his companion without much display of interest. "Do you care what happens to other ghosts? I know I don't."

The two spirits had met in the empty observation tower of the Empire State building in the middle of the night when none but cleaning personnel might be in the building and if they came here, they had been and gone. The first speaker looked roughly humanoid in shape, though bigger than a human being. He was, in fact, a spirit from the Netherworld, rather than a human, though once coming here he had decided to assume the general form of the natives of this dimension. He could never have passed for one of them in a crowd, even if he could present a less transparent look.

The second spirit didn't look human at all. He had eight legs and vaguely resembled an octopus, though they did not usually come in Day-glo yellow. Unlike an octopus, though, he had a much more human face than his companion, a rather beautiful face like something from a classical painting, creating the opinion of wisdom and sincerity. Since he possessed neither of those particular qualities, he had learned to make full use of them since his arrival in New York.

"Of course I don't, except on general principle," the first specter replied. "But I do care what happens to me. I was nearly captured yesterday and only escaped through sheer luck. This realm has become dangerous for our kind, and I don't like it, Malkizah."

"Go back to the Netherworld," said the second easily. "No one will trap you there, Raputis."

"And fall under the sway of some demon or other? I think not. Here I have freedom--except for the threat of the Ghostbusters."

"Then leave New York," suggested the octopoid ghost. "No one forces you to stay here. Then I won't have to listen to your complaining any longer."

"No one is making you listen now," snapped Raputis in exasperation. "Yet you're still here. I tell you, I want to stay here. I like it here. It fascinates me, all this humanity in one gob, all at once; I like the lights, the colors, the smells, everything about this place. It almost makes me feel, dare I say it, alive. But the Ghostbusters almost caught me yesterday, and I won't let that happen, not when it would be so easy to do something about it."

"Is this the point where you ask me to exert myself?" The beautiful face made a moue of distress as Malkizah shrugged its whole body in lieu of shoulders.

"I expect nothing from you except irritation," snapped Raputis. "Besides, you would not serve my purposes. I can find another who will do it better than you, and if the initial plan does not work, there are others. I must stop the Ghostbusters, but I must make it appear a natural end. If the city believes them killed by ghosts, there would be a great outcry, and others would come to take their place, determined to end the 'scourge'. These may be the only Ghostbusters now, but should a ghost end their lives, others would come, other scientists, vigilantes, the army, who knows what kind of threat. But should it be an accident, a regrettable twist of fate, perhaps there would be a grace period. Possibly others would come, but they would not come in a great crusade, hot and angry and ready to war upon ghostkind and they would not come immediately."

"I admit it would be better to know the Ghostbusters were gone," the octopoid responded thoughtfully. "Do you plan to take over the city?"

"No. Why bother with all that exertion. I don't want the city. I only want peace. I plan to do what I do now. Enjoy it. I have no complaint against humans in general--I find them interesting. Just those four men. So I shall draw them to their deaths and none but us will know the 'tragedy' had anything but accident in it. I even know how I will do it. But I will require one ally."

Malkizah drew back fastidiously.

"Not you. You do not fit into my plans at all."

"Except as someone to listen while you boast of them?"

"Maybe that." Raputis chuckled. "This will take a little time. But," and he gestured at the sleeping city spread out below them, "time is not a problem for our kind, only for theirs." He laughed. "I simply invite you to view the fun. For I hope it will be fun. I will show myself very clever, creating several back-ups to my plan. And there might be one other thing. You've ranged further abroad than the city, haven't you?"

"I have explored, yes. I've seen far more than you."

"Then perhaps you can help me after all. Find me a haunted house, not just your run of the mill spook shop but someplace intriguing, someplace with a history, someplace where I can egg the owner on to call the Ghostbusters, someplace out of the city. Find one that's either currently occupied or about to be occupied. Then, we'll see what can be done. This is what I need..."

"Wake up, Peter. Rise and shine." Ray Stantz's good-natured voice caused Peter Venkman to groan and pull the pillow over his head, curling up under his covers. He'd never quite gotten the hang of mornings, especially since the other three Ghostbusters tended to be insultingly cheerful in the mornings and the four of them shared a dormitory bedroom. Getting in that sack time took skill and devoted effort in the mornings at Ghostbsuter Central.

Abruptly Peter felt the pillow yanked away and Egon Spengler bent over him expectantly. "If you will attempt to engage your brain before you drink your coffee, Peter, you will remember this is the day we've scheduled to make a visit to the Children's Hospital. So no more lying around wasting time." He grasped Peter's arm and pulled him up inexorably. Peter allowed himself to be pulled. He couldn't disappoint those kids--but someday soon he'd find out who had scheduled the visit for nine in the morning and coax Slimer to thoroughly slime his bed, clothes and the insides of all his shoes.

"Shower," Winston Zeddemore instructed Peter, pointing in the direction of the bathroom. "Now."

"Is that a personal comment?" Peter asked, taking a surreptitious sniff at his armpit. Maybe Winston had a point, but why did they all have to be in such a hurry? Peter could have gotten away with at least ten more minutes of sack time.

"No, it's a way to wake you up," Ray put in as he finished making his bed and set his Stay Puft Marshmallow Man doll on the center of his pillow. He looked as cheerful as he sounded, and ordinarily Peter liked that, but not before eight in the morning. A guy had his priorities after all. Clad in a tee shirt that read in big, bright, red letters, "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good proton pack on your back," Ray looked ready to don his weapon of choice and march out to confront hordes of nasty ghosts--before breakfast. Peter essayed a pitiful whimper.

"I was out late last night, guys. Have mercy."

"That's hardly our fault, Peter." With nary a shred of sympathy Egon gestured him toward the shower. "You knew today's schedule as well as we did."

Heaving a heavily-put-upon sigh, Peter dug in his drawer for clean underwear and headed off to the bathroom, pretending high dudgeon. After he was fully awake he'd plan his revenge. A shower would feel pretty good, after all.

It did. The water was hot and plentiful, and Slimer was mercifully absent. Peter lathered up, raising his voice in what he--and evidently he alone--considered tuneful song. If the other guys didn't appreciate it, well, they were simply tone deaf, that was all. Besides, Egon liked opera. That proved it. No accounting for taste, Peter thought as he warbled cheerfully away.

A sound like a squish and slurp began to issue out of the drain, and Peter left off singing to listen. That sounded like the spud sneaking up on him through the water pipes, one trick Slimer had learned and never forgotten. Peter didn't mind sharing a shower with his current girlfriend, but sharing it with a slimy little spud who undid all the good of soap and water went beyond the acceptable. "Slimer, if that's you..." he muttered under his breath.

Whatever it was started to ooze up out of the drain and Peter jumped backward because it bore no resemblance to Slimer. It was green, but it was a darker shade than the spud, scaly like a trout, but, as it expanded into its normal shape, far bigger. Its body was almost half head with a huge, toothed mouth, and it blew steam at Peter through protruding nostrils like an angry bull's. It had a sharp, curving horn between the nostrils, little stubby arms just beyond the ends of the cavernous mouth, and a bulbous body that tapered into a dolphin-like tail, complete with three sets of stubby little legs that didn't mean it was confined to scuttling along on the ground. It hovered in mid-air in front of Peter, its mouth opening as if to take a bite.

"YAAAA!" screeched Peter at the top of his lungs, backpedaling wildly and coming up against the side of the tub. Grabbing frantically at the shower curtain to prevent his inevitable fall, he felt himself tipping backwards as the curtain tore loose, unable to support his weight. "EEEEGONNN!" he screeched as he fell. A voice in his mind intoned soberly, 'the worst accidents take place in the bathroom.'

The ghost let out a shriek even louder than Peter's and dove past him. Peter's arms windmilled as he made a vain attempt to catch his balance, then in a tangle of shower curtain, he went over backwards, and hit the floor hard, knocking the breath from his body. As his head slammed backward toward the floor, the ghost cried out and dove, sliding to a stop just beneath the falling man. Peter's head impacted with the ghost instead of the hard floor, and though it slimed his head completely, the entity broke the worst of his fall. Peter wheezed, trying to get his breath.

"PETER!" The guys appeared in the doorway. He saw them upside down, staring at him in utter horror. "Peter, get away from it. We'll trap it," Winston urged, vanishing again, evidently to fetch a proton pack.

The ghost evidently understood English because it oozed out from beneath Peter, wrapped stubby arms around the supine man's neck and hugged him frantically. "Save me, Peter," it moaned pleadingly, big tears oozing from its eyes.

"It talks," blurted Ray, eyes widening. "Peter, can you get away from it?"

Peter was still trying to catch his breath. He made wild gestures, mouth opening and closing as he attempted speech.

"Are you injured, Peter?" Egon asked, as he realized the ghost wasn't actually hurting his friend. He squatted down beside Peter and put a hand on his shoulder, evidently to keep Peter from moving until he could be examined, concern in his eyes, but also, unfortunately, amusement at the sight of the affectionate ghost.

Peter gasped and panted, still too shaken to take exception to Egon's look. "Breath...knocked outa me..." he wheezed.

"We gotta wrap up this nasty gooper and then we'll listen, Pete." Winston returned wearing a pack and toting a trap in one hand, his thrower in the other.

Peter shook his head, trying in vain to push the overly affectionate monster away. "...came up the drain..." he gasped. "Made me trip."

"Did he hurt you, Peter?" persisted Ray, while Egon pointed his ever-present P.K.E. meter at the clinging phantom.

"No." Finally catching his breath, Peter sat up, shoving the ghost off. It backed off a little and hovered, watching Peter closely, luminous blue eyes turned hopefully toward the downed psychologist. "When I fell, I was gonna whack my head on the floor. He broke my fall."

"After he made you fall in the first place, Peter," Egon pointed out, his meter still aimed at the anxious ghost.

"True, but I don't think he meant to." Peter felt no fondness for the ugly little spud, but he was basically a fair man.

"Didn't mean to hurt Peter," the little ghost agreed quickly in a piping voice that was about as piercing as Slimer's but a lot more understandable. "Wanted friends."

"Aw, he wants to be friends," said Ray, smiling at the little ghost then reaching out to help Egon pull Peter into a sitting position.

"Ray, in case you have forgotten it is our job to bust ghosts," Egon said, shaking his head as he watched Peter to make sure the movement hadn't caused any pain. "This is a Class 5 free roaming vapor. He belongs in the containment unit."

At those words, new tears welled up in the spirit's eyes and ran down its despondent face. "Wanted friends," it repeated. "Didn't want to hurt Peter. Saved Peter."

"Yeah, he did," Peter agreed without enthusiasm. He didn't like the ghost--those teeth were nasty as was the tusk and as he watched the entity blew steam from his nostrils. But the thing had saved him from a possibly severe injury. He knew a guy who had fallen in the shower and hit his head, and the guy had had grand mal seizures ever since. "Besides," he continued hastily, "Nobody's paying us to bust him. Waste of power, isn't it? We'd only have to recharge the packs and use up a trap. He doesn't want to hurt anybody. He can always go back down the drain again and save us the trouble."

"Hmm." Egon's very knowing gaze lingered on Peter. "Perhaps another ghost to study for a time might be useful. Slimer won't always sit still for the tests I wish to perform." He turned to the ghost. "I am a scientist. I would like to do some experiments on you."

The ghost stared back, two pairs of blue eyes meeting and considering the offer. Then the monster edged back to Peter and wrapped a stubby arm around his neck. "Okay. Want to stay with Peter."

"Aw. He likes you, Peter," said Ray, smiling a little too broadly. "So is it okay, guys? Can we keep him?" he pleaded eagerly like a kid trying to wheedle his parents into allowing him a new puppy.

Peter's idea had been more intended to urge them to send the little monster someplace far away from New York, like possibly the Aleutian Islands. "On one condition," he said sternly. "Long as he doesn't keep sliming me. Bad enough the spud does it. I don't want this little wiggler to get in the habit, too. Hear me, ghost? I like hugs when they come from gorgeous females. I do not like to be hugged by ghosts. Back off, okay?"

The ghost obeyed instantly, withdrawing to a discreet distance. "Okay, Peter," it promised solemnly.

Egon grabbed Peter by the hand and pulled him to his feet. "Sure you aren't injured?" he asked, his fingers lingering on Peter's wrist as he checked the psychologist's pulse. "Any pain?"

"I'm not hurt," Peter said, ruefully rubbing his bottom. Realizing he was stark naked as well as soapy and wet, which was a condition totally brimming with indignity, he added, "I'm gonna finish my shower. How about giving a guy a little privacy here? And that means you, Jack," he added, pointing at the ghost.

"Liked singing," the ghost confessed with a sigh of pleasure at the memory of it, but he swooped obediently toward the doorway. "Came to hear pretty voice."

"At least he's got good taste," Peter muttered as he grabbed the shower curtain and held it before him in a futile attempt to regain his lost dignity.

Grinning, Ray and Winston removed it from his grip and began to hang it up again. Egon smiled at Peter's abortive gesture to get it back. "You've got water everywhere, Peter," he called over his shoulder as he waved the ghost toward the door, pausing to gesture at the water that had run down the fallen curtain to puddle everywhere and squish under the clothed Ghostbusters' boots. "I trust you'll clean it up before we have to leave for the Children's Hospital."

Peter stood clutching a corner of the shower curtain while the shower continued adding to the water on the floor, and heaved a frustrated sigh at the way his morning had begun. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet. How bad was this day going to get?

The gig at the Children's Hospital could have gone better, but on the other hand, it could have gone a whole lot worse. Slimer had returned from his morning trash-can foray shortly before they were to leave and discovered the new ghost ensconced in the lab while Egon ran tests on him. Peter, just lacing up his boots, heard the spud's outraged screech and hurried across the hall to the lab to investigate, prepared to be entertained. Slimer was gesticulating wildly and sputtering protests, the gist of which was that Ghostbuster Central was Slimer's place and he didn't like other ghosts being there. Ignoring the little spud's complaints, Egon adjusted equipment, Ray attempted to reason and sympathize with Slimer, and Winston stood back, arms folded across his chest, grinning in amusement at all the excitement.

"We're going to run tests on him, Slimer," Egon explained reasonably. "You won't sit still for all my tests any more. I need backup."

"Slimer be good," the little green spud vowed, casting a baleful look at the intruder. "Egon do all kind of test and Slimer like it. Promise."

"Like Slimer," the new ghost volunteered. "Like Egon, like Ray, like Winston. Love Peter!"

Slimer's eyes narrowed at what he must consider an infringement on his territory. "Go 'way," he cried, flinging a dramatic hand in the direction of the nearest window. He would have pushed the other ghost right through the glass if he hadn't needed to go through Ray to do it. "Don't need you here."

"Hey, Pete, the spud's jealous," Winston said with a grin, noticing Peter in the doorway and beckoning him in to share the fun.

"Great, just what I need. Ghosts fighting over me," murmured Peter without enthusiasm as he ambled into the lab. "Don't worry, Spud. I don't like him. If it comes to that I don't like you either."

"Aw," wailed Slimer, shooting a hugely reproachful look in Peter's direction. "Peter hates me."

"He doesn't hate you, Slimer," Ray said quickly, anxious to reassure the little green ghost. "He's just grouchy in the mornings. You know how he is. He can't sneak you popcorn at night and chase away that nasty gooper that tried to dive bomb you yesterday and then say he doesn't like you."

Peter winced. He didn't like to seem soft around the spud, and Ray's encouraging words were certain to inspire Slimer to all kinds of bad habits, even if the occultist was right. Slimer irritated Peter like crazy, but he wasn't quite as bad as he had been at the beginning. Better to believe the spud had improved than to admit he'd developed a tolerance of him, because if it were true, Peter didn't want to admit it. He'd never live it down.

"Hmmm," said Egon, his tones deeply significant. "I hadn't considered that fact before, but Peter, considering their reaction to you, you may somehow be a natural ghost attractor."

"I thought you said there wasn't any such thing as a ghost attractor, Spengs," Peter reminded him hastily. He didn't like the possibility of Egon's new theory. True, Slimer tried to hug him and smooch him all the time but he did it to the other guys and Janine too, and it wasn't really that much worse than having an affectionate dog licking one's face. But Peter did tend to get slimed a lot on busts. More than the others, he was sure of it, at least it felt that way. Could Egon mean something about him caused it, that it would go on happening forever? He'd half suspected he got slimed the first because he always plunged into any new bust, partly because if there was going to be heat he wanted to protect his buddies. Ray was so gung ho that danger never occured to him and Egon got caught up in all the technical aspects and could walk in front of a bus if he was concentrating on the readings of his P.K.E. meter. Peter didn't often acknowledged the thought consciously, and he wasn't overtly--or overly--protective of the guys on busts, but a part of him suspected it was true. If Egon was right, it might mean the ghosts would find him anyway, even if he hung back the way he sometimes pretended to. Now there was a disgusting thought.

"I said we couldn't build one," Egon replied. "However, there's no question some people appear to experience significantly higher contact with the spirit realm than the rest of the population. I have done little research into this particular subject yet, though I have always meant to." His gaze traveled consideringly over the reluctant psychologist. "Today might be a good day to begin."

"If that means you want me to sit around all afternoon with electrodes stuck to me while you play mad scientist then today is not a good day to begin," argued Peter just as Slimer stuck out his tongue at the new ghost and gave him a dramatic raspberry.

"Cool it, Slimer," Winston put in, patting the green ghost on the back. "Think of it like this. You'll have somebody to play with when we're gone."

Slimer didn't look like he derived any pleasure from the idea, even when Ray said encouragingly, "It'll be fun, Slimer. You can teach him all sorts of things and show him what he's not allowed to touch. We'd never manage without you."

"What things?" Slimer asked suspiciously, narrowing his orange eyes as he sneaked unfriendly looks at the new specter.

"Probably how to slime my boots," muttered Peter, giving the new little ghost a dark look. He had to admit it was a lot more polite than Slimer. It hadn't retaliated to the spud's overt dislike, instead simply hanging politely in the air near Egon, his little feet making small stroking motions like a dog-paddling swimmer attempting to remain in place.

Ray leaned in, interested, as always, in any new phenomenon. "What's your name, little guy?" he asked. "We can't keep calling you, 'him', or 'hey you'."

"Muz," said the ghost obediently. "Name is Muz."

"Short, but not sweet," said Peter. "Slimer, we've got that gig at the Children's Hospital. Your job is to look after Muz and make sure he doesn't scare the kiddies. You got it?" And when the other three looked at him in astonishment that he would permit the new ghost to come along, he shrugged. "Leave it here where it can get into all kinds of trouble? Janine would probably quit if we tried to get her to babysit a ghost again. You know how she goes on about what's not in her job description? Course you might get around her, Egon," he said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively at the blond man. It was common knowledge Janine had the hots for Egon. Egon's reaction to her was known only to Egon.

"I think it best to keep our eyes on Muz, too," Egon replied immediately, ignoring the latter half of Peter's remarks. "He appears harmless, even quite friendly."

"The kids'll love him," enthused Ray, getting into the spirit of things. "He's cute."

"Yeah, if you like monsters with big teeth," grumbled Peter.

Janine Melnitz gaped at Muz when he bobbed down the stairs after Peter, ignoring Slimer's attempts to crowd in between. "What is that?" demanded the secretary, eyes wide.

"New toy for Egon to play with," Peter said wickedly. "He came out of the bathtub drain when I was taking a shower."

"Is that what all the noise was up there? I never know if you're being killed or if you're playing touch football or what. Most of the time," the redheaded woman added darkly, "it's better not to know." She eyed the new ghost skeptically. "And I'm not gonna watch him while you're gone."

"Told you!" Peter elbowed Egon with a wicked grin. "Don't worry, Big J, we're taking him with us. Though medical science may never forgive us."

"I'm not sure I will either, Dr. V," she called after him.

"Hey, Melnitz, what did I ever do to you?"

She folded her arms and looked at him consideringly. "Well, let me see. Do you want a list?" She smiled suddenly. "Go on, get outa here. I've got work to do. And don't get in trouble, Dr. V."

"We won't," said Peter pointedly as the four men and two ghosts headed for Ecto-1.

Actually medical science had nothing to complain about. The kids liked Muz as much as they liked Slimer and reveled in a chance to play with both ghosts. Slimer had his routine down pat in which he pretended to be a nasty ghost while the guys chased him around the ward and pretended to miss, causing the children to laugh uproariously. When Slimer had finally been trapped, and then freed, Peter gestured the other ghost forward and the kids were fascinated.

"They know we won't let anything hurt them," Ray told one of the nurses. "Slimer's been with us a long time and Muz is protective of humans. He saved Peter from getting hurt when he tripped in the shower this morning."

"Well, if you say so," the nurse replied uneasily. "It's just that they're both so ugly."

"Very different from you," Peter told her with a smile. "They're harmless--unless you count getting slimed harmful."

"I don't think I'd like it," she said doubtfully. "You're sure it won't hurt the children?" She pointed at Slimer who was hugging a little girl in a wheelchair. In spite of the goo in her hair, the child looked rapturous with delight and was hugging him back with all her strength.

"It never hurt me," Peter said. "Annoyed me, maddened me, messed up my hair, but it never hurt me."

"And Peter should know," Egon replied. "He is often a ghost's first target when we go on a bust."

Peter straightened up, threw out his chest, sucked in his stomach and struck a pose. "It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it."

"Yeah, that's why we keep him," Winston chortled. He ducked away before Peter could retaliate, joining Slimer and squatting down to speak to the child. Ray was already circulating, showing his thrower to the children and explaining it in a way they could understand.

The nurse followed Peter's gaze and smiled a little at the sight. "He's very good with the children."

"Yeah, Ray's just a big kid himself," Peter said fondly. Realizing Ray was getting good press here while Peter himself was just standing around, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. "Yo, Muz. Front and center." The ghost complied immediately, even sketching a half-salute.

"Aye, aye, Peter."

The kids loved that. Peter grinned. "Okay, Muz, you're the world-champion air swimmer. Let's show these kids how great you can swim across the room--and you don't even need a pool."

The ghost instantly poised himself like a fish and went off across the room, legs paddling, stubby little arms cleaving the air, tail wiggling back and forth, up and down, controlling direction and pitch. It was a comic sight. The kids shrieked with delight and applauded, and Muz beamed. He swam from child to child, giving each one of them a big, sloppy kiss.

"He's worth his weight in PR," Peter muttered to Egon. "I was pretty smart when I said we should keep him."

"You? I seem to remember you wanted to shove him back down the drain and forget about him," Egon reminded him, controlling his amusment at Peter's attempt to save face. "Perhaps a series of television ads might be beneficial. You know there is a certain segment of the population who considers us cruel for busting every ghost we see. It might please them to realize we don't do it automatically."

"We don't bust 'em all," Peter argued as if to convince the pretty nurse. "Some of 'em, we talk into going away, some we help disperse peacefully. Some we vaporize because they need it. We only bust the bad guys."

"And this will convince people that's true," Egon replied. "We'll take Muz with us on some of our busts. He could be very useful."

"Yeah, and he's got great taste, too," Peter put in. "He even likes my singing."

"Well, yeah, no accounting for taste," Winston called over his shoulder. The older kids chuckled knowingly at this and even the younger ones giggled a little. Peter pretended to be hugely distraught, which caused the children to roar with laughter, especially when Muz swooped over to Peter and patted him on the back with his little hands and his two front feet with enough force to make Peter stagger. He cast a baleful glare at the little ghost, which the children took as part of the performance, and Muz, full of his own importance, swooped around the room giving some of the children high fives. The little ghost was definitely a scene stealer. Noticing this, Slimer sulked, and Ray coaxed the green ghost down from his hovering position near the ceiling. Slimer made him work for it but then he finally came down and threw his skinny arms around Ray's neck, to applause from all the children.

All in all, it was a highly successful performance, and Peter could tell as he was signing autographs for the children that their spirits had been raised by the Ghostbusters' visit. He thought back to a hospital stay of his own when he was a kid, once when he was sick enough that his father, the roving con man, had actually shown up and sat with him, and imagined how he would have received something like this. Of course by then he was old enough to have started to develop a layer of cynicism, but he suspected no child could have resisted this performance; certainly none of the children in the ward had.

He looked around for the nurse who had seemed impressed earlier, determined to see if he could gain something from the experience, and found her talking eagerly to Ray. Peter had been upstaged a few times by Egon--the tall physicist seemed to attract women without trying and Peter was used to that--but Ray didn't generally try to upstage Peter with the fairer sex. Edging closer, Peter discovered they were talking enthusiastically about comic books. Ray had found a fellow comic fan. Peter backed off. A little female companionship would be good for his buddy. He grinned proprietarily, as if he had planned it that way.

Egon was engaged in conversation with a doctor, a woman of much Egon's age with her hair pulled back severely in a bun, wide blue eyes nearly concealed by horn-rimmed glasses. An expert in female appearance, Peter realized she would be spectacular if she took her hair down, not that she was anything but beautiful now. He eavesdropped a little. Egon was speaking, enthusiastically and with gestures.

"...with an adjustment to the proto-ectoplasmic resonator--"

"Fascinating." The doctor's eyes widened. Her glasses slid down her nose much the way Egon's always did. If that kind of talk fascinated her, it looked like a match made in heaven.

Peter turned away, and came face to face with their new ghost, who embraced him heartily and slurped a long purple tongue from Peter's chin to his forehead. He groaned and pushed the ghost away, which set the children laughing again. A showman the ghost might be, but he wasn't Peter's favorite companion. The other doctors in the room were male and the other nurses were old enough to be Peter's mother. He gave a sigh, resigning himself to the role of comic relief, at least for the remainder of the gig.

"Never mind, Pete," Winston consoled him, giving him a comradely slap on the back. "Does 'em good to get out of the lab once in awhile."

That was true. Peter looked at Egon and Ray and grinned broadly. Yeah, the two mad scientists needed a little female companionship, though Janine was certain to dislike the doctor on sight. Now if Peter could just figure out how to convince Muz that it was time for him to go back to wherever he'd come from....

Muz spent the next few days worming himself into the affections of Peter's fellow Ghostbusters. Even Egon, who claimed to serve the cause of science, rapidly warmed to the little ghost, who proved utterly helpful in the lab, determined to allow Egon to run every test known to humanity upon his ugly little person. Slimer had always run out of patience before Egon had finished, but Muz was willing to spend long hours there with the physicist, though he would pop away long enough to reassure himself that Peter had not run off in the meantime. He never wanted to come along on Peter's dates after the first time he asked, either, resigning himself to the company of the other three while Peter was out on a date. They had begun to grow quite fond of him, accepting him as a natural part of life around the firehouse. Only Peter was able to control his enthusiasm, though he could tolerate Muz, even if only because the new ghost was such an appreciative audience if Peter decided he wanted to sing or play music on Egon's keyboard, actions which usually reminded his three teammates they had urgent work elsewhere.

Slimer was the only hold-out, but after three or four days, even the spud started to warm up to Muz, who professed himself to like Slimer, even when the green ghost was at his most obnoxious. Muz finally offered, very sadly with huge tears, to go away, managing to create a thoroughly hangdog expression, and even Slimer felt sorry for him.

"Aw, poor Muz," he muttered to Ray and Peter, who had watched the new ghost's performance, Ray with overt sympathy and Peter in appreciation for a con man whose skills rivaled Peter's father. Muz wasn't particularly smart but he had great instincts. "Muz can stay," Slimer announced.

Muz beamed. With his huge mouth, beaming was quite dazzling, and all his teeth glittered. "Muz loves Slimer," he announced and embraced him. Slimer wasn't entirely sure he liked that, but he bore up with it, and returned it. After that, the two ghosts began to have fun together, sometimes planning joint attacks upon Peter, sliming him from two directions at once.

"Fascinating, Peter," Egon said after one such dive-bombing attack in which Peter was coated from head to toe in two shades of green ectoplasmic residue. "You do seem to be a natural target for ghosts. I think I should indeed run those tests. Can you give me an hour?"

Peter heaved a sigh. "Come on, Egon, I think I'd rather not know. After all, unless you can find a way to shut down my ghost-attractor pheromones, what good does it do to know about it. I might as well paint a bulls-eye on my chest and be done with it."

"You know very well a large part of your receptivity to being slimed is due to your gung-ho desire to lead the charge," Egon replied, though he was obviously intrigued by Peter's choice of the word 'pheromones'.

"Gung-ho, Egon?" Peter asked, lifting a haughty eyebrow. "That's Ray, not me."

Egon grew serious. "Peter, don't think I don't understand why you sometimes press to the forefront on a bust."

Venkman avoided Egon's eyes. "Well, maybe I just get carried away," he mumbled, adding brightly, "I live for my work."

"You have a large protective streak," Egon replied knowingly, his eyes warming. "Though it isn't necessary to shield us, I realize you do it out of genuine concern, and the rest of us do attempt to take up the slack."

Peter knew that. Whenever he charged into danger at the head of the group, he could always count on the others following him; he knew they did it out of the same concern that motivated him, and that their teamwork functioned so well because of their genuine friendship and caring for each other. They didn't trip over their own feet to protect each other, but they were there in a crisis. Never let it be said that one of the Ghostbusters could fall into danger because his buddies hadn't stood up for him.

A little embarrassed at where this subject was leading, since Peter had never been quite comfortable with overt declarations of affection, he said quickly, "So run your tests, Spengs. If there's such a thing as ghost-attracting pheromones, I want to know about it. Maybe I can change my diet or something so I don't have the knack any more."

"It would be a fascinating study," returned Egon, letting him off the hook. "Something does draw ghosts to you, and it works whether the ghosts love you or hate you. I'd enjoy clarifying the reason."

Peter grinned broadly. "Maybe it's the same kind of thing that makes women like me so much." He sneaked a considering look at his friend to see how well that had gone over, and noted the stern look in Egon's eyes. "So tell me," he prompted with a grin, "how are you and Dr. Levitt getting along?"

Egon reddened slightly. "She is an intelligent woman, Peter. She knows more about physics than I'd expect someone in another field to understand, and she is fascinated with mushrooms."

"In other words, a match made in heaven. What does Janine think about this paragon?"

Egon frowned. "Well, um, Peter, I think this is not the time for such a frivolous discussion. We have work to do."

Peter grinned. Egon was enjoying himself with the doctor, but he wasn't deeply smitten. Besides, her schedule was such that she had very little time for Egon. The romance would run its course and then fade away, but Egon might well enjoy the process and it would probably be good for him. He needed to get away from the lab more than he did, and Peter always encouraged him to go out on the town.

"Okay, Igor, bring on your electrodes," he conceded. "I'm ready to be the guinea pig. Or should I say 'victim'? Let's see why Muz--not to mention Slimer--find me so lovable. After all, Muz always comes to listen when I sing in the shower."

"Perhaps Muz is female, Peter, and simply enjoys watching you bathe out of some type of prurient interest," Egon said wickedly, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth at his suggestion.

Peter gaped at Egon, finding the idea a terrible one. What it if applied to Slimer, too? All these years.... He grimaced horribly, feeling his cheeks redden. "You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding. The last thing I want in my entire life is to be a lust object for a six-legged wiggler with big teeth--or for any other little spuds, either."

Egon couldn't hold back his laughter any longer as he abandoned his teasing. "Don't be alarmed, Peter. As near as I can ascertain, Class 5 specters do not possess specific sexual characteristics, at least not as a general rule. Slimer might react when watching sexual scenes in a movie, but it is simply to copy human behavior. He doesn't do it on his own. I've noticed him drift away from the screen during love scenes on television and certainly Muz has shown no interest in that direction. We tend to refer to such ghosts as 'he' either out of gender stereotypes in the language or simply because their voices more often than not sound male."

"Well, thank goodness for that," Peter retorted with relief, embarrassed at the very thought. "The thing came up the drain when I was naked, for Pete's sake."

Egon's laughter intensified. "Don't worry, Peter. I doubt it was physical lust which attracted Muz. Perhaps he is simply tone deaf."

"I hope so. The last thing I want is something hanging around lusting after me while I'm in the shower. At least not unless whoever it is proves to be female and very much alive. Wait a minute," he added suddenly. "What do you mean, tone deaf!" He lunged at Egon, who jumped sideways to avoid being tackled to the ground.

The alarm rang.

"Saved by the bell," Egon said with an amused smile. "I'm afraid the electrodes will have to wait, Peter."

"So will your payback," retorted Venkman, grinning. "I'll try to contain my disappointment. Come on, let's go down and see what Janine has in store for us."

"Hopefully something interesting," Egon replied.

"Just so long as it isn't big and nasty with a lot of teeth," Peter said as they started for the stairs. "I get enough of that at home."

"It's a job Upstate," Janine informed the Ghostbusters when the four of them lined up in front of her desk, Winston wiping grease from his hands after emerging from beneath the hood of Ecto-1. Ray, who must have been working on trap maintenance had one in his hand that he was just finishing with, sealing the casing into place with a screwdriver.

"I hope it's exciting," he said with a bounce of anticipation. "We haven't had anything past a Class 2 or 3 all week."

"Muz come too?" asked the little dark-green specter, hanging in the air over Janine's left shoulder. "Muz help out a lot."

"We haven't taken him on a bust yet," Ray reminded the team. "It might be interesting to see what useful qualities he has. He might be able to sense other ghosts, and he does have a longer attention span than Slimer."

"Yeah, about five minutes longer," Winston reminded them, tossing aside the greasy rag. "He's hardly a Rhodes Scholar. But it wouldn't hurt, I guess. He's not always clamoring to be fed, either."

Slimer popped up out of one of the drawers of Janine's filing cabinet. "Slimer go too?" he beseeched the guys in hopeful anticipation.

"I'm not going if they both are," Peter said firmly. The thought of being slimed from two directions at once didn't appeal to him in the slightest, not when he was on a job.

"Slimer," Ray wheedled, realizing Peter meant what he said, "you have to stay and protect Janine, remember? Muz has never gone with us before. I think you two can take turns. This will be his turn. You can come next time, and that's a promise."

Slimer's yellow eyes rolled meaningfully. "Slimer doesn't like it," he muttered under his breath as if he were fighting massive disappointment, then he zipped over to Janine and embraced her around the neck. "Slimer protect Janine."

"Can it, Slimer," she urged, pushing him off. "Give me some space."

"Tell us about the job, Janine," Egon urged.

"Well, it was a guy who bought a big old house in a little village called Jonesville, and he wants to renovate it, but he says it's got a bad history. Mysterious things happen there and it keeps changing hands, though nobody will claim there are really ghosts. This guy's apparently a stubborn type and says that if there are ghosts, why not call in experts just like he would if there were termites."

"So we get to be the Orkin Man?" Peter asked, not quite certain if this was a slur on their profession or not, though they were ghost eliminators. Peter had always considered that a peg above run of the mill exterminators, but it was clear that some of their clients didn't have quite the elevated notion of Ghostbusting that the team did.

"That sounds about right," Janine said. "The guy, a character named Johnson, said he hadn't experienced much of anything himself though some of the painting crew he had in the house had, but he wanted the place checked out. He left a key for you under a brick beside the front steps. He says he's prepared four rooms. It will be night by the time you get there. He says there's a good restaurant in Jonesville and you can eat there, then head out to the house. He'll leave an ice chest there with some cold drinks and some thermoses of coffee or cocoa for you, and you can either bust the ghost tonight or sleep over and do it in the morning."

Peter brightened. It sounded like this client had their interests and their comfort at heart. "Won't he be there?" he asked in surprise.

The secretary shook her head. "No, he's a businessman and can't get away. He was up there a couple of days ago and evidently heard all the local dirt about the place and apparently had a 'close encounter' of his own, though he says he didn't actually see a ghost." She grinned suddenly. "Frankly I think he did experience something but doesn't like to admit it. You know the rational type--there are no ghosts, so obviously he didn't see or hear anything. Here's his phone number. You can call him if you have questions."

Peter smiled in return as he took the paper and shoved it into his pocket. "Too bad he won't be there, then, to see us in action. We work well for a skeptical audience." In fact, Peter liked to manipulate such busts to be even more convincing than usual if he could to prove how brilliant and talented the team was.

"Cheer up, Peter, he's paying us whether he wants to admit he believes or not," said Ray with enthusiasm. "How far is it? We'd better get moving if we want to get up there before dark."

The house in question was an old mansion over looking the Hudson River, reached by a journey down several back roads through a rather thick woods. It would prove for its owner an ideal retreat from civilization once it was de-haunted. In a contented frame of mind the four Ghostbusters, replete from a fabulous meal at the recommended restaurant, pulled into the long, curving driveway of the old place just at twilight. Peter's content was increased by the fact that Muz had been quiet in the back of Ecto and hadn't insisted in coming into the restaurant with them. In fact Muz didn't seem to eat at all, except for the odd bite Ray tended to offer him, which was infinitely better on their budget than Slimer's voracious appetite. Peter banished the memory of the sight of Slimer watching them with huge, betrayed eyes as they pulled out of the firehouse to head upstate. He didn't want to start getting sentimental over Slimer. There were enough problems in life without that. Egon and Ray wanted to test Muz's abilities to detect other ghosts and see if they could form any theories about ghostly receptivity to spirits. And at least Peter hadn't been slimed once on the journey. He still wasn't particularly fond of the little ghost, though.

The house was big and boxy, red brick and, in Peter's estimation, rather too overgrown with ivy and creepers. Some of the windows were blocked right up, as if the house had been abandoned a long time or as if the previous owners had liked living in a green-filtered, jungle-like atmosphere. The old place was ideal for ghosts. Anyone looking at the place would expect it to be haunted.

"Wow, it looks spooky," cried Ray, echoing Peter's thoughts.

"Not only does it look that way, it will indeed be a fascinating study," Egon replied. As they had pulled into the long driveway he had taken out his P.K.E. meter and started taking readings, and now the detection device had begun to react. As Peter watched, the antennae lifted slightly and the meter gave a faint beep.

"Residuals, huh?" asked Ray, glancing over, expertly gauging the level of readings produced from the meter's reaction.

Winston pulled Ecto to a stop in front of the wide brick steps that ran up to the front door. "Doesn't look too strong," he opined as he shut off the engine.

"On the contrary," Egon replied, "this is particularly interesting. I'm getting more than simple Class 3 readings here, which is what one would expect in a typical haunted house."

"More?" echoed Peter and Ray in unison, Ray's voice full of delight while Peter sounded less than enthusiastic. It wasn't that he didn't love his work, but the thought of spending the night in a haunted house didn't thrill him as much as it did the occultist. Peter remembered a few such instances where haunted houses had proven nearly too much for them, Heck House being a major contender, not to mention Mrs. Rogers' place, though the real problem there hadn't been the house but Mrs. Rogers herself. While this place couldn't be as heavily haunted as the late Jonas Heck's enspelled estate or compete with the threat of the demon Watt, the look on Egon's face convinced Peter there was more than a simple ghost present. "What do you mean, more?" Peter asked in dismay.

"I'm not entirely certain yet," Egon replied thoughtfully as he twiddled the dials. "It could be something as simple as a dimensional gateway, or something more complex. There appear to be no spirits currently in residence, but the house has patterns to indicate there has been more than one spirit here recently, and indeed that there have often been a number of them, yet I can't quite classify them. This is fascinating and will require a great deal of study."

"Hey, it's a ghost motel," offered Peter, to whom the word 'study' had never appealed. "Need a free night's 'rest' they come here. Maybe it's a ghost safe house."

"Now there's an interesting thought," Egon returned, opening the door and climbing out of the vehicle, his face alight with interest. While he probably didn't subscribe to Peter's off-the-cuff theory, he was still interested in the possibilities. "Unless we're dealing with multiple deaths on the site; say, for instance the hiding place of the victims of a mass murderer, I wouldn't get this kind of readings simply from Class 3's."

"Mass murderer?" echoed Winston, as he got out of Ecto, standing and stretching to relieve the kinks in his shoulders from the long drive up from the city. "You mean like that Daumer guy or that Gacy character? Somebody hiding his victims on the grounds or something?"

"It is a possibility," Egon replied. "It would certainly explain the high level of residuals I'm picking up. But I don't think that's it. We'd be getting Class 3 residuals if that were the case. Further tests are definitely called for."

Ray headed for the steps. "I wonder where the key is. There's a lot of bricks here. Oh..." His voice trailed off as he bent down. "I think it's here. Yep, here's the key." Holding it in one hand he bounced up the steps. "Come on, guys, let's take a look inside and get some readings before we bring our suitcases in." He fitted the key into the lock and it turned easily. The door swung open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges.

"Oh, Ra-ay," called Peter behind him. "Didn't you forget something?" He held out the occultist's proton pack by its strap. "If this place is hip-deep in ghosts or the latest cross-rip waiting to happen, I think it might be better to go armed."

"Oh. Yeah." Ray came back down the stairs, reluctant to delay his investigation, and slid into his pack, fastening the snap across his stomach. Then, drawing his thrower, he hurried eagerly back to the open front door and vanished inside, calling over his shoulder, "Come on, guys, this is really great."

Fastening on his own pack, Peter exchanged a quick glance with Egon and shrugged. "Into the valley of death..." he muttered. "Sometimes I think we ought to give that boy downers."

"No way, my man," Winston objected. "We just need a leash."

Peter chuckled as he hastened up the steps after Ray, just as lights flashed on in the entry hall of the house. "At least the electricity is on," he called back to the other two who were right behind him, Egon still shrugging his shoulders into the pack straps.

The entry of the house was a square room with doors off it to the left and right and a stairway rising directly opposite it that rose to a landing and then branched to left and right. At the landing, a triptych of stained glass windows caught the last of the daylight as the setting sun struck it full on, revealing a medieval scene with a castle in the background, an winged angel to one side and a dragon or some such mythical creature on the other. The reds, blues and greens shone brightly in the fiery rays of the sun.

Behind them in the doorway, Muz hovered making nervous little sounds. "Ghosts," he announced. "Bad ghosts," and shivered pathetically.

Ray turned quickly. "Where? Hiding here? Can you show us, Muz?"

The little ghost pointed in two directions at once, one hand stabbing upward toward the ceiling, the other waving around in a circle to encompass the entire house. "Up there, nasty," he announced.

"He's correct, Raymond," Egon said without lifting his eyes from the meter. "The concentration of spectral energy is indeed higher overhead. Hmmm. I would have guessed it to be beneath us, perhaps deep in the bedrock."

"Not if somebody got offed in one of the bedrooms," suggested Peter, prowling around investigating the entry hall. "Hey, here's a huge ice chest," he said triumphantly, opening it. "Full of goodies, too. I think Mr. Johnson is a class act. Here's a note. 'Thermoses of hot chocolate have been placed in each bedroom. The power works, and so does the stove if they need to be heated up but the furnace isn't connected yet. Light fires if it's too cold. I've left a Mr. Coffee machine in the kitchen and some rolls and doughnuts for breakfast.' This guy knows how to treat Ghostbusters, I've gotta give him that." He pulled out some liter bottles of soda and a few cans of beer. "All the comforts of home."

"Except a TV," muttered Ray as he switched the settings on his meter. "Egon, I'm going to take readings for negative valence and then head upstairs with the ecto-scopes and see if I can find anything unusual. These readings might be strong, but they're really only residuals. The ghosts or whatever aren't here now."

"Maybe because we didn't knock," Peter suggested mischievously, replacing the containers in the ice chest and setting the cover into place. He was still too well fed from his dinner to consider adding anything else, but the supplies would come in handy a few hours later while Egon and Ray brainstormed their findings, if the ghost or ghosts hadn't made an appearance by then.

Muz had overcome his initial distress and now hovered near Ray as if he had learned the occult specialist was the most likely of them to consider his wellbeing. Ray looked sideways at him. "Can you sense anything here right now?" he asked the ghost.

Muz concentrated. "No," he admitted at length. "Bad ghosts here before, not now. Peter protect Muz?"

Winston's elbow connected painfully with Peter's ribs as the black man encouraged him to answer positively. Venkman elbowed him back. "Sure," he agreed. "When the shooting starts, you can hover behind me. Fair enough?"

The little ghost brightened, and his tail wagged to and fro like that of an enthusiastic puppy. Abandoning Ray without a second thought, he drifted over to Peter and positioned himself at the psychologist's shoulder.

"He likes you, Peter," Egon said, maintaining a straight face though his statement of the obvious was matched by a wicked twinkle in his blue eyes.

Peter groaned. "If we're gonna start talking about me being attractive to ghosts and that kind of weird stuff again, I might go home. So tell me, Spengs," he persisted before the taller man could respond, "what kind of spooky doings have we got here? Anything interesting or just a run of the mill fixed repeater?"

"It's more than a fixed repeater, Peter," Egon replied, pausing as he heard his inadvertent rhyme and grimacing slightly.

"Repeater, Peter," echoed Venkman with a grin, stressing the inadvertent rhyme. "That's real catchy, Egon. Did you ever think you were wasted at this when you could have had a brilliant career writing jingles for Hallmark?"

"As I was saying," Egon began with deliberate sternness, "the readings do not indicate anything as easily categorized as a Class 3 or 4 repeater. Yet it doesn't seem powerful enough to suggest a demon."

"You think it might be a whole new classification we haven't encountered before?" suggested Ray, turning to stare at Egon in surprise. Since he'd already lowered the ecto-scopes over his eyes, he had to push them up on his forehead again.

Egon shook his head. "No, not that. I think perhaps we might have found a different type of gateway, perhaps one leading somewhere other than the netherworld or a ghostly realm."

"Leading where?" Peter asked, resting his elbow on the knob atop the newel post and regarding the two hard scientists expectantly. "Cleveland? The Hard Rock Cafe? Saturn?"

"No, that's not what I had in mind," Egon replied.

"In other words, you don't know yet."

"We just got here," Winston said pacifically. "How about we haul in our overnight bags and take a look at our bedrooms, then Egon can track down this doorway to who-knows-where and maybe we can find out what it's here for."

"Yeah, and it might open up and we'll be able to guess right away," agreed Ray hopefully. "I hope so. This is great!" He started for the door. "We can get settled in and see what we can find. I wish we had a history of the house. That might be helpful. Johnson gave us everything else we need. You don't think he left anything like that lying around?"

"We'll look when we've settled in," Egon replied, sounding quite content to spend days here investigating the unusual readings. "And we'll take Muz with us. He can serve as a canary."

"Oh no," objected Peter heartily. "He sings worse than I--I mean he's got a really lousy voice. We could use it to scare the ghosts away."

Ray chuckled at that. "No, Peter. He can go in first and we can monitor his reactions. They used to use canaries to test for bad air in coal mines. The bird would react quicker than the miners and when they saw its reaction they knew it was time to get out."

"Muz look for ghosts for Peter," the little ghost promised, draping one arm around Peter's neck.

"Great, but right now I gotta get my suitcase," Peter said, shoving him away. Why did it have to be ghosts who reacted to him this way? Why couldn't it be beautiful women and people casting around for someone to leave their fortunes to?

They carried the bags in and took it upstairs to choose their bedrooms. The house proved to be only partially furnished, some of the rooms holding a few chairs draped with Holland covers, others holding nothing at all beyond the inevitable dust balls and cobwebs, the latter of which made Peter shudder.

"I bet this place is just full of creepy crawlies," he complained. "Probably mice too. Just so long as it's not rats. If there's anything I hate more than rats and mice, it's mice and rats."

"Not to mention cockroaches," Egon offered, unable to hold back a smile. "Don't worry, Peter. I'm sure a thrower will chase away a mouse in a pinch." He checked his readings again.

"It's stronger up here, isn't it, Egon?" Ray asked, emerging from the bedroom he'd claimed as his own and pulling the scopes down over his eyes. "WOW!"

Peter deposited his overnight bag inside the door of the nearest bedroom and turned to Ray. "Wow, what, Tex?" he asked.

"There's a kind of weird overlay all over everything," he said. "Sort of a glitter around the edges. It doesn't really match the readings we're getting. I wonder if there could be some kind of paranatural entity here, like we encountered once before when we went to the Macabre house."

"These readings don't match the ones we got there," Egon replied at once without glancing up from his P.K.E. meter. "Though they do tend to shift in that direction. I suspect the house has somehow accessed an alternate dimension."

"Maybe it's ley lines," offered Ray enthusiastically. "This house could be an intersection node for power conduits."

"Ley lines are not exactly scientific," Egon objected. "They're generally discounted now, though part of that is because the whole concept was never completely established, or more likely, correctly established. To suggest the ancients created their monuments at positions of power might indicate that they were more in tune with the world than we are in our more modern age. We've lost the simplicity and contact with nature they had. But on the other hand, it may have simply been a coincidence, or perhaps the rites they performed might have imbued certain sites with a residue of power. In any case we have been in this general vicinity before and have never encountered anything to suggest ley lines."

"No, but maybe some kind of power nodes exist here. After all, we've run into that kind of thing before. Look at the New Jersey Parallelogram," Ray reminded him, determined to stick with at least part of his theory. "Something weird goes on in this house or people wouldn't keep moving away. Maybe the house rejects them."

"Well, I hope it doesn't reject us before we have a good night's sleep," said Winston. "That big meal made me sleepy. Are we going to do a lot more work tonight?"

"I want to go over the entire house with the P.K.E. meters," Egon responded. "Even if the gateway isn't open presently, I want to pinpoint its location."

"Pinpoint away," Peter agreed, smothering a yawn. "Just so long as it isn't in my bedroom."

Egon swung the P.K.E. meter in that direction, and nothing much happened. "No," he replied, continuing the motion to check each of the four prepared bedrooms. "It's not in any of them. "Mr. Johnson no doubt chose for us the only rooms remotely ready for inhabitation, but if the ghost is bothering him, even subliminally, I doubt he'd have chosen one of those rooms. I wish there was a telephone here. I'd like to call him and check out his feelings."

"We can use Ecto's mobile phone," Winston reminded him, "if the range isn't too far. He's up here for the night, not back in the city, right?"

"He's in the same town as the restaurant," Peter said, remembering Janine's scribbled notes and the number he'd brought. "He's probably out of his business meeting now. I'll go call him."

He returned from the trip to Ecto shaking his head, uncertain if the responses from Johnson were in any way reassuring, suspecting it could mean big trouble. Night had fallen abruptly and he'd hurried back to the house, though it was not exactly a place of safety. "I got him, guys," he said when he found the other three coming down from the attic. "He sounded pretty perplexed. He bought the house in spite of the rumors and didn't have any sensitivity to it himself at all, not while looking the place over or tracking around it with architects and painters, though he thought some of them were a little uneasy. Then one of them passed out cold. Guy built like a linebacker, in perfect health. Johnson tried to indicate something freaked the guy and he passed out, but I don't know. It was only in the last day or two while he's been up here doing some repair work that he's really felt uncomfortable. He kept feeling like he was being watched. Sometimes he felt like he was being touched, once he said he thought a cat had gotten in and was rubbing against his ankles but when he looked down, Tabby wasn't there. He didn't see any ghosts--he sounded like we should give him a reward for that--but he was so sure he was being watched that his first thought was local kids hanging out or burglars casing the joint. Then yesterday another painter had a dizzy spell and this morning the painters made a really flimsy excuse not to come back, and he realized what it must be. They were scared. That's when he called us. He doesn't want to believe but when he put everything together, he decided he'd better call us. He thinks whatever it was has been sleeping and now it's starting to wake up, and he doesn't want to share the house with it." Peter grinned. "Poor guy, he's as embarrassed as hell about it. He's going to come by in the morning just to prove how brave he is."

"It's not cowardly to be afraid of ghosts," Ray said with quick sympathy. "Some of them are dangerous."

"Thus speaks Mr. Fearless," Peter responded instantly. "The bigger and scarier they are the more you like 'em. Most people don't react like that. I remember how excited you were the time you thought there was a new demon in the sewers."

"That was different," Ray replied, a little embarrassed himself. "It would have been fun to bust it."

"So what did you find when I was out in the car?" asked Peter, grinning fondly at Ray's flustered face. "Any gateways to parallel universes? Doorways to the past or future? Teleport devices to the Enterprise?"

"Nothing like that, Peter," Egon replied pedantically. "I think there is a cross-rip here, but it may be cyclical. What intrigues me is that I don't believe it has any connection with any alternate dimensions we've encountered before. It's not to the Netherworld. The opening seems to be in the attic, and we found traces of a hexagram carved into the wood of the floor and painted as well. It was partially buried under old trunks and typical attic junk, but it was there."

"Hexagram, Egon?" Peter asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Is this one of those weird terms that you and Ray and maybe two other people in the whole world have ever heard of?"

"It's a shield of Solomon, Peter, sometimes called a macrocosm," replied Ray, happy to share his knowledge. "It's a Kabbalistic symbol and it can be used to call demons like a pentagram or to shield against things like fire, only instead of having five sides, it's a six sided star."

"Well, I'll buy that. Just so long as it isn't about hexing people. We've got enough trouble without that," Peter cracked.

"You know what I think?" Ray persisted. "I bet somebody in the past knew about the gateway and tried to close it off and used the hexagram though I'm not sure that's what I'd have used. I wish we had records of the house. I'd like to know how dangerous the gateway was, and whether anybody ever saw anything really unusual or died in the house."

"Somebody must have seen something if they were messing with things like that," Winston said, uncomfortable with the idea.

"Yeah, and I don't like this 'died in the house' routine," Peter said. "Johnson said there were a number of unexplained deaths here about a hundred years ago. Not just at the house but in the neighborhood. They found maybe half a dozen people dead, not a mark on any of 'em, and the doctors couldn't explain why they'd died. Some of 'em were pretty young and not likely to have died of natural causes, either. 'Course medical science wasn't the best in the last century, but I still don't like the idea of it. Anyway, I thought a six-sided star was a Star of David. You saying this guy was doing some kind of Jewish ritual?"

"It wouldn't necessarily be Jewish, Peter," Egon replied.

"Well, Solomon was," Peter defended his question.

"True, but you don't normally carve a Star of David into your attic floor," said Winston, shaking his head. "No, it wasn't like that. It was some kind of occult power thing. It had that kind of feel to it."

"I wish we had more information," Egon said thoughtfully. "It may well be an important clue. Either the cross-rip is indeed cyclical or the hexagram has prevented passage for whatever passes through it habitually, or has until now."

"Yeah, and whatever passes through it is really weird," agreed Ray. "I set my P.K.E. meter to pick up negative valences and that's when I got a reading unlike anything we ever encountered before."

"Like the Bogeyman?" Peter asked, remembering he had given off a negative valence reading, too. "Is something nasty going to come popping out of my closet when I'm sleeping tonight?"

"Possibly, Peter," Egon replied, looking a little amused. He shoved his sliding glasses back into place on the bridge of his nose. "But this is very interesting. We won't be trapping the Bogeyman again; as you'll remember, he's safely stowed in our containment unit."

"And he's a physical entity," Ray reminded Peter, holding up his meter as if to prove a point. "Mostly when we get a negative valence that's what we read. I bet if we ever encountered pixies or fairies or brownies they'd give negative valences, too."

"So would the men in white coats who would come to take you away when you claimed to see them," Peter informed him. He glanced up the attic stairs, shivering a little. The shadows seemed almost tangible up there as if they were alive. "So give, Ray. What are you getting and just how dangerous is it?"

"Well, whatever was here isn't really here right now, at least we can't prove it with any regular settings, but we're getting residuals as if it's been here really recently. Within twenty-four hours, I'd say. And it's not one something; it's a lot of little different somethings. They're not solid but they're not ectoplasmic either. It's like nothing we've ever scanned before. Wow, isn't it great, Peter? A whole new discovery. I bet this will really make parapsychologists everywhere sit up and take notice."

"Yes, it's great, Ray, and I can smell a Nobel with your name on it, but what do these little non-solid non-ghosts do?"

"I have a theory, Peter," Egon said, his face gone solemn. "But you won't like it. I don't like it myself."

"So tell, big guy. They eat Ghostbusters, right? Nibble off our toes and work their way up to the important stuff?"

"They aren't physical, Peter. They can't eat anything at all, let alone the 'important stuff'. But you yourself spoke of bodies that had been found dead with no evidence of a cause. I wish there was a way we could have taken readings of those bodies, because based on my readings, whatever has been here can feed on life energy. A little contact with it would make someone experience lassitude, unease, nervous tension, crankiness. A lot might make someone pass out."

"Like the painter?" Peter echoed. "Some kind of invisible whatsit that rubs itself against your ankles like a cat and draws away your life energy." He shivered involuntarily. Could even the Ghostbusters defend themselves against something like that?

"Or your soul," said Ray solemnly.

"I knew I didn't like this place," Winston said with dramatic certainty. His gaze drifted to the attic stairs too, and he looked like he wanted to slam the door and prop a chair against it, not that it would do any good against entities that weren't solid. Either they could zip right through the door like Slimer could or they could compress themselves and ooze through the keyhole.

"Hey, Muz," Ray said suddenly, turning to the little ghost, who had suddenly reappeared as if he'd been wandering around on his own. "Where have you been? Do you know what's here?"

Muz hesitated then chose to answer the second question. Peter wasn't sure how long his attention span was and suspected the ghost would always respond to the most recent question. "Shadows," he said, as if that answered it all, rolling his eyes and glancing at the attic stairs too as if the shadows there were alive and moving, like a dark army. "Too many shadows."

"Yeah, right," agreed Peter, controlling a chill that ran down his spine. "Anybody but me wish it was morning?"

"Tell us about the shadows, Muz," prompted Ray in an encouraging voice, leaning toward the little ghost and smiling at him. "You mean something specific, not just the ordinary meaning, don't you?"

That confused the little ghost. He paddled furiously with all six of his legs as he tried to reason out what Ray had asked him. "Shadows," he repeated, frustrated, as if he couldn't believe they didn't know what he meant. "Bad shadows."

"Are they real?" Egon asked, trying to clarify the question. "Not just the darkness where something blocks the light?"

"Shadows," moaned Muz. "Nasty. Muz protect you. Fight shadows for Peter. Muz loves Peter."

"Thanks, I think," returned Peter dryly. "So what do we do now, Egon? Please tell me you know what to do."

"Well, this is an old house," Egon replied, gesturing along the hallway. "I found some journals upstairs in one of the trunks and brought them along with me in case I should find something useful in them." He indicated a couple of small, leatherbound books poking out of the chest pockets of his uniform. "They seem to be from the period in question. I want to go over them and see if I can find out anything about what happened here. If we can't resolve it by tomorrow, we'll go to the local newspaper office and try to learn what we can about the earlier incident. What does disturb me is the fact that the 'entities', for want of a better word, may not react to our proton rifles. I suspect we can trap them if they pass over open traps, but the beams might be ineffectual against them."

"Oh, good," said Winston. "I really hate this, you know. We can't trap 'em, and they can suck out our souls. And they're shadows so even if they're conscious entities, they can hide in ordinary shadows and we can't see them."

"We don't know that they're conscious entities, Winston," Ray pointed out. "They might be, oh, like termites, for example. They eat what's put in front of them without any awareness at all, except of hunger."

"Great," said Peter with a shiver. "Somehow that makes it worse."

"Yeah," agreed Winston. "I just love living in a horror movie." He braced himself. "What about that library we saw downstairs. It looked like it had a lot of old books in it. I bet Johnson got them with the house. Maybe we should look it over, kind of check the place out for information."

"I wonder how much informed data we could find," Egon replied. "True, people had made studies of the paranormal in those days. But the Society for Psychical Research was only founded in 1882 and the American branch began three years later. It's possible someone from that organization had involvement here. I might make a few phone calls tomorrow, back to the city."

"I know a couple of the current members who could help me out," Ray said. "At least they'd have access to the Society's library and if there's anything we could find it there. We could drive into the village tomorrow and I could call them while you guys check out the local newspapers. I think this may be bigger than we thought it was."

"A lot bigger," agreed Winston. "What do you say I make a big pot of coffee before we check the library?"

Muz parked himself at Peter's shoulder and grabbed the strap of his proton pack. "Muz protect Peter from shadows," he repeated. "Peter protect Muz?"

"I thought we might get to that," Peter muttered. "Lead me to that coffee. I don't suppose we'll get much sleep tonight."

An hour later, Peter was sure of it. The library proved to be a fairly large room, with books on three of the four walls, the vast expanse of texts broken only by floor to ceiling windows and a huge fireplace on the wall opposite the door. In the center of the room, a grouping of a sofa and three soft chairs stood, bulky and white, under covers which Winston immediately hauled off. "If we're gonna read, I want to be comfortable."

Peter agreed and helped him, using his activity as an excuse to bag the sofa for his own, stretching out full length, his head resting against a throw pillow he'd found beneath the sheet. "Not bad," he remarked with a contented grin as he settled himself as comfortably as possible.

Egon promptly dropped four books on his stomach, causing Peter to wheeze and grunt, brushing them off with a sweep of his arm. "EEEEGONNN!" he whined. "No fair."

"Start reading, Peter," returned the physicist. "I think we have a serious problem here, more serious than we realized. If these so-called shadows can come through the cross-rip from their own dimension, and if they are, in fact, the entities that caused those unexplained deaths a hundred years ago, they may be back now. There are a lot more people around than there were then. I wonder if we went back two hundred years we would find other unexplained deaths. I also wonder what their range is. Suppose they could reach the City."

"They'd think it was one big smorgasbord," breathed Ray, eyes widening in alarm. He set aside a stack of books and stared at his friends, dismayed. "Gosh, we have to find a way to stop them. Egon, do you think there's any way to modify the throwers to do it?"

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility but until we've been able to take more than residual readings, I would doubt it." Egon frowned. "If we have found a gap between worlds through which a paranatural entity, or swarm of entities, can pass, we must seal it up again. It's possible we'll have to cross the streams."

"Great!" muttered Winston without a shred of enthusiasm. "I hate crossing the streams. Things always blow up, and one of these days it's sure to be us."

"Mr. Johnson's going to say we didn't help his house if we do that," Peter replied without sitting up. "Are you sure that's the only way, Spengs?"

"No," replied Egon unhelpfully. "I'm not even certain it would work in this instance. We might have to wait for the gate to open before trying it. I can take more readings, of course."

"Not alone you won't," Peter said, sitting up abruptly as if to grab Egon and restrain him if he took a step in the direction of the attic. "I'm not sure any of us should be alone in this place, even to sleep. In fact, I think it might be a great idea to track down a motel when we're done here if we haven't found the ghosts or the doorway hasn't popped open."

"I doubt there is one within ten miles," Winston reminded him. "Remember, we're at the back of beyond here, all those miles away from anything."

"Well, two or three miles away from anything," corrected Ray. "I remember seeing a truck farm right where we left the highway."

"Maybe three miles cross-country," Winston said. "This place is isolated. If these shadows are some kind of hungry monsters from Dimension X they might not have eaten very much just because we're cut off from most other places here."

"So we're the only targets. Today's Blue Plate Special," said Peter. "Good. Why are they always hungry? And if it comes to that, I'm hungry."

"After that big meal?" Egon asked in surprise. "Really, Peter, have you no idea of self-discipline?"

"No," said Peter immediately. "Tell me all about it. Besides, I'd rather have some of that hot chocolate. It might not be up to your standard, Spengs baby, but at least it will be warm and chocolate. Where did those thermoses go?"

"I get them," volunteered Muz eagerly and swooped out of the room. He returned after what seemed a long time but couldn't have been more than ten minutes with all four mugs clutched against his 'chest' and held one of them out to Peter first. "Nice chocolate," he said. In Slimer it would have been wheedling for a taste, but Muz wasn't interested in food as such. When Peter took the thermos, he zipped over to the others one by one and distributed their drinks too. Peter unscrewed the lid and sniffed it. "Nope, not up to your standards," he told Egon in disappointment but without surprise. "But it doesn't smell bad, and it's still hot." He took a sip. "Well, make it lukewarm. And it doesn't taste as good as yours either, Spengs. Too bitter." He drank some more anyway, feeling the slight warmth run through him. This was pretty decent after all, though he'd never found anyone who could outdo Egon at hot chocolate.

The others set aside what they were doing and sampled their drinks, not too dissatisfied. "At least it's homemade," said Ray, wiping away a chocolate milk mustache from his upper lip. "I wonder if there have been any mysterious deaths around here like those in the 1890's. Did Johnson say anything about it, Peter?"

"No, not a word, but then he might not know. He's only staying at a motel in Jonesville, and he's probably repeating legends the motel people have told him. Sometimes the locals like to scare off the newcomers. Remember that waitress back at the restaurant who encouraged us not to come out here."

"I thought she was encouraging you to go home with her, Peter," Winston teased him.

Peter frowned. "She was married, Zed. She had a wedding ring on. I know when somebody's giving me the rush, and she wasn't. She was only flirting to keep her hand in. Though she wasn't entirely impervious to my charms."

"'Impervious,'" Egon echoed, lifting his eyebrows. "I am impressed, Peter. "I didn't know you knew any words longer than two syllables."

"Smug, Egon," Peter told him. "I have a humongous vocabulary. I just try not to humble the lesser mortals the way some people I know do." He yawned. "Are we gonna play twenty questions all night. I wanna get some sleep."

"It's not much past nine o'clock, homeboy," pointed out Winston, checking his watch. "Maybe all this fresh country air is too much for you."

Peter lifted his nose from the thermos mug. "That's it. I'm too far from the city. My powers are draining. Hey, Egon, do you think it's safe to sleep here? Can I go up and crash or will creeping shadows sneak in and suck out my soul the minute my eyes are closed?"

"Entirely possible, Peter," Egon returned, but with amusement in his eyes. Peter grimaced at him.

"I'm going to rig a couple of meters to set off an alarm if anything comes," Ray explained, holding up a meter he'd been adjusting. "I've boosted the sound and if anything comes through, this will go off loud enough to wake us up. I don't want to go to bed yet. If the ghosts aren't very noticeable, if they look like shadows in the dark, then they probably come at night. I want to stay up till midnight, maybe with the lights mostly off, to see what we can see. We don't know they hurt anybody, after all."

"Yeah, right, Ray," said Peter. "That's why painters are keeling over left and right."

"Maybe it was just paint fumes in an enclosed place," Egon said practically. "I'm less inclined to discount the sensation something was rubbing against Johnson's ankles. In other words, there may be something here that drains people, and it may cause hallucinations, physical hallucinations rather than visual or auditory ones. Muz spoke of shadows and while he did not completely understand our questions, I formed the definite impression he was referring to something specific."

"Maybe these shadows aren't that common in our reality plane," theorized Ray with growing excitement. "Maybe they hang out in the Netherworld or other dimensions and only come here once in awhile."

"If they were here a hundred years ago, something sent them away," Peter reminded them. "There haven't been ongoing deaths like Johnson talked about since then or people would have noticed. Ray would have been talking about the Unexplained Death Incident of 1894 and making comparisons to ones in 1938 or 1957."

"No, they went back," Ray replied. "They came out a hundred years ago and went away again for some reason."

"Yeah, maybe they ate everybody they could find and decided this dimension wasn't the ideal feeding grounds."

"But there are a lot more people around here this time, Peter," Winston reminded him. "The population has exploded since those days and if they come out and find them, they might even be able to sense the City. Once they're loose there, we'll never stop 'em. Maybe they grow more powerful the more they feed." He rolled his eyes as if he didn't at all like the way his reasoning was leading him.

"Assuming they even exist," Egon replied. "We are postulating an entire species of voracious feeders on extremely limited information. We don't have enough information upon which to base a theory."

"And in English, Egon?" Peter said around another cavernous yawn. "Johnson said people died back then. Now he's got painters keeling over and things he can't see twining around his legs, and Muz babbled about shadows the way we might talk about--about--" His mind wouldn't make a comparison.

"A plague of rats?" Ray offered. "Only in this case it would be man-eating rats. Hey, Muz, do the shadows kill people?"

Muz bobbed rocked back and forth in the only way he had to nod. "Bad shadows."

"Are there any here now?" Winston asked, the whites of his eyes showing vividly as he turned his gaze toward the doorway. All the normal shadows in the room seemed to hold menace, as if they would thicken and move like coiling smoke, attacking in a concerted rush. Peter eyed a particularly dark one in the far corner of the room, staring at it so hard he was sure he had seen it move.

"Is there anything over there?" he asked.

Ray slid the ecto-scopes down over his eyes and studied the darker corners of the room. He was silent a long time, then he shook his head. "I'm still getting that kind of overlay. It could be what the shadows look like, but I don't think so. I think it's just a byproduct of the energy we've been reading. The scopes aren't designed to pick up paranatural entities anyway. If the shadows aren't ectoplasmic, they probably won't register with the scopes. I'll check again later."

Peter found himself only mildly reassured. He blinked hard a couple of times and it became an ordinary shadow again.

"Nothing now," Muz confirmed. "Guys sleep. Have nice dreams. Muz stand guard."

"Nice dreams?" echoed Peter sleepily. "Yeah, right. I might wake up with my soul sucked out through my nostrils, but I'm gonna have swell dreams first. Egon, are there really shadow ghosts here?"

Spengler held out his P.K.E. meter. "I'm reconfiguring the device to match the criteria we've theorized about," he explained. "If such an entity exists, it would meet certain guidelines, even if it is not a ghost as we know it. It would perhaps be a paranatural entity such as the one we encountered at the Macabre house, only of course, much smaller. That's why Ray isn't reading anything."

"The Macabre House. Oh, goodie," muttered Peter. "I didn't like that one."

"This would be different, Peter. That one was impossible to miss. These would be near-invisible, and I don't believe our throwers at the present configuration would have any effect upon them."

"But we could maybe adjust them," offered Ray. "We could correlate all the readings we've taken and compare them with the possibilities and postulate the entities' actual nature and maybe I could even adjust the scopes, but it might not be productive."

"Sounds like you've been taking lessons from Egon in talking technobabble," Peter observed with a crooked grin. He gulped down the rest of his chocolate and held up the thermos in disappointment when he realized it was empty. "Why don't you wake me when you've got it all figured out. I'll be saving myself for battle." He stretched out on the sofa and wiggled contentedly into the cushions, enjoying the lassitude that was stealing over him.

The thought of that roused him a little. Maybe the shadows were here and already sucking the energy out of him. He pushed himself up again and took out his own P.K.E. meter, adjusting it carefully while the others compared notes. Negative valences had a whole different reading, one he wasn't as familiar with as Ray or Egon was, but he knew how to adjust the setting. Taking careful readings, he then changed the setting again to reflect his own biorythms and compared the reading with the remembered figures. He wasn't being sucked dry, he reassured himself. He was just tired. Stretching comfortably, he set the meter back to the reading for the Shadow entities, assuming they even existed and lay it upon his chest still active before he closed his eyes. If anything tried to sneak up on him, he'd be ready for it. For awhile he heard the guys' voices, increasingly blurred and distant, then even that faded as he sank down into black, dreamless sleep.

"Look at him," Ray said fondly, sparing a glance for the slumbering Peter. "He can sleep anywhere."

"Even standing up," Winston replied, grinning.

"I even saw him teach a class at Columbia while three parts asleep," Egon remembered, smiling, too. He looked at the sleeping face, relaxed and innocent of its usual cocky good humor or amused mischief. Peter looked much younger asleep, almost innocent, though that was not a word Egon would have applied to Peter Venkman under normal circumstances. And for all he looked innocent, the activated P.K.E meter that rested upon his stomach proved he was cautious when necessary. The way it was set, it would go off like an alarm siren and make him jump straight up. Egon grinned at the very thought.

But there was too much to be done to spend time speculating about Peter. The more he considered it, the more Egon came to believe there was an entity, or even a swarm of entities, here. Maybe they weren't always here or maybe a few advance guards had already come through and tasted the painters to see if there was 'food' for them here. Egon knew, as many scientists did not, that other dimensions were a reality because he had been in the Netherworld and knew for a certainty it existed. His soul had once been lost in an alternate dimension as well, but Peter had come in after him and rescued him. There were other worlds that ran concurrent with their own, though different. If the worlds were different, then so were their denizens.

"Where did I put those journals?" he asked, interested. "I want to see if there is anything in them about what happened a hundred years ago. If Johnson's story can be verified, and what happened to him and the painters is real, then perhaps the other dimension is only in conjunction with our own at regular intervals. It need not be regular. A hundred years this time. Maybe more or less before. Maybe the entities found enough 'food' to last them before. Maybe they don't need much."

"I wouldn't want to assume that, Egon," Ray disagreed. "If there's even a tiny chance we're not going off on a tangent or letting our imaginations run away with us, we have to assume we've happened on something really bad, and we have to prepare for it. I'm going to take some more readings in the attic. You stay here and go over the books, and Winston and I will check the house from top to bottom again. Then we'll have more readings to correlate."

"Be careful Ray, Winston," Egon agreed. "And use the walkie talkies if you run into trouble. I'll wake Peter and we'll join you." He opened one of the journals and sat down in a wing chair across from the sleeping Venkman.

"You be careful, too, Egon," urged Ray. "Don't let anything sneak up on you."

"Peter designed himself a wake-up call if any shadows popped in for a visit," Winston remarked, pointing to the activated meter on the sleeping man's chest. "Keep an ear on that, Egon." He clapped Ray on the shoulder and steered him toward the door. "Come on m'man. Let's see what we can find. Do you suppose these nasties are resistent to light?"

"No," Ray replied, his voice fading as they left the library. "They came out when the painters were working and that was daylight."

"But they didn't kill them," argued Winston. "Just drained them a little. Maybe they're stronger at night."

"Wow!" cried Ray, excited at the thought, then their voices faded away. Egon began flipping pages in the journal.

He read for ten minutes without finding anything abnormal. The journal he read had been written by a Douglass Kingsley, who had evidently once owned this house. Kingsley was something of a latter day Renaissance man, scholar, architect, scientist. He enjoyed the physical sciences and spent whole pages describing experiments he had conducted, some of which seemed rather simplistic to Egon but which would have been groundbreaking in his day, especially for an isolated man who was not affiliated with a university or a science lab.

There was also an undercurrent that Egon picked up but couldn't put a finger on. Something about the writing made him uneasy, as if he were waiting for the other shoe to drop. On some pages of the journal, Kingsley made reference to 'the experiment' but didn't describe it. Often whole pages went by with the only words, 'No progress.' Interested, Egon skimmed ahead, looking for anything new or different, and finally stopped when he came upon something that interested him.

"Dear God, what have I done? How can this be? I acted in all sincerity, determined to expand the frontiers of science, to pass beyond those barriers that limit us and confine us. While writers such as Mr. Verne may spin tales of journeys to the moon and the bottom of the ocean, I, too, wished to touch upon other words. I have read many theories, but they were vague and unsupported. But such things have been known from the time of Plato and before. Other worlds, abutting our own, filled with people we did not know at all. Perhaps they are our counterparts, doppelgängers of those in our own world, perhaps they are hideous monsters or as beautiful as the angels. Such was my speculation, but now, I know that I was wrong, wickedly, sinfully wrong, and what I have done is opened the floodgates and allowed evil to come through. I do not believe I can stop it, for they will not stop with me. I did not understand, did not guess, not until I saw the darkness oozing, not until Fidelus, good Fidelus, barked and tried to attack it. Noble canine, he gave his life to save my own, but it was no good. I drove them back with fire, with a torch, but it was not a complete retreat. I know they will return, those mindless, formless creatures, determined to feast upon us all."

There it was before him, spelled out in black and white, proof the creatures did indeed exist, or had existed in the last century. "They're real, Peter," Egon said aloud. "They're real and they are dangerous."

Peter didn't stir. He made a faint interrogative sound but lapsed into sleep immediately afterward. Egon shrugged that away. There would be time to awaken Peter when he had learned all he could. Light drove them back. Was it the heat of the fire or the actual light that had done it? Shadow creatures would love the darkness, for the concealment it would offer.

Muz had vanished. Egon looked around, realizing he hadn't seen the ghost since the distribution of the hot chocolate. Picking up his thermos, he poured the rest of the chocolate into his cup and sipped it. It was scarcely warm now, and not as good as his own, but it was pleasant enough, scarcely bitter. Maybe Peter had gotten the dregs, though he had overcome his distaste and gulped it quickly enough. He always slept better after one of their midnight hot chocolate sessions, just as he was sleeping now.

Muz must have gone with Ray and Winston. He was in general a much less obtrusive ghost than Slimer, who forced himself upon one's consciousness and rarely gave ground. Muz, except for his obvious devotion to Peter, was much more self-effacing. He could blend into the group without disturbing them. It was clearly not a conscious choice, but perhaps it was a survival characteristic. Muz recognized the concept of shadows. Perhaps they came from his own dimension or had invaded it. The ability to avoid notice would stand him in good stead, especially since the shadows seemed to relish feeding on life energy, something different from the PK energy produced by ghosts.

It might be worth studying Muz when he returned, to determine whether or not the shadows would find him appealing. In the meantime, there was still information to be gained from Douglass Kingsley's journal. Egon turned the page.

The words scored deeply into the paper as if the writer had been in shock or anguish, and the text bore out that supposition. "OH, GOD, OH, GOD, what have I done!" The man had underlined that sentence so fiercely he had torn a hole in the paper, though it was a heavy parchment. "There are deaths! I am become a murderer, as black and evil as those fiends from hell I have summoned. There are deaths in the community, strange deaths. Dr. Brinker was the first of them, that old stubborn Dutchman unwilling to avoid the darkness, though I put it about that a wild animal had been spotted. He went to a call, a confinement, delivered the child and was returning. He was found in his buggy, dead without a mark on him, his horse the same. A panic has begun and I can only hope it will confine the villagers to their homes after dark. Whether that will be enough, I have no way of telling. There are other deaths, one a tramp, a harmless vagabond, roaming the neighborhood, doing chores in trade for food. They found him last night, lying in the path, as drained of life as Piet Brinker.

"As we have no doctor now and my scholarly interests are well known, I was summoned to examine the bodies. They are unmarked, though I searched every inch of their pitiful remains. The shadows must absorb their spirits through the skin, drawing away whatever it is that makes us live. There was no blood loss, no gaping wounds. Simply they lay down quietly and died.

"No, not quietly. They said the tramp lay twisted and curled, his fingers arched like claws, holding his pose through the stiffness that comes and goes after death. By the time they had called me, he was again flexible and I was able to manipulate him, but his fingers were still curled up. I found no residue beneath his fingernails, which I would have expected, had he died fighting an animal or even a human who set upon him in the night. But the shadows are not solid. They leave no residue. What I did find was the same sense of clinging cold, not the cold of death but the cold of creatures who come from a place beyond our world. I must stop them. I must not let them kill again. I must hide this journal, for no one must ever know. It is not that I would shun the blame that is mine. But there are unscrupulous people in the world, and it is from those individuals I must conceal my knowledge of the world of the shadows. Loosed upon a populous area, the death count would be staggering, and I will not permit that to happen."

Egon turned the page. "Six more people have died, though none further afield than five miles from my home. I have hopes the creatures can range no further before they must return to whence they have come. If so, I can but be relieved, but I cannot depend upon such good fortune. Therefore I have taken other action. Through my researches into the 'other side' I have learned many things, and though I have never been a practitioner of the black arts and despise those who have sold their souls to Satan, I realize some of those powers may be used for good. Perhaps I would sell my own soul to change what I have done, to draw back the evil I have loosed upon this world, but I will try other means first. I have put a seal around the opening," announced Kingsley in dark letters. "It is a six sided star, marked with Kabbalistic seals. I have learned much of the Kabbalah in my studies and rely upon my knowledge to assist me. Tonight I will go to the attics, where the doorway is, and I will complete my work. The seal may hold them, the hexagram may do its work. They fear fire. I will light fire in the center of the hexagram. It is a shield against such, and I can but hope it will burn there confined, and block the opening. I will spend the entire night guarding it. In the morning, I will report my findings."

There was nothing else written in the journal.

"How frustrating," Egon muttered in some annoyance. "But at least I've learned something. Peter, I think you should wake--"

"EGON!" Ray's distant voice echoed a near-subliminal alarm Egon hadn't realized he'd felt until this moment when he lifted his head and saw the air muted and transformed by a slowly thickening mist--no, it wasn't mist, it was smoke, its crisp, acrid tang stinging his nostrils.

"FIRE!" hollered Winston. "EGON, PETE, get out here."