The topic of conversation in many homes was ignored, though, in a remote and isolated Staten Island mansion that sat on a hill overlooking its lesser neighbors. Behind pulled drapes, light flickered and gleamed mysteriously, as if the fictional Martians were making a sneak attack now, when no one was willing to give credence to them. The neighbors, remote as they were in that wealthy neighborhood where houses stood in spacious grounds blocked off from nearby houses by banks of trees, only shook their heads, ignoring anything strange from the mansion on the hill that was distantly visible from the road below. That house, they thought, shaking their heads in familiar scorn, and went their way without looking back. They were long used to ignoring strange lights and noises coming from the tower room and since none of the lights and noises had hurt anyone, the neighbors were inclined to put it down as one more stunt from Crazy Cletus and to ignore it as such.

None of them visited the Vanderbergs any more, never mind that Cletus Vanderberg's parents had once been the cream of New York society, that an aunt of his had survived the Titanic carrying all her jewels in a sack taped to the inside of her bloomers and created a scandal over it, that his great uncle had invented some railway train device that had more than doubled the family fortunes back in the 1880s. Cletus Vanderberg was a strange one. He'd belonged to some cult in the City in the 20s when other men his age had been pursuing flappers and going to speakeasies. There had been an even bigger scandal than the jewel story when something mysterious and unreported had happened and some of the cultists had died. After that, Cletus Vanderberg had seemed a little more normal, especially after he met and married Anne Portman, eldest daughter of a wealthy Long Island family. When she died tragically however, Cletus, though still a young man, had come back to the family home and shut himself up in the south tower, where strange light leaked out to scandalize the neighbors, causing them to speculate he was calling up demons and consorting with Satanists and witches.

Cletus Vanderberg had always felt an obsession with the occult. His letters to a few cronies, some left over from his Oxford days, had spoken of seances, demon summonings, pentagrams, mediums, summoning of ghosts, and joining a cult right after Oxford that worshipped an ancient Sumerian god. Whether it was the failure of the cult or the loss of Cletus' wife in the riding accident that changed him from an outgoing and enthusiastic pursuer of the strange into a dark and brooding man who shut himself away with musty old books and esoteric relics, the man withdrew entirely from society shortly after her death in 1927. Cletus often buried himself in old and mysterious texts, grimoires, ancient and musty tracts located at no little expense and delivered to him from the four corners of the globe. Cletus had joined the Society for Psychical Research while up at Balliol College and had remained active in otherworldly affairs ever since to the annoyance and embarrassment of his more conventional parents who found his pursuit of ghosts, demons and specters embarrassing. They died together in 1930 in an automobile accident that some folks said was not an accident at all, though nothing was ever proven to indicate Cletus might have arranged their deaths. The neighbors shook their heads, giving him a wide berth when they encountered him on the street. They would have felt smug and self-righteous and secure in their Christian beliefs were it not for the uneasy conviction that Cletus was laughing at them, watching them and smiling oddly, as if he knew something they didn't. It might have been an act, but the otherworldly air about him wasn't disguised by the untidy clothes, the shaggy mustache or the cloth cap he wore when he appeared in public. He would sit in the streetcars scribbling notes whenever he went into the City, and even those who didn't know him avoided him uneasily, sensing something strange and possibly dangerous about him.

Either the Stock Market Crash and Great Depression had managed to avoid taking a bite out of the Vanderberg wealth, or the wealth was great enough to withstand the losses on the Market without depleting the man's resources enough to make him abandon his expensive hobbies. Cletus began buying even more exotic items than before; a huge mirror with an elaborate brass frame, arcane books and manuscripts, weird statues, all carried up the sloping driveway and vanishing into the huge Tudor house with the mismatched Victorian towers. Cletus paid no attention to appearances. An old handyman still cut the grass, but no one trimmed the bushes and vines away from the windows, and no one cleaned the windows themselves, so the weird glowing lights that shone periodically from the tower appeared even eerier then they normally would.

Tonight, on this crisp Halloween night, the lights were stranger than ever, vivid and bright in ruby and emerald, as if he had set a bank of traffic lights in his high window to warn the spirits when to stop and go. Three neighbors came by--it was a Monday night--on their way home from their local tavern and paused as brighter light than ever stabbed the darkness, vivid as a beacon, shooting out in a streak of scarlet until it vanished into the trees across the road. Thunder crashed and rumbled, thunder that seemed to come directly from the tower, as if Cletus had summoned the storm and now orchestrated it in the privacy of his retreat. Above it and woven through it in terrifying counterpoint was a savage, muttering roar that almost sounded as if it came from a living throat, though none of the three men who stood transfixed had ever heard a creature who could make such a terrifying sound. Sharp with agony, a scream stabbed through the growling, and suddenly every window in the tower shattered outward as if there had been an explosion, though there was no fire, no smoke. Light blazed up in a blend of colors, catching the shards of glass as they spun down to the distant ground in revolving fragments, green, golden, red, blue, yellow, like the colors in a kaleidoscope, turning and turning, to land with a tinkle of sound in the dried autumn grasses. The scream was repeated, then actual words. "No! Stop. Go back!" followed by a desperate, "HELP ME!" Then, with a whoosh that disrupted the very pressure of the air around the three quivering witnesses, smoke and mist coalesced upon the shattered tower as if it had been sucked inside by a giant bellows, and all the lights in the entire neighborhood went out.

Even in their need to be blase after the Mercury Theater broadcast of the night before, this was too much for even the most intrepid of souls. The three men stared at each other speechlessly then with one accord they turned and ran down the road toward the village as if all the hounds of hell were hard on their heels.

From that day forward, Cletus Vanderberg was never seen again. When finally the police forced their way into the house three days later to investigate his absence, they found an empty room at the top of the tower, windows shattered, books scattered and ruined by the rain that had saturated the room. The faded remains of a pentagram that had been drawn in chalk against an earlier, painted version lingered, part of the chalk washed away by the rain, part scuffed as if someone had kicked it and dragged feet across it. Lying the its center was a medallion Cletus had been known to wear, bronze on a leather thong, with an eye on one side and lettering in an unknown language on the other. A black, slimy substance covered the medallion, a substance with a strange smell that was musty and fishy at the same time. The medallion proved so disturbing to the touch that no one would handle it, and later on, it was reputedly sent to a museum. The same substance covered some of the scattered books and a scientist who was called in later said it had a lot of the same properties as saliva, but if so it didn't match human saliva and it didn't resemble that of any known savage animals.

The tower door had been locked from the inside and the police had been forced to break it down. Cletus wasn't there. No blood stained the floor. Considering the broken windows, the police had gone outside again and searched in widening circles around the foot of the tower, half expecting to find a broken body tangled in one of the shrubs or bushes, but the body was never found. Whatever had happened to him, Cletus Vanderberg was never seen again.

For the first few months after his disappearance, people claimed to see strange lights flickering sporadically in the tower at night, not every night and not even every week, but periodic and intermittent. Whether it was simply the imagination of his neighbors or some remnant of whatever weird happening had caused the occult expert to vanish no one ever knew. Eventually the sightings grew more and more intermittent and finally stopped altogether. A year later, a distant relative moved into the house and renovated the tower, down to repainting the pentagram on the floor in an attempt to restore the place to the way it had been maintained before Cletus disappeared. Nothing bizarre or spooky happened to him, no lights showed themselves except for normal electricity and gradually people stopped talking as much, though everyone in the neighborhood had referred to the place as 'The Haunted House' ever since.

It wasn't until the 1980s that anything happened at all, and at first it seemed a by-product of the Ghostbusters' first big case, their encounter with the Sumerian entity Gozer. Those passers by who saw weird lights gleaming in the tower and reported it to their friends the next day were assumed to have bought into the ghost frenzy that had swept the area prior to and following the Big Apple's brush with the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. There are those who will jump on any bandwagon, and ghost sightings had become fashionable even before the triumphant defeat of Gozer. When a few curiosity seekers eventually wandered by in the quiet darkness a few days later, there was no trace of anything mysterious, no weird lights, no strange noises, no shattering windows. The house was presently empty anyway, its current owner out of the country, but it stood peacefully on its hill, bland and undisturbed.

The current Vanderberg, grandson of Cletus' cousin Ralph and also known as Ralph was a rising light of the Diplomatic Corps and out of the country more often than he was in it. He was presently posted to Vienna and the house was left to the supervision of a caretaker who didn't live in but who came every few days to check on the place, a phlegmatic fellow named Darius Pettigrew, originally from Bangor, Maine. He was a laconic loner of late middle age who didn't often mingle with anyone else in the neighborhood except for the occasional visit to the local bar where he enjoyed himself by telling ghost stories to the other customers, delighting in his reputation as a crank. His wife was a bit of a gossip, but she couldn't report what her husband wouldn't tell her. She made up a few hopeful tales, but they couldn't be proven and no one ever took her seriously.

Over the next few years there were other sightings. Each time the lights were visible, people talked of them for weeks afterwards. They flickered dimly at other times, sometimes in a blaze of color but others just in an unfamiliar glow that seemed to limn the house in gold and then go away. These times no one measured or recorded. When people asked the caretaker about them during his several-times-weekly visit to the local bar, Darius Pettigrew chewed on his pipe stem and allowed that maybe lights were shining in the tower, but he didn't seem concerned. "Ayuh," he told one of the few men he drank with at the local tavern. "Lights. And what if they are? Don't hurt nobody, lights don't." He raised his glass and took a long sip of ale, the corners of his mouth curling into an amused smile beneath his salt and pepper bushy beard. For him, familiarity bred contempt. Lights had never hurt him so he didn't fear the thought of lights. "Not the same as footsteps, doors opening and closing, seeing things out of the corner of your eye, pages turning in books with no human hand to move them, the eyes of paintings watching you." He made his voice deliberately creepy, eyeing his crony speculatively over the rim of his glass. The bartender, who had been listening for all he was worth, realized Darius was pulling his crony's leg and winked at a customer further down the bar while Darius spun out his spooky tale. He wasn't afraid himself. He simply wanted to frighten others.

Yet three nights later the colored lights flared again, and the next morning Darius' wife arrived at the local police station to report her husband missing. "It was the ghosts that did it," she reported, her fingers tightening on her purse strap, her eyes lowered as if afraid she would see scorn in the faces of her audience. "He used to tell me there were weird noises," she insisted, annoyed at the policeman's lack of response. "Nobody believed me, because when he'd talk at all he made a big joke of it, but there were things. Noises. Lights. Lots of folks saw the lights. Try to tell me they didn't and I'll laugh in your face." Her accent was heavily Brooklyn but her voice was firm and determined. "Something's there. He wrote to Mr. Vanderberg to tell him about it. Got a letter from him yesterday." She stuck her hand into the cavernous bag and produced an envelope with a foreign stamp on it. "See?" She waved it under their noses. "I'm going to see the Ghostbusters next, but you mark my words. Darius didn't come home last night. The ghosts got him."

The officer skimmed the letter. It reeked of skepticism, though it gave grudging permission for something to be done, for a visit from the Ghostbusters if that was what was considered necessary. Ralph Vanderberg III was clearly a skeptic. "If you are seeing ghosts, and you're not seeing them at the bottom of your beer mug, call the Ghostbusters if it will ease your mind and have them bill my office. But I doubt they'll find anything. I lived there nearly twenty years and nothing ever happened in all that time."

"He didn't," Mrs. Pettigrew said stubbornly, when the officer gave the letter back to her and remarked upon Ralph's lack of sightings. "Live there all the time, I mean. Oh, he lived there part of the time, but he was away at school. He went to Choate--same school where President Kennedy went--and then to Harvard. Every summer he went to Europe with his parents. They were a wealthy family. Yes, he was home part of the time but he can hardly speak for every second of every day. You mark me, horrible things are going on in that house. It's an evil place. You tell me why the maids would always quit and why Mrs. Vanderberg, that's Mr. Ralph's mother, Mrs. Ralph Jr., spent the last five years of her life in a mental home. They made excuses, called it a private nursing home, claimed she'd always had poor health. But the woman's hair turned white overnight. She saw something. You couldn't pay me enough to go in there. Not for a million dollars."

Her husband was truly missing. He hadn't come to the tavern after work the night before, and no one in the village had seen him. Vindicated, if not happy with the vindication, Mrs. Pettigrew set off in her little Chevette to catch the Staten Island Ferry and brave the traffic in Manhattan in her quest to find her husband. She had never liked Manhattan, but the Vanderberg offices were there. She bearded them in their den waving Ralph's letter, and the receptionist tried not to laugh in her face. But Ralph's word was good and Darius had been a faithful and hard-working guardian of the property. Eventually, determined to see it through, Mrs. Vanderberg headed for Lower Manhattan to hire the Ghostbusters.

The comfortable silence in the lab at Ghostbuster Central had been going on for nearly an hour, broken only occasionally by the sound of snoring from the bedroom across the hall where Peter was sacking out after his date of the night before. The other three had gathered in the lab, each involved in a particular project, sharing a bit of conversation every now and then, laughing over plans to go and drag Peter out of bed if he didn't get up soon and start doing his share of work, or just enjoying periods of friendly silence.

"I don't know how he can sleep like that," Winston complained, appearing a little aggrieved because he would have liked to sleep in himself. His date had ended earlier than Peter's had, but he had proven reluctant to roll out of the sack.

"He's tired," Egon said with a smile.

"Yeah," Winston retorted, remembering the almost smug grin on Peter's face when he'd drifted in and snapped on the light, rousing them all from their sleep. "Too much strenuous activity. Pete's not used to strenuous activity."

"Not even on his dates?" Ray asked mischievously, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

"You're too young to know about such things," Winston bantered.

Setting aside the magnetometer, Egon favored Ray with a curious glance. "Peter did have a successful evening," he said. "However, that snoring is beginning to distract me. Do you imagine a cold shower might be beneficial? Invigorating?" He lifted a questioning eyebrow.

"I'll go for it," Winston agreed. "It'd be worth it to see the expression on his face when that icy water hits."

"You guys are mean to him," Ray defended Peter, though he couldn't keep the wicked gleam of humor out of his eyes. "I'll go wake him up. Besides, if we do that, he'll get us back for it, you know he will. Short sheeting our beds or making Slimer sleep in your underwear drawer, Winston, or sending Janine flowers in your name, Egon."

Winston frowned. "You do have a point. Doesn't he have a point, Egon?"

"Hmm?" Egon turned on the P.K.E. meter that he checked every day at the same time when they weren't out on calls, and studied the readings thoughtfully, pursing his lips as he considered what he had seen. He didn't deliberately ignore Winston's question; it was simply that the readings distracted him from the silly conversation and he had honestly forgotten about it. Keeping track of the ambient ectoplasmic readings of the New York area was a job he'd assigned himself before the coming of Gozer, a job that had proven useful more than once since, and which might be beneficial again now. He pondered the readings, mentally compared them to the ones he had taken the previous day, and decided to voice his thoughts on the subject.

"This is interesting, Raymond," Egon said as he set aside his P.K.E. meter to chart his new data in a ledger that was propped on the table in front of him. "For the past few weeks the ambient energy levels of the city have been rising very slowly. If I didn't maintain a regular check we'd scarcely notice it, until it was too late." The last two words made Winston lift his gaze and regard Egon thoughtfully, even a little nervously, but it was the third member of the team who responded first.

"Wow, that's great, Egon." Ray put down the ecto scopes he'd been adjusting at the workbench across the room and came to peer over Egon's shoulder at the rows of figures he had copied there. Egon let him read them then turned to the already-activated computer, loading his data program and pushing keys until he had accessed a chart. "Look at this. You can see the increase has been very gradual. Last night there was a definite surge in readings, though it was not large. I noticed it after we'd busted that class two at the Lincoln Center."

"What would cause something like that?" Winston had been recharging and fine-tuning the proton packs, one after the other, checking the readings to make sure they were working right. He was on the last one now, just ready to test it to make sure it was fully charged, but his interest had switched at Egon's announcement. "I remember you looked at the meter funny then, but you didn't say anything."

"The reading dropped immediately," Egon explained, shutting down the meter and keying the new data into the computer.

"What do you think could have caused it, though?" asked Ray, wide eyed at the idea of a new challenge. Of all of them, Ray was the most eager to track down new and mysterious ghosts and he didn't fear the nasty ones either. Instead he regarded each new risk with the eager enthusiasm of a child at Christmas time. "A new demon, maybe? A major dimensional cross-rip? A plague of zombies?" he concluded hopefully.

"The ghosts are having a major party," Peter offered from the doorway. Egon had heard him stirring a few minutes earlier and then the sound of running water in the bathroom. Now Venkman stood toweling his hair dry, wearing his sweats and looking like he had barely managed to pry his eyes open. He yawned and stretched, his hair still rumpled and damp from the shower and ambled into the room. "And they didn't invite us. It's not fair."

"They'll invite us soon enough," Winston said darkly, glancing up from his work to grin at Peter. "They always do. Bout time you dragged yourself out of the sack, homeboy."

Peter made a face at them. "Just getting my beauty sleep. After all, that was a great party last night. No way I could tear myself away before three. We didn't have any busts scheduled, and this is supposed to be my day off."

"I wouldn't want to waste my day off lying around in bed," Winston argued, shaking his head. "There are too many things to do."

Ignoring Peter and Winston's exchange, the occultist grinned in delight, his finger tracing the rising line across the chart on the screen. "I can't wait to see what happens next. It's building up for something, that's for sure. When's the last time we had anything like that, Egon?"

Egon pushed his glasses into place on the bridge of his nose. "I believe it was right before Samhaine broke out of the containment unit. I'd have to check my files to be absolutely certain."

Winston abandoned his attempt to correct Peter's living habits and returned to the original discussion. "I know I'm not gonna like this. You said we wouldn't have to do any more gods, Egon."

"It's been some time since we've encountered anything as powerful," Egon recalled, spreading his hands as if in apology. "True, the Ghostmaster was powerful but he was not particularly bright. We were able to defeat him with sheer intellect and logic. Hardly even interesting." Egon had enjoyed the challenge all the same. He always enjoyed an opportunity to use his brain to solve a problem rather than simply blasting ghosts and sucking them into traps. That was a necessary part of the job, and it had its own particular fascination, but Egon enjoyed the more complex busts even more, though in a different way than Ray did.

"What about the time we went to Russia?" Peter put in, stretching like a cat and yawning widely. The effort seemed to wake him up a little more. "That was one of the primal gods, wasn't it?" he asked around the yawn. "It was powerful enough to nearly vaporize us all. I don't like that kind. I like the little cute ones who'll jump right in the traps so people can pay us right away."

"Yes, that was a powerful entity but the readings weren't that strong this side of the Atlantic," Egon responded. "I wasn't able to document a rise in the ambient psi before we left. I noticed them when we arrived but once I realized they had a copy of The Nameless Book, I believed that was the cause of the disturbance. No one in Moscow had been taking P.K.E. readings so there was no one who could have reported a gradual increase of ectoplasmic power."

"Wait a minute. Time out." Peter held up his hands one on top of the other as if he were in a ball game. "You're saying we get readings like this every time some of the Old Ones or Elder Gods or major demons try to break through into our world? And you never warned us? I don't like this. I think I'll go back to bed."

"But this is great, Peter!" exploded Ray, his face bright with excitement. "We haven't had anything really dangerous in a long time. I mean anything powerful enough to be a real challenge. If we don't take on something like this every now and then we'll get rusty, chasing class twos and threes and fives all the time. They're hardly even exciting."

"That class three that chased you down Broadway last Thursday had you pretty excited, Ray," Peter said with a huge grin, leaning against the door frame and folding his arms over his chest, his eyes sparkling. "I thought you were trying out for the hundred yard proton pack shuffle."

Ray's face turned red. "That was different," he defended himself, embarrassed at the memory. "He was shooting fire at me."

"Your primal gods tend to do that, too, Tex," Peter reminded him, almost with relish. For all Peter's complaining, he was a very good man in a crisis, though it would never do to tell him so. He'd be insufferable about it for weeks. "Hey, Winston," the psychologist said now, "you'd better get those packs charged in a hurry. I think Ray's gonna drag us out to find the source of Egon's readings--and on my day off, too. Fate is never kind."

"We should go searching for them," Egon said, rising and reaching for his pack. "Because we might still have time to close the door. The longer we wait, the harder it will be. I'm sorry about your day off, Peter, but I think you'd rather do this now than have to face another Gozer."

"Well, yeah," he acknowledged without too much reluctance. "But we don't know where it is. And remember this, Spengs. We're not getting paid for it."

"If we wait long enough for someone to pay us, it might be too late to stop the entity," Egon said reasonably. "The world as we know it could be destroyed, but of course a paycheck is much more important." His eyes twinkled behind his round-rimmed glasses and he lifted an expectant eyebrow at Peter.

"When you put it like that..." Peter conceded, grinning back. "Besides we can always bill the city after the fact. They come through in a crisis if we don't break too much of New York. I'll just get on the line to the mayor and remind him what might have happened if he didn't have the world's best paranormal eliminators right at hand."

"Oh, guys..." Janine Melnitz appeared in the lab doorway, trailed by Slimer, the Ghostbusters' resident spook. The secretary paused to stare at Peter. "Dr. V! You're up and it isn't quite noon. This is good. I'm not sure the world can stand the shock, but it's still good."

Peter made a face at her. "I'm up before noon a lot, Melnitz," he defended himself. "I'm just up here engaged in serious work, and that's why you don't know about it."

"Yeah, serious work," agreed Slimer, drifting over toward Peter as if he meant to hug him around the neck. Peter backpedaled.

"Do it and I'll never buy you another pizza, Spud."

"Aw." Eyes full of disappointment, Slimer drifted over to Egon and Ray and pretended to study the computer screen as if he could understand it. There were times when Egon wondered if he actually could, though such times were few and far between.

"Yeah, right, serious work," muttered Janine knowingly. Reluctantly she abandoned the teasing of Peter and some gravity came into her expression. "You guys have a client. You'd better try to be serious about it. Her husband is missing, and the last time he was seen he was going into a haunted house."

"I'm not sure we have time for haunted houses right now, Janine," Egon said with some regret. "We're postulating a major cross-rip."

"Yeah, Egon says we have to save the world first," explained Peter. "But I bet we can squeeze in one little haunted house first. Come on, Spengs, have a heart. Her husband's missing."

"Peter's right, postulate your cross-rip after you talk to Mrs. Pettigrew," Janine instructed firmly, folding her arms in determination to drag them downstairs by the hair if necessary. "Poor lady's upset, and that was before Slimer tried to comfort her. Besides, this might even be your cross-rip. She says the place has been spooky for decades, and Pettigrew isn't the first person to disappear there. He went to work last night and hasn't been seen since."

"Really?" Ray asked with growing excitement, abandoning the computer projections he'd been playing with and bouncing to his feet. "We'd better go see, Egon. It might be important. It might even tie in with that power surge you recorded last night."

Peter and Winston exchanged a glance. Disappearing people sounded bad to both of them, power surges or no, but Ray did have a good point. Though many haunted houses were not really serious problems, some of them tended to be very dangerous. "Are you sure this is safe, Egon?" Peter demanded as if he'd read Egon's mind--sometimes he could almost do that. He pushed himself away from the door frame. "I'm too young and gorgeous to die."

"We're not gonna die, Pete," Ray said with a big grin. "We're gonna have a great time."

"I think you've been sniffing your capacitors again, Ray," Peter told him sternly, shaking his head. "What do you say, Egon, you kidder you? Is this going to be fun?"

"It depends, of course, on your definition of fun, Peter," Egon said unhelpfully as he started for the door. He couldn't resist sneaking a sideways glance at Peter, and hid a smile when Peter's face fell. Sometimes it was simply too easy to tease his friend.

Peter shrugged and fell into step with him. "If I get killed on this bust, I'm gonna come back and haunt you," he teased, draping a casual arm around Egon's shoulder. "And don't think I won't enjoy it, because I will."

"Oh, good," interjected Ray, smiling and giving Peter a nudge in the arm. "That'll give us one more ghost to study."

Peter stuck out his tongue at him.

The guys were suitably serious when Janine introduced them to Mrs. Pettigrew, a little woman with greying hair pulled into an old fashioned bun on top of her head. Janine had seated her at the chair beside her desk, and the guys positioned themselves around her, Peter sitting on the edge of the secretary's desk while Ray dragged up another chair and Egon remained standing, taking a surreptitious P.K.E. reading of the woman. The device didn't react to her at all. "You've got to help me," she pleaded, holding out two envelopes to them. "My husband went into a haunted house and no one has seen him since."

Egon took the envelopes. "What's this, Mrs. Pettigrew?"

"It's a letter from the owner of the house, Ralph Vanderberg, and another from his office. He's out of the country, and my Darius is the caretaker of the Vanderberg house on Staten Island. Darius wrote to Mr. Ralph about the disturbances and Mr. Ralph wrote back giving Darius permission to check out the house, to stay in the house overnight if it was necessary to find out about it. Mr. Ralph thought it was someone breaking in, but he never believed it. After Darius disappeared I went to Mr. Ralph's office and got permission to call you in. That's what this is," she explained, pointing to the second letter as Egon opened it. "Authority to investigate the house. There's a key in there."

Egon retrieved the key and put it into the pocket of his jumpsuit before he studied the letter.

"Wow," Ray cried. "I've heard of the Vanderberg house. This is--" He stopped himself just in time from proclaiming it 'great' in the face of Mrs. Pettigrew's worry. "People have disappeared there before. Have there been lights in the tower, Mrs. Pettigrew?"

"Yes, just recently. At first they were small and people didn't notice them, but Darius did because he has to be on the property anyway. That's when he wrote. But they got worse all the time, and last night he went up to the tower. He told me he would. When he didn't come home, I knew something was wrong. The police didn't believe me. But you'll come, won't you?" She gazed at them desperately. "Darius wouldn't have gone away on purpose. I know he wouldn't." She began to cry.

Peter jumped up and went to her, putting an hand on his shoulder. "It's okay," he soothed reassuringly. "You've come to the right place. We'll go out there today and see what we can find. After all, we're the Ghostbusters."

She raised her eyes and smiled at him. "I know you will. Should I come with you?"

"No, it could be dangerous," Ray warned her. "We'd better go on our own. You can wait here or we can take you home."

"I have my car. I'll go home and wait to hear from you."

"Wow, the Vanderberg house," Ray breathed as Janine ushered Mrs. Pettigrew out. "This is really great. I've heard about it for years. Cletus Vanderberg disappeared there in 1938."

"Cletus Vanderberg?" Egon stared at him. "That Vanderberg. This casts an entirely different light on the subject. I should have realized."

"Who's Cletus Vanderberg?" Peter asked.

"He was a specialist in the occult, and a black magic practitioner," Ray replied. "Worse, he was once a member of Ivo Shandor's Gozer worshippers. When the cult disbanded, he retreated to his estate on Staten Island where he practiced a lot of weird rituals--until he disappeared on Halloween, 1938. People saw mysterious lights in the tower around the time of his disappearance."

"And now they're seeing weird lights again?" asked Winston. "This could prove interesting."

"Yeah, especially since it's not Halloween," Peter remarked.

"This might well tie in with those ambient energy levels I've been monitoring, Ray," Egon said thoughtfully. "Especially since the house has manifested before. It could be the nexus of the disturbance."

"And that's bad, isn't it?" Winston asked knowingly.

"No, it's good," Peter argued. "It means Ray and Egon get to chase their spooky readings and we get paid for it after all, out of the Vanderberg estate. Ralph Vanderberg is a big shot in diplomatic circles. Big bucks. This is great. Let's get out gear, guys, and head out there right away."

"Don't you love his priorities?" Winston asked as he started for the stairs. "Good thing I recharged all our packs. This sounds like we're gonna need them."

"It even looks like a haunted house," Ray opined as Ecto-1 pulled up at the end of the long driveway and he shut off the engine.

He was right. The house was old and huge, three stories high, with twin towers one at each end of the main wing, each rising another two stories above the level of the house itself. Ray had explained there was a wing heading backward from the left end of the structure. The building had a Tudor façade but the towers were mid-Victorian as if the house had been minding its own business when a different architect had come along and played with it. Shrubbery crowded close around the house and vines grew up along the walls, shading some of the windows.

"Which tower is it, Ray?" Winston asked as he got out of the car and stood looking up at the house.

"That one, I think." Ray pointed to the south tower. They all stared at it expectantly, but aside from creating a shadow where they stood that blocked the afternoon sun, it appeared quite normal, if ivy-shrouded. The lower windows had blinds pulled across them, or curtains, and only the windows on the top floor were open to the sun.

They had stopped at the police station on the way to the Vanderberg house where they had learned two police officers had gone through the house earlier but had found no trace of Mr. Pettigrew. The younger of the two men had insisted he heard noises in the house but his partner had laughed it off and claimed it was the result of a too-good imagination. "The house has been shut up," he said. "Furniture draped in dust sheets, that kind of thing. I've gotta say it looks spooky enough, and it's got plenty of atmosphere. Jasper here always did have a good imagination."

Jasper scowled. "Give me a break, Mick," he had argued. "I did hear something, but I don't know what it was, a kind of weird rumbling like a distant thunderstorm, muttering away in the background."

"Sure, when the sky's clear? You expected to hear things, so you did." Mick folded his arms across his chest. "The place hasn't been dusted in years but you could see where Pettigrew walked when he made his rounds, regular tracks in the dust to check on every room, make sure kids or transients weren't breaking in."

"Did he go up to the tower, the one where the lights are supposed to appear?" Ray had asked eagerly.

"Tracks in the dust up the stairs, all right. No way to tell if he went up and didn't come down, but there's nowhere to hide up there."

They had speculated about what might have happened to Pettigrew all the way to the house, and unless he'd been secretly having an affair and had used the mysterious old place as an excuse for disappearing abruptly, nothing came to mind. Ray theorized he'd been sucked into a parallel dimension, but they couldn't prove any such thing one way or another until they could go inside and take readings.

Now they stood in the shadow of the tower adjusting their proton packs on their backs while Egon activated his P.K.E. meter. The antennae stirred slightly and the lights blinked, but with no more reaction than a normal residual reading might have given them. "Hmm," said Egon, moving the meter to and fro while he stroked his chin thoughtfully with his other hand. "I'm picking up the same overlay I had in the city, but it's stronger here. Perhaps this is the center of the disturbance."

"Wouldn't it be reacting a lot more strongly if this was the center of the disturbance?" asked Ray in some disappointment.

"Not if the nexus were cyclical," Egon responded. "We'd receive stronger residuals in between. I believe this house is reputed to experience only nocturnal manifestations."

"The nexus is cyclical," Peter repeated. "I like it. Egon, you talk better gibberish than anyone I ever heard." He grinned. "So we have to wait until the next time it manifests; and that means we stay overnight. Well, I always wanted to stay in a mansion, though a haunted one wasn't my first choice."

"We might not have to do that," Ray replied. "Let's go in and see. Maybe the readings will be stronger in the tower." He bounded up the steps, with Egon right behind him. The physicist passed the key to Ray.

"Slowly, the door creaked open upon the house from hell," Peter said in an eerie voice. "Little did the doomed trespassers realize...aw," he concluded in disappointment when the door swung open soundlessly and efficiently, revealing a tidy entry hall.

"Kind of mundane," Winston remarked as they went in. "I thought spooks would be lining up to greet us, and the head spook would announce us, like a butler."

"Yeah," said Peter wryly. "Or even better, a real butler. I'm gonna write Ralph a protest letter." He edged over to Ray, who was busy taking readings. "Anything, Ray?"

"No, just residuals like Egon got." He closed the door, casting them into shadows, though enough light filtered in from outside to keep it from being dark.

They stood at the foot of a flight of curving stairs that circled up to the second floor where a balcony ran a third of the length of the house. A suit of armor stood on either side of the stairs, one holding a lance and the other a broadsword. Peter ambled over to the one with the lance and lifted the faceplate. "Nobody home," he reported. "They were little guys, weren't they?"

"If these are genuine, then they would have to be, Peter. We would have been giants in the middle ages, you know."

"I always wanted to know that, Spengs. Thanks for the tip." Peter wandered to the nearest door and peeked in. It was obviously some kind of salon, because sheets swathed chairs and sofas, and, on the far wall in front of a big window, a grand piano. Paintings adorned the walls that were either genuine or very good copies, but Peter suspected the latter because no one would leave really valuable artwork in a house that was unoccupied nine months out of twelve. There had been a security gate, of course, but any high tech crook could have had it down in no time at all. He frowned, considering the possibility that Pettigrew hadn't fallen afoul of ghosts but of art thieves who had been systematically exchanging the originals for fakes, but there had been no evidence of a break in that he could see.

"Let's explore the tower first," Egon suggested, catching Peter by the shoulder and giving him a push in the direction of the stairs. "It's supposedly the site of the manifestations. If the readings are stronger there, we'll know there's a paranormal explanation, at least for the lights people have seen."

"People disappear from the tower," Peter said in an aside to Winston. "Are you sure that's where we want to go?"

"I'm sure I don't," Winston agreed, but he fell into step anyway.

When they reached the second floor, Egon halted long enough to point his P.K.E. meter in both directions, frowning. It gave a slightly higher reading when pointing south, so Egon fine-tuned the device to shut out extraneous readings and tried again, and this time, he got a stronger reaction from the direction of the tower.

"Come on," urged Ray, heading for the next flight of stairs. "Let's get up there and see what we can find."

Peter trailed the others up the stairs, pausing abruptly halfway up to the third floor. He'd just had the uneasy feeling there was someone behind him. He thought he could feel eyes boring into the middle of his back, never mind that his proton pack rested there. He turned quickly, but no one was there. Frowning because he didn't usually hype himself into expecting trouble when there wasn't any, he sneaked out his own meter and took a cautious reading of the stairs behind him. Nothing. Yet when he pointed the meter in the direction of the south tower, the detection device functioned normally.

"Trouble, Pete?" asked Winston, hanging back to wait for him.

"No, just a case of the creepy-crawlies," Peter admitted reluctantly. "That young cop was pretty good at creating an atmosphere."

"Yeah, he and his partner probably set us up. Figured they'd have a good joke if they could spook the Ghostbusters." Winston shook his head. "Nobody here, homeboy."

"There could be somebody here," Peter persisted, climbing again. "It doesn't have to be ghosts. Check out this place. A thief would have a field day. Heck, my dad would have a field day. Last I heard, robbers didn't register on a P.K.E. meter."

"Good point." Winston unshipped his thrower and took it firmly in both hands. "Just in case," he explained when Peter lifted an eyebrow. "I don't have to neutronize them, just scare 'em a little."

"You won't get any argument from me," Peter reassured him, halfway wanting to draw his own thrower. He decided to wait. If Old Pettigrew suddenly stumbled out after taking a long nap under one of the sheets that covered all the furniture, he'd look pretty silly confronting the guy with a proton rifle.

The house must have been spectacular in its prime, Peter thought as they reached the third floor and wandered around exploring the place. He peeked into one of the bedrooms just to see. There was a smaller and much less fancy structure behind this one, on the other side of what had been the kitchen gardens in the days when someone had troubled with such things. Egon had pointed it out as they came along the road heading for the driveway. The servants had lived there in the days when even the mildly rich had kept an army of them, and the Vanderbergs had become mildly rich only after the Crash of '29. Before that they had been fabulously rich. The bedroom Peter saw now was sheer luxury, even in Holland covers, with carved panelling on the walls and a spacious window that looked out over the curving driveway. The bed was a four poster with a canopy and Peter decided he'd bag this room if they wound up staying the night.

"It will not be yours."

Peter glanced at the doorway quickly to see which one of the guys wanted to dispute him for possession, but they weren't there. He poked his head out and saw them moving on toward the door at the end of the hall that must lead to the tower. "It will, too," he called after them.

"It will too, what, Peter?" asked Ray, peering back over his shoulder.

"This is my room, if we stay overnight," he insisted.

"Nobody's arguing with you, Peter," Egon added, putting his hand on the door handle, then jerking it back abruptly as if it had stung him.

Abandoning the room without a second thought, Peter rejoined his buddies in two quick steps. "Problem, Egon?" he asked, as Egon raised his hand, palm upward, and stared at it before holding his P.K.E. meter up and running it over the doorknob.

"It was cold," Egon exclaimed, touching his palm with the fingers of his other hand. "The doorknob was cold, like ice." He studied the readings and his eyebrow lifted in a superb Spock imitation. "There is strong power here, though it has faded again."

"Really?" Ray's eyes widened in intrigue and surprise and he reached out to touch the knob himself without a thought to the danger he might be risking.

Peter batted his hand away before Ray could risk freezing his fingers. "Ah, ah, ah, Ray. Wait until Egon figures out what's going on here. Maybe the nice nether entities don't want us to go in the tower."

"That's odd," Egon mused, raising his eyes from the meter, intrigued. "The readings are now normal."

"Let's see." Peter stretched out cautious fingers and brushed them against the doorknob to test how 'normal' it was, prepared to pull back at the first sign of trouble. Trouble wasn't long forthcoming. Peter squawked, yanking back when flames shot out of the keyhole at him. "Yikes," he cried, blowing on his fingers then popping them in his mouth. The flames subsided the minute he let go, leaving no trace of charred markings on the wood around the doorknob.

"Fascinating." Egon moved his meter closer to the doorknob. "It reacted when you touched it, but the readings vanished the minute you pulled your hand away, Peter, as if whatever causes the heat and cold can come and go at will. Did you injure yourself?"

Peter pulled his fingers out of his mouth and studied them consideringly. "No, but it was close. You said it was cold," he accused, rubbing his fingers against the front of his jumpsuit then waving them around to finish drying them off.

"It was," Egon replied, catching Peter's wrist and turning his hand palm up to check for burns. Other than a slight redness that was already fading, there was no trace of injury. "Winston, you try it," urged the physicist, releasing his grip on Peter and leveling the meter at the doorknob.

"Not me, man." Winston retreated a step, shoving his hands behind his back. "I don't want to be barbecued. Something's in there and it doesn't want us going in."

"I bet this'll work," Peter said, taking out his thrower and activating it. "Stand aside, guys. Fastest lock-pick in the Tri-State area." Adjusting it for low power, he aimed at the doorknob and fired just as Egon said:

"That might not be a good idea, Peter."

A wailing shriek tore the air around them but the doorknob sizzled away and the door swung open. Involuntarily, all four men stepped backward at the moaning sound, but it faded immediately. "It's as if the door could talk," breathed Ray, his eyes round as saucers in his excitement. "We don't get talking houses very often."

"Thanks, Ray, now I feel like a butcher," muttered Peter, though he didn't mean it, not after the doorknob had tried to fry his fingers. He poked at the door with the tip of his thrower, pushing it open, revealing the start of a narrow spiral staircase and an archway to the right of it that must have opened into the third floor tower room. "Anything, Egon?" he asked, trying to peer sideways into the room.

"Yes, Peter. The readings went off the scale for a moment there, when we heard the scream. I'm getting higher readings now than we had before, but it's back to residual level and fading again."

"What would make that happen?" asked Winston, glancing up and down the corridor as if he suspected whole hordes of ghosts were creeping up on them.

"Perhaps the ghost is confined in the tower," Egon replied thoughtfully, rubbing his chin as he considered the possibilities. "It didn't want us here yet it was easily defeated. I find that intriguing."

"It might have sent out a fragment of itself into the structure of the house," theorized Ray happily, delighted at the possibility. He liked a nice, complex problem to solve and new types of ghosts always appealed to him.

"You mean the whole house is a ghost, Ray?" Winston asked, eyes narrowing. The glance he cast over his shoulder was not a happy one. "We're not talking about moving walls coming together and crushing us and all the outside doors locking so we're trapped forev--ulp, mpmrh!" he concluded as Peter clapped his hand over Winston's mouth.

"Now, now, Winston, let's not give the nice house any nasty ideas," Peter chided. "I'm sure it's entirely capable of thinking up its own nasty tricks and it doesn't need any help from us."

"You think it's listening to us," asked Ray, grinning, "so it would know if anyone came in? It could have been watching us and when we tried to reach the tower, it could have intensified its strength in the door to keep us out."

"And we just made it mad," Peter pointed out, going to the heart of the matter. "Something's up there waiting for us and it's ticked off, right?"

Egon stretched out his arm and held the P.K.E. meter in the stairwell. "I would say so," he agreed as the readings intensified slightly at the change in direction. "What we have here could well be much stronger than a class seven."

"Could be?" asked Ray, waving his own P.K.E. meter around. "That's weird. I'm still detecting only residual readings even if they're strong. As if it were mostly quiescent but there's some class three in there too."

"It's hiding out," suggested Peter. "Waiting to jump on us." He made spooky gestures with his fingers. "Oooh--oooh," he breathed in a poor imitation of a Hollywood ghost.

"It may be an unconscious entity," Egon replied, ignoring Peter's antics entirely. "Aware when we hurt it, but only partially. It may be quiescent as you said, Ray, coming to awareness only at certain times. When you blasted a fragment of it just now, Peter, it might have rolled over in its sleep, so to speak."

"Then how about we tippy-toe out of here and run like crazy before it finishes its nap and starts hunting around for dinner?" Peter asked hopefully.

"We can't do that, Peter," Ray reminded him. "Mr. Pettigrew is still missing--besides, we're being paid to find him."

"You do have a point," agreed Peter, smiling at the thought of payment. "If he's up there, he's probably waaaay beyond anything we can do for him, though." He poked his head through the doorway very cautiously. "Yo. Mr. Pettigrew!" he called. "Are you up there? If you can't talk, pound on something or give us a sign." He waited, listening. There was no response.

"Well, he's not up there," Winston murmured, shaking his head. It didn't seem like it would take much for him to shrug his shoulders and call it a day.

"Unless he's unconscious," argued Ray. "I wonder if the police really went into the tower like they said they did."

"Come on, Ray, they still have all their fingers," Peter reminded him. "Betcha they wrote it off as locked and that was that."

"They would have told us if it had fried or frozen them," Winston put in, becoming interested in the problem. "So either they didn't search the house very thoroughly or the place has got it in for Ghostbusters. Oh man, I should've listened to my dad and kept working construction. Worst thing that could happen to you there is falling off a beam when you're a hundred and fifty feet off the ground."

Peter shuddered. The idea of working construction in a high rise ranked somewhere down there below confronting Gozer all over again. He'd never been very happy with heights.

"We're going to have to go ourselves, whether they went or not," Egon decided. "We'll never solve this unless we do." He reached out and flipped a light switch, turning on the lights in the stairwell. They promptly went out.

"Too bad. Bulb burned out," said Ray in mild disappointment.

"I don't think so. All of them at once?" Egon pointed to the light switch. It was now in the 'off' position.

"Bad switch?" Winston volunteered hopefully though he rolled his eyes nervously at Peter.

"I wouldn't count on it." Egon turned the lights on again and this time kept his hand on the switch. Peter could see his muscles tighten as he braced himself, pitting his strength against...something, then he relaxed and lifted his hand away. The light stayed on.

"You just have to teach it who's boss," said Peter with a grin. "Light switches can be really stubborn."

"Come on, then," Egon urged and stepped into the tower.

The door slammed shut behind him.

"Egon!" Ray grabbed for the door, only to have flames shoot out the hole where the doorknob had been.

"Stand aside. Door taming is my specialty." Peter adjusted his thrower and ran the beam over the door. The flames died, and Peter wedged his fingers in the hole and pulled.

Egon stood there unhurt and unalarmed, eyes on his meter. "This is indeed intriguing," he remarked as if he had been in no peril at all. "I'm still not entirely reading a conscious entity."

The lights went out.

"No, but Sleepy's got a really high nuisance value," Peter muttered. He edged carefully through the doorway to join Egon. "We'd better move or he'll wake up," he suggested, glancing up at the circle of dark stairs overhead.

"Good point," Egon agreed. He led the way up the stairs while the other three fell in behind him. Light filtered out from the openings above, so that the stairs were not in darkness even without the electric lights. The top tower room had been open to the light, and the late afternoon sunlight must have illuminated the room at the top of the stairs. "Watch out for trouble," Egon called over his shoulder. "It doesn't want us up here. It may well--yeaaaaah!" His arms windmilled as the step beneath his foot collapsed inward beneath his weight.

Peter let his thrower go and grabbed the stair rail to brace himself, his other hand thrust against Egon's proton pack to help him keep his balance. "Grab on, Egon," he warned, feeling Winston bracing him from behind. Egon's grasping fingers caught hold of the railing, too, and he steadied himself, his foot feeling for the next step until he regained his balance.

"This house is nasty," Ray volunteered from behind them. "Isn't it great?"

"Egon wouldn't have thought it was great if he wound up in traction," Peter pointed out, giving Egon one further push before letting go and taking a grip on the other railing in case another step bit the dust. "Okay, guys, listen up. Something up there doesn't like us and he's making it hard for us, so double check everything, okay. Test each step. And watch each other."

"Got it," agreed Winston.

Stepping over the broken stair tread they made their way up to the fourth floor tower room and paused there to investigate. It proved to be a near-empty room with only a couple of straight chairs against the far wall. The window blinds had been drawn and thin strips of sunlight made a complex pattern on the floor. Egon and Ray took readings but nothing registered except the same residuals as before, slightly higher than previously as if they were closer to the center of the disturbance but no more than that.

They came out of the room and peered up the last flight of stairs. Ray waved his P.K.E. meter around. "Whatever it is, it's centered up there," he reported. "Let's go."

Peter caught his shoulder. "Watch your step, Ray," he reminded him.

Ray nodded. "Sure, Pete. Come on, guys," and he plunged up the stairs, meter in one hand, thrower in the other.

Peter fell in behind him, gripping his own proton rifle, and as he did a weird groaning sound shook the entire house. "This sounds bad," he quipped. "Like the house has indigestion."

"A giant burp?" Winston asked. "Like it just--had dinner?"

Peter grimaced. "You had to say that, didn't you?"

The stairs to the top floor remained firm, and the light grew brighter as they circled up to the room with the unshaded windows. Peter checked each step before he put his weight on it, but that made him lag behind Ray who raced up eagerly, full of enthusiasm for the bust. He didn't stop until abruptly they heard a voice speaking.

"Help me. Help me."

It sounded faint and distant, breathless and shaken, and it came out of the very air all around them, not from the tower room above. "Wow," breathed Ray, then raised his voice. "Where are you?"

No answer.

"Could you tell where that came from, Egon?" asked Ray.

"Not precisely. It seemed to come from everywhere."

"Spooky noises courtesy of Dolby Sound," Peter volunteered, glancing uneasily over his shoulder. "I don't think I like this place."

"It was obviously a product of unusual acoustics," Egon offered. "It may have been Mr. Pettigrew, trapped somewhere nearby, perhaps in a concealed panel."

"Mr Pettigrew!" yelled Ray again. "We're coming! We'll find you." Again, no reply. Ray hurried up the last few stairs, weapon at ready, and vanished through the doorway. "Oh my gosh," he blurted in surprise. "You guys have got to see th--" He broke off in mid-word as a burst of golden light blazed within the room as if the sun had suddenly shone through an open window.

"See what, Ray?" Peter asked quickly, following him through the arched doorway and stopping so abruptly Winston collided with him and Egon plowed into him so they all staggered forward. Peter grabbed the back of a sofa to stop himself before his feet could land within a pentagram that had been drawn on the floor with fading red paint. Faded Victorian furniture crowded into the spaces between the windows; opposite the door a huge mirror in an elaborate brass frame embossed with cabalistic signs reflected Peter's impromptu dance as he fumbled for balance.

A table with a design not unlike an Aztec calendar carved into its top stood to one side of the mirror, a huge book lying open upon the table, its pages stirring as if in a breeze, though the windows were all shut. As Peter stared at it, several pages flipped over, deliberately, one at a time, and a red silken bookmark fluttered up to dive into the book and mark the pages. Peter stared at it in disbelief, his mouth dropping open at the sight.

Bookcases blocked two of the windows, bookcases jammed with huge old tomes, jars holding mysterious liquids in brilliant colors and dry ingredients labeled in an old fashioned hand, two human skulls, an astrolabe, sealed tins with poison symbols or foreign words inscribed upon them, several mounted and stuffed small animals, one of which was a rat with eyes that glowed red in the beam of sunlight that struck it. What little wall showed between the multitude of windows was covered in patterned Victorian wallpaper, and the lamps that sat here and there on stands were double-globed glass with flowers and vines painted upon their amber surfaces.

Lying on the table next to the open book, was Ray's P.K.E. meter, activated, its antennae extended to their full extent. It was beeping shrilly, the sound beginning to fade even as they watched it.

Ray was nowhere in the room.

"Ray!" bellowed Peter in alarm, spinning around in a slow circle and scanning every corner as if he had managed to overlook the occultist in the small room.

Winston pushed past him and checked behind the wing chair near the small fireplace just beyond the mirror, shaking his head in confusion and disbelief when he didn't find Ray there. "Ray, where are you? Come on, guy, give us a sign here!" He listened carefully, but there was no reply, not even when Winston raised his voice and added it to Peter's as they tried again. "RAY!"

"Don't anyone move," Egon commanded, his voice abrupt and meaningful, and Peter froze like a statue before his foot could come down on the small throw-rug in front of the fireplace. "And don't touch that pentagram, Winston," Egon added. He edged past Peter and whipped up the throw rug. Beneath it, a white circle had been painted on the floor. Egon pointed his meter at it and the device reacted, beeping more loudly than before in counterpoint to the fading beeps from Ray's abandoned meter.

"I don't know what that is, but that looks bad," said Winston with a shake of his head.

"I shudder to think what might have happened if you had stepped into the circle, Peter," Egon confirmed Winston's unease with the painted circle. "This may once have been protection for a magic practitioner. I suspect if we analyzed the paint we'd find it contained salt, often used to block the way of powerful entities."

"Can I move now?" Peter asked uneasily, tired of balancing on one foot. When Egon nodded, he set his foot down very carefully outside the circle and turned to face the physicist, squaring his shoulders for what was to come. "All right, Spengs, where's Ray? Did that flash of light have anything to do with this? How do we get him back?" he demanded.

Egon's answer was the only possible one right then, but Peter didn't like it. "I don't know." Egon moved very carefully through the room, watching not only the markings on the floor but the furniture itself. "Touch nothing," he added. "Check under chairs before you sit down. Trust nothing here to be what it appears. I'm reading an unfamiliar kind of power. The meter isn't precisely designed to interpret it but it's close enough to normal psycho-kinetic energy for it to stir the meters. So be very careful."

"Never mind all that, Egon, we're going to be cautious as hell, but where's Ray?" Winston added his question to Peter's. "He walked in here and there isn't a door, and from the layout of the walls, there's not a secret door either. There was a burst of light but he couldn't have been vaporized without his pack taking out the entire tower. So where is he?"

"A very good question. I think perhaps we have found our first clue into the disappearance of Darius Pettigrew."

"And maybe Cletus Vanderberg," Peter reminded him, sorry he'd thought of that. Cletus Vanderberg had never been seen again. "But Vanderberg was messing with things he shouldn't, from what you and Ray said about him in the car, and Pettigrew didn't know what he was doing. Ray had his meter and it's activated. He wouldn't have stepped on the pentagram. And even if it did, it couldn't have, uh, vaporized him, like Winston said, because his pack would have gone up like a bomb." He wanted that made very clear, that Ray hadn't been neutronized, and he wanted to hear Egon say it. He needed to hear Egon say it.

"No. He wasn't vaporized," Egon said hastily, his face reflecting alarm at the very idea. "Don't worry about that, Peter. It didn't happen. There would be telltale readings to account for something like that, and it would have been painful. Ray would have had time to scream. This was instantaneous."

"Thanks, Egon, I sure appreciate that." Peter gazed down at the big pentagram, uneasy to see it there. You'd think after all this time the Vanderbergs would have removed it, but maybe there was a good reason they hadn't: perhaps Cletus had left papers warning them not to upon pain of death--or worse. It wasn't as if the room was in regular use. Dust motes hung in the sunlight and dust lay thick on all the furniture except the surface of the mirror. "That isn't drawn in blood, is it?" he queried nervously.

Egon shook his head, pointing his meter at the pentagram and studying the readings, which were faint but steady. "Blood would have turned brown by now and likely flaked away. That's paint. It may well have had blood mingled with it or salt or some other substance when it was painted there. Without a chemical analysis, it would be impossible to tell. Ray is well versed in occult lore. He would have known better than to step in it no matter how excited he was. I surmise Cletus stood in the circle and summoned up spirits, confining them in the pentagram. A remarkably dangerous practice for the layman--or even for an expert."

"Well, Ray must have stepped in something," argued Peter, unconcerned with Cletus and his habits while Ray was missing and possibly in major trouble. "And did you catch that book, Spengs? Pages turned and then the bookmark jumped into place, with nobody touching it. Think it could be a message from Ray?"

"Pages turned?" Egon's eyes lingered on the book with interest. "Intriguing. No, I didn't see it and it may well be connected with Ray. I'll have to study it. One other bit of advice. Don't look directly into the mirror. Do not meet your own eyes in the glass."

"Why not?" asked Winston suspiciously.

"Because it is obviously more than a normal mirror. Sometimes a large mirror can serve as a dimensional conduit or function as a scrying glass or be used in a number of dark practices. I'm not picking up anything but residuals from it now, but they are very high. Higher than they would be if the mirror were not involved in Ray's disappearance."

"Listen to me, Egon," Winston said, shaking his head in disbelief. "You telling me Ray walked over and jumped into the mirror without a word to us and the glass didn't even break? I don't buy it."

"Neither do I," Peter agreed, grabbing Egon by the straps of his proton pack and shaking him lightly. "Come on, Spengs, give us answers here. Who knows what might be happening to Ray while we have our little chit chat."

"I didn't say the conduit was voluntary," Egon remarked, his mouth drawn in a tight line. He uncurled Peter's fingers from the straps, gripped his wrists a moment in reassurance and let go. "And the so called chit chat is very necessary if the rest of us aren't to vanish as well. We might find Ray only to find we have no way back. It's important to discover how to bring him safely home. Until then, heroic rescues would be a case of jumping the gun."

"Gotcha," said Peter reluctantly. He wanted to jump into the mirror, if that's where Ray had vanished, and drag his friend back in triumph, but giving Egon two people to rescue was stupid, even though he wanted to do it very badly. He couldn't help Ray if he didn't know how to bring them home afterwards. "So put a little speed on it, Egon," he encouraged. "We don't know if Ray's in danger but I'd bet the longer he's in there the bigger the risk."

Egon was still engrossed in his readings though his face tightened when Peter mentioned danger, proving he was as worried as Peter and Winston though he wasn't as prone to showing it. He glanced up from the detection device and met Peter's eyes levelly. "I'm picking up residue here that reads class three or four as well as a much more powerful overlay. At some point in the past an vastly powerful entity was here, one I would theorize was higher than a class eight. It was so powerful that a residue from its presence still lingers. It may have been what killed Cletus Vanderberg. The class three residue may well be Cletus Vanderberg. It seems to have permeated the house. I'm not certain there is a conscious entity here, unless perhaps it is the house itself. The powerful entity is dormant right now. We must move carefully because if it wakes, our throwers will be no match for it."

"You're just full of good cheer, aren't you." Peter gave him a sour smile, then shook his head apologetically, knowing none of this was Egon's fault. "Sorry. Hey, Spengs, I'm not so sure about Cletus Vanderberg. Remember, they never found a body. They don't know if he's dead, though if he snuck off he's probably bought the farm by now. Maybe he hopped into the nexus and is cavorting around in the Netherworld. Is that where Ray is? Because I'm tired of talking about it. I want to get him back."

"Any attempt to retrieve him without further information would only lead to additional disappearances, Peter," Egon insisted stubbornly. "I want to find Ray and bring him back safely as much as you do, but we can't try jumping into the mirror until we know exactly what is going on here. Obviously we've managed to disturb great power. It's not entirely awake yet, and I'd as soon not awaken it if we can free Ray quietly first, but it will come."

"Oh, good," grumbled Winston, bending to peer into the fireplace and examine the chimney in case Ray had decided to secrete himself there for a mysterious reason of his own. "Bad enough Ray decided to pop over to the next dimension for a visit. Now we've got company coming, the kind that isn't welcome. We talking something like Gozer here?" The look in his eyes pleaded for a negative reply.

"Possibly. I'm afraid Cletus Vanderberg was playing with powers way over his head. By all accounts he was exceptionally well read on the subject of the occult. I think he'd gone beyond the simple. Seances, table tipping, even demon summoning probably had begun to bore him. I think he wanted something more."

"More?" echoed Peter in dismay, hearing his voice crack on the word. "What kind of 'more' are we talking about here, Egon?"

"I'm thinking of something like the Old Ones, the primal gods, the ancient ones--"

"You mean like Cthulhu? Like Nexa? Like that thing that nearly got summoned when we went to Russia?" Winston squawked in alarm, eyes widening. He abandoned the fireplace as a lost cause and stepped carefully around the circle to join the other two. "This is bad, isn't it?"

"Very bad, Winston. Because whatever it is has been asleep for a long time. Every now and then it stirs in its sleep. It's stirring now. I'd like to correlate previous reports of disturbance here, anything since Cletus Vanderberg disappeared, and see if they tie in to any of our own cases, such as the encounter with Cthulhu."

"You mean it might have tried to wake up when there was a disturbance of that magnitude?" Winston asked in dismay. "Like what you were talking about this morning?"

"I don't know. I am, of course, theorizing without full data, but these readings indicate great power. What we have to face is the possibility that any action we take in this house will only further serve to rouse the beast."

"We're not leaving Ray trapped here," Peter insisted fiercely, planting himself in front of Egon. "I don't care if we have to fight five Cthulhus to do it, but we're getting Ray back."

"Of course we are," agreed Egon, as if it were a foregone conclusion. "But we have an advantage Pettigrew didn't have. Ray knows many of the same things Cletus did. Wherever he is, he can help us."

"Wait a minute, Egon." Winston folded his arms across his chest and matched Egon stare for stare. "Cletus knew this kind of stuff backward and forward, and he never came back."

"He never had the Ghostbusters on his team, either," Peter reminded Winston quickly so he wouldn't have to dwell on Winston's words. "Ray might not have his P.K.E. meter, but he's got his thrower." He didn't want to think about Ray all alone with only one thrower against something as powerful as Cthulhu, even if it was still mostly asleep. Ray wouldn't have a prayer unless they yanked him out of whatever hole he'd fallen into before the Old One came to full awareness. "And he's got us on this side with all the resources we can muster. We'll get him back. You'll see. We'll get him back."

"What about that book?" suggested Winston, stabbing a finger in its direction. "Maybe Ray was trying to tell us something."

"You think Ray turned the pages?" That hadn't occurred to Peter, but he edged over to the book, avoiding furniture and marks on the floor, even some that were obviously scuffmarks from someone's heel. He bent over, reaching for the pages.

"Don't touch it." Egon batted Peter's hands away, his tone sharp as he voiced his caution. "Let me test it first. The book itself might control the nexus. Ray may have seen the pages turning and touched it out of curiosity and been drawn in."

"Ray didn't have time to get all the way over here before we came in," Winston reminded him. "And he sure didn't have time before that light flashed."

"Sure he did. He left his meter on the table," Peter reminded him.

Egon moved the detection device along the open pages of the book very carefully. The meter reacted, though not strongly. "Hmm." Frowning thoughtfully Egon lifted the device away from the book and made adjustments on its setting, changing the frequency with care, then he tried again. This time it reacted a little more strongly. "I thought so," Egon said. "It's registering Ray's biorhythms, though faintly. Ray touched this book, but according to the meter it was a long time ago."

"It couldn't have been that long ago, my man," Winston disagreed, shaking his head. "We've only been in here a few minutes."

Egon pursed his lips thoughtfully. He fiddled with the dials again and took another reading, with much the same results. "It makes no sense," he agreed. "These readings are very weak, much weaker than normal residuals."

"What would make them so weak?" Peter asked. He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, any more than he wanted an explanation for Egon's contention that Ray had touched the book a long time ago. Weak readings might mean Ray was--dead, and Peter wouldn't accept that. Egon would figure out something any minute now and then Peter could go into the mirror and haul Ray back.

"I don't know." Putting aside the meter, Egon bent over the pages, pushing his glasses into place with his thumb. "This is in Latin," he remarked.

"Oh, good. Can you read Latin, Spengs?"

"Can I read Latin?" Egon began rather haughtily, and Winston nudged him with his elbow.

"Yeah, underwater in your sleep with the lights out. We know, homeboy."

"Do you know Latin, Winston?" Egon challenged him.

"Sure. Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. Oremus," volunteered Winston with a crooked grin. When Egon narrowed his eyes, he shrugged. "Altar boy. What can I say?"

"Let me study this," Egon said thoughtfully. "Peter, you witnessed the pages turning. Did it look deliberate? Could the wind of whatever happened to displace Ray have done it?"

Peter shook his head. "I don't think so. The curtains behind it weren't moving. Nothing was, just those pages. So what does it say, you linguistic genius you?"

Egon studied the text on the two pages exposed. One of them had very little writing, though it did have a carefully drawn rendition of a creature that resembled a mutated giant insect. Its two forearms reached forward toward the readers ending in four-fingered 'hands' with long, curving talons that narrowed to evident razor sharpness. Its face had a fanged mouth protruding in a snout and filled with rows of teeth. It slavered and drooled as if it had just spotted its dinner. Shadowy in the darkness, another pair of legs arched up, jointed almost like a grasshopper's hind legs, powerful legs that would allow it to spring upon its prey. Huge black bug eyes regarded them intently, protected by heavily browed ridges, and between them, where human eyebrows would begin, rose two horns. The creature's hide was rough and scaly and protruded with jagged ridges like those along a dinosaur's back, except these went side to side instead of back to front and arose at irregular intervals. The monster gave the appearance it was about to reach right out of the book and snatch the reader. On the facing page was what might be a poem, consisting of short lines with a title in bigger letters, surrounded by decorative designs. Peter leaned over Egon's left shoulder and Winston leaned over his right to study it.

"See." Winston pointed to the caption underneath the drawing. "I told you I knew Latin. There's the word 'Dominus'. It means 'lord'."

"The Devourer, lord of the caverns," translated Egon. "It refers to some kind of underground monster, perhaps."

"This ugly dude?" asked Peter with a gesture at the bug-eyed monster. "Hey, maybe it's what got Cletus Vanderberg."

"You had to say that," muttered Winston.

"Then what's it doing showing up for us?" Peter asked without enthusiasm, as he realized it could well be what had got Ray. He didn't like that at all. "So what's the poem say, Egon?"

"It is not a poem. It's a prophecy," Egon corrected him. "It's very obscure."

"You mean you can't read it?" Winston cocked an eyebrow at Peter behind Egon's back.

"Of course I can read it. I simply cannot yet fully understand its meaning," Egon replied. "Take this line, for instance. Loosely translated, it reads, 'First, the watcher at the gate, the one who called the voyager'."

"Yeah, I see what you mean," replied Peter thoughtfully trying to grasp what it meant and failing completely. "Okay, go back to the top and start there. We need a translation of the whole thing. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but in case it does, then we better figure it out. If three brilliant and clever guys can't make sense out of it, then nobody can. Right, Winston?"

"You got it, man. Come on, Egon, what does it say."

Egon hesitated, then he read aloud, slowly.

This is the way the chosen shall come when the defender has great need.

In the time of peril when the Devourer shall awaken:

The danger shall be reflected.

First, the watcher at the gate, the one who called the voyager.

Next, the guardian of the land, who repelled the sleeper with tamed fire.

Third, the speaker in the night, who alone defied the drifter.

Last, the final chosen, who defeated the immortal with the power of the ages.

On paths long chosen...'"

His voice broke off. "It continues on the next page. As yet, I am reluctant to turn the page. Does that make sense to any of you?"

Peter narrowed his eyes as he studied the words. "I don't know about you, Egon, but I'm not quite as up on my gibberish as I should be. I don't like that bit about the 'Devourer' awakening. I don't like anything with teeth that wants to make a meal of us."

"I can't say I am fond of the concept myself," Egon concurred. "Did you notice that there were four 'chosen' and four of us?"

"Yeah, I got that right away, and I don't like it. But where? The chosen shall come where? Where Ray is? And if Ray is first, what does it mean, the watcher at the gate? Is that what you said?"

"'Who called the voyager,'" Egon repeated. "I shall transcribe it." He drew a small notebook and pencil from his breast pocket and began to jot down the words.

"I wonder who the voyager is," Winston muttered. "It doesn't mean a whole lot, does it?"

"Not yet," Egon replied. "But it will. We'll make sense of it. I'd like to verify some of my translation as well. Perhaps a synonym here and there might make it clearer." He considered that as he scribbled. "There. Take a look at it, Peter." He passed the book over.

Venkman studied it. "No one's ever going to award you the Pulitzer for handwriting, Egon," he remarked then fell silent reading, mouthing some of the words.

"And here I seem to remember you giving Slimer trouble for moving his lips when he read," Winston teased.

Peter raised his head from the book, stuck out his tongue at Winston then returned to his reading. "I wonder who the defender is."

"Vanderberg?" offered Winston. "If his ghost is here...."

"Then his body should be here," Egon reminded them. "It was never found. Yet he could have been pulled into the same dimension as Ray was."

Peter's head came up at that, worry imperfectly concealed in his green eyes. "Yeah, and nobody ever saw him again. So make sense of this quick, Spengs, because you're getting class three readings from somebody, and it better not be Ray."

"It's not," Egon said hastily, as if he realized how his words might have been interpreted. "I know Ray's biorhythms. I haven't had the opportunity to research the subject but I believe there would be some carry over should a living person become a ghost. If we knew the biorhythms of that ghost when he was alive, we should be able to identify him though there would, of course, be differences. This ghost is unfamiliar, with no correlation to Ray. I'm sorry, Peter. I didn't mean to imply--"

"I know," Peter replied quickly, clapping Egon on the shoulder. "It's just, he's out there somewhere and so is this Devourer, getting ready to wake up. We've gotta get Ray back and quick because we're gonna have to take him together."

"How about we search the house?" suggested Winston. "Egon, you can be trying to figure out what the prophecy means and whether it really means us. Ray's the first to disappear but he wasn't the watcher at the gate or whatever it was that I can figure. And who's the voyager? Thing is, this mirror or whatever shifted him might have landed him in the basement or out on the grounds. He might have a twisted ankle or something and can't get back to us. So before we try anything else, how about we check what we know we can check first?"

"A practical solution. We'll do it," agreed Egon. Taking the notebook back from Peter he closed it and put it in his pocket. "Let's go."

Peter hung back, reluctant to leave the tower room. This was the place where Ray had disappeared. He didn't expect to find him in the basement or in one of the other rooms. But he wasn't here and Egon wasn't about to let any of them jump into the mirror after him. If the prophecy in the book meant anything, they were probably all going to disappear anyway in order to take on the Devourer, probably the sleeping entity Egon kept detecting, the one that must have devoured Cletus Vanderberg. But maybe if they left the tower no one else would disappear and they could take it on as a group. That sounded like a good plan to Peter.

He paused, then he spun back to the mirror before anyone could stop him. Drawing his thrower he stretched out with the very tip of it and touched it to the glass, tapping faintly. He'd half expected it to sink into the glass like a hot knife in butter, but it merely rapped against the hard, unyielding surface, refusing to give. The mirror might be a door, but right now it was closed. Peter heaved a sigh and replaced his thrower in its cradle, looking into the mirror sadly before Winston and Egon came up to him and pulled him back.

"Hang in there, Tex," he muttered to the empty air and followed the other two out of the room.

In the empty tower room, a misty figure emerged from the mirror, pausing to speak, though no sound greeted its words. It put away its thrower, called again then approached the table where the huge book lay. The spirit figure turned the page in the book and lay the marker gently in place. The insubstantial shape bent over the text and studied it for a long time. Then it spun around and crossed the room to the door, circling the pentagram automatically. If it spoke again, no sound emerged from its open mouth. As it stepped through the tower door, it vanished from sight.

Ray Stantz's eyes widened as he stepped into the tower room and he gazed around, enthralled. It was an occultist's treasure trove, full of things he would love to study. "Oh my gosh," he breathed in sheer delight as he skirted a painted pentagram on the floor and came up against a round table where a huge and ancient tome lay open. He deposited his P.K.E. meter beside it and reached out to turn the page. "You guys have got to see th--"

The transition was instantaneous. One second light pulsed brilliantly from the mirror, the next Ray stood in total darkness.

"--is," he finished, blinking. The light had been so bright. Was he blind now? He put up a hand to rub his eyes, then looked again, straining for any evidence of vision. "Guys?" he faltered pleadingly. "Guys, I can't see."

No one answered him.

Ray shivered, feeling cold and alone. "Guys? Come on, talk to me. This isn't funny. Answer me."

No one is here but you.

It wasn't a real voice, nothing he could hear, but the words rang in his mind, hollow and echoing. The guys would have answered him right away. They wouldn't let him stand here alone in darkness. Cautiously he put out his hands to feel for the table. Nothing was there.

This wasn't the tower any more. He knew that without explanation. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten here, but the mirror must have done it. It was some kind of transfer portal, bringing him from the tower to this dark place. Maybe this was where Cletus Vanderberg had been brought the night he disappeared.

But that had been in 1938. And he had never come back.

It had been over fifty years since Cletus Vanderberg had disappeared. He had vanished, just as Ray had, and he had been as knowledgeable in occult matters as Ray, perhaps even more so because he practiced them rather than merely studying them. If he had been unable to escape....

Ray sighed unhappily. This was not good.

Cautiously he took a shuffling step forward, trying to see where he was. If he had been transferred he was probably not blind then, just shunted to a place of darkness. His hand went to his belt where a pocket flashlight hung, and he detached it and switched it on. Its steady yellow beam glowed brightly and he heaved a great sigh to know he could still see, though the light was swallowed up by the vast blackness that engulfed him. He couldn't even see the ground beneath his feet, as if he stood suspended in nothingness.

The rumble of noise began slowly, subliminally, a mere background rumble, but it built, growing louder, thundering, pounding, slamming into Ray with an almost physical force. The light in his tiny flashlight dimmed as if the noise had beaten it into submission, and Ray shook the tiny light encouragingly, hoping it would brighten again. The batteries were new. He had replaced them only last week.

As he stared in dismay, the light flickered two or three times and went out. The noise gradually faded as if it had rushed past Ray and now the doppler effect made it echo more deeply as it faded. He waited, clutching the useless flashlight in his hand until it was quiet again.

Light is not welcome here.

Ray nodded, though he wasn't sure anyone--or anything--could see the gesture. "Sorry." He shuffled forward again, probing with his toe to get a feel of the mysterious black substance on which he stood. He wasn't sure where he was, whether he was in some mysterious Netherworld so black he couldn't even see starlight or if this were part of the transfer portal. He didn't know why he was here and without light he couldn't find his way out again either. Though there had been nothing close at hand when he had turned on the light, he spread his hands wide and moved them in circles in front of him as he moved.

"Can you tell me where I am?" he ventured. "Are the others here, too?"

You are alone, Watcher at the Gate.

"Watcher at the gate? What does that mean?" Ray asked, intrigued. He wasn't sure what was going on but it seemed like there was a purpose to it. Maybe he could figure it all out and rescue Darius Pettigrew in the process. "And where's Mr. Pettigrew?"

Even such as he may serve a purpose here.

"Am I here for a purpose?"

Oh, yes. A very great purpose. But I will not yet tell you of it. Go onward and discover it. Beware the guardian of the tunnel, who would strive to stop you.

The voice in his mind faded away leaving Ray full of more questions than before. He took another step, two, and saw something in the distance, a faint gleam of light, small and narrow, the light at the end of the tunnel? Tunnel? He had been warned. Uneasily Ray groped nervously over his shoulder for his thrower, grateful when it came to hand. He powered up, hoping whatever had taken away his flashlight wouldn't drain his proton pack as well. Half afraid that would happen, he hastened his steps toward the light, watching the opening grow bigger and bigger as he raced to meet it.

A deep growl echoed around him, low and savage like a hungry predator. Ray's fingers tightened uneasily on his proton rifle and he braced himself, muttering, "I don't like the sound of that."

The growl's owner came at him out of the light, giving him one hasty impression of a shadow against the brightness, before it became only bulk in the blackness, faintly limned in red. It was probably the size of Ecto-1, and he could make out a great, shaggy head, thick, bulky legs and a heavy body, yet for all its apparent size and weight it was as agile as a dancer. It circled him so quickly he had to whirl to keep it in sight, half afraid it would spring on him from behind. He fired once, a quick, short burst that made the monster roar in pain and rage and lunge sideways to elude the stream. The energy didn't confine it at all. Ray wasn't sure it was either solid or real, but that didn't stop him from taking aim at it and firing a second time. "This'd be fun if the guys were here," he said under his breath, ducking abruptly to avoid a lunging 'paw'. "Well, almost fun."

It roared again, shaking itself, and sprang, screeching painfully when the beam shot out at him. As he fired, Ray edged toward the light, determined to elude the guardian. It must be here to prevent him from escaping this limbo. Ray still didn't know what was going on, but he had an idea it wouldn't follow him out into the light.

Step by step he worked his way toward the opening, watching it grow as he drew nearer, but never turning his back on the savage guardian. As he neared the escape route, he noticed a curious thing. Light from an open door will spill into a dark room, illuminating everything in its path, but this light didn't. It was there, bright and real, but it didn't bleed through into the vast cavern of darkness. The line of demarcation was stark and distinct as the terminator on the moon.

With a savage growl the beast lunged at him. Even when it was between him and the light it didn't show up as anything but a shadow, an impression of darkness across it. Not one beam of brightness reflected off its bulk. Prowling back and forth like a great lion, snorting as it breathed, it tried to herd him away from the light, retreating only when he fired at it. But he didn't want to drain his pack to escape it. He had a feeling there would be need of his thrower for something a whole lot bigger before this was all over.

Finally he was near enough to run for it, and he did, racing backwards toward the light, sending out sporadic bursts of proton power as the creature darted at him. Each time he hit it, it backed off a little, but it always came back.

Then with a vicious howl of sheer rage, it pounced. Ray scrambled backwards, tripped over something and was pitched into the light, feeling one slash of claws across the bottom of his boot as he fell. The creature's fading roar cut off abruptly as Ray blinked against the sudden brightness and found himself back in the tower room.

"Wow! That was weird. Guys, you're not gonna believe--" He stared around at the room in blank disbelief. The guys were gone! The room was deserted and even his P.K.E. meter wasn't on the table where he had left it.

Ray stared in surprise, then he went over to the steps. He didn't know how long he'd been trapped in the dark limbo fighting the guardian of the darkness, but it could have been hours instead of the minutes it had seemed to him. The guys might be systematically searching the house for him. Standing at the top of the stairs, he yelled at the top of his lungs:

"PETER! EGON! WINSTON!" He stood there listening, but there was no reply, nothing to disturb the silence, nothing but the faint, subliminal noises common to any old house. Nothing but a quiet rumble in the distance and the flicker of yellow light that ran up the wall opposite him and vanished before he could decide it was real.

Ray retreated into the tower room again, frowning, careful to avoid looking into the mirror. Instead he went over to the huge book lying there and lifted the front part of it enough to read the cover. The words were in Latin, and Ray had learned Latin so he could read books like this. What he held was a copy of Necromancy and the Casting of Spells by Mordaunt Hays, a book he'd heard of but never seen. A dangerous book. A book that was reputed to contain prophecies about the fate of the world. He pulled his fingers back with some distaste as if he'd been touching something cold and clammy, though the cover was not really cold and the leather was smooth and dry beneath his fingers, and studied the page open before him, marked with a silken cord. As near as he could make out, it seemed to be saying something about the imbuing of inanimate objects with ghostly power. At any other time, Ray would have been fascinated. He'd seen that kind of thing happen before once or twice, once when a ghost had wound up in a pot of molten steel and had infested, at least in part, everything made from that metal.

He was about to turn away, when he frowned and glanced back. The book might well be open to this particular page for a reason. It might be a good idea for him to read about it before he went in search of the guys. He might learn something.

Rapidly he skimmed over the text. Hays had written in Latin, as various occult scholars had chosen to do because until fairly recently, learned men were at least exposed to Latin on a regular basis. But as near as he could tell, Hays had a florid style and was given to using ten words when two would have done.

"And it be said," Ray read aloud, working out the meanings of Hays' complex sentences with some difficulty, "that a ghost who has fled this earthly realm after the commission of great evil, evil so great that others, the innocent, must pay its price long after he has died, must make atonement, no matter how complex the task." He frowned. Had Cletus Vanderberg created that great an evil? Did the residual readings Egon found indicate a power as great as Gozer might linger dormant here, summoned by Cletus right before he died. If he had single-handedly loosed something so powerful on the world, then he might well have to pay the price for it. Maybe his ghost was here. Ray longed for his P.K.E. meter.

He was reluctant to touch the book again. That sense of power he'd felt when he'd lifted it to read the cover stood out in his mind, an unpleasant feeling as if he'd touched something nasty and evil. Instead he stood in the center of the room, avoiding the pentagram with great care and asked, "Did you do that, Cletus? Did you summon up something you couldn't control?"

It will be controlled.

He wasn't sure if he'd heard that at all, or whether he'd imagined the words. The 'voice' had been much clearer and louder in the darkness than it was now, though he could still sense it. Ray stared around the room with interest as if he could catch a glimpse of Cletus, if that's who was trying to communicate, out of the corner of his eye. Some spirits couldn't be seen head on, they had to be glimpsed sideways in passing and would slide away from a direct look into invisibility.

Nothing flickered except an edge of gold along the door frame, as if the house was charged with ectoplasmic power. When Ray turned his gaze in that direction it vanished entirely.

He concentrated on the book again. "The spirit may not rest until he has--uh, let's see--atoned for his wickedness," he read aloud. Well, that worked here. The house had been a center of disturbance for a long time, though not when the family lived here. The police had told them no Vanderberg had lived here since 1981 when Ralph III was first posted abroad. Before then, they lived here sporadically, generally spending several months here in the summer when not traveling abroad and the odd holiday. The manifestations had never been constant. Cletus must follow a kind of cyclic pattern.

Ray was engrossed in the possibilities. He loved a complicated job. His only worry now was that the guys were in danger without him. "I'll get back to you," he told the empty air of the tower room. "First I've gotta find my friends."

They are so far away you can never reach them.

Ray shivered. True, they hadn't answered his calls, but he'd just assumed they were simply in another part of the house, exploring the cellars, maybe, or going over the grounds. "What do you mean, far away?" he demanded, glancing sideways at the mirror in hopes of finding Cletus looking out of it. He got a hasty glimpse of a bulky shadow outlined in red hovering beyond his own reflection and turned his eyes away rapidly, afraid he would be drawn in again if he stared directly into the glass.

Reminded of the guardian, he lifted his foot and examined the sole of his boot, where the beast had clawed as he escaped. A deep score ran across the heel of his boot, nearly half an inch deep.

"Gosh, look at that," Ray breathed, shocked at his near miss. If it had hit him across the face or the stomach he would be in serious trouble right now. "I hope I don't have to go in there again."

He waited, holding his breath, to see if Cletus would tell him he did, but there was no answer. Cletus might be trapped but that didn't mean he had to cooperate. He hadn't been one of the good guys while he was alive. Ray wasn't sure being a ghost could change him, even after as long as this. He hoped so, because Cletus was a powerful ghost, if it were he who had drawn Ray into the mirror.

When Cletus didn't reply, Ray squared his shoulders and headed downstairs to find the guys. He called their names periodically, but no one answered. Without a P.K.E. meter he couldn't take readings to measure the increase in ambient energy or to track the guys by their biorhythms. Instead he was reduced to a physical search.

He started at the tower room below Cletus' workshop, pausing in the doorway when he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye. It had been a flash of blue, like Egon's jumpsuit, but when he stepped into the room, there was no trace of it. Ray frowned. "Egon?" he asked tentatively. "Are you there?"

No answer. He closed his eyes, concentrating. Did he hear his name, so faint as to be subliminal? He couldn't be sure whether he heard it or whether he simply wanted to hear it. "Gosh, Egon, where are you?" he demanded.

"Raymond?"

That was real, though it was so faint he had to strain for it. "Egon," he yelled happily. "Where are you?"

No answer. He took a couple of steps into the room, peering here and there. Egon couldn't be hidden here unless he had gone into the wall, and the only wall without windows was the one with the staircase.

"I can't hear you, R...." The voice faded entirely, and Ray knew without even calling again that he couldn't reach Egon now. Alarmed he raised his voice and bellowed.

"EGON! PETER! WINSTON!"

No one replied.

His shoulders rounding in disappointment, Ray tapped the walls beside the stairway in hopes of finding a secret panel, but the wall didn't sound hollow except where it obviously backed the stairs. Heaving a sigh, Ray left the room and went down to the third floor.

In the first bedroom, he saw a telephone on the night stand. He wasn't sure the phone lines were connected since no one lived here, but it was worth a try. He picked up the phone--yes, he had a dial tone--and called headquarters.

The line was busy.

He hung up and tried again. Still busy. It was possible Janine was comparing recipes with her sister or sharing gossip with a friend, but it could mean the guys had called to report him missing. He'd wait a little and try again. He didn't know how long he had been in the mirror.

That made him look at his watch, and then he frowned. It had stopped. The second hand wasn't moving at all, and when he lifted it to his ear, he could hear no ticking. So he picked up the phone and dialed a time and temperature report. It was 9 a.m.

It couldn't be. They had come here in the late afternoon. Had he been trapped in there overnight? No wonder the guys hadn't answered his calls. They'd probably stayed hunting for him for hours, stayed overnight even, but now they might have gone for help, though who could help them with a ghostly manifestation Ray wasn't sure. Nine in the morning? He had lost the whole night fighting the guardian. Yet he wasn't tired. He went over to the window and realized what he'd noticed without realizing it all along. The light was coming from a different direction. The machine was right. It was morning.

Time must pass at different speeds in the guardian's realm. That was the only answer.

Heaving a worried sigh he tried to call headquarters again and once more got the busy signal. The guys must be going nuts searching for him. If only he could call and let Janine know he was fine. Then she could call them on the mobile phone and let them know. But a third attempt only garnered him another busy signal.

Maybe he should leave the house altogether. That might do it. Once outside, he'd be out of Cletus' influence, sure to find his friends.

Eagerly he galloped down the stairs to the ground floor and crossed the entry hall to the door. If Ecto-1 was still outside, he'd know for sure the guys were still here. Hadn't he heard Egon upstairs after all? He put his hand on the doorknob.

Flames shot out of the keyhole and he yanked his hand back, copying Peter's move of before, sticking his fingers in his mouth to ease the sting.

"That's not nice," he mumbled around them, lifting his eyes to study the entry hall. "Come on, Cletus, I'm not running out on you. I just want to find the guys."

You must stay here now. The Devourer awaits.

"Devourer? Maybe I could pass on that one." He frowned. "Is that what Egon's getting readings of, what's trying to wake up?"

There was no answer.

"Well, I'm not gonna do it," Ray insisted hotly, pushed to anger at last. "Nobody tells me what to do, especially not a ghost." He unshipped his thrower, powered up, and fired at the door, all in one smooth motion.

The proton stream bounced right off the door, reflecting back at him as if he'd fired at a mirror, and he had to power down and jump sideways with a startled gasp or he would have been neutronized where he stood. His beam didn't even touch the door itself.

"Wow, a force field," breathed Ray as he picked himself up off the floor. He might be able to get out if he could find its frequency, but without his P.K.E. meter that would be a hit and miss proposition. "Okay, you've got me here. Suppose you tell me what you want with me."

The time will come.

Try as he might, Ray couldn't get a better answer than that.

"This is crazy, Egon," Peter complained as they gathered in the third floor hall. Peter now knew more about the Vanderberg house than he had ever wanted to, including the location of the thickest cobwebs and where the roaches liked to hide in the root cellar. He, Egon and Winston had covered every inch of the house, reduced to opening closets and peering under beds, all the while calling for Ray. They didn't find him. Aside from his abandoned P.K.E. meter, they could find no proof he'd even been here.

"Why crazy, Peter?" Egon asked, frowning. It was as if the P.K.E. meter had grown to his hand. He hadn't lowered it once during the search as if it would guide him to Ray. There had been a period of excitement when a search of one of the bedrooms, the one nearest the South tower, had given off faint readings as if Ray had been there. Egon shook his head. "Peculiar," he said. "The readings are too faint. Ray couldn't have been here today and left them. I should doubt he could have left them this week or even this year. And we know he's never been here before."

"You're sure he wouldn't read that way as--as a ghost?" Peter had asked unhappily, wanting to make certain it was clear that, wherever he was, Ray was still alive.

"Of course, Peter. These are faint residuals of a living person. There would be some analogous readings but the whole pattern would be qualitatively different." Egon had shaken his head. "I can't explain what I'm reading, but it's fascinating."

"Sure it is," Peter had grumbled. "It'd be a lot more fascinating if Ray were here."

Those readings were the only ones they'd detected at first, though there were more at the front door. Peter had opened it and poked his head out, but Ecto-1 sat there calmly waiting for them and Ray wasn't in the car. They had separated to search the grounds but had met at the front door again, unwilling to enter the house separately. Once inside again, they had conducted another search as they worked their way higher, though all of them were convinced they weren't likely to find Ray on the lower floors.

Now as they stood at the entrance to the tower stairs, Peter persisted. "Crazy. Ray didn't disappear down here. He disappeared up there. The mystery is up there. I know we had to search, but whatever is behind all this in the tower. I think we better get back up there. We tried it your way. Maybe it's time to see if we can't jump into the mirror, too."

"No way, m'man," Winston argued. "We don't know Ray's there after all. And I've got a feeling we're not the ones with the rule book. Somebody's calling the shots here. We're here for a reason."

"The chosen," Egon replied, pulling out his notebook with his free hand and studying the text he'd written there. "I think we must make sense of this before we risk entering a dimensional nexus."

"But Ray might be in trouble," Peter argued, snatching away the notebook and running his eyes over the mysterious words as if they might suddenly become clear.

"If he is, he has been all this time," Egon replied, shadows in his blue eyes proving he'd considered this from the first and hated it. "We can't help him if we get killed in the process," he insisted, taking back the notebook. "The other thing we should do is turn the page and see what else it says. We may be missing the vital clue."

"Yeah, and if the Ghostbusters are the ones they're talking about, that means Ray is the watcher at the gate, whatever that means. Who's the voyager and why did Ray call him?"

"And when did Ray call him?" Winston wondered, leaning over Egon's shoulder to read the words. "And which of us are the others. Is this something we did already or is it what we're supposed to do?"

"Good point." Peter started for the spiral stairs. "How about we do our research up there where Ray disappeared."

"And vanish one by one?" Egon asked flatly, barring the door.

"What do you mean, vanish one by one?" Peter demanded. "Come on, Spengs, what do you know? I don't like this. Have you figured it out?"

Egon shook his head. "I know we must go back there, but if this has bearing on us at all," he held up the notebook, "then it's talking about each of us 'coming' somewhere. Ray has already gone. Whichever of us is the guardian of the land will go next. We have no way of guessing, though I should believe Winston would be 'the final chosen', simply because he joined the team last, although that may not be the criterion upon which this is based."

"So what are you saying, that we're really going to disappear one by one?" Peter asked without enthusiasm. "And who's the defender? Cletus? He's not one of the good guys, especially if he nabbed Ray."

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Egon replied. "What I intend to do before we return to the tower is make each of you a copy of the prophecy. That way, if we're separated, we can each try to solve it on our own."

"That makes good sense, homeboy," Winston agreed, though none of this appeared to sit well with him. "Go for it. Then we'll get up there and see what we can find."

Egon scribbled the words of the prophecy on two sheets of notebook paper and gave them to Peter and Winston, who stared at them as if the meaning should be obvious. Yet while certain things had a half-familiar ring to them, the words twisted around, their message hidden in obscurity.

"Keep those with you, in case we should be separated," Egon instructed as he started up the stairs.

"Nobody better try," Peter snarled. "Bad enough we've lost Ray already and all we get are those weird readings. The only clue we've got is gibberish. It might as well still be Latin for all the sense it makes."

"Hmm," said Egon as he led the way past the fourth floor tower room toward the top. "That makes me think of something. Interesting, Peter. For once you may have put your finger on the heart of the problem."

"A natural genius, that's me," Peter agreed with a crooked grin. "What would you do without me?" He added quickly before someone could actually tell him, "So what do you mean?"

"Do you remember The Lord of the Rings, Peter?" Egon asked incongruously, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Sure," agreed Venkman with a grin, surprised at the unlikely question. "We all read it in college about the same time, you, me and Ray. Ray was so caught up in it he wouldn't even talk to us for a whole week because he was reading all the time and you weren't much better. Good stuff. What about it. You read it, didn't you, Winston?"

"Yeah, not too long before I joined the business. Tolkien really knew his stuff."

"So what's that got to do with the prophecy?" Peter asked, trying to remember if there were any prophecies in the Ring Trilogy. There had to be but his mind was blank.

"It's simple, Peter," said Egon as he entered the tower room. "Do you remember when Gandalf--"

Yellow light gleamed out of the room as Peter reached the doorway. He bellowed, "EGON!" in a desperate voice and jumped for Egon, just in time to see the yellow glow sucked back into the mirror, taking the blond physicist with it. Peter had one brief, frantic impression of Egon struggling before the mirror surface opaqued again and gave a reflection of Peter and Winston charging toward it. The frame of the mirror glowed gold for an instant as fire ran around it in a circle, almost a reflection of what had just happened, then it died entirely, leaving the room much dimmer though the late afternoon sun still illuminated it.

"Whoa! Hold it, homeboy." Winston grabbed Peter by the shoulders and yanked him backward before he could step on the pentagram in his headlong rush to the mirror. Pulling the protesting Venkman sideways around it, he dragged him to a halt just out of arms' reach of the looking glass.

"Let me go," Peter snapped, struggling to break free. "It's got Egon now. We're not just gonna let the mirror eat our buddies without doing anything to get them back." He writhed in Winston's tightening grip, desperate to get to the mirror and pull Egon out. Maybe he could stick his hand right through the glass and yank him free. He had to try, but Winston didn't relinquish his hold.

"No way, not till you tell me you're not gonna do something crazy."

"Rescuing the other half of our team isn't crazy," Peter insisted hotly. "Come on, Winston. It just took him. It took Egon. I'm gonna get him back even if it means jumping in there myself."

"And how are you gonna get out? If it was simple, Egon and Ray would have come back on their own, and you know it." Winston took a deep breath and relaxed, easing his grip on Peter and continuing seriously when Peter didn't immediately fling himself at the mirror. "I think we're only pawns in somebody else's game here. That prophecy says something about paths long chosen, right? I think when we came here we put something in motion we can't stop until it's done. If we're supposed to take out that Devourer, that's good. That's what they pay us for, right? Whoever this defender is, he probably can't do it on his own. Otherwise he'd be called the defeater or the conqueror or something like that. He sounds like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. Our job is to mend the dike. Anyway, that's what it looks like to me."

"But they just took them." Peter was still shaken by that last blurred image of Egon vanishing into the mirror. Ever since college he'd depended on Egon to be the voice of reason in a world that was mostly unfair and sometimes cruel. Egon had never once let him down. Now Egon needed him and Winston was saying there was nothing he could do about it. He hated that. He hated it fiercely. Egon and Ray needed him, and they didn't need him to stand around and play word games. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to act, to jump in and get them back so they could face this Devourer as a team. Up against something as powerful as that, one thrower at a time wasn't much good. He poked a tentative finger at the mirror and heaved a frustrated sigh when solid glass met his fingertip. Winston shook his head at him.

"Yeah, and they're probably gonna take us next," Winston reminded him. "Wherever they are, we'll be together there. But Egon had an idea. He thought he understood it. He'll tell Ray and they'll do something about it."

"So you're saying we should sit down here for the next week and read Lord of the Rings? That should really help," Peter said in incredulous disbelief. He'd never been very good at playing a waiting game. He was much more inclined to try to do something in a crisis, even if it was only yelling and blowing off steam. He stared at the mirror, a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. First Ray and now Egon was gone, and even with Winston besides him Peter felt uneasy, lost, alone, not to mention helpless.

"No, that isn't it, but you know, he started me thinking. Just a knack he has. There's something in the back of my mind. I can't quite get a handle on it."

"Wait!" Peter held up a hasty hand. "Just a minute. When Ray disappeared, the book changed, the pages turned, remember? Let's see if we're getting anything this time," he said, pushing past Winston and stopping in front of the table to stare at the book.

Winston joined him, and the two of them stared at the open pages of the book.

"It's already turned," Peter discovered. "Look." He stabbed a finger at the text that was the continuation of the prophecy. "Oh, great, now we have to read more Latin. Where's that sheet." He pulled the copy Egon had given him from his pocket and held it up. "'On paths long chosen...'" he read aloud then ran his finger over the text on the new page. "Yeah, I think this is it," he said. "Let's see. What does it say?" He scrunched up his face in an agony of concentration. Latin had never been his best subject even that time when he was a junior at Columbia and Egon had decided it might be beneficial for them to have a 'secret language' and had chosen Latin. For awhile they'd played with it, but that had been years ago. "'On paths long chosen they', uh, what's that word, Winston? 'Separate?' I don't like it already. 'Far away from this place.'"

"'To, uh, stop the eating." He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "No, I bet that's where Egon got 'Devourer' don't you think? I never knew Latin even as well as you did. This thing's saying we've got to separate. Far away from here. No, what's 'nunque' mean? 'Nunque hic?' Sounds like the morning after or something."

Peter shrugged. "'Nunc' is 'now', I think. And I think 'hic' is 'here'. 'Now and here?' No, 'here and now'. That's a help." He made a face at the book. "Here and now. Time travel? Or just another dimension?"

"I thought 'here' was 'ici'," Winston objected, scratching his head as if that would aid his concentration.

"That's French. Or Spanish? No, French. You know, like 'ici on parle Français'?" Peter suggested in what he fondly imagined was a superb French accent, though from the way the black man winced, it might not have been quite as on the money as Peter hoped it was.

"Whatever you say, homeboy." Winston shook his head wryly, then his eyes narrowed unhappily. "Maybe time moves differently in the mirror," he offered reluctantly as if he didn't like any of the implications that possibility might present.

Peter's head came up and he stared at the other man, eyes wide, his stomach muscles knotting in alarm. "You mean time's passing faster or slower for them in there? They might get old and die and still be trapped? Or come back after twenty years? I hate that, Winston." Tell me it isn't true.

The black man spread his hands in a pacifying gesture. "I don't know what I mean and it doesn't have to mean anything like that. We're not Latin scholars. We need a Latin dictionary. There are all these words and they might mean different things. Egon might translate them differently than we did. 'Eating' instead of 'Devourer' and stuff like that. What I think this is saying is that if we're the ones the prophecy is about, we have to separate when the mirror grabs us and face this Devourer in the other dimension. I don't know why we can't all go at once, but there must be a reason to it. We have to wait our turns. And we'd better use the time making sense out of it so when we get there we can help our buddies."

Peter heaved a frustrated and unhappy sigh, then he grabbed one of the ladderback chairs from the far wall of the room and dragged it over in front of the table, dropping into it and leaning closer to the huge book. "Okay, so we have to translate this and figure out what we're supposed to be doing. Ray didn't have a clue. He never got to see the prophecy in the first place. That's why I think we should go in. We've gotta or he'll be screwed."

Winston shook his head. "Let's finish this first, okay? Once we've got the clues and see if we can figure them out, then we can try it. I don't like those two mad scientists wandering around in there without us to look after them any more than you do."

Peter hated it. He'd been worried sick about Ray since he disappeared, though Ray had his thrower and was probably the best suited of all of them to go dimension hopping. He knew more about the occult than any of them, though Egon was a close second. Though they spent part of each day drilling on that kind of thing and all of them were well informed on the type of ghosts they most often faced, they had rarely been in alternate dimensions. They'd all gone into the Netherworld to rescue Egon, and Peter had gone into another dimension once to rescue Egon's soul. But both times he'd had a way there and something definite to do. Now there was just the mirror and it didn't want to let him in. Well, tough, because he was gonna try it anyway. If all else failed, his thrower might be the ideal lock-pick.

Abruptly, before Winston could stop him, he bounded up from the chair and lunged at the mirror, though Winston yelled, "No, Pete!" behind him.

He crashed against the glass and reeled backward from its solidity, rubbing a bruised shoulder.

"The pentagram," yelled Winston and tackled him, knocking him sideways. They tumbled to the floor against the far wall, and Peter felt the air knocked from his lungs as he hit hard with Winston's solid weight on top of him. Struggling helplessly to draw in breath, he felt agony twist his chest, and though his mouth opened and closed, he couldn't make a sound.

Winston rolled off him apologetically. "Sorry, Pete, you were about to step in the pentagram. I didn't think we could use the mirror anyway. What's wrong?" he peered down at Peter, who was still trying to catch his breath. "I knock the wind out of you? Sorry. Give it a minute. Easy now." He dropped down beside Peter and put a hand on his chest, rubbing it gently. Peter wheezed painfully, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.

Though he soon caught his breath, he lay there a little longer, gasping for air. He couldn't rescue Egon and Ray. There was no way through the mirror except when the mirror chose to open. Egon and Ray might be facing the Devourer right now and Peter couldn't do a thing about it. He felt sick, but feeling sick was a luxury he couldn't allow himself right now, even though he was afraid of being the only one left more than he was of going into the mirror. He didn't trust the prophecy one bit, and he wasn't sure it was really meant for them anyway. Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When Peter's breathing steadied Winston gave him a hand up and the two of them went back to the table, carefully skirting the pentagram. Peter eyed it narrowly, uncomfortable at the sight of it, the dark red color of the design suggesting old blood. "Suppose we could go after them by stepping into that?" he asked hopefully.

"I don't know but we're not gonna try without testing it." Winston reached into his pocket and brought out a pencil stub. "Let's see," he offered and flipped the pencil down onto the pentagram. It bounced twice and landed dead center where all the lines converged to make a five sided box. For an instant, it lay there untouched, then, without warning, it burst into flames and incinerated itself before their eyes in less than a second, the flame dying as quickly as it had risen, leaving behind a lingering odor of burned wood.

"Uh huh," said Winston unhappily, eyes rounding at the sight. "So that's why you're not supposed to step in pentagrams."

"Winston, good pal," Peter said, grinning at him gratefully. "Getting the wind knocked out of me was worth it. You saved my life. I owe you world class."

"Yeah, you do," agreed Winston, shaking his head sternly at the psychologist. "And I'm gonna collect, you can bet on that. I want your word you don't go off half cocked on any other weird plan without checking it first."

Peter stared numbly at the incredibly small pile of ashes in the center of the pentagram, mouth dropping open when a wind arose from nowhere and blew them away, dispersing into the air. The whole process was just too strange. He tried to imagine the result with a larger object, notably a remarkably handsome and upwardly mobile Ghostbuster and he shivered involuntarily.

"You've got my word on it," he agreed fervently. "Dust in the Wind is a great song, but I don't want it to be my obituary."

"Then back to work," Winston said. "I'd like to make some sense out of this before I wind up doing a detour through the mirror. Hey, didn't that thing say something about reflections?" He grabbed Peter's copy of the prophecy that was lying on the table then passed it to him and pulled out his own. "I don't want to walk off with your only copy, the way you read Latin."

Peter gripped it securely, staring at the words. Egon was going to have to do something about his handwriting one of these days. Thus reminded Peter edged sideways to the mirror and put the palm of his hand gently against the glass as if he could touch his friends. "Egon, wherever you are, take care of yourself," he said softly. "If anybody can handle it in there, it's you. And Ray," he concluded hastily. Heaving an inaudible sigh, he moved away from the mirror and the sight of his shadow-eyed reflection. Instead it was time for business. It was up to Peter and Winston to make sense of the words Egon had copied, so Peter ran his eyes over the text. "Something about reflections?" he repeated. "Here it is. 'The danger shall be reflected.' What do you think that means?"

"I think all of this means something pretty specific. I think Egon was right. I'm the 'last chosen' because I was the last one hired, what do you say? Make sense? Or maybe it means something else entirely." He spread his hands wide as if to disclaim his words as anything more than a clever guess.

"Sure, makes as much sense as anything does. Spontaneous combustion of pencils and people zipping into mirrors is not my idea of normal." Peter glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the pentagram in case it decided to move, sneaking up on him. He'd seen one do that once, but it had been controlled by a demon who was out to trap them. That was different. He hoped.

"'Reflected.'" Winston ran a hand through his hair as he considered the possibilities. "Has to have something to do with mirrors, like that one." He pointed unnecessarily at the cause of all the trouble.

"Yeah, but all of this is done with mirrors," Peter objected. He heard the shrillness worry had put into his voice and tried to smooth it away. He didn't have the luxury of worry right now, not when his friends were in danger and might need him any minute. They might even need him to solve this so he could come in and rescue them. Occult studies might not be Peter's field of expertise but he knew a lot more than the layman just from listening to Egon and Ray toss ideas around from the time he'd met them back at Columbia. "Come on, Zed, Egon had an idea, remember? Course he had to give it a big buildup first the way he always does so he never got to it. What do you think it was?"

"I'm not sure," Winston confessed. "But we'll figure it out, and the first thing we're doing is translating the rest of this prophecy so we can tell what's going on. You with me on that?"

"Okay," agreed Peter, frowning a little. "But we might not get it right. I know a little Latin, mostly a few catch phrases and stuff like 'All Gaul is divided into three parts,' (actually I don't remember that) and you know some Church Latin and it isn't gonna get us very far. Suppose any of those books is a Latin dictionary?"

"Books!" Winston burst out, jumping to his feet. "Damn. We never thought of that. Suppose this Devourer is listed in Tobin's Spirit Guide? I don't think Egon checked it because he couldn't be sure that was its actual name and not a title of some kind, but what if it's the official name of the entity. Or part of the name. Devourer of Souls or something like that. Devourer of Light. You know. One of those really nasty names." He shivered elaborately as if hoping for a response from Peter. "We've already got 'lord of the caverns' whatever that means. It's a start."

Peter grimaced, disliking the sound of those possibilities very much. He'd only wanted a few little ghosts to bust, not a monster capable of ending all life as he knew it, and a monster who might well have access to his two oldest friends, in a place where he couldn't help them. "It's probably a title, then, not a name," he said, halfway surprised to find his mind working automatically on the problem when it was so hard to see past Egon and Ray's disappearance and the fear he'd never see them again. "Like Gozer the Destructor. He had a bunch of titles. Dana, uh, Dana was spouting them when she was possessed by Zuul. And so was old Gozer himself or herself or itself. Whatever it wanted to be. Hey, he'd have fit right in with the army. Be all you can be. Bet they never thought of anybody like Gozer."

"So what do you think, Pete?" Winston prompted with a slight grin at Peter's halfhearted frivolity.

"Let me see. Gozer the Destructor, Gozer the Traveller, Gozer the Gozerian (I always thought that one was a little too self-evident, but hey, Gozer was big into self-promotion.) What was the other one anyway? Volguus Zildrohar? Something like that. I wonder what language that was in. Sumerian?"

"Do you know Sumerian?" Winston asked doubtfully.

"No. Not a clue. We need Spengs for that." He gazed longingly at the mirror wishing with all his heart Ray and Egon would pop out of it alive and whole. Nothing happened at all except he observed the shadows in his eyes. Forcing a more hopeful expression onto his face, he frowned at his image, because he still looked glum and worried--and scared, not for himself but for his missing friends.

"'Choose the form of the Traveller,'" Winston quoted, his face thoughtful.

Peter chuckled in spite of himself remembering that moment on the roof of Dana Barrett's building and the outcome of Gozer's instruction to 'choose and perish'. "Yeah, and only Ray Stantz would have come up with a giant Marshmallow Man," he said reminiscently.

"So what would you have chosen, Pete?" Winston asked almost offhand. He looked like he was in pursuit of an idea.

"Michelle Pfeiffer," Peter said promptly with a crooked grin. "If I was gonna go out, I'd want to do it in style."

"Yeah a hundred-foot Michelle would have been a real challenge," Winston replied, grinning in response. "And don't tell me how you would have taken the challenge. I don't want to know. But we had Ray's choice. I'll never figure that boy out." Winston shook his head ruefully. "So he called the shots that time." He sat up straighter abruptly, his mouth falling open. "You know, that makes a kind of sense."

"Ray picking Mr. Stay Puft?" Peter asked doubtfully. "I suppose we're lucky he didn't pick Dopey Dog and try to sing that silly song to call him. What do you mean, Winston?"

"'Called the voyager,'" Winston quoted from the prophecy, shaking his copy in Peter's face. "What if the actual translation is 'named the Traveller'? It could mean the same thing, when you think of it, couldn't it?"

"So what's the 'watcher at the gate' bit?" Peter asked, then answered his own question. "The gateway to Gozer's dimension. I betcha that's what it is. Ray got called first because of Gozer? Whoever wants us to wipe the ground with the Devourer picked Ray because he was one of the team that shuffled Gozer back through the gate?"

Winston nodded excitedly. "Don't you see, Peter? We were trying to figure out what the words meant and we came up with eating and Egon came up with the Devourer. It's a translation thing. The first part really does fit Ray if you use the word 'name' instead of 'call' because they can mean the same thing."

Peter read over the line they'd assigned to Ray by virtue of his vanishing first and nodded. It could be that. It could be a fancy way to refer to their battle with Gozer. But he didn't know what it really meant. Okay, so it referred to Ray, but what was Ray supposed to do besides vanish? Anybody could vanish. Darius Pettigrew had vanished and the odds were very high he wasn't the Defender. Probably he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of the prophecy seemed to refer to him, especially since there'd been no sign of him since the Ghostbusters had arrived.

"So okay, then why Egon?" he asked. "'Guardian of the land.' Who's the Sleeper? Somebody sleeping. I don't remember any sleepy ghosts other than that one we ran into in the studio out in Hollywood when we went to be advisors to our first movie and all he wanted was some peace and quiet."

"Nothing about tamed fire there. Egon used sign language. I don't think you've got it. 'Guardian of the land'," Winston mused, skimming the text on the crumpled sheet of paper. "As opposed to another country? I don't remember us fending off any foreign ghosts who wanted to take over the country. Mostly they wanted to take over the whole world. Big ambitions must be the rule of thumb on the 'other side'."

"As opposed to land and sea?" Peter ventured. He didn't have a clue. He was just rambling on the way he sometimes did, hoping something would click. Even if they figured out what each of these things meant, he didn't see how it would have anything to do with what they were 'chosen' for. Okay so they were supposed to take on the Devourer, but how, if they were separate? Something that powerful needed them together, all four throwers operating at the same time, maybe even crossing the streams, horrible thought. Peter heaved a sigh. He needed them together, too. Brainstorming like this was fun with Egon offering pedantic suggestions and Ray bouncing from A to B to Q with wild leaps of logic. Winston was the practical one and he'd learned a lot about ghost and spirits since he'd joined the team, but his mind didn't function the way Egon's and Ray's did, and neither did Peter's. Winston absorbed information like a sponge and remembered the most unlikely things at opportune times. He also had the battle skills he'd acquired in Vietnam to help them plan their strategy and tactics. As for Peter, he'd always learned fast and remembered what he learned, but he'd learned best what interested him. He'd had to pick up knowledge useful to Ghostbusting, but he was the team's 'morale officer', the one who could prod Egon to come up with a brilliant answer or bolster Ray when his spirits were down. Sure he could pull a brilliant rescue of his own if he had to, and he loved the press write-ups afterward, but he did better, all of them did, when the four of them were working together, each bringing in their own particular expertise. Peter needed them together.

"I think you've got it, homeboy. What about Cthulhu?" Winston offered, breaking into Peter's reverie, barely able to restrain his excitement. "He was sleeping in the depths. Tamed fire? Betcha it's lightning. We used lighting to stop him and force him back into the depths. We needed a ton of power and our throwers weren't strong enough to take him. Tamed fire? Lightning? Get it?"

"Yeah, but all of us did that," Peter objected. "Even if it was Egon's idea... Or was it Ray's. Ray was the one who figured out the answer from that pulp magazine after all. I can't remember. No, it was Ray's magazine but Egon thought of using the lightning."

"And all of us defeated Gozer," Winston replied, scratching his head as he glanced from the book to his copy of the prophecy. "I guess they have to pick one of us each time. It really could be Cthulhu, though. Maybe the prophecy is saying that since we've got so much experience with all this nasty stuff, we're the ideal ones to take on the Devourer."

So what's this bit about an immortal and power of the ages?" Peter asked. "That's not ringing any bells right now." He cast his mind back over some of their most dangerous cases since Gozer and Cthulhu had been two of the most powerful entities they had encountered and the odds were the other two were likely to be as nasty or almost.

"Don't have a clue yet. But I think I know yours. Speaker in the night. You're the speaker because you never shut up anyway--" Peter stuck out his tongue at him--"and I bet you dollars to doughnuts the drifter is Nexa. You went out there in a little boat and used that microwave emitter and your smart mouth to make him give us back and to get rid of him. See, it says you defeated him alone. So I bet that's you."

Peter nodded with a reluctant smile. It did fit pretty well, though he still didn't understand it. Of course prophecies were wordy most of the time. They used fancy words where simple ones would have done the job just as well. "But I don't see what this other thing means," he persisted.

"Neither do I, but it's gotta mean something. So far we've had primal gods. Old ones, Elder deities. You know, gods or the type of creatures Lovecraft wrote about. There's a pattern in that and it's a nasty one. I don't like it."

"You don't like it? I always hated that kind of stuff," Peter said in heartfelt tones. "Even when it paid great." He cast a darkling glance at the mirror. "And I especially hate it when Egon and Ray disappear." He frowned, trying to make sense of Winston's part of the prophecy, and it clicked then, at least a possible answer. "Hey, I think I've got it."

"Tell me," urged Winston.

"The Undying One. You know. When you got to be the living incarnation of Shimmy Wu Wu or whoever he was?"

"Shimabuku, Peter," Winston corrected with a grin. "That could be it. Another thing, if you're right, this is in the order it really happened. I know we fought Gozer first. And we came up against old Cthulhu pretty quick, too. And I think we ran into Nexa before we had to go to the Cosmopolitan Museum and take on the Undying One. So that's gotta mean something, too."

"Means whoever made his list is a stickler for detail," Peter offered. They didn't know enough to understand it yet, even though they'd translated the first part of the prophecy fairly well.

Something made him lift his head from the mirror then, a sense of presence, and his eyes widened in stunned disbelief. Standing in the doorway was Ray Stantz, but it wasn't Ray as they remembered him. He was wispy, insubstantial, transparent, and they could see the edge of the door frame tracing a rigid line down through his whole body. He was transparent like Egon had been when the atomic destabilizer had backfired and turned him into a 'ghost'.

Ray marched into the room without any evidence he had seen either of them, circled the pentagram with purposeful care and headed straight for them. "Ray!" Peter squawked in a combination of worry and relief as he jumped up to the greet the occultist. "You're all right! You worried us silly, you turkey. Where have you been?"

Ray paused and lifted his head as if he heard something but wasn't sure what it was. His gaze passed over them as if they weren't there as he peered into the corners of the room, eyes wide and hopeful. Then he heaved a sigh. They could see his chest rise and fall thought they couldn't hear the sound he made. "Egon?" he said doubtfully. The word was so faint they only got it because they saw his lips move. "Is that you?" When he didn't hear an answer, his face fell, then he gathered himself up with new purpose and started forward again.

"Ray. It's us. Peter and Winston." Peter jumped in front of Ray and yelled his name. "Ray. Listen to me! Come on, Tex. You've gotta be able to hear me."

Ray walked right through him. Peter didn't even feel it, the way he would have felt Slimer or any other ghost. There was no sense of cold, no feeling of ectoplasmic residue, nothing except a weird shudder at the thought of the transparent Ray, intent on his purpose, as he advanced on the book, passing directly through Peter's body. It was as if he weren't really there, even though they could see him. Standing in the middle of Peter's abandoned chair, the occultist bent over the book and stretched out his hand to touch it.

"No, Ray, don't--" Peter began in alarm, uneasy about even the insubstantial Ray touching that book, breaking off when he realized his words had no effect. Peter shot out his arm to block the way and Ray put his hand right through it before his fingers reached the page. With a muttered curse Peter yanked his hand back. That really made him uncomfortable. The minute Ray's misty fingers reached their target Peter blinked and rubbed his eyes because he could see a ghostly overlay upon the page he and Winston had been studying. Ray wasn't on the same page he was. Ray was on the page with the picture of the scaled, taloned monster and the beginning of the prophecy rather than the page with its conclusion.

When Ray raised his hand the illusion vanished, but Peter was sure the ghostly image of his friend was actually reading the prophecy for the first time, studying it, translating it in his mind. His lips moved, sounding out the Latin text. Maybe it would make some sense to him, maybe enough for him to come home.

Beside him, Winston sneaked out a P.K.E. meter and held it up, aiming it at the transparent Ray. Nothing happened. The valance shifted fractionally but not enough to indicate an entity. It wasn't reading Ray as a ghost. "No readings, Pete," Winston said quickly. "He's not giving us class four which is what we'd get if--well, you know," he concluded awkwardly as if he hadn't wanted to suggest Ray could be dead any more than Peter wanted to let himself even conceptualize the idea. He was glad Winston hadn't spoken the words, but it didn't stop him from wondering.

"It's as if he's not here at all," Winston concluded, lowering the P.K.E. meter. "I wonder if he could see us if he used the ecto-scopes." He gestured to the goggles pushed up on Ray's forehead, but there was no way to make the suggestion to their friend while he was so completely unaware of them.

"Think he's in a parallel dimension?" Peter hazarded. "Maybe it overlaps in this room. Egon could show up any minute?"

"He asked for Egon," Winston reminded him. "Egon's wherever Ray is. Maybe they can see each other, and we can't because we're still here."

Peter nodded, unable to take his eyes off the form of his friend. Ray looked normal, if you could ignore the fact that it was possible to see right through him. He put out his hand as if to clap Ray on the shoulder and drew it back again. It only intensified his feeling of helplessness. His memory of that moment when Ray had walked right through him still made him shiver. There had to be a way to get his friend back, and Egon, too. There had to be.

As they watched in mute and aching disbelief, Ray pulled a little spiral notebook out of his pocket and began to copy down the text. Peter edged in as close as he dared without touching the transparent Ray and tried to read over Ray's shoulder as he copied the text in hopes of getting a clearer meaning.

He wrote it in Latin.

Peter heaved a sigh. That didn't help. If he'd written it in English, he might have used different words from Egon's and it might have helped them out, especially with the end part. Ray scribbled quickly, his fingers flying, then he stopped, stared back at the book, looked at what he had written, and began to smile.

"He's quick," said Peter to himself, feeling a surge of hope at the sight of Ray's reaction. "I think he's got it."

"He's got some of it anyway," Winston agreed, grinning. "He's doing it on purpose, finding out what it is. We can only see him because I think this room overlaps where he is, or it's the same in both dimensions. Or maybe it's about the same time where he is as it is here. But he's working on it, Pete. He's okay, wherever he is."

"For now," said Peter darkly, falling silent when Ray finished the last line and turned abruptly for the door. "Follow him," cried Peter, circling around the pentagram in the same direction Ray had taken. Winston went around the other way and they met in the doorway just as Ray stepped out onto the top step--

--and vanished.

Egon Spengler had half expected something to happen to one of them when they returned to the tower, so when he suddenly found himself in a place of blackness with only fragmentary memories of a blast of yellow light, he was not surprised. He hadn't expected the dark, but it took a short time to reach for his belt light and to turn it on. Just as it took moments for it to go out, but not before Egon had discovered he stood in a formless landscape and all the light had illuminated was himself. Even the ground beneath his feet, though it felt solid, did not show in the fading beam of the flashlight.

Interesting," Egon murmured thoughtfully as the light dwindled away to an orange gleam where the bulb was and then popped away to nothing. He restored the light to his belt, suspecting it was either drained by the field that held him or that while it would not work here it might well work elsewhere and he might have need of it later.

Light is not welcome here.

A telepathic voice, one that resounded within his head but that made no actual sound: intriguing. Egon concentrated on a question of his own.

Where am I?

You are in the passage. Beware of the guardian.

Intriguing. It worked. He might be able to learn more in this method, but first, the guardian?

He lifted his P.K.E. meter and, finding its grid still illuminated, he took a quick reading to see what he could detect. There was something nearby, possibly class seven. It wasn't moving, but neither was it quiescent. Reluctant to speak aloud for fear of disturbing it, Egon ascertained its direction and started moving cautiously that way. It might well be the guardian of whom he was to beware, but a guardian's job was to guard something, and Egon would learn nothing if he avoided it. Wherever he was, he was here for a purpose, if the words in the book were to be believed. Egon went over them in his mind. Since he was the second to disappear he could assume that meant he was the guardian of the land. He didn't understand what it might mean but he had come up with a theory just before he had vanished. Words had more than one meaning. Words had synonyms that gave them slightly varying interpretations. In Lord of the Rings, the travellers had come to a door with a sign they had translated as reading, "Speak, friend, and enter." Unsure what to say they had hesitated until they reasoned the message had actually said, "Say 'friend' and enter." The same definitions for the words, but with an entirely different meaning. Egon meant to go over the words in his translation and see if that made any difference. This was not the place to do it, however. The meter's antennae stirred in his hand, indicating he was growing nearer to the guardian, or it was moving toward him.

Who are you? Egon thought toward the telepathic speaker. Why have you brought us here?

You must discover that for yourself. Beware the guardian. You will be of no help to me if you are destroyed.

That told him how powerful the guardian was. He was grateful for his particle thrower and for the fact whatever drained the flashlight had not affected his P.K.E. meter. Egon used it to continue toward the guardian, and as he did a pinpoint of light emerged from the darkness. At once it became apparent what the guardian chose to guard. It was the gateway out of the darkness.

Egon unshipped his thrower. The beast registered as ectoplasmic, and that meant the thrower could affect it. He intended to be prepared.

He thought of Ray then, wondering if Ray had come this way, if Ray had encountered the beast. If Ray had escaped the beast...

It was already moving toward him. It knew he was here. Egon braced himself and raised his voice. "Ray? Are you here? If you can't speak, make a sound." Glancing quickly at the meter, he adjusted it for Ray's biorhythms, but there were only residuals. He adjusted it back quickly, disappointed.

He listened for an answer anyway, all the while striding toward the growing dot of light, watching it expand into a rectangular shape. Ray didn't reply. There was no answer at all, no sound, not even when a huge shape lunged at him out of the light.

He had been expecting it, but he had not been prepared for its burst of speed. Only long practice as a Ghostbuster enabled him to fire in time to repel it. The beast roared and shook, vanishing past him into the darkness. When he whirled to confront it, afraid he would be unable to see it in the darkness, he discovered it was outlined in red, a faint, sullen light that shifted with astonishing rapidity as the guardian charged at him again. Egon fired, fleeing backward toward the light, swinging his particle thrower in a wide, rapid arc to hold the entity at bay. It roared and bellowed, but the technique was effective because it didn't come closer. Egon frankly ran, waving the beam over his shoulder at the monster, and it came up on him silently, claws slashing as he jumped through the opening. He felt a sting of fire along his forearm as the thrower was nearly wrenched from his hand, then he was through and he found himself back in the tower room, now lit with electric lights against the gloom of night. Interesting. He wouldn't have said he had been in the tower as long as that. Perhaps time passed there at a different rate. He frowned, glancing around the tower.

Except for him, it was deserted.

"PETER!" he called at the top of his lungs. "WINSTON!" Then, considering what had happened to him had happened to Ray before him, he yelled, "RAY!"

No answer. Concerned and disappointed, he tried once more and when there was still no reply he abandoned it for the time being. He would try again at intervals while he researched the problem.

Shipping his thrower, he examined his arm to see if he had been injured and found a shallow cut that had begun to bleed sluggishly, a string of little dots of blood that oozed into more as he watched. He'd been grazed, no more. Pulling out his handkerchief, he undid the cuff of his jumpsuit and pushed it up his arm to tie the makeshift bandage over the injury. He'd clean it at first opportunity.

As for now, he had other things to do. He shouted for the guys again, but they didn't answer. Intrigued, he considered the fact of the darkness outside, pausing to read his watch. Though it still indicated it was late afternoon, outside the tower, it was totally dark. Electric lights had been turned on by someone. Ray? Had Peter and Winston waited, leaving on the lights in case he returned, since it must now be obvious the disappearances had been into the mirror? Peter and Winston would have left the lights on in case he or Ray came out. Ray may well have emerged before him.

The need to understand what was happening and why drove him over to the book on the table and he bent over it, studying the prophecy once again. Yes, it was possible different words might have different meanings. But first he had to learn what else the prophecy said. Reluctant to touch the book itself, he had no choice. Warily, he turned the page and bent over the rest of the text, taking out his notebook and scribbling. When he had finished, he read it over carefully to make sure he had missed nothing.

"On paths chosen long ago in separate dreams,

the four will confront the Devourer for a long time, (No, in a far time? that makes no sense).

He frowned. "Time travel? Perhaps we've gone back in time. Interesting." He would have to check that at first opportunity. It would explain the darkness outside as well as the possibility that time passed differently within the mirror. Either explanation was fantastic, unbelievable, but the darkness outside was real. Either this was the same day he had come to the Vanderberg house or it was a different night entirely. He preferred the latter explanation. Frowning, he went back to the prophecy.

"...in a far time, to quell the awakening.

Then, one by one, they return

Here and now to...hmm, confront the Devourer in his lair."

He frowned, studying the words. There was another small picture of the entity in the text below the words. It appeared no more appealing than it had the first time around, and it bore no resemblance to the 'guardian' he had encountered within the mirror.

Egon stepped away from the book. "Separate dreams?" he mused. "Perhaps this is not real. Perhaps it is a dream." He glanced down at his forearm where the guardian had slashed him and felt the light sting of pain from the small wound. Surely in a dream that would not hurt, not unless this dream had all the earmarks of reality. Perhaps what happened to him in the dream happened to him in reality, and if he died here, only his body would be returned.

Ray's body had not been returned however and, if he were dreaming his body slept somewhere else. Perhaps 'dream' was not the exact interpretation of the text. Or perhaps it would make more sense as he gained further information.

First, however, he wanted to try to find Ray. He went to the stairs and started down, pausing in the room below the tower to call for him. He was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to reach Peter and Winston, at least not until they had joined him by passing through the mirror, but Ray had come this way before him. Egon couldn't ignore the part about 'separate' dreams, but neither did he want to overlook the possibility of finding Ray. He walked into the room and stood listening, braced for contact. "Ray?" he asked in a tentative voice as he switched on the light.

Something moved. Eyes narrowing, he stared. Yes, there was a flash of color, sand colored like Ray's jumpsuit. It was blurred and transparent, so faint he almost suspected he wasn't really seeing it, but no matter how hard he squinted, he couldn't bring the image into any clearer focus. It glittered as if the sunlight had struck it with its full dying brightness at the end of day, but where Egon stood it was night.

"Gosh, Egon, where are you?"

The voice was a mere wisp of sound, hollow as the wind and as formless, but he knew he had heard it.

"Raymond?" he asked eagerly. Surely if he and Ray could find a way to bridge the gap they could solve the problem together. They always had been able to do that.

"Egon? Where are you?" He could hear momentary elation in the thread of sound, then it faded as the voice drifted further and further away. The faint glimpse of Ray blew apart like smoke in the darkness and that otherworldly glow of sunlight was gone.

"Hmm," said Egon, taking a reading. Yes, there were fading residuals, but just as faint as they had been at the book upstairs. They were also residuals of Ray's biorhythms, not ectoplasmic readings that matched them. Ray was alive. The readings were as faint as they were because Ray was no longer in his same reality or because he was in the past or future, or for some other reason Egon had not yet thought of. Egon could not firm up the readings any more than he had, but for the moment it was enough to confirm that Ray still existed, somewhere out of Egon's reach, though not permanently if the prophecy was to be believed. He wondered if he would appear so vague and transparent to Peter and Winston or if they would have to pass through the mirror too, in order to see him at all. And if they could not communicate with each other, how could they hope to solve this problem?

Still, it was a worthy challenge. Reassured that Ray was alive somewhere, Egon put his mind to the problem. He and Ray had been brought through the mirror for a specific purpose, and Peter and Winston would follow in time. Each of them had a task to perform and once it was performed successfully, they would return and face the Devourer together. Not an appealing prospect, but even an entity like that need not daunt him when he had the rest of his team at his side. They had defeated Cthulhu as a team, they had forced Gozer back through the dimensional gateway by crossing the streams. Surely the Devourer could not be more powerful than they.

And that brought another thought to his mind. Perhaps the Devourer was a specific entity, one he could research. He had assumed the appellation was a title rather than a name, but it might be enough of his name for Egon to check. He was glad he had been carrying the pocket computer program when he went into the mirror. Now as he started down the stairs to the third floor of the house he took the mini-program out of his inner pocket and activated it, keying in the name 'Devourer'. What came up was forty-seven references to various entities, demons, ghosts and spirits who had that title as a description.

This would take more time than he had thought.

Peter and Winston got a rough translation of the end of the prophecy that came close to Egon's, but it left them feeling frustrated and helpless. Unless they entered the mirror in turn, when summoned, they might not find the other two, but if they entered it, they might never come out, at least not in their normal form. If they waited here long enough, they might see a transparent Egon, too. If so, would they have any better luck communicating with him than they had with Ray?

"Okay, homeboy," Winston said tiredly. "We've got to figure something out. This sounds like we're all gonna go our separate ways for awhile, but I'm not sure what we're supposed to do. Then we come back and we have to take on this Devourer as a team. It doesn't sound like Ray and Egon are gone forever."

"They better not be," Peter muttered with a dark glare at the mirror. He hated being separated from them like this, especially when it was something he had no control over. Sure they sometimes split up on a bust, but they didn't reappear transparent and walk right through him. Bad enough when Egon had his molecules reversed that time, but at least once he'd shown up at the firehouse he could talk to them and help Ray figure out a solution. The worst times then had been right at first, when Peter believed Egon was dead, and then when he'd disappeared and wound up in the Netherworld. Peter didn't think Ray or Egon were in the Netherworld now, because he was pretty sure they wouldn't have been able to see Ray, unless there was a kind of dimensional overlap in the tower, but he didn't like the thought of not being there if his buddies needed him, and he could tell from the taut expression on Winston's face that he felt the same. Winston didn't make a big production of it, but he was always there when one of the other three were in trouble. He'd probably be glad to be sucked into the mirror because then he could do what he could for Egon and Ray.

Peter wasn't glad about it, though. Ray and Egon didn't seem to be together wherever they were, and the prophecy talked about them all being separate. He hated that.

"So what do we do?" he asked. Near as he could figure they had one choice, and that was to leave the tower room and come in again so he could be sucked in. Peter wasn't sure he wanted to do that unless he could get Egon and Ray. Just because there was a prophecy didn't mean they had to buy into it. The whole thing might be a scam, a way to trash the Ghostbusters. If Cletus was the Defender, then he wasn't the greatest of allies. So what was he doing now, being the Defender. Maybe Pettigrew was the defender, though he didn't sound like he knew anything about ghosts, demons or alternate dimensions.

"Take turns?" Winston hazarded.

"That's if all this is something good. For all we know, it might be some kind of a trick to separate us so the nasty entity Egon's been saying is about to pop through will have a clear field."

"Now there's an unpleasant thought," Winston muttered without enthusiasm. "There's gotta be a way to tell the difference."

Peter held up his P.K.E. meter. He didn't use one as often as Egon or Ray did, partly because hard science wasn't his bag, but he knew how to take readings as they all did. Egon had drilled it into them all because it was necessary for any of them to understand their equipment. Peter might not have been able to do delicate repairs on any of it, but he could do some field repairs on proton packs and even on traps, as long as the work wasn't too complex, and he had a good handle on what the P.K.E. meters could tell him. Generally Egon interpreted their data, or Ray did, but Peter and Winston could do it, too. They'd be pretty useless as Ghostbusters if they had to fall back on the two hard scientists all the time. Winston had a lot of engineering background, too, from his undergraduate degree he'd gotten on the G.I. Bill when he'd come back from Vietnam, and had been taking some night school and correspondence parapsychology classes toward his Masters'. He hoped to have it in a year or two. The business was paying for it, figuring any expertise Winston gained would help them all.

So the two of them knew enough to do all but the most specialized parts of the job without the backing of Egon and Ray. What they didn't always consider was how much other specialties helped them. While both of them had a little Latin, translations were usually left to Egon. And Ray had such a solid foundation in occult specialties that they could always rely on him when they ran up against something really obscure. Their specialties always fell to the one with the background. Peter didn't expect the guys to be psychologists, though Egon was a lot better at it than one would expect from him, and Winston's common sense was always a help.

The knowledge held by the two missing men might prove exactly what they needed, but Peter and Winston couldn't throw up their hands and resign themselves to their fate because of it. They had to learn what they could. So far they'd played along with the prophecy, and Peter had been inclined to believe it was meant, especially when he and Winston had reasoned how part of it might apply to them.

For now, Peter took a reading and studied the results. Egon's power levels were higher than before and most likely centered on this place. Whatever was trying to break through was behaving in the way such an entity usually did, triggering higher readings everywhere, probably calling out more and more ghosts the way it had when Gozer had come.

"Do you think this whole thing is a trap?" Peter asked, glaring at the mirror. "Something Egon and Ray would be so gung ho to buy into that they would have jumped into the mirror anyway, even if it hadn't taken them? We can walk out of here right now and not come back." His voice half trailed off as he heard himself. It might mean abandoning his two oldest friends and he wasn't about to do that, even if it meant he had to jump into a mirror himself. From the stubborn set of Winston's chin, the black man agreed with that.

"No way, Winston," Peter contradicted himself. "We're not leaving Egon and Ray, no matter what it takes. Even if it is a trap, we're still going through with it, because we've beaten worse traps than this. Put the four of us together and we can handle anything!" He hoped Winston wouldn't be able to tell how much his stubborn defiance was like whistling in the dark.

Winston nodded. "You got it, my man. We'll get 'em back, and even if we get sucked in, too, we'll find out what's going on and we'll do it." He raised his hand in a high five and Peter slapped his palm against it.

Then he sagged back in his chair. "So what do you think we should do?"

"I think we should find a way to track down this Cletus character and make him talk," Winston insisted.

"Good idea. But the only reading I'm getting is some kind of ambient psi." He broke off and grinned. "I'm starting to talk like Egon. When he gets back, don't tell him."

Winston grinned back, amused. "You got it. Okay, so we're getting ambient readings and they're strongest here. Can you filter them out and see what's left?"

"Good idea." Peter bent over the meter and concentrated on it so hard he had to poke his tongue around in his cheek to achieve the desired result. Egon had been showing him all this little gizmo's bells and whistles just last week. Peter had been largely pretending to listen, thinking instead about his upcoming date with Ann Cowan, but he'd picked up enough to do what he had to do now. He'd always been a quick study and it had served him well, especially since he rarely let anybody know how fast he could learn something new. Egon knew it of course--Egon practically had Peter's psyche memorized, to Peter's sometime discomfort--but he was content to say nothing, merely to share the friendship that meant so much to both of them and not push Peter into giving himself away when he wanted to keep up the pretense. Of course Egon always knew when it was a pretense, just as he would now.

Peter adjusted the meter carefully. Maybe Egon could do it with just the flick of a finger, but Peter hadn't been born using high tech equipment and it took him a little longer. He meant to filter out the extra readings and fine tune it to class three and class four entities. There shouldn't be that many of them here, though the Vanderberg house was old and any number of people must have died here over the years. Still, Cletus' involvement with magic and the black arts would probably make his readings stand out.

"How's it coming?" Winston asked, leaning closer to watch him work.

"Egon could do it in a minute," Peter replied. "I, however, take a minute and a half. Not bad for a psychologist, if I do say so myself. There. This will let us know what we're up against." He activated the meter and held it up, waiting breathlessly to see what would happen.

"You did it, man." Winston pounded him on the shoulder. "Look. It's telling you class three."

It was what Peter had hoped for. He bounced to his feet, grinning and bent over the meter. "Let's track him down," he urged.

That proved easier said than done. The readings weren't directional at all. No matter which way Peter turned, they were equally powerful, until he headed for the door and halfway down the flight of stairs to the next level with Winston hot on his heels. He stopped dead, grabbing for the railing with his free hand to keep Winston's involuntary collision with him from knocking them both down the rest of the stairs.

"No good. The readings are strongest up there. Turn around." He gestured Winston back, and they retraced their steps to the tower room.

The minute Winston crossed the threshold, brilliant yellow light ran in crossing circles around the outside of the mirror, the two circles meeting as they crossed each other, shooting out a beam of yellow light. Peter saw it start to happen and flung his arms around Winston's waist from behind. "No way, we go together!" he yelled. "Besides, it was my turn next." The thought of being the only one left bugged him like crazy.

Winston didn't have time to answer. Suddenly Peter had an armful of nothing and Winston slid right through the glass of the mirror, catapulting into darkness that swallowed him up like Slimer swallowing pizza. Peter lunged hopefully for the mirror even as the light died and hit the glass hard, rocking back on his heels and raising a dazed hand to rub his bruised forehead that had come into much harder contact with the glass than he would have liked. He staggered back and sat down on the floor, missing the pentagram by mere inches and halfway bolting up again as he remembered it.

Heaving himself sideways, he sat down again, his back against a chair, and leaned forward, clutching his aching head in his hands. "It's not fair," he wailed. "I didn't ask to be left behind. It was my turn to go. Damn it, Winston...." He felt utterly alone.

His fingers encountered a slight trickle of blood and he rubbed it away, finally lifting his face and gazing into the glass. Egon had warned him not to meet his own reflection, but obviously that had not been what had happened to his friends, so it wouldn't hurt him, and he might learn something. He studied his own image, seeing a slump-shouldered man with a faint smear of blood over his left eyebrow and a hollowness in his eyes. Behind his reflection in the glass he could only see the room in which he sat, not the dark place where Winston had fallen. The last rays of the setting sun bathed everything in pink and orange. It would soon be dark in here.

Peter dragged himself upright and went over to the door, flicking on the light switch. The lights came up and this time they stayed that way. Mentally he thumbed his nose at the entity that had turned them out on the stairs. Either the ghost was too busy with his friends in the mirror or the prohibition no longer mattered.

Peter circled the pentagram, shooting hasty glances at his feet to prevent a misstep, his eyes darting back to the mirror as if it could sneak up on him again. He was just glancing down at his feet when he realized he'd seen something in the mirror that should not have been there and he froze where he was standing, warily lifting his head to look again.

Reflected in the glass he could see himself, standing beside the pentagram. Over near the fireplace, where the white circle was painted on the floor, stood the reflection of a man in an old-fashioned suit minus the jacket, staring out of the mirror at Peter.

"Huh?" Stunned and nervous, he glanced over at the white circle. It was untenanted. But when Peter turned his eyes to the mirror again, he could see the dark-haired stranger glowering at him. There was nothing friendly in the man's mien, but it was a resentful glare rather than a hateful one. He was wearing brown pants and vest, the lines of the shirt and tie subtly different from those Peter wore for a night on the town, his shirt sleeves rolled up as if he had been hard at some work for many hours. His hair was short and parted in the middle, brushed to either side, either in an attempt at a former fashion or to hide incipient male-pattern baldness. The stranger was as tall as Peter, but thinner, and there were dissatisfied lines on his face, tracing deep paths from his nose to the corners of his mouth and one deeper line between his brows as if he had a habit of squinting. His nose was long and thin and had once been broken. Above it, vividly blue eyes under lowering lids--bedroom eyes, women called them--met Peter's questioning gaze with steely determination. When he lifted his hand to stroke his jaw, Peter saw he was wearing a golden ring on one slender finger that had an esoteric design set into it with black stone. Around his neck, on a slender band, was a pyramid-shaped medallion, and he held a short stick in his other hand that had feathers bound with leather thongs to each end of it, with a ruby-red crystal set in the middle. Behind him in the reflected fireplace, a fire roared and the windows of the tower were solid squares of blackness against a room lit only by rows of banked candles and the fire. A circle of thick white candles were positioned around the outside of the circle in which he protected himself, some burned at wall sconces around the room and more of them stood on the table where the thick book of Peter's time still lay, still open at the page with the picture of the Devourer, though the red marker was brighter and newer than it was when Peter shifted his eyes sideways to see it in reality. Wherever Cletus Vanderberg stood, it was night.

Positive his identification of the reflected stranger was right--this guy didn't resemble a modern-day handyman--Peter lifted his hand at the man in the mirror and said, "Cletus. Hey."

"You are not welcome here."

The voice was strange and echoless, and held a hint of a mid-Atlantic accent as if part of his education had been in Britain, as indeed Vanderberg's had been.

"Maybe so," Peter returned, squaring his shoulders for the challenge. Nobody pushed Pete Venkman around and he wasn't about to take it now, when his three friends were missing. "But I'm here, and somebody wants me because that prophecy is talking about me. You caused all this, didn't you?"

Vanderberg's eyes dropped momentarily. "Yes."

"I figured as much. And we're the clean-up crew?"

"Flippancy will not help your friends--or yourself."

Peter didn't like that; it sounded too much like a threat. He wondered what would happen if he angled a shot with his thrower into the mirror at Cletus, but he didn't intend to do it, because any damage to the mirror might mess with his friends' chances of coming home alive. "Okay, I'm not flippant now," he said, pasting a sober and respectful expression on his face. "Are my friends alive?"

"For now," Cletus replied, which was not as reassuring as Peter would have hoped for. "I did not want you here, and I did not want them. It is my right to seal this breach, not yours. I'm tired of endless talk of good will and good intentions. Those are for the small minded. I meant to know, to open my mind to all the possibilities."

"Didn't you stop to think your mind might be just a tad too small to comprehend them?" Peter suggested. He was starting to get a handle on Vanderberg now; the man had become obsessed with the occult and believed, as some foolish folks did, that he could take it all on, life, the universe and everything, and come out unscathed. Combined with his overly-healthy ego was too great a knowledge of the arts of darkness, always a bad combination. Peter shuddered to think of the damage a man like Vanderberg might have caused and probably had.

"I have seen too many petty minds afraid to take the risks, afraid of harm, when one step more would have brought them into glory," Cletus boasted. "I paid the price, and have dealt with it ever since. I fear nothing, not you and your friends, not even the Devourer. All these years I have kept it at bay without your help, and I do not need you now."

"I'd say maybe you do, bunky," Peter disagreed. He sneaked a glance at the P.K.E. meter in his hand. It was reacting now to a manifesting class four entity all right. This may be the only way Cletus could really appear. "You're trapped in the house, aren't you?"

"I pity your small mind," Cletus snorted with no real evidence of any pity, only contempt. "Is the house all you can see? Yes, I am a part of the house and always will be. Yes, I have kept my kin safe from the Devourer as that is my responsibility. But there is more here than the house or your friends would, as you did, have banged their heads against the mirror in vain."

"Okay, another dimension then," Peter prodded expectantly, needing to learn all he could. Cletus was here but whether he meant help or threat Peter couldn't tell. He didn't think Cletus was the type who liked to help anyone, but his freedom might be contingent on it. He would hate that, Peter could tell.

"Perhaps," Vanderberg replied. He appeared quite pleased with himself as if he could happily play word games for hours and still give nothing away, and Peter wasn't prepared to take that. The guys might not have the time to spare.

He frowned as he regarded the ghost of Cletus Vanderberg. The spirit didn't like the Ghostbusters and wasn't inclined to be very helpful, but there were ways to get at the truth, and Peter needed to do just that if he were to help his teammates and figure out how to get all of them out of this house intact. He narrowed his eyes consideringly. "There's something in this for you, isn't there? Some kind of payoff? How'd you ever come to messing with things like the Devourer in the first place? It's more than just that power thing, knowing everything, I betcha. Once you know it all, what do you do with it? Who do you talk to when you think you're smarter than God?" He shook his head with careful scorn. "You got into this for ego, I'll buy that. I can even understand it. But you wound up putting your life on the line this time around, against something a lot more powerful than you knew how to control."

Cletus glared at him. "Just because you're one of the Chosen doesn't allow you the privilege of digging around in my mind," he said haughtily. "I have a good mind to disappear again and share nothing with you."

"Sure I'm digging in your mind. I dig in everybody's a little," Peter said with a casual wave of his hand as if to dismiss such an action as not really a threat. "Goes with the job. I'm a psychologist. I dig in people's minds without even thinking about it. Right now, I don't much care about any of your nasty little secrets. I just want to figure out why my friends and I are popping in and out of mirrors. We didn't sign up for this, but we're in that book and I'd bet big bucks that book was old long before I was a twinkle in my pop's eye and even before you were the same."

"It surprised me, too, when you came," Vanderberg admitted. "That is the only reason I am here now. I didn't trust you, so I watched you use your technology tools to gain admittance to my lair. You talked--you talked a great deal--and I listened. I have long been hostile to strangers here. I tolerated the family; one must, though I never liked them, shallow, grasping dolts that they were. I left them alone. I even tolerated that prying fool, Pettigrew as he snooped about the house so he could brag about seeing my shade to the mindless, grasping curiosity seekers in the town. Then you came, you and your friends, invaders. I tried to halt you, too. Then I heard you talking to the colored man. Ah, pardon. African-American is, I believe, the currently accepted term. I knew you were the chosen. But I never chose you, nor needed you, either. After that, however, I stopped planning to interfere with you. I will not actively help you. That was never my way. But ask your tedious questions, little man. I may even choose to answer some of them."

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere," said Peter, brightening. He needed the answers to help the guys, and he was pretty sure he needed them to help the world as well. If the Devourer broke free, it wouldn't just be Peter and his team who were endangered. "You're the one who tried to keep us out of the tower, shooting fire at me, nearly crisping my fingers." Peter wasn't happy with the guy, but Cletus knew things Peter needed to know and that meant Peter had to put up with him, maybe coax an answer or two out of him. "So what is all this about? Why is the Devourer here in the first place?"

Cletus folded his arms and tapped one foot against the floor within his circle. "That requires some history, and I am loath to share it with you. You know something of me already."

"I know you got interested in the occult and started digging around in the really nasty stuff. You bought into Ivo Shandor's cult and others like it. You took risks with things even I know are too dangerous to mess with. I know you were a kind of hermit, shut up in your tower playing with magic, probably the black magic kind. And somehow, I can't quite buy that it was all for the noble aim of higher learning. You wanted to know the truth, but some truths aren't for even the likes of you."

Cletus was silent a long moment as if he would have liked to refute Peter's words, and Peter saw the temptation to lie in the ghostly face before the man who died in 1938 shook his head abruptly and said in a curiously gentle voice, "Have you ever--cared about anyone enough to die for, no, more, not to risk only your life for but your immortal soul?"

Peter found himself nodding without even having to think about it. "Yeah, so what about it?" he asked, reluctant to admit Cletus might have some power over whether he took the risk or not. He let his eyes drift off Cletus and back at the glass in general, wishing with all his strength that the others would come popping out of it now that Cletus had chosen to show himself but they didn't. So Peter fell back on what he was doing, trying to get information.

Cletus hadn't expected a positive answer, but Peter had no hesitation in giving one, even though he wasn't the type of man to wave his sentiment around like a flag and he didn't want to reveal too much in case the ghost used it against him. Yet his friends had brought out that side of him. He had already taken that kind of risks for them more than once and he knew he would willingly do it again. There were some people worth the risk, and the other three Ghostbusters had come closer to Peter than he had expected anyone to in his life.

Peter looked back at Cletus, determined not to let the ghost escape him now. He didn't think he could trap the ghost through the mirror, and he wasn't going to try, not when Cletus might somehow control it. If he did anything like that, it might mean the guys would never come home.

"Think you've got all the rights?" Peter said. "You want to tell me about it?" He let a slight edge of sympathy creep into his voice, not too much or Cletus wouldn't buy it, but a sort of 'fellow sufferer' tone.

Cletus pursed his lips, eyeing Peter from the glass. "I always found myself interested in occult studies," he said. "Not devil worship, in spite of what the fools said. Yes, I could summon a demon, but I could control the summoning, and I never worshipped demons. I used them. The ignorant fools could never tell the difference."

"I've met a few demons in my time," Peter responded. "They don't take kindly to control. That why you have the pentagram?"

"Of course. I protect myself as well as confine them." He gestured to the white circle at his feet.

"So you've got a fondness for the company of demons or what?" prodded the psychologist. He'd never understood why anybody would want to call up a demon, though some did it for the power and some did it because they bought into that kind of thing for one reason or another. There were always those who would try it and get into trouble and since Peter had been a Ghostbuster he'd helped clean up the mess a couple of times when some poor schmuck had summoned a demon and lost control of it. Though such entities could pop in from the netherworld when they chose, they didn't bother very often, which was just as well, because they were hard to trap.

"Don't be a fool," snapped Cletus. "I sought to use their power."

"Yeah, that's a good way to get vaporized," Peter agreed. "A pentagram's all well and good, but you don't know what you're getting ahead of time."

"I tried to summon specific demons. I know you must be aware of such useful texts as Tobin's Spirit Guide. I used such references in my work, as you do. I studied. I traveled to Arkham and gained permission to research The Necronomicon and other obscure texts. Somewhere in all the many books written on the subject, I knew I would find the answer."

"Answer?" This was getting a little closer to the true purpose of Cletus' work. "What were you searching for? What did you hope to find?"

"I hoped," said Cletus in a flat, cold voice, "to find a way to bring my wife Anne back from the dead."

Peter hadn't expected that. He wasn't sure quite what he had expected, but the one barrier that really couldn't be crossed was that one. Ghosts might return, but not living beings. Evidently Anne had not returned to haunt her husband. "Did it work?" Peter asked in neutral tones, afraid to let Cletus see how much the idea disturbed him. Yet he could understand the urge. If one of his friends died, Peter would wish for a way to storm heaven for him. He wouldn't start summoning up demons, though.

Cletus shook his head.

"What happened?" Peter asked more sympathetically. "Ray said she'd died..."

"I was always interested in my occult studies. I'd researched ghosts and spirits all my life. I inherited this house from my uncle Milton, and with it the funds to pursue my interests. In England I joined the Society for Psychical Research while I was up at Oxford. I knew there were borders beyond which man had never gone, and I meant to push back those boundaries, to learn what happened at the time of death, where the spirit journeyed. Heaven and Hell were convenient simplifications, I believed. There had to be something else, a life beyond this one, a place for the soul to journey. If the soul is immortal, and that I chose to accept as a given, it would outlast the clay that it tenants. Some spoke of other lives, reincarnation, and I knew it to be possible. I have visited seances where the soul of the subject spoke of other lives and other times. This fascinated me. I read and studied, trying to learn more, yet I knew it was not the entire answer. There were other possibilities, shielded from me. I postulated a world drawn apart from our own with a veil between, a veil across which the spirits could speak, a veil they could penetrate. In that realm, I believed, life continued, changed to be sure, but substantive. Across this boundary, only ghosts could penetrate, and had done since human life began."

"Okay, so that's a nice delusion," Peter responded. "You wanted to find a way back and forth to the 'other side'," he suggested. "Like a trans-dimensional Staten Island Ferry?"

"Yes, but it was a theoretical exercise. I never intended to cross this veil myself. I came down from Oxford, returned to this country, prepared to immerse myself in my research. I converted this room," he waved a hand around the tower room, "into my own research facility, I gathered books to study, and I experimented. I found others who shared my interest in the afterlife, with other dimensions, with powerful spirits. Ivo Shandor was one of them. I know of the coming of Gozer, the way you and your friends were able to force the Traveller back though the gate to his own time and dimension. Shandor believed society was evil and perverse, too much so to survive. The Great War helped convince him this was true. He knew much of occult matters, and he planned to summon Gozer to destroy the evil in our world. I was intrigued. He had many followers, but I saw that the vast number of these were not genuine believers but merely lost souls who needed to belong to something in order to validate their petty existence or to take advantage of the helpless for their own power."

"Yeah, there are people like that in my time, too," Peter agreed. "We call them lawyers."

Cletus shook his head at Peter's flippancy. "There will always be followers. I despised them, Shandor despised them, but he was not unwilling to use them for his purposes. I meant to go along with him, to gain power, to become his second in command, for he was a skilled manipulator as well as a specialist in many fields which interested me."

"But you didn't," Peter said positively. "What happened. A falling out in the ranks?"

"No. Anne happened. My wife."

His voice changed drastically, growing warm and tender when he spoke the woman's name. Even the cynicism melted from his face as he remembered her.

"Was she into all this dimension hopping mumbo jumbo, too?" Peter asked skeptically, rubbing his forehead. He'd have a bruise there later, and the bump was tender beneath his fingers, but his headache had faded while he talked to Cletus. He wasn't seriously hurt.

"To a degree. I met her at a seance. She was untrained, unskilled, but interested in the subject. When she met me and learned of my knowledge, she was more so. She was a gentle soul, a loving woman, warm and caring, and I had never met anyone like her. We left the seance and talked for hours. She was a very modern woman--for the times, of course. She also grew absorbed in my work. Yet I knew, even then, there were certain elements from which she must be shielded. She was never my assistant. I would never have endangered her nor risked her life. We married, and we were happy. Have you ever known true happiness, Speaker in the Night?"

Peter hesitated. "Yeah," he admitted, a slow grin transforming his face. Being a Ghostbuster, being with his friends, made him happy. He loved his life. Once a ghost had manipulated them, told Peter he was allergic to ghosts and would have to give up Ghostbusting altogether. He still remembered the horrible hollowness in the pit of his stomach at the news, as if he stood on a falling elevator, plunging down toward a crash far below.

Cletus continued, untouched by any feeling he might have observed in Peter's face. "So did I, with Anne. Life had real meaning, more than I could have dreamed possible. She was my true soulmate--and then she was gone. So stupid, thrown from her horse. She liked to ride, but after she fell I had the brute that threw her put down. And then there was...nothing, no hope, no joy, no meaning in anything, no purpose, no reason to go on."

"What did you do?" asked Peter. He'd had a few lousy breaks in his life, too, but nothing that had taken him that hard, and he hoped he never did. If he couldn't get the guys back....

"For a long time I did nothing. I puttered around with my books and avoided family and neighbors. Then one day I had a revelation. All my work, my studies, had a purpose, one I had built toward all my life, as if the day had been prepared for. I remembered my retreat, this room, and I came here, prepared to devote the rest of my life to one purpose and one alone, to reuniting myself with my Anne. I would find a way to cross through the veil and bring her back to me, or, failing that, I would stay with her, on the other side."

Peter felt a frisson of unease slide up and down his backbone. "You mean you tried to find a way to resurrect her?" he asked.

"Precisely. Reincarnation was no good to me, for she would be reborn an infant, though I could wait if necessary. If so, I would have to find her, so I began to study that field with great concentration. Yet I knew if she was not reincarnated I had to find her and quickly before the pastimes beyond the veil drew her in and changed her until she was no longer my Anne. I had to learn once and for all what existed on the other side."

"So you started sending for demons," Peter theorized, caught up in the story in spite of himself. It wasn't a subject he would have wanted to research himself. He was content to know what he knew now and leave any other mysteries until it was time to find out in the natural way of things. "What made you think demons would give you answers?"

"Because my studies indicated powerful demons could cross the barriers between worlds, as powerful primal gods could. I thought, in my foolishness, that demons would be easier to control, so I would begin there."

"And it didn't work, did it?" Peter was sure of that.

"No. Demons came at my summons, of course. I had evoked them before, and it was not difficult for one of my skill. They were powerful and difficult to confine in the pentagram, but I summoned them up, asking them questions about this life and the next, and commanding they show me how to breach the veil. They answered: they were compelled to do so: but they spoke in riddles so complex I could not reason them out. They laughed at me and said it was because I was human, because it was beyond my meager comprehension. Mine. I, the man who learned more of their nature than any other human."

"The human with the biggest ego anyway," Peter muttered under his breath. "So you couldn't figure out what they meant?" he asked aloud. He didn't like the way this was progressing. He knew he needed answers, knew only Cletus could provide them unless Ray and Egon had been solving things wherever they were. He hoped they could, and eventually when the prophecy reunited them, the four of them could face down whatever Cletus had called forth that was beyond his ability to control.

"They were deliberately as obscure as possible. I would have learned, given time, but I was impatient. I had glimpses beyond the veil, but such glimpses never showed me Anne. I could not find her in my searches and I became desperate. Demons were no help to me. And then I remembered Ivo Shandor."

"Hey, why do I think he wasn't the best person you could have remembered?" Peter mused.

"For once you are correct. I remembered Ivo and although he was a madman he gave me a new direction. He didn't bother with puny demons. He worshipped Gozer, one of the primal gods. Where better to get answers than from beings as powerful as Gozer. I knew the failure of Shandor's cult had sealed away the entrance to Gozer's own dimension for many years to come. I could not seek him. Yet there were others. I journeyed to Arkham to consult the Necronomicon again, and I traveled to Germany to speak to Erhardt Braun, one of the leading lights of my time. The man was a fool. He advised me to try nothing, to abandon my scheme, to wait until death reunited me with Anne in the next life. I would not heed him. Yet perhaps he was right, for all the time I have remained pent in this house I have not so much as glimpsed her shadow. She is gone beyond, perhaps forever."

Peter would have expected that. Only sudden death had burdened Anne, it seemed. She had died happy, loving her husband, or so Cletus would have Peter believe. The odds were she had never been a ghost.

"You didn't listen to Braun, did you?" he asked, shaking his finger at the other man. "You didn't pay attention to good advice and you got in trouble for it. What did you do? And why am I so sure I'm not gonna like your answer?"

"I knew a demon would not serve, so I thought to bind one of the Old Ones. They possess power undreamed of by puny human minds. If I could summon one here, and control him, I could do anything. My power would be limitless and I could bring Anne back to me."

Peter bit down all the things he could have said, that Anne had died, her body was rotted and decayed, her essence either passed on to a higher realm, dispersed into a collective unconscious or simply dissipated. He might bring back a golem of his Anne, and he would have found it a crushing disappointment after all his efforts. Peter didn't think he could have succeeded in the first place. But if he started finding fault with Cletus' plan before he heard it, there was a chance he might not hear it at all. So he merely nodded encouragingly. "Go on."

"I chose carefully. I would not have mighty Cthulhu. Even I, with all my skill and knowledge, could not confine one such as he. Instead I would select another, perhaps less powerful, but powerful enough for my own needs. He would teach me what the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, knew, how to raise the dead, and I would have my Anne back again. But first I must open a gate, for the Old Ones come to us through gateways from their place of darkness."

"Yeah, right." Peter shivered. He'd seen a Cthulhu cult in action, seen several others who had planned to destroy the world and introduce chaos in its place, and he'd never figured out what they thought they'd do once the world was gone. Did they believe the bringers of chaos would cherish them as allies and reward them richly, and if so, reward them with what? Money would be useless for there would be nothing to spend it on. No new cars, no fancy stereo systems, no trips to Tahiti, because there'd be no roads, no music, no beaches, nothing left. The thought that all this was about a gate to allow one of the Old Ones to come through made him shiver involuntarily. No wonder Egon had been picking up a rise of psi energy in the last few days.

Except that didn't make sense. Cletus Vanderberg had been dead for over fifty years. Unless he'd managed to block the gate for a time.... He'd said himself that Gozer had been sealed away with the destruction of Shandor's cult, for a period of years. Did that mean Cletus' last act had been to seal away the Devourer, but only until now?

"You messed with a gate, didn't you?" he asked. "Egon was telling me about that kind of stuff once. Nasty stuff. Powerful. You don't want to mess with gates because the odds are the gate itself will kill you, never mind what's going to pop in for a tea party afterward."

"I had to bring Anne back," Cletus insisted with single-minded intensity. "A gate was the only way to do it."

"Yeah, never mind about the rest of the world," Peter snapped.

"I couldn't see past my need," Cletus admitted, for the first time sounding reluctantly guilty. "I forgot Anne would not forgive me if I destroyed the world to be with her. She was ever a gentle spirit, loving and kind. She could no more stand to see another human suffer than she could hurt anyone herself. She always thought of others, never herself. I told myself the world needed her back, but in truth it was I who needed her. So I went through all my books to find the right entity to summon, to bring her back, and that was when I found the Devourer, He Whose Name Must Never Be Spoken. He can come to humanity, to our world, only through the Narrow Gate, and the references in old books always speak of the Narrow Gate as far to the west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. I studied it further and came to the conclusion that the Narrow Gate was here, in the new world, where none of those ancient scholars had discovered it. Perhaps the Phoenicians with their fleets of ships ventured as far, perhaps there were actual Atlanteans who had come here and met with more cautious travelers. But the Narrow Gate, also called the Gate of Tears, is here. I sought it long and hard and realized it was so close I could use it as a focus and even draw power from it."

"So you got yourself a mirror," Peter suggested. "And tied it to the nexus."

"You are smarter than you appear," Cletus replied, and Peter didn't know whether to feel smug or to be offended by the hasty remark. Before he could answer, Cletus went on. "The gate had been sealed so long it required a physical focus, and mirrors have often served as such conduits. I performed the necessary rituals, studying them through September and October, readying the mirror for its purpose. Then, the night before I meant to try there was a great disruption in the land."

"What disruption?" Peter asked suspiciously. He was pretty sure he would have remembered hearing about a major disruption of the kind Cletus meant. Ray would have known about it. He was always going on about this or that Mass Turbulence of 1947 or 1959 and comparing them to their current cases.

"It was an artificial disturbance, a hoax radio broadcast implying a Martian attack," Cletus replied. Oh yeah, thought Peter. Orson Wells. The War of the Worlds. "I did not hear it, but I am sensitive to moods and disruptions and the panic created energy I could feel in the focus of my mirror. I meant to try on All Hallows' Eve, selecting that as the best day to summon the Devourer. It is the feast of Samhaine." He pronounced it 'Sowin', referring to the feast itself not the conscious entity the Ghostbusters had captured and sealed in their containment unit, the spirit of that particular holiday. "On that night," continued Cletus in the tones of a lecturer, "those who have gone before retain an interest in the living and are willing to come to their aid. The veil is thin on Halloween, and I thought I could do it. The panic resonated on my mirror and I thought it might be best to wait, afraid the psychic energy released by all those people would cause problems. But I could not wait. An entire day had passed since the panic. I should be safe enough. I refused to wait a whole year to try again. Each passing month only took Anne further from me and bound her more fully to her existence beyond the veil. So I tried it as I had planned.

"I performed the ritual precisely, sacrificing a goat and two black chickens for the ritual blood. I anointed the mirror and made it ready, and then, I bound the gate to the mirror, creating a narrow portal between the two worlds, the place where your friends passed, out of the here and now into the worlds where they were needed. I opened the gateway, finally, and brought forth the Devourer. He was massive. You have seen his picture in the book, but his size is unimaginable. He is the Beast that Crawls Across the World, the Hunger that Never Ends. And he had been sealed away beyond the Gate of Tears for millennia. I knew immediately I had made a grievous mistake. I could not control him. No individual human, no matter how skilled, could control him, even without the reverberations caused by the War of the Worlds broadcast. I knew then Anne would hate me for the destruction I was about to bring on her precious world. I could not live with her hatred, even were it only imaginary hatred, knowing she would have despised my actions. So I did the only thing possible. I could not undo the nexus in time, nor free the binding of the mirror without the appropriate ritual, which was time consuming. Instead I sealed the gate."

"How?" asked Peter. "You'd think with something that big coming through it would be too late. What was to keep him from getting wedged in the door."

"He was not yet through. He was still beyond the corridor, preparatory to coming through the gate. I could see him through the mirror, past the dark limbo and the guardian which would never have been strong enough to stop him. It failed to stop your friends, so how could it have stopped He Whose Name Must Never Be Spoken? I had to close this portal, this nexus, though I knew it would not stay closed for all time. But by then I had seen the prophecy. I found it in my studies, and I could not tell to what it applied. But it gave me hope, that even if I could defend the gate for a time, there would be those who came after me to finish the job. I guessed the first reference was to Gozer, since I knew all there was for mankind to know of the Destructor. I thought perhaps the Sleeper was mighty Cthulhu. The rest meant nothing, but I believed if others would come, capable of stopping Cthulhu, then the Devourer might well be stopped, too."

Peter wasn't exactly thrilled with this explanation. He'd never been comfortable with ghosts with sharp teeth, ghosts who liked to take friendly bites out of well-meaning Ghostbusters. The Devourer wouldn't need to take bites. He would swallow his meals in one big gulp, and it wouldn't be just people. It would be whole city blocks in one bite.

"You mean us," he said without enthusiasm, then put that aside, because the story was not finished. "So how did you close the portal?"

"I gave myself to it. I stepped into the mirror without preparation and without shields and it destroyed me in an instant. Of my physical body nothing remained. I remember dying. I remember terrible pain that seemed to last for eons but in reality was no more than seconds. I gave myself to the portal, choosing to be a part of it, an early warning, a doorbell at this end of the Narrow Gate. It took me, pleased with the sacrifice, and I now guard the portal itself. Beyond is the guardian, who defends the Devourer's side of the gate and tries to herd travelers to it."

"You mean there's a monster in the mirror that's been trying to feed my three friends to the Devourer?" Peter demanded, feeling the color drain from his face. "And why wouldn't they be destroyed the way you were? They better be okay or you're gonna be soooo sorry."

"The barrier I created still holds firm, though it is weakening. Soon it will fall altogether and the Devourer will come through. But it has not yet fallen and your friends still live. I have watched them emerge from the mirror, one, two. The third will soon emerge. Sooner, if you let me go."

Relieved to hear his friends survived, Peter drew a deep breath and let it out gustily, then he suddenly realized his conversation with Cletus might be trapping Winston in there with the Guardian, whatever it was. It didn't sound like Casper the Friendly Ghost, though. "So tell me quick, what are we supposed to do?" he demanded.

"Stop the Devourer. He is awakening, stirring from his age-long sleep, and each time he stirs, the Narrow Gate opens a little further. He must be stopped, not just here but for always, for what has been as well as what will be. Do you understand me? For what has been as well as what will be."

Peter repeated the words to himself over and over, knowing they had meaning, but uncertain of what that meaning was. It was for when he got together again with Egon and Ray so they could figure it out. For now, he had to let Cletus go so Winston could get out of the mirror. He nodded. "Okay, you've given me something to go on. Back off now and let Winston out."

Cletus faded away and the mirror shifted, revealing only the here and now, a shaken Peter standing gazing wide eyed at his reflection. Halfway afraid Winston couldn't get out while he was watching, he started toward the door only to jump back when a shadowy, half-transparent figure emerged through the glass in a barely controlled fall--right toward the pentagram.

"WINSTON!" Peter yelled and lunged for him, knowing Winston would be no more solid than Ray had been, and just as unable to hear him. But if he fell into the pentagram, he would meet the same fate as the pencil stub. Frantically Peter screamed Winston's name as if the black man would hear him if he were loud enough, though his attempt to break the fall was useless.

Winston did a frantic mid-air scramble that twisted his body around and kicked out at the edge of the table. A gymnast couldn't have done it better, but desperation and adrenalin lend strength in a crisis. Winston went down on the floor right next to the pentagram and one of his sleeves touched the edge of the faded red design. It smoked and burst into flames, and Winston's mouth opened in a soundless yelp as he rolled frantically away from the five-pointed star, beating at the flames.

He seemed to lie there flat out for a long time while Peter, heart in his stomach, bent over him anxiously trying to see if he was hurt. The fire was out, leaving a charred place on Winston's sleeve to mark his nearness to death, but there were other marks on the tattered uniform to indicate a vicious fight had been fought within the limbo contained in the mirror. Gaps and tatters showed in the legs of his jumpsuit and Peter could see cuts and scratches still oozing blood. The worst of them was a deep slash right across his abdomen just above the proton pack strap. It didn't look deep, but it was obviously messy. As Peter watched, helpless to assist his wounded comrade, Winston groaned heartrendingly--Peter could 'see' the groan though he couldn't hear it--and opened his eyes, his hand fumbling for the cut. When he touched the blood, he stiffened in alarm and sat up abruptly, though the motion sent fresh blood welling up between his splayed fingers. Winston's lips moved and Peter could read his speech without hearing it. "Shit, shit, shit," said the ghostly Winston in obvious disgust. The disgust relaxed Peter's taut muscles fractionally. Winston wouldn't be sitting up and complaining if he'd been gutted.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket, folded it the long way and lay it over the cut, pressing it into place while Peter watched anxiously, trying to judge by that how badly his friend was hurt. The frown on Zeddemore's face was put there by furious thought rather than by pain, and he started digging industriously through all his pockets. Finally he nodded in satisfaction and produced something and Peter felt his mouth curving into a smile at the sight of a transparent and ghostly roll of duct tape. Winston proceeded to cut several strips of it with a pocket knife and use them to tape the handkerchief into place, and Peter grinned remembering a joke Ray had told him only a couple of weeks ago. "Why is duct tape like the Force?" The answer: "Because it has a dark side and a light side and it binds the universe together." Ray, of course, had thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, but only now did Peter really appreciate it. He wondered if Winston remembered, too, as he cared for his wound.

Peter hated being helpless like this when something needed doing. Winston was hurt. For all he knew the 'guardian' Cletus had talked about had poison claws--no, no point in imagining the worst. Winston didn't seem to be poisoned. He was shaken after his battle with the guardian and no little bit ticked off about it, but he showed no trace of growing weakness or upset.

Then, abruptly, he sat up straighter, shoving the tape and pocket knife back into his pocket and pulling out a notebook and pencil in their place. Opening the notebook to a clean page, he began to write in big, dark letters. Peter was amazed to see that he could read them and he shifted around behind Winston to see what his friend was saying.

"Hi, Pete," the note said. "If you're still hanging around, I hope you're reading this. Just a warning. Rover in the mirror is not a friendly dog. When you go in there, you're gonna be in total darkness and your flashlight will bite the dust in about three seconds. I don't know where it is, but there's a nasty character in there. You can't really see him but he's outlined in red. Head for the light and don't let him get in between you or you'll have a heck of a time getting out. I'm not sure where it is in there, but I'm back in the tower room now, and I have to guess it's like when Ray came walking in. Maybe this place overlaps a whole ton of parallel dimensions or maybe we're in different times and can only see each other here because the mirror has links to all of them. Whatever it is, I'll try and find Egon and Ray, because I think I'm here for a reason. All of us are. Whether it's this Devourer gig or not, we don't have a lot of say about the way the stage is set. So be ready for trouble. And your turn is next. I don't know why I got sucked in before you unless it was that old bugaboo, the wrong place at the wrong time. Get out as quick as you can and we'll see what we can do." He held the book out in front of him for several minutes after he finished writing, apparently in hopes that Peter could read it, then he heaved another soundless sigh and pulled himself stiffly to his feet, moving as if it hurt. Peter reached out automatically to take his arm only to jerk back as his fingers passed right through his friend's wrist. He hated that.

Winston straightened up, fastened his proton pack more loosely than before so the strap wouldn't pull against his wound. He winced but didn't seem to be dizzy or have any trouble saying on his feet. He mouthed words with exaggerated care. "Be careful, Peter." Venkman, who had never been as good as he'd have liked at reading lips, was still able to make it out.

"You too, buddy," he said wistfully and followed Winston out the door.

The minute Zeddemore crossed the threshold, he vanished without a trace.

Peter stopped dead on the top step, staring down with wide, worried eyes. He knew wherever he really was, Winston was heading that way to look for Egon and Ray, and Peter wished he could go, too, but the only way to get to them was to return to the tower room and be sucked in to meet a possibly very angry and frustrated guardian who had already had three chances to learn the Ghostbusters' moves. It was not a good choice, and Peter wasn't looking forward to it. What was more, he didn't understand the purpose of it. If they were here to stop the Devourer from finally coming through the Narrow Gate, it would take all four of them to do it. Yet the mirror sucked them in one at a time, implying a need for separate action. The prophecy did speak of separate tasks, but Peter didn't understand what they were. Come to think of it, he had no reason to believe the mirror nexus to be their ally even if Cletus controlled it. Cletus might believe Anne would hate him now but he was too obsessed to give up his driving need to reunite with her, especially now that he was dead and, presumably, in no danger from the Devourer. This whole thing could be a trick. Peter's eyes narrowed as he considered that.

Except the prophecy was a lot older than Cletus was.

Peter dithered on the top step, hesitant to cross the threshold. If this were all a trick and he crossed over, too, would the Ghostbusters have any chance of survival? Would the world? And if he didn't cross over, would his friends risk death and worse for the lack of him?

He'd learned a lot but he hadn't learned enough to solve the problem. One thing he knew, though, was that the answer was not on this side of the gate but over there, where his teammates were, and if there was the slightest chance they needed him, that's where he had to be.

Squaring his shoulders and adjusting his pack between his shoulder blades, Peter Venkman drew his particle thrower and keyed it on. Then, with careful intent, he crossed the threshold again to the tower room.

Golden light blazed out to meet him and with a scream compounded half of panic and half of outrage, Peter was sucked into the darkness beyond the mirror.

Ray had searched the house from top to bottom, occasionally thinking he heard the distant voices of his friends, at other times wondering why he was alone. The time line worried him most of all. He was half afraid something had happened to the others, especially when he looked from the upper windows and noticed Ecto-1 was gone. Also, the trees had a particularly springlike appearance, much more so than he had expected of the warm summer day they had driven to the Vanderberg house. He might not have merely missed a day. He might be in another time altogether. He opened the window, half expecting it to repel him with fire or cold. Maybe the fact that he was on the second floor made a difference. The house didn't expect him to jump out the window. Cool air whispered in the minute he'd lifted the window even an inch. The temperature couldn't have dropped so abruptly. Maybe he really was in another time.

"Wow," he breathed excitedly. "Temporal displacement. This is great!" He headed for the stairs again wishing he could take readings, figure out where and when he was. Maybe he could use the ecto scopes.

Pausing in the doorway to the bedroom Peter had earlier claimed as his own when they had first arrived, he stopped abruptly as he got a new idea. A clock-radio sat on the bedside table, and Ray hurried over to turn it on. The house's electricity had been on when they arrived, though he wasn't sure until he got an announcer's excited voice whether it would be so when he was as well as where. Grinning in triumph, he reached for the dial, then froze.

"We're here on Central Park West where the Ghostbusters are trying to face down the most unlikely sight this reporter has ever seen," babbled an unknown announcer. "I couldn't swear it, but--yes! It is! It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It's a good ten stories high, I'd swear it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is no joke. It's fully dark here. Look at it, it just stepped on a taxi! People are running and screaming, dodging into doorways and down into the subway. Priests and rabbis are leading their flocks in prayer. This is a sight never before seen in the Big Apple."

"Gozer," breathed Ray in disbelief, heading for the window again because it faced north. Crazy. The sky was dark in that direction, over the area where Gozer had come and where, if he could go there right now, Ray would see himself and his friends. Why would he be here now, at the same time he was fighting Gozer in Manhattan? It might not even be safe to be twice in the same time. He'd heard theories to that effect more than once. This was weird.

You must go to the tower.

There was that strange voice again, the one that had talked to him before. Ray glanced around wildly, half expecting to see a misty form emerge from the wall. He knew it wasn't the voice of one of his friends. Even without speech, he would have known them. Quickly he pulled the ecto-scopes down over his eyes and revolved slowly, checking for evidence of paranormal activity. He got one quick flash of gold tracing the dimensions of the room and vanishing again.

You have not much time!

The sense of urgency that swept over him was artificially induced but no less real. Ray bolted from the room and hurried toward the stairs, grabbing his thrower and powering up. He could almost feel the higher energy levels and when he lowered the ecto scopes over his eyes he could see hints of the powers swirling around him. If he couldn't do something about them, the entity might well burst through now, years ahead of time. Would that change history?

He raced up the stairs to the tower room and then stopped dead, staring at the mirror. It had sucked him in before, but this time it didn't. Instead it glowed and gleamed with brilliant colors: vermillion, emerald, amber, pulsing with light and power. This was what people had reported seeing from time to time, but Ray not only saw the power of the light enhanced by the goggles he wore, he felt it, in a low subliminal vibration that quivered against the soles of his boots, stronger in the gash the guardian had dug out of it. He shifted uneasily on his feet as he took another reading. The Devourer? Like Gozer, it was coming, and it was coming now. He could feel the strength of it, smell the odors of sulphur and rotting seaweed grow stronger and stronger until it nearly gagged him.

"As you defeated the Traveller, now you must stop the Devourer," said a voice from the mirror. Ray blinked at the glass. The pulsing colors shifted briefly to reveal a man standing within the glass staring back at him. He was even clearer than Ray's reflection, no doubt boosted by the ecto-scopes.

"Wow," breathed Ray excitedly. "That's what Egon meant. Not the 'voyager'. Gozer. Gozer the Destructor. Gozer the Traveller. But how can he be coming here, when he's already there? He can't be in two places at once, can he?"

"No. But you must act. Quickly. The Devourer comes."

Ray thought furiously, then all at once he had it. "Gozer," he breathed. "Gozer is feeding power to the Devourer." No, that wasn't right. He didn't quite have it, but he was close.

"Raymond?"

The voice was so faint he barely heard it, but he turned his head sideways just the same, looking for Egon. There was a flash of blue, barely visible even with the scopes.

"I see you, I see you," he blurted excitedly. "Egon, Gozer's coming."

He strained for an answer, but what he got was not Egon. "Homeboy?"

"Winston? Where's Peter?"

"I don't know, man." Then that voice faded, too.

"Peter?" Ray pleaded, remembering the savage attack of the guardian in the mirror. Had Peter escaped it. He strained to see him, a fleeting glimpse of a brown uniform and a cocky grin, but he didn't find it. "Peter, are you okay?" he pleaded.

"Hurry!" That voice was the stranger in the mirror. His face held frantic desperation. "You alone can save him."

"Gosh," breathed Ray in alarm, staring at the mirror. "What can I do against all this power?"

"Stop it. You must stop it."

"Now, Ray!" Egon's voice faded in and out and he couldn't see the physicist, no matter how hard he squinted, but there wasn't time to keep looking. Carefully he approached the mirror, studying the arcane symbols written there. He'd done a lot of research on Gozer after they'd forced the Sumerian god back through the gateway into his own dimension. The resultant energy had nearly destroyed the Ghostbusters, and it had taken all four of them to do it. Now he was only one, though he could still hear Egon fading in and out. "You have to do it now!" The strength of Egon's need made those words leap out at him, and with a gasp, he adjusted his thrower. If he could cut back the power pulsing from the mirror he could defuse the threat, at least for now, though he was sure it would take more than one thrower to end it for all time. He had a sneaky feeling all times could coexist within the mirror which was why he'd been spit a few years into the past. He couldn't destroy the mirror. From the desperation in Egon's voice, he was certain Peter was still inside it, trapped there by the rising power, up against the guardian. He had to do something right now to shut down the power and free Peter before it was too late.

He adjusted his thrower very carefully. He couldn't close the gateway, but he could cut back the power if he set it just right. Carefully he fine-tuned his thrower to pinpoint accuracy, glancing at the signs around the edge of the mirror. That was the mark of Cthulhu there, and he'd seen that one before, too. Was that the sign of Gozer? He remembered what Egon had found in Tobin's Spirit Guide as they investigated Dana Barrett's story of a monster in her refrigerator. If he could coordinate his thrower with Gozer's exact frequency and fire directly at the sign, he might be able to control the mirror, at least for now. If only he could remember....

His fingers turned the dials automatically and he took careful aim, bracing himself. He wasn't sure what he'd do if this didn't work.

The proton stream lanced out, a burst of golden energy, dead on target on the sign of Gozer. Within the mirror, someone screamed!

"Don't stop firing, Ray!" If he looked out of the corner of his eye he could just see Egon in the mirror, gesturing at him to keep firing.

"But that was Peter!" he protested in alarm.

He could feel the mirror fighting him, the brilliant colors stabbing out as if to strike him and he shifted carefully, reluctant to let that otherworldly light fall upon him. The scream in the mirror held real pain, and Ray was afraid what he was doing was hurting Peter, but he could feel the pent up energy writhing and twisting against the thrower's power as it struggled to be free, and he knew he couldn't stop, no matter what. If he did, something would be loosed and there would be no turning back. It was more than Gozer, he was sure of that. The mirror was simply reacting to the nearness of the Sumerian entity as it fought them in New York.

Worse, the very presence of Gozer was feeding power into the mirror. Whatever was trapped in there, and Ray was realizing it was the Devourer, the monster pictured in the book and referred to in the prophecy found there, was trying to come through, drawing on the spirit energy released from the destroyed containment unit and the psychic battle presently being fought on Central Park West.

He felt the power surge up in a fury and he boosted the thrower to full streams. In a burst, the colors exploded, nearly blinding him, sending him reeling backward as a fierce explosion shook the mirror and nearly tipped it over, though the glass didn't shatter. Instead it went completely dark, not even reflecting Ray as he was flung backward to fetch up in the door frame, half winding him with the force of the impact. His thrower shut down automatically as it slid from nerveless hands, and he blinked dazedly, gaping at the now-opaque glass. It was silent, dead.

The screaming had stopped when the explosion happened, and Ray pushed himself to his feet in utter horror, shoving the ecto-scopes back on his forehead, his eyes wide and miserable. "Oh, gosh, Egon, I think I killed Peter," he breathed unhappily, feeling an aching sickness swelling in the pit of his stomach. He may have stopped the Devourer from breaking into the city when the Ghostbusters would have been too caught up in the battle with Gozer to notice, but at what price. He was afraid he'd managed to seal Peter in the mirror with the beast--and that was the best option he could think of. He shipped his thrower automatically, feeling numb and dazed. "Egon, talk to me?" he pleaded, heartsick.

No one answered him.

Then, before he could do anything else, golden light ran around the mirror frame in twin circles and Ray felt himself pulled into the darkness. The mirror opened up to pull him in, and as he slid through, he got a quick reflection of a man in a brown vest and pants, nodding at him in approval.

Egon searched the house as thoroughly as Ray had, concentrating on the readings of his P.K.E. meter. He had thought the ambient psi level was high when they arrived at the house, now it was much higher, yet different. He thought he recognized those readings, and they certainly required further study.

The time difference intrigued him. He had come back at night, and while that meant he could have been in the mirror longer than he had expected, it might also mean he wasn't when he thought he was. Though the night was dark, there was enough light to reveal that Ecto-1 was no longer parked on the drive in front of the house. While he did not believe the rest of the team would abandon him, it was possible one of them had returned to the firehall for something they might need while the other searched for him and Ray.

Encountering Ray in 'spirit' form had interested him, too. Since Ray had been through the mirror just as he had, he felt it only logical to assume that he would seem equally ghostly to Ray or to Peter and Winston even before they came into the mirror.

After reasoning that an alternate translation might help him solve the riddle, Egon had put a great deal of thought into it, and it hadn't taken him long to identify each of them tentatively, and to recognize the situation each clue indicated. Gozer, Cthulhu, Nexa, The Undying One. He pondered over the selection, since each came from a different mythos, though all four were powerful. If any might be compared, it would be Cthulhu and Nexa, both drifting in the deeps, though Cthulhu was the more powerful. Gozer was a Sumerian entity and the Undying One from Africa. He could not find a pattern in that, save that they were powerful and the Ghostbusters had encountered each of them in a fairly short time.

Needing more information, he returned to the tower where he attacked the reference books seeking a clue that might bind the four entities. There was nothing. They had no connection with each other at all.

More fascinated than frustrated, Egon again checked references, this time searching for some clue that would connect each of the four entities to the Devourer. This time there were even scantier leads to follow, and the end result was that there had been no historical connection at all.

That did not, however, mean there would be none in the future. A prophecy, after all, spoke of events that had not yet taken place. A prophecy that referred to him and his three friends and that had been put into this book long before any of them were born intrigued him. He sat puzzling over it, idly rubbing his sore arm as he tried to reason it out.

"On paths chosen long ago..." he read aloud, pondering. "A far time? Hmm. This becomes interesting." A possible answer occurred to him and he went down to the third floor again to research the possibility. He had seen a television set in one of the rooms. The power was on, so the set should work. He turned it on.

For a few minutes he channel surfed, smiling faintly as he remembered how often he chided Peter for habitually doing exactly the same thing. Some of the programs were the same as now but he found one or two that had since been canceled. Proof he had time traveled even as the programs wrapped up and went to the news at eleven.

The special bulletin broke across the news, announcers claiming danger at a disturbance reported by that station's helicopter team as it flew over Coney Island. Something was coming out of the sea, they reported. Something huge and nasty. The city was in grave danger.

Cthulhu!

Egon stiffened, and suddenly everything became clear for him. He knew why he was here, and he thought he was certain what he was to do.

Cletus Vanderberg had called up the Devourer, never mind why. Realizing the full extent of his folly and the danger to which he had exposed the world, he had found a way to seal the entity up, most likely somewhere in the mirror. The effort must have killed him or trapped him in the mirror with the Old One, which would explain why a body had never been found. But the sacrifice of one human might not be enough to hold such a powerful entity forever. Certain things would awaken it, including natural erosion of the portal's seals. Cletus could never have hoped to hold the Devourer forever. Egon's studies had indicated the Devourer in question was most likely The Devourer Who Must Never Be Named, the Beast that Crawls Across the World, an entity who nearly rivaled Cthulhu for power. It would never stay behind artificial seals forever.

In order for Cletus to summon it, he would have had to open a gate. Egon's research indicated it was the Narrow Gate, or Gate of Tears, which had not been opened for untold millennia. Cletus must have realized his danger immediately, but closing the gate would be a time-consuming process. He would have had no time to prepare. The most he could have hoped for would be to block the passage and hope it would hold long enough for help to come.

But the presence of powerful entities close at hand would weaken any attempt at blockage. Which meant every time the Ghostbusters had fought something of incredible power, the blockage had weakened, thus the present increase of ambient psi. It had been building to a climax for years, weakened every time a powerful entity had come through into the world. For some reason these four had resonated more strongly through the gate. Perhaps they had even--broken through.

Except that they hadn't. Egon's readings would have proven it. Had defeating Gozer and the others reinforced the blockage each time? Or was the answer more complicated?

'The four will confront the Devourer in a far time, to quell the awakening.'

"Amazing," breathed Egon. "This is truly incredible. I had no idea." He switched off the television set and hurried back to the tower, his eyes shining with excitement, wishing he could share his information with Ray and the others. Ray would be as thrilled as he.

The Ghostbusters had been pulled into the past individually to prevent the Devourer from breaking through each time he tried, each time a powerful entity resonated through the barrier and awoke him from his sleep. The world survived as it did because the Ghostbusters had been pulled back in time to confront each menace as it occurred and make sure the Devourer was well sealed into its prison. Each one of them had been selected to meet one of the crises. Other powerful entities they had faced must not have been strong enough to do more than shake the Devourer's sleep. But these four may have given him the impetus he would have needed to break free. Egon's task was to face the gateway at the time of Cthulhu and make sure the Devourer didn't break out.

But unless each of them succeeded, they would change what had been, change the world as they knew it, change history into a threat so great it was possible the world might not have survived it, especially since after Gozer they had not been organized enough to face a new threat. The Devourer would have come through and possibly life as they knew it would have ended.

There was only one chance, and that was for each of them to hold the Devourer at bay in the times to which they had been sent. Only then would they be returned to the present to make certain the gate was permanently closed.

Egon hurried into the tower room and stopped dead. This time he could sense a presence here, in fact several presences. If he did not gaze directly at them he could see faint blurs of movement, blurs that might resolve into his friends if only he could concentrate. That meant perhaps one of the others or more had reasoned as he did. He took a reading of the gate--and froze in alarm.

Time passed in two ways within the gate, he realized. For the four of them it moved at a constant rate, no matter where they had been ejected. Though Egon was in the past, when Peter or Winston passed into the mirror, Egon would be aware of them as if he were still in his original time. And he was aware of one of them now. Altering his P.K.E. meter quickly, he tried the guys' separate biorhythms.

Peter was still inside the gate.

And the Devourer was stirring.

Peter would have the guardian to face, but he would also encounter the Devourer, pushing against the boundaries of the barrier, perhaps breaking through.

And what would happen to him if they tried to do what they had been brought here for while he was still inside?

Egon felt cold sickness run through his belly at the thought of what the Devourer could do to Peter. Yet he knew, deep inside, that he had no choice. He could not loose the Devourer on the world, even if it meant Peter must be trapped inside with him forever, or killed by the power needed to force the Devourer back.

Life without Peter.... Egon was not a fanciful man but he had a good imagination and it showed him, in a flash, what his life would be without Peter Venkman. It would be empty, cold, without that spark of humor and delight the two of them could share. Peter had taken a rather stuffy physics student and loosed the humor within him. He was afraid the process might revert without Peter to tease him and encourage him to live his life to the fullest, outside the lab as well as within its confines. There would always be a hollow place inside him, a place that had been filled by a certain wisecracking, irreverent individual, so different from Egon as to make their friendship unlikely to outsiders, but essential to Egon's happiness.

All that passed through the physicist's head in a matter of seconds and he knew he had to put it aside for now and do what he was here for in spite of the pain that decision might well cause. "I'm sorry, Peter," he whispered softly, then he braced himself and advanced into the room, aware peripherally of Ray and Winston as he had sensed Ray before. Hadn't Winston passed into the mirror, since Peter was third on the list and still inside? Did that mean they were running out of time?

He tried to call warnings to Ray, realizing Ray could hear him dimly and both of them could hear Winston's voice, faint and distant. It was not the easiest of communications, but at least Ray had grasped his purpose here and was prepared to do what he must, as if he had guessed not only his purpose but the solution to the problem. "Now, Ray!" Egon urged, conscious of Ray's horror at the screams of pain that echoed from the mirror. All of them could hear them, and Egon suspected Winston would be unable to do so unless he'd passed through the mirror before Peter. Did that mean they were already doomed to failure? And if Peter were trapped in the mirror unable to stop Nexa, did that indicate the whole prophecy had failed?

He could not see Ray with any clarity, but he could see the lance of golden energy from his proton stream. Ray was acting on sheer trust, but his mind hadn't stopped working. Until the energy lashed out to strike one particular symbol on the mirror Egon had not entirely reasoned how best to shunt away the energy from Gozer and the others, but Ray's proton stream had found the sigil of Gozer halfway down the lefthand frame of the mirror amid a row of other signs and occult symbols representing many powerful entities. When the beam struck, it illuminated it brilliantly and Egon finally understood exactly how the prophecy could be fulfilled.

"Don't stop firing," he urged.

"But that was Peter." Ray's impossibly faint voice was stricken with anguish but he obeyed, firing when he must though it must have torn him apart inside.

"Well done, Raymond," Egon murmured softly. Peter's shrieks emerged from the mirror, resounding around the room and only the knowledge that Peter never hesitated to yell no matter how minor the injury gave Egon any kind of hope that what they were doing now wasn't killing him. He heard the sounds fade away to muted moans and then silence, as the mirror blazed up with brilliant light and then, all at once, went totally dark as if it had been destroyed. Egon realized the gate had been barricaded again against the power of Gozer. Ray had been successful--but at what price?

He hadn't expected Ray to vanish into the mirror so quickly, nor had he thought to see the opacity vanish from the glass the minute the occultist was through. The mirror again reflected the room, and that gave Egon an idea. He shifted around carefully, always watching the mirror, until he discovered a second reflection in the glass. Winston. His uniform was in sad shape, torn and shredded here and there with a huge gash across the front, that had ripped through the metal zipper as if it had been simply cloth. The guardian, Egon realized. Through the reddened gap in the fabric, Egon could see an amateur bandage taped firmly in place with what appeared to be duct tape. Winston was firmly on his feet and though he seemed tired and frazzled, he didn't appear to have sustained a major injury.

"Winston. Can you hear me?"

At his question, Zeddemore's head came up. He squinted, saw Egon in the mirror and cried out, "Egon!" his face lighting with joy. Unfortunately for both of them the word was a distant whisper, translatable by sight more than sound. They could see each other, but they could not communicate, certainly not to convey complex ideas. Egon was doubtful Winston would be able to make the same leap of reasoning Ray had done, and he had no way of knowing if Winston and Peter had solved enough of the prophecy to understand the nature of the threat they faced.

The two men stood there staring at each other in helpless frustration, unable to communicate, concern for Peter in the back of their eyes, then Winston's face brightened and to Egon's relief, he lifted his hands and began to ask questions in ASL. After they had gone out to Hollywood to act as advisors to their first movie and encountered the ghost that wanted total quiet, Egon had decided it could benefit all of them to learn sign language, and they had all been studying hard, with the possible exception of Peter, who was not fond of study and never gave the impression of studying at all. Peter, of course, could learn things much more quickly than he wanted to admit, and he'd dated a woman with hearing loss six months ago. He'd thought it a kick to be able to communicate with her without the whole world overhearing and had learned a lot more than he was admitting to the others. Winston wasn't an expert by any means, but he knew enough for Egon to make his point--he hoped.

The next few minutes were spent in desperate signing, explaining as much as Egon could convey with the traditional signs they had both learned and a good deal of spelling out of individual words. There were no signs for Cthulhu or the Undying One, but Egon spelled them out and Winston stopped him as he caught the meaning of each, nodding to show he had understood. Egon pointed to the frame of the mirror, indicating the occult signs that decorated it. Winston nodded, studied the frame himself a time or two and pointed. A stylized design of a black bird could well indicate the Undying One, especially since the Moaning Stones of Tangala had taken that form when brought together.

It was good. Winston and Peter must have reasoned out the first part of the prophecy, and now Winston knew what he had to do when the time came. Holding up his P.K.E. meter to convey his meaning without resorting to spelling, Egon set it on the table and tried to explain with symbols he knew and spelling that Winston should check the readings for those that matched the Undying One, and when they became strong, it would be his job to fire at the black bird sigil. Winston nodded to show that he understood, frowned a little and held up his own meter, pointing at the grid. He wasn't sure he would know the right frequency, since he'd spent most of that bust trying to be convinced he could let the living embodiment of Shimabuku work through him rather than in taking readings and recording data. Egon cast back his mind, grateful for his gift of near-total recall when it came to figures, and related the necessary information to Winston.

When Winston signaled understanding, scribbling notes as fast as Egon signed them, the physicist picked up his meter again and took careful readings of his own. Cthulhu's power was growing. Soon it would be time for him to act as Ray had done. Outside the night sky churned with power. A storm was coming. He remembered how it had thundered the night they had defeated Cthulhu, using the power of lightning to drive him back to his endless sleep.

'Good luck,' signaled Winston in the mirror, then he hesitated, waving his hand to catch Egon's attention, and asked about Peter, his face full of grave concern.

Egon shook his head and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. He had no way of knowing what had happened when Ray was forced to fire. He reminded Winston that Ray had entered the mirror and tried to explain that time within the mirror seemed to run 'normally'. If Peter were in there, Ray would find him and render what aid he could. He hoped that was true, considering the darkness within the corridor and the fact that he had no P.K.E. meter. Peter might need someone simply to survive. Egon gnawed his bottom lip. There was nothing he could do to help either one of them and he hated that, though he could do nothing about it.

Winston nodded and tried to explain something. The gist of it was that he had been trapped in the mirror for a long time fighting the beast while something else had blocked the mirror. He was fairly certain it had been Cletus talking to Peter. He explained as best he could that he had heard distant voices while trapped and one of them had been Peter asking questions while Cletus explained how he had managed to loose the Devourer on the world in the first place. Stranded within while the mirror was in use, Winston had been forced to hold the guardian at bay, nearly losing the fight on more than one occasion. From the tight line of his mouth and the shadows in his eyes, his thoughts were on Peter, too. They shared a concerned and understanding look, both wondering if the four of them would ever be together again.

Abruptly Egon's P.K.E. meter began beeping wildly and he nodded at it to Winston. It was time.

Neither Ray nor Peter had emerged from the mirror.

He took out his thrower, stilling the quiver of his hands with an effort. He had encouraged Ray before when Peter was trapped, but now both of them were inside. If he fired now would he be killing his two oldest friends? Could he live with himself if he did that? Would he even want to?

If he didn't, he might be condemning the whole world to destruction.

He couldn't see Winston in the mirror any more. Maybe the other man had backed off to give him room to work, since the Undying One had been the last of the entities to threaten New York. It made Egon feel very much alone as he lifted the particle thrower. With a sigh he braced himself and took aim at the three signs of Cthulhu that adorned the mirror in a row across the top of the mirror, as if whoever had designed the frame had known a great deal about dangerous entities. There was a star, a triangle with two lines extending beyond the joining places and ending in small circles and the third consisted of two sides of a triangle, an abortive third side curving into another circle. He had seen these before, in the Necronomicon.

It dawned on Egon he had no idea what Nexa's sigil was.

His thumb hovered over the trigger of his thrower. Soon now he would have to fire, or else he would be too late. He started to press the trigger.

The mirror pulsed yellow in two concentric circles revolving around an unseen hub and spit out an inanimate form that collapsed to lie unmoving at Egon's feet.

He looked down automatically, saw nothing, returned his gaze to the mirror and saw Peter's body lying there supine as if on top of his boot tips. His uniform was not quite as tattered as Winston's, but his body lay quivering and jerking as if he had received an electric shock. His face was unnaturally pale--Peter was fair-complected to begin with, so his face now approached the color of parchment--and lax with unconsciousness. He was breathing, but with great, shuddering gasps as if he had nearly been suffocated. Without readings Egon could not be certain, but realized Peter had most likely suffered psi backlash, a result of being trapped within the radius of a proton beam. He had not been its direct target and so had not been neutronized, but he had been trapped in a corridor full of power and it had nearly killed him. As Egon stared, horrified, at the mirrored Peter, he realized none of the conventional treatments for such an accident would work right now, because he and Peter were trapped in two different times and there was no one to apply them. Even such a simple remedy as opening a ghost trap beside him to bleed off some of the energy that made his body twitch and jiggle as he lay there wouldn't work because Peter was unconscious, unable to respond to commands to trigger the trap he carried. Though his eyes were slitted open there was no trace of awareness in the sliver of green Egon could see reflected in the glass.

"PETER!" Egon tried, yelling at the top of his lungs in hope of making a connection. The limp form that lay sprawled at his feet, in his future, barely stirred.

The Cthulhu readings on his meter were intensifying, and Ray still hadn't emerged from the mirror. If he didn't come out soon, Egon would be forced to do the same thing to him that Ray had done to Peter. "Come on, Ray," he breathed, watching the mirror image of Peter, hoping for the yellow circles of power that heralded a transition. He could not wait much longer. He braced himself, understanding all too well what Ray had felt when it had been his turn to do this.

Just as Egon's thumb began to tighten on the trigger, knowing he dared risk waiting no longer, the mirror pulsed with yellow light and spat out Ray Stantz. Egon saw him reflected as he burst through, spinning around at once to stare at the mirror. The physicist could tell the exact instant when Ray saw Peter, for he cried out with soundless anguish and fell to his knees, groping through the empty space for his friend, his face disconsolate when he touched nothing. He seemed able to see Peter without relying on the mirror though Egon could see no more than blurred smudges of his friends without it. That must have something to do with Ray being back in his original timeline. While all of them were trapped in the past, they were only loosely bound together by the mirror. But Ray was where he belonged. Egon wasn't sure why that made a difference, but Ray could obviously see Peter so evidently it did.

Unable to wait any longer, Egon fired at Cthulhu's sigils, adjusting his beam as finely as possible to strike all three of them at once.

The backlash from the proton stream rocked him back on his heels, but he braced himself and kept on firing, knowing his only chance was to maintain the beam until the exact moment when the lightning struck and helped them drive Cthulhu back to his watery rest. The air crackled with power, drawn in from the mirror as it absorbed the ambient energy from Cthulhu's presence at the southern tip of Brooklyn, and Egon found it took all his strength to keep firing directly at the target.

The mirror's surface crackled and distorted, causing the image of Ray and Peter to vanish. Deep within the glass Egon saw something moving, something huge with a massive snout and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth as long as daggers, backed by immense black eyes that reflected back nothing at all, as if it could hypnotize its prey with a glance to draw the hapless victim down into darkness. One long, skinny arm reached forward, the scythelike talons swooping in Egon's direction, as he cranked the thrower to full power. He had to duck sideways to miss being slashed, coming up on his toes, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the proton rifle. The Devourer growled, its hungry roar as loud as the sound of a hundred freight trains, absorbing and smothering all lesser sound.

The air was split by brilliant light, so vivid and glowing it seared itself across his retinas. Momentarily blinded, he closed his eyes involuntarily against it, his ears already aching from the cry of the beast so that the mighty clap of thunder that shook the whole house was muted in the overall effect. Egon lost hold of his thrower and it shut down automatically. Reaching for it frantically he paused, straightening up and opening aching eyes that at first saw only the afterimage of the burst. Blinded and deafened, he reeled in the thrower by its cable, blinking and removing his glasses to rub his watering eyes until his vision began to clear. By that time, muted noises were coming back to him, faint and far away. The effect had not been permanent, though eyes and ears ached, blending into a mighty headache that beat through his skull. He put away his thrower and raised both hands to massage his temples then opened his eyes again and stared at the glass as he put his glasses on again.

The mirror's surface was opaque, revealing nothing, no hungry Devourer ready to break through, no reflection of his friends who were trapped in different times, though Ray might well be back in the Ghostbusters' original timeline.

Before he had time to reason that, the mirror pulsed, dragged Egon from his feet and thrust him soundly into the darkness.

Frantically Ray landed on his hands and knees in the midst of the dark corridor. "Peter," he cried desperately, sitting back on his heels and reaching out with his hands to grope for his friend. "Answer me, Peter. Are you still in here? I didn't mean to do it. I had to. I'm sorry."

Nothing. No answer at all. Ray had probably alerted the guardian to his presence, but that didn't matter, not if Peter needed him. He crept forward on his hands and knees, pausing every few feet to feel around for his friend. This place was huge, endless, full of a vast and waiting darkness, and the floor beneath his questing hands was alternately smooth as if the passage was manmade or rough and jagged, scraping his fingertips. He didn't want to call out because that might bring the guardian searching and expose Peter to its teeth and claws. Peter might be out of the mirror, but if he were still lying here, hurt and helpless, Ray had to be quiet to keep the guardian from coming to investigate.

Nothing. He groped wider afield, trying to work out a pattern of searching, moving to the left, then the right, his arms swinging in wide arcs as he sought his injured friend. He wouldn't let himself conceptualize the thought that the search might already be too late, that Ray's work with the thrower might have put Peter beyond his reach for all time. Heart aching at what he'd been forced to do, Ray scrambled on, feeling cold, small and scared. Where are you, Peter? he thought miserably. I'll find you, I promise--

His fingers landed first on something hard and cold, Peter's thrower, abandoned and powered down. With a cry of relief, Ray followed its cable until he came up against something more yielding, an arm. "Peter," he breathed. "Wake up, Peter, please wake up."

The arm beneath his hand twitched feebly. Ray let his fingers slide down to the wrist and push aside the cuff to feel for a pulse. It was there, though much weaker than Ray liked, and shocky. Peter had been hit by the backlash of Ray's thrower. He'd nearly killed his friend and time might well finish the job, unless something could be done to prevent it. There were ways to do it; he and Egon had studied them, and the safest way involved the thrower at a very exact setting. He didn't want to use his thrower in here, though the right setting could make all the difference. Without light to set it properly, there wasn't much hope of getting it right, and if it were off even by a fraction, it could kill Peter. Ray couldn't risk it, though he had to do something or Peter might die anyway.

The unconscious man's skin was cold and clammy under Ray's fingers. How to get him warm? He lay beside Peter and put his arms around him, hoping to warm him with body heat, but the quivers that ran through Peter's body weren't from the cold; instead they were signs of psi backlash. They might fade away on their own, but Peter must have taken a big charge. Ray would have to bleed some of it off. He sat up carefully, dropping his hand on Peter's forehead. "Peter," he whispered, agonized, wishing his friend would revive and start complaining about how terrible he felt. Instead Peter flinched away from the touch as if Ray had hit him. The occultist gasped unhappily and lifted his hand. Peter wasn't rejecting him, but he must be in terrible pain if that light a touch hurt him while he was still unconscious. Ray bowed his head, miserable, but his mind kept on working, trying to find a solution. He had to save Peter. He had to!

In total darkness the only way left to Ray was to use a ghost trap. It was the least accurate and most chancy method of doing what needed doing, but it had been known to work. It might be Peter's only chance. "Hang on, Peter," Ray muttered under his breath. "I'll help you." Reaching up to grab the trap off his own proton pack, Ray positioned it so it was facing Peter and keyed it open by kneeling on the trigger with one knee. Brilliant light shot out, illuminating Peter's waxy face and half open eyes as he lay on his left side, his right arm flung forward toward Ray, and revealing just beyond him the huge bulk and glowing red outline of the guardian of the corridor just about to pounce on them.

"Oh no," Ray breathed, an instant before the beast let out a bellow of rage and panic as it suddenly elongated and shot past Peter into the trap. Ray thought he saw a burst of glowing power emerge from Peter's chest and follow it in before the doors snapped closed automatically. The plan had worked, and it had zapped the guardian at the same time. Elated, Ray sagged back on his heels and set the trap aside, then he bent over Peter, anxious to see if it had really helped. The unconscious man made a faint, fretful sound and seemed to stretch closer to the touch.

Ray grasped Peter's shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly before he felt for the pulse in Peter's neck. This time, it seemed a little steadier and Peter didn't flinch under his friend's fingers.

Ray didn't think the energy he had drawn off had been enough to ease Peter's condition completely but the guardian's arrival in the trap had made it shut down. He would have to use Peter's trap and try again, but before he could lean forward to fumble for it in the darkness that seemed twice as weighty after the brilliance of the open trap, something happened. The darkness shifted and flowed around him like water, and with a whoosh, Peter seemed to dissolve under Ray's hand, turning insubstantial, one minute there but fluid, like sticking his hand into slime only not so sticky, then gone altogether. "NO!" cried Ray, grasping in vain at the darkness for Peter, only to find nothing but the rocky floor.

"Oh, gosh, Peter," he breathed worriedly. "Are you out, or...." He staggered to his feet, free of the guardian at least, and looked around for the way out.

There it was, a faint pinpoint of light in the distance. Had Peter gone out that way, shot into the past where he would probably have to stop the energy projected by Nexa? If so, how could he do it unless he revived, and how would he know what to do? Ray thudded toward the light, watching it grow bigger and brighter, until finally he burst out into the tower room where lights gleamed inside though the sky outside was just darkening toward night.

He landed hard and turned immediately back to face the mirror, and that's when he saw Peter lying there, reflected at Egon's feet, with Winston standing to one side. All four of them were there, but none of them were actually with Peter. With a cry of dismay, Ray flung himself down at Peter's side and reached for him, his hands sinking to the floor right through Peter's body.

"No," he burst out. "No, no, no."

Above him in the mirror, Egon braced himself and fired.

Ray backed away from the mirror a little, knowing when Egon finished he would be brought home, too. He could see Egon as well as Peter, and he looked up at him, then, as he realized Egon couldn't see his face, he turned to watch the mirror where he could actually see the two of them more clearly, and offered up an encouraging smile. Winston moved into range then, his image clear, though he was misty when Ray turned his head and saw him standing a little distance away. He wondered why they looked more solid in the mirror while their images in the room were transparent. Yet when he'd been in the past, he had not been able to see them without the mirror. Maybe it was because he was in the mirror's present. He and Egon would have to talk it over later.

As Egon fired, Ray could feel the power building in the here and now. He was back in his own time and when he turned his eyes away from the mirror, he saw brilliant bursts of yellow, green and red bouncing off the walls of the tower and gleaming against the windows. He wondered if anyone could see it from the outside. He hoped it wouldn't harm Peter who was lying so close to the mirror in Egon's future and Ray's past.

Sudden white light shot out of the mirror and with a spectacular crack of sound that carried through the overlapping times, thunder echoed the brilliant burst of lightning, the vast of power of the storm the Ghostbusters had used to stop Cthulhu. Egon reeled back dazedly, too shaken by the power that must have been deafening for him, loud as it had been for Ray. Below him, Peter rolled over cautiously as if the thunder had awakened him, putting a dazed hand to his forehead, then pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, his head hanging down. It took him a real effort to lift it. Then the mirror went opaque and all Ray could see was the present day tower and the transparent ghost of Peter, sitting there groggily, holding his head in his hands and a misty Egon looking down at the mirror as if he wanted to examine the downed man, though Ray wasn't sure he could see him.

"Peter's okay," the occultist breathed happily. Though the psychologist looked far from his best, at least he had revived, and that was a good sign the backlash would wear off on its own. If he was awake now, he would make it. He had to. Whether he could pull himself together in time to stop Nexa's influence from freeing the Devourer was another matter. "Oh, gosh, Peter, you can do it," breathed Ray hopefully.

Egon popped out of the mirror, barreled into Ray and knocked the two of them to the floor in a heap between the pentagram and the white circle, Egon crashing through Peter's transparent image as he fell, though neither he nor Peter seemed aware of it. The blond man was solid and real, not a ghost image, and Ray was so happy to see him he wriggled his way free, pulled the shaken Egon to a sitting position and flung enthusiastic arms around his neck. Egon hesitated an instant as if he wasn't sure where he was or if he were still shellshocked from the lightning that must have been overpowering in his portion of the past, then his arms enclosed Ray and he held on tight.

"I'm sure glad to see you, Egon," Ray murmured against the physicist's hair. "That was awful. I was sure I was gonna neutronize Peter." He shivered a little. "I hated it when I heard him scream and knew there was nothing I could do. If I'd caused protonic reversal--"

"You didn't, though I suspect he will feel hung over for some time because of psi backlash," Egon replied hastily and reassuringly, his voice carefully steady. "I am very concerned about him, and I hope we will be able to assist him soon, though you had no choice in which you did." He drew back a little from the hug, though he kept his hands on Ray's shoulder's and studied the younger man with serious eyes. "Are you all right, Raymond?" he asked in concern. "You had no choice in what you did," he repeated firmly. "I hope you understand that."

Ray nodded once, clutching Egon's upper arms for a minute, relieved to be reunited with at least one of his friends. Then he collected himself, climbing to his feet and offering Egon a hand up. The blond man took it, still shaken from the intensity of the lightning bolt, transferring his hand to Ray's shoulder as if for balance. Sensing Egon's need for reassurance was as great as his own Ray said quickly, "Right after you blocked out Cthulhu, I saw Peter wake up. You probably didn't notice; you had to have been blinded for a minute with that light--it even hurt my eyes and I wasn't even in the same year as you were. But he woke up right before the mirror blanked out and got up on his hands and knees. He looked pretty much out of it but he was moving under his own steam. See?" He pointed at Peter's transparent image which was sitting at their feet clearly conscious. As they watched he shook his head as if to clear it, then he pulled the ghost trap off his pack and proceeded to aim it at himself. The two scientists watched the ghostly form of their friend use the trap to draw off some of the extra energy, Ray's grin a mile wide and Egon's face filled with overwhelming relief. They turned and shared a smile, and Ray noticed Egon's eyes were just a little too bright behind his glasses as he pushed them into place with a determined shove. Part of that was the lightning, of course. As close as Egon had been to it, he could well have been blinded. Ray was relieved to see he hadn't been.

"Isn't it great?" Ray cried in delight. "I think he'll be okay as soon as we can get our hands on him and bleed off the rest of that power, though he looks a lot better." He let the relief flow through him like a river. One of his friends was home with him now and Peter was all right, or at least heading that way. His absorption in the experience swept through him and he couldn't hold it back. "Wow, Egon! We were in the past, all of us in different times! Isn't that great?"

"I confess I would have preferred to have a scorecard," Egon replied, his face serious. "You did a brilliant job, Ray. By the time you blasted the frame I had realized why we were in the past, but I hadn't yet had time to understand how to achieve our purpose there."

"It was easy," Ray replied in delight, feeling his cheeks redden at the praise. "That mirror is a real reflector, not just of images but of psi power," he explained eagerly. "Didn't you feel it? I know there's writing all around the edges of the mirror, but there are symbols, too. When I saw the one for Gozer I knew what I was supposed to do and why my part of the prophecy had referred to Gozer. Just think, Egon. All this time we've been alive and safe because we had already come back here and stopped the Devourer from breaking out when ectoplasmic energy was high. Isn't it great?"

"I would say so," Egon sounded as thrilled by the paradox as Ray was, "except it's not finished yet." He stopped as Peter dragged himself unsteadily to his feet and staggered out of range. Light brightened the mirror and Peter returned from switching on the electricity and sat down again, still not quite steady, but alert and moving under his own steam. Egon smiled. "Peter's turn is next, though it looks as if Winston went into the mirror before Peter did, and that concerns me."

"Yeah, it looks like the guardian clawed him up a little," Ray said more soberly, recalling Winston's tattered uniform and the flash of white where he'd bandaged himself just below the ribcage. They both turned to study his transparent image. He had seen Peter in the mirror and the two of them appeared to be attempting to communicate with sign language. "But it's okay now. It won't happen again. Because I trapped him, Egon. I trapped the guardian." He displayed the blinking trap proudly. "I was trying to pull some of the residue from the feedback off Peter and when the trap opened I saw the guardian just about to get him. He just zipped right into the trap. And I pulled a little of that backlash energy out of Peter at the same time. I think we're supposed to put an end to the gate anyway, so it won't matter if the guardian is gone, and he could have broken out when we were shutting down the gateway and caused more trouble."

"Well done, Ray. I feel sure you're right, and it spares Peter and Winston another encounter with the entity." He turned to the mirror. "Odd. I don't see anything in the mirror now, just our own reflections."

"I hope that's not a bad sign," worried Ray, eyes lingering on the glass as he shifted back and forth, hoping to spy Peter or Winston in it so he could get a clearer view than the ghost images. All he saw was the room behind them, though once he thought he caught a glimpse of a stranger with dark hair. When he looked again, there was no trace of him. When he mentioned it to Egon, the physicist took P.K.E. readings and reported only the same levels of ambient P.K. energy they'd been detecting from the start.

Adjusting the meter Egon took additional readings. "It might not yet be time for Peter's confrontation. Perhaps Peter and Winston entering the mirror in reverse order delayed the process. Time passes constantly within the corridor or seems to, so I theorize Peter will have to act first and then Winston, in spite of the order in which they jumped. Yet time in the corridor doesn't match time in the different time zones, but runs concurrently with time here. I estimate it's been several hours since I was sucked in, and it is now dark, which is what I would expect if I'd spent that time here."

"Yeah, but are you sure we're in our own time?" asked Ray. "Want me to go down and call Janine and see?"

"I'll do it," Egon volunteered. "I'll be very quick. Stay in here but call me if anything starts to happen."

"Okay. Hurry, Egon."

The tall physicist passed him the P.K.E. meter and dashed down the stairs. While he was gone, Ray kept the meter active and moved all around the room, checking out the mirror from different angles, but no one appeared in the glass. Ray made sure not to step in the pentagram, but he hesitated beside the white circle. It was probably where Cletus had stood when he had tried to summon the Devourer and it hadn't saved him, but it might well save Ray and his friends when the time came. The Devourer wasn't loose. It was still trapped in the mirror beyond the dark corridor. The circle might shield them or give them a few minutes' grace when the time came.

Egon came thudding up the stairs. "I hurried as fast as I could, Ray," he panted as he burst through the doorway. "I called Janine. She was still at the office. She said she had a feeling we might be in trouble and need her, and she offered to come out with a thrower, but I told her not to. It could be dangerous."

"So you and I are back in our own time?" Ray asked, though Egon's words had implied as much.

"It's still the same day," Egon confirmed. "The time we were gone matches exactly the amount of time that passed for Janine. Yet the mirror took Winston first." He strode over to the looking glass and ran his fingers over it carefully.

"I think that's mostly a coincidence," Ray volunteered, considering it. "I was the first one to walk into the room, so I got zapped first. Was it the same with you? Were you the first one in the door?"

Egon nodded. "Maybe Winston was, too. It may have no connection with the timing of our chosen tasks. Hmm. Interesting," he said in a different voice, his expression thoughtful and intrigued as he continued to explore the mirror's frame.

"What, Egon?" Ray joined him.

"Look at this, Raymond. This clear space was where you blasted the sigil of Gozer. It's gone now, which implies energy from Gozer no longer has power over the gateway. And you'll notice the marks of Cthulhu are gone as well. Proof we have taken action in the past. Proof of our time travel."

"Wow!" Ray slid his fingers over the clear brass space where the embossed signs had been.

"Which is Nexa's sign, Ray?" Egon asked abruptly. "I remember seeing many of these in Tobin's Spirit Guide, but we did scant research of Nexa in the book. I can't recall a sign there." He pulled out his pocket program and ran it, while Ray scanned the other signs, recognizing some of them from his many years' contact with the occult. He wondered if blasting them all would make the mirror harmless. He asked Egon.

The physicist frowned. "It might, but I wouldn't advise it. My readings and research implies that Cletus Vanderberg found a way to open the Gate of Tears. Destroying the mirror will not close the gate."

"Wow. The Gate of Tears. I thought it had been lost for so long most occultists don't believe it was anything but a myth. But it would have had to tie into this side of the Atlantic. I think a lot of the gates are fluid and can move around, but only at the whim of the Old Ones. And that doesn't usually happen. That's why we can always tell when something major's going to break through, because of the power levels. But I don't think anything ever used the Narrow Gate, at least not in thousands of years--I thought it was only a legend myself."

"There is a gate tied to the mirror, and that seems the most likely one," Egon replied. "I--"

"LOOK!" interrupted Ray as he pointed at the mirror. It was changing again, and suddenly other images crowded in beside the reflections of Egon and Ray. "It's starting again."

Peter Venkman couldn't remember feeling so terrible in all his life. His head ached, his heart pounded, his ears rang and his stomach churned. He felt like someone had turned him into a giant bell and was swinging him back and forth while the clapper beat against him with dull tones.

He had finally been pulled into the mirror only to encounter the nasty character Winston had warned him against, a bulky dark shape against the distant light, gleaming red around the edges. He couldn't see fangs and claws but he was pretty sure the monster had them. Most of the nasty ghosts that trapped Peter in places that were hard to escape had them. It was typical. Ghosts never made it easy for him.

The entity was afraid of the thrower, though, and that gave Peter confidence. He was making good time, nearly out, when something else happened, something that stopped him in his tracks and made him yell in outrage that changed all too rapidly to blinding pain.

The darkness vanished in an instant, lighting the tunnel and revealing the bulky, if ill-defined shape of the guardian--it did have teeth and claws--but the light held the intensity of a proton charge at close range. It dawned on him as he struggled to find in the formless shape of the passage that one of the guys must be using a particle thrower on the mirror, and that didn't bode well for Peter.

He screeched as the fiery pain intensified, feeling as if he had inadvertently jammed a finger into a light socket, and though he writhed and twisted as he staggered sideways in an attempt to get out of range, he couldn't fight it. Collapsing in a crumpled heap, he curled up in a ball, and tried to shield himself from the power resonating through the corridor. He thought for a minute that someone was with him, trying to protect and shield him from the pain, but he couldn't really be sure, except that while it continued, the agony wasn't quite as strong as before. He was grateful when the darkness came and blotted out the pain.

A confusing interval followed in which he remembered very little, only a few shaky memories of Ray trying to soothe him, though the touches at wrist and throat, and once on his forehead, seemed to do more harm than good. He wanted to lean into them, grateful for any comfort, but they hurt so much he fought futilely to jerk away. He struggled to talk, to beg Ray to stay with him and help him but he couldn't force out more than a breathless moan.

Then something strange happened, more brilliant light against his closed eyelids, and a strange suction like a vacuum cleaner run over his entire body. It lifted some of the agony free of him, enabling him to let his clenched muscles slightly relax. This time, when Ray felt for a pulse, it didn't hurt as much and he struggled to make his unresponsive muscles lean into the comforting touch. I'm glad you're here, Ray. Don't go. I don't know what's wrong with me, and I'm scared.... But the words wouldn't come out. At least he wasn't alone. He couldn't have stood it if he was alone.

Abruptly, he was moving, yanked away from the comfort, and in his mind he yelled for Ray, though he wasn't yet capable of making a sound. Ray! Hang on. I'm losing you.... He felt himself flying through the air and landed hard, lying dazed on the hard floor. Almost immediately he was bludgeoned with light so bright it made him scrunch his eyes closed more tightly, and with sound so loud he gasped and tried to get up, afraid to lie here unprotected. He managed to push himself up as far as his hands and knees, though he felt queasy and weak, and very cautiously slitted his eyes open as the light began to die. The mirror was beside him, and as he tried to focus on it, something swished past him into it in a flash of blue. Just before the reflecting surface went opaque he got a quick glimpse of a wide-eyed Winston reflected in it.

Then with a groan he pulled himself into a sitting position and leaned against the back of the armchair. "This isn't Peter's favorite thing to do," he muttered resentfully, his voice strengthening as he talked. "Loud noises and bright lights are fine, but I don't like being neutronized. They don't pay me enough for this." He was starting to feel well enough to complain, though the thought of getting up and moving around didn't have any appeal.

Peter pressed his fingers against his temples, massaging his head to ease the ache that lingered there. "Somebody tell me what's going on?" he asked weakly. "Egon? Winston? Ray?"

No one answered.

Peter shook his head fiercely, regretting the motion as soon as he did it. When everything stopped spinning, he opened his eyes again and gazed around blurrily to make sense of his location.

It was the tower room at the Vanderberg house.

Memories cascaded back in a rush and he remembered his long conversation with Cletus Vanderberg, and his entry into the mirror. He was stuck here, wherever here was, though he was pretty sure it wasn't--quite--the same place he had left. This was where the others had come, and he'd just seen Egon sucked into the mirror. Did that mean Egon had done his part, whatever it was, to fulfill the prophecy? Did that mean Ray had done his before him and that was why he had been inside the mirror with Peter? If so, did their tasks involve blasting the mirror with their throwers? That was what must have happened while Peter was trapped inside there. What he didn't know was why?

Cautiously he risked a look around the room. It was night now, deep night, with no trace of lightness in the sky beyond the windows. The electric lights had been turned off, and he was sitting in the darkness. While it was probably a lot better than bright light for his headache, he forced himself to his feet and tottered unsteadily over to the light switch and flipped it on.

The mirror was reflecting again. He watched himself approach on wobbly feet, grimacing at the sight of his tousled hair and ragged uniform. The guardian had taken a few swipes at him, though Peter had been fast enough to elude most of them. He had a slight cut on the back of his right hand, not deep, a series of beads of blood that hadn't run, and there was a reddened welt across his left shoulder that had ended just short of his proton pack strap. From the tattered condition of Winston's uniform, Peter decided he might have been lucky to have only suffered feedback from the thrower attack on the mirror.

Feedback? He could take care of that, couldn't he? Hadn't Ray or Egon said something once about using a trap to bleed off extra power when one of them had been too close to a ghost when it was trapped. Peter was suffering from feedback; that was why he felt his muscles quivering every few minutes. Ray had helped a little, but he hadn't finished the job.

The only ghost Peter had found here so far was Cletus and he wasn't planning to trap him, so he sat down gratefully, still weary, freed his own trap from his proton pack and gripped it in his hands, pointing it at himself. Turning his head away so he wouldn't look directly into the trap, he keyed it open with his foot.

The light stung his eyes again and the suction against his chest was even stronger than it had been before. But after a few seconds, it felt as if negative energy had popped free of his body, and almost immediately after that, the trap swished shut.

Peter took a cautious breath, then let his tensed muscles relax. He didn't feel completely recovered, but at least he felt like he could function. Stretching out arms and legs in relief, he hooked the trap on his pack, knowing he could always open it and discharge the backlash energy harmlessly if he really needed the trap again. He sat there a minute longer, leaning back against the chair, taking long, deep breaths as he tried to gather his strength for the problems to come.

When he climbed to his feet and stared at the mirror again, Winston was watching him out of it.

Peter could have cheered--and did. "All right! Winston, my man," he exulted, spinning around to grin at his friend, though the quick movement reminded him he was still lightheaded, a long way from full recovery.

There was only an empty room behind him.

Whirling back he saw Winston again waving at him from the mirror. He also held up his notebook again so Peter could read it. He must have expected a need to communicate. Peter leaned closer and squinted at the message Winston had written to him.

It was backwards.

He shook his head and pointed to Winston, then the message. Winston leaned forward, looked into the mirror, then muttered something Peter couldn't hear. Tucking the notebook into his pocket, he raised his hands and began to sign.

Peter had been fairly fluent at sign language about six months ago when he'd met and dated Nancy Kingston, a beautiful woman who had lost her hearing at seventeen when an explosion had shattered her eardrums. He had learned all sorts of signs to communicate with her, though she could speak quite fluently. The two of them had enjoyed signing together, though, and Peter had discovered a whole new body language that was very entertaining. It had ended on a high note, by mutual consent, and Peter had not bothered with signing since then though the other three had kept it up. He'd watched them and remembered a little, but he wasn't sure he could remember enough to understand what was obviously an important message.

There didn't seem to be many options, though, so he concentrated. As near as he could get it, Winston was telling him all four of them had been sucked into the past, and not the same past but four different ones. They were here to keep the Devourer from breaking free. Well, that much he'd already figured on his own, but he didn't know why they were supposed to do it in the past. Communication broke down a bit, until Winston resorted to the much slower process of spelling out the key words. Peter 'listened' carefully, denied a chance to be flippant because the signs he remembered weren't particularly useful. He remembered Nancy teaching him how to say, "Screw you and the horse you rode in on," in sign but that wouldn't be a nice thing to say to a pal. And while it might serve against the Devourer, it was hardly what was needed. Winston was talking about Nexa, about Peter facing Nexa again on his own. He had accepted that the prophecy referred to him as the defeater of Nexa, but he hadn't expected to take on the entity a second time. Peter shivered.

But Winston shook his head. Holding up a P.K.E. meter, he gestured for Peter to use his own. The psychologist pulled it out of his pocket and activated it. Bummer. He really could read Nexa, though faint and far away. What bugged him was the surge of power from the mirror, resonating at the same frequency as Nexa.

"Nexa is so powerful his energy is enough to weaken the gate," Winston spelled out, lifting an eyebrow as if to ask if Peter understood. When Peter nodded, Winston went to the mirror and reached out to trace the various signs carved into it beside the writing. Egon hadn't had a chance to translate the text, just the necessary material in the book, but Winston didn't bother with the text. He pointed to one stylized drawing of a bird.

"Aha, the Maltese Falcon," Peter remarked.

As if he'd heard Peter speak, Winston shook his head, and spelled out, "Undying One."

"Gotcha," Peter agreed, nodding. That was what Winston was supposed to do, stop the Undying One's power from lowering the gate. That meant Ray had faced Gozer again, or at least Gozer's energy, and the brilliant light just before Egon had vanished into the mirror meant Egon had taken on the energy of Cthulhu and triumphed. "Only how do we do it?"

Winston tried signing again, pointing to a place at the top of the mirror strangely devoid of embossed devices. "Cthulhu here," Winston signed. "Egon, thrower. Closed gate."

Peter started to grin. If that was all there was to it, he could do it even feeling like he had his worst hangover since Woodstock. He gestured at the frame and looked at Winston. "Which one?" He knew how to sign that.

Winston shrugged elaborately. He didn't know.

"Why is nothing ever easy?" Peter demanded wryly. Okay, so Winston didn't know. But Peter knew Nexa better than anyone in the 20th Century did. Maybe he could figure it out on his own. He'd better try it fast.

A thorough scan of each sigil wasn't particularly helpful. Some, like the one for the Undying One, were clearly representational, easily identifiable with a little thought. Peter even found one sign that resembled the Bogeyman. He'd have to show that one to Egon when he got back where he belonged. Spengs ought to love that. But none of the stylized figures remotely resembled Nexa.

Okay, so much for the easy way. Peter frowned, considering the possibilities. Nexa was a sea creature. Some of the signs contained wavy lines that suggested water. He would be willing to bet one of them represented Nexa, except betting at a time like this was not very smart. He'd be risking not only his own life and Winston's, since both of them were stuck here in the past, but Egon and Ray, his dad, Janine, everybody he knew and cared about, and the rest of the world, a lot of innocent people who didn't deserve to die unexpectedly because a crazy man had been unable to bear the loss of his wife. Peter wouldn't subject the world to the destruction the Devourer was sure to bring to it. He had to find an answer.

"Why is it always little Petey Venkman whose neck is on the chopping block?" he asked aloud. When Winston's reflection looked a question, he gestured away his words and held up his hand in a waiting gesture. Returning to the book on the table, he bent over it. There had been all kinds of fancy decorations around the Latin words, decorations he'd ignored in his need to decipher the message. Maybe, if he was real lucky, some of those decorations would be more than just fancy curlicues. From the way his P.K.E. meter was chirping and blinking at him, he'd better get some answers quickly, otherwise he was going to be reduced to blasting everything but the Undying One and hope it did the trick before it drained his proton pack. He didn't like it out here on his own. Busting ghosts was great when he was with his friends, but he'd done the solo number a few times and didn't like it nearly as well. He'd never been happy with the thought of being left all alone. He wouldn't mind a ticker tape parade in his honor in the works, but what really mattered was finishing this up and getting home where he belonged with the other three Ghostbusters, all of them safe and well.

The designs were all over the page, incorporated into an elaborate border, and his heart sank, then he noticed there was a pattern to it. First a lone sign with a pyramid at the center then three signs in a row, separated from the next solitary sign by a space. The third sign seemed to be a stylized fountain beneath three curvy lines, and the fourth was the Maltese Falcon. Bingo. He even thought he'd seen the three signs in a row before, when they were reading all those pulp stories about Cthulhu. This had to be right.

"Way to go, Super-Venkman," he praised himself. "When you've got it, you've got it."

Even as he lifted his head with a broad grin, the mirror made a crackling noise and burst forth multi-colored light, brilliant green, vivid red, golden yellow, beacons of each color shooting around like a traffic light gone berserk. "I don't think I like this," muttered Peter, pulling out his thrower and turning it on. The lights were so brilliant he had to squint to see the signs, but he edged nervously closer, afraid one long, taloned hand would shoot out of the mirror if he got too close and pull him into that fanged mouth he had seen in the picture.

"Hang in there, Peter," he told himself as he ran his eyes frantically over the sigils, hunting for the right one.

At first he thought it wasn't there, and he moaned, "This isn't fair," as he continued to scan the device. Then, just when he was starting to think he'd made a mistake or the designer of the mirror frame had, he spotted it, midway down the left side of the frame, almost opposite Winston's Maltese Falcon. "All right," he cried, powering up his thrower and fine tuning the beam with the ease of long practice. Dead-eye Venkman, he thought with a grin. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Faster than a speeding bullet.... He caught a glimpse of Winston in the mirror and paused long enough to give him a triumphant thumbs' up sign before he took a firm grip on the thrower and fired.

At first the brilliant colors emanating from the mirror seemed to strengthen then, as he hit his target, the mirror wailed. He hadn't expected sound effects and he almost lost his hold on his proton rifle, but he'd been around too long to give up on his weapon. Tightening his grip, he braced his feet on the floor and poured on the power. "This puppy's gonna lay down or my name isn't Dr. Peter Venkman," he proclaimed.

The thrower bucked and pitched in his hand, requiring all his limited strength to hold it steady. He had been exhausted to start with. In spite of his determination to hold on he wasn't sure how long he could keep firing. "Come on, you mother," he growled at the mirror. "Give it up."

The task seemed to take forever, but in the end it wasn't more than five minutes before the colors began to dim. His arms were trembling with exertion and that worried him, until he realized he was still under the weather from the psi backlash, and worse, the mirror was fighting back. It didn't seem to move and struggle like a conventional ghost, but it pitted its strength against him, and its strength was considerable. Peter felt himself break out in a cold sweat and his legs grow shaky, but he drew his mouth in a taut line and held his position. He hoped it wouldn't take much longer because if he did he would have to take a time out for a nap.

Then the colors erupted forth in a blaze of glory and his heart sank but it was the mirror's swan song; the lights dwindled away to wimpy pastels and then vanished altogether as if the mirror were devouring them. Peter shuddered and lifted his thumb from the trigger, blinking dazedly at the diminution of light. The place where Nexa's sigil had been was marked with a clear bronze circle, smooth and unmarked, as if the threat from Nexa had never existed. Peter sagged back, lifted his eyes to the glass and saw Winston, clutching both hands above his head in the classic boxer's sign of triumph. Then the glass went black and Peter felt himself rushing toward it as if at the speed of light. All the stresses of his passage through the corridor swarmed up and overwhelmed him and when the mirror spit him out in his own time, he dropped to the floor in front of it in a little heap and went out like a light.

Egon pulled Ray away from the mirror when the glass opaqued. He wasn't sure how Peter had found the Nexa sigil, though he must have looked it up in the book; he'd vanished from the mirror in that direction. Whatever it was he'd done, it had worked. But when he emerged from the mirror, he collapsed in a heap at Egon's feet and lay there limp and unmoving, sprawled face downward on the hardwood floor. He was breathing. They could see his chest rise and fall with each breath. But he was unconscious and exhaustion and pain had traced new lines upon his face.

"Peter!" cried Ray in horror and flung himself at his friend. His heart thumping Egon knelt on the other side and turned Peter over onto his side, undoing the straps of his proton pack and helping Ray ease him gently out of it to make him more comfortable. Then he took Peter's pulse, checked his respiration and lifted one eyelid to stare at Peter's eye. He was afraid the psi backlash had been magnified by passing through the corridor so soon after stopping the influence of Nexa, but the steadiness of his breathing and the near normalcy of his pulse was reassuring.

Peter's breathing might be deep and regular, but he wasn't moving. Egon glanced at Ray, who was fussing worriedly over the psychologist, and then back at Peter again. The team was almost complete, but Peter was down. Egon had never liked to see any of them hurt, but Peter was so determinedly strong and alive that to see him sick or hurt always disconcerted him, at least until Peter recovered to the stage of obnoxious invalid, a state he managed with consummate skill. He was a long way from that now, though. Egon sighed, resting his hand on Peter's shoulder and squeezing.

"How is he?" Ray demanded anxiously. "What can we do for him, Egon?"

"Let me take a reading." He adjusted his meter and passed it over the unconscious man.

"Well?" Ray prodded.

"I don't like these readings." Egon frowned. "He was exhausted when he blasted Nexa's sigil. We could both see that. Though he'd pulled off a lot of the feedback energy, I don't think it was enough, not when he was thrust into the corridor again. We both felt the power in there."

"What do we do?" Ray asked, gazing at Egon in wide-eyed alarm. "Draw off more of it? Will that help?"

"I think it might be best. There's not enough of it left for us to locate the precise frequency and draw the energy away, but there's enough to wear him down after the force of the backlash."

Ray's face was grim and worried. "We've got to do something, Egon. I'll do it."

"Your trap has the guardian in it. We'll use mine." He unslung it from his pack and made several adjustments to the dials. "We don't want to overdo it. I've adjusted the power down. It will still have an effect but it won't put as much strain on him. Hold him steady, Raymond."

Ray nodded, propping Peter up a little and settling him with his head on Ray's knee. "I've got him. Do it." He screwed his eyes shut against the trap's brightness.

Egon held the trap facing Peter the way a catcher might offer his mitt to the pitcher and triggered it open. Light shot out and enveloped the unconscious man, so bright it was almost impossible to see the energy rise up along his arms and legs and dance around him, clinging to him for a long moment. "It's working, Ray," Egon cried, relieved, as the golden light met the white and blended with it, vanishing into the trap. It slammed shut and Egon blinked, his eyes aching from a second attack of brilliant light, pain throbbing across his forehead and across the back of his neck.

Peter groaned.

Nothing could have roused Egon and Ray faster from their weary lethargy than a reaction from Peter. "I think it worked," Egon said, his voice cautiously relieved. His color's better now and he seems to be breathing more deeply."

"His pulse is better, too," agreed Ray, his fingers pressed against the side of Peter's neck to feel it. "I think he's gonna be okay. I was so scared...."

Bending over him, they exchanged glances, both of them wishing Peter would bob up and make a smart remark. "You know, it's at times like these I realize how much we rely on Peter to keep us on track," Egon said wryly as he took out his meter and adjusted it again for Peter's electro-metabolic frequency. "His smart remarks can be very annoying, but the world is simply not the same without them. Help me make him more comfortable, Ray." He hoped his matter of fact tones would ease Ray's concern, a concern that was tinged with guilt. Egon would have felt the same, had he been the one to blast Peter, even knowing there had been no other option.

Egon sat down and pulled Peter up beside him, easing his friend's head against his shoulder, supporting Peter with an arm across his back, and Ray found a folded afghan over the back of one of the chairs and spread it over Peter, tucking it firmly under his chin. The unconscious man made a faint sound of comfort and snuggled under it, pressing himself against Egon's shoulder with a smile, though his eyes didn't open. He seemed a lot closer to awareness than he had before they'd bled off the feedback energy, though he'd probably sleep in tomorrow morning--and possibly tomorrow afternoon as well. For once, Egon wouldn't begrudge him the downtime.

"That's right, Peter, you'll be okay," Ray encouraged. "What do the readings say, Egon? How is he now?"

Egon glanced down at the unconscious face that was half turned against his chest and smiled fondly, then he took another reading. "Hmm," he said, as relief finally caught up with him and hit him in the stomach and made it twist as if with excitement. He lifted his eyes to Ray and smiled. "He managed to pull off some of the energy with his own trap," he remarked, gesturing to the faint blinking coming from Peter's abandoned trap. "We did more, mostly combatting the stress of the passage through the corridor. The rest of it will dissipate normally over the next few hours. This is a combination of the energy backlash and simple exhaustion. The pull of the mirror was very strong and he didn't have the resources to stand up to it. He should be reviving soon."

Ray put his hand on Peter's forehead to feel for a fever, smoothing back the tousled brown hair. When he lifted his head it fell forward again and with a grin he pushed it back once more. "Yeah, he doesn't feel so clammy as he did in the corridor."

Peter made a faint, contented sound and turned his head toward Ray's touch, the corners of his mouth turning up. He made a faint sound of contentment and wiggled deeper into the blankets.

"Look at him," said Ray fondly, grinning at Egon in sheer delight. "Just like a big kid, isn't he? He sure loves being the center of attention."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a hedonist," Egon returned, and the two of them chuckled.

"If you're gonna use twenty dollar words, Spengs, I think I'll go back to sleep," muttered a weary voice against his chest.

"Peter!" exclaimed Egon and pulled the other man up to encircle him with his arms, relieved and grateful to hear the familiar teasing tones that reassured him Peter was himself again. As if to prove it Peter grabbed him with all his strength and held on tight, his face a study in sheer bliss.

"Don't you guys ever jump into a mirror without me again," Peter chided sternly, the edge of a tremor in his voice. He caught it immediately, cleared his throat, blinking frantically to get the moisture out of his eyes, and when he spoke again, he sounded much more in control, though he wasn't disposed to let go. "I hate it when you guys decide to play hero games and leave me behind. There were a couple of bad minutes there, Egon," Peter muttered. "I'm gonna track down old Cletus and give him a few good blasts with my thrower for sending us into the past without a rule book. It wasn't fun."

Ray flung his arms around both of them and held on, his face alight with a huge smile. "Gosh, Peter, I'm so glad you're okay," he burst out, tightening his grip around them and pressing his face against Peter's shoulder for a long moment before he finally let go. "You really scared us," Ray continued. Peter sat up slowly, Egon and Ray helping him and holding on until he got his balance. Peter grinned at them and put up a hand to straighten his hair, sneaking sideways glances at the mirror to make sure it met his exacting standards, then he settled back against Egon's shoulder again, not yet disposed to remove himself from the comfort and reassurance of tactile contact. He worked one hand free of the quilt and curled his fingers around Ray's wrist as if to complete the link.

"You gave me a few bad moments yourself, Tex," he admitted. "I especially liked the time when you came in and walked right through me. Scared me and Winston silly. We halfway thought you were a ghost." Egon heard a hollow note in his voice and realized how Peter would have hated that.

"Yeah, but that's not the same," Ray insisted, dropping his gaze and regarding the floor with rapt attention. His voice shrank down to a near-whisper. "I almost killed you, Peter. I had to blast the gate while you were still inside and you could have died from the feedback." His voice ran down unhappily and he refused to lift his head. Seeing Peter looking like this must have brought back all the unhappy memories of his attempt to seal the gate at the time of Gozer.

"You had no choice, Raymond," Egon informed him as matter of factly as possible. "If you hadn't fired when you did, Gozer's energy would have freed the Devourer and after taking on Gozer we wouldn't have been able to stop the Devourer too. We had no way to recharge our packs. As you recall, the firehall was nearly destroyed when Peck shut down the containment unit. We couldn't have done it. We would have survived Gozer only to go down when the Devourer broke free."

"Yeah, but I nearly killed Peter," Ray persisted miserably.

Egon could understand his dismay. The destruction of the human race at the time of Gozer was theoretical but here was Peter, still shaky from the attack on the gate. Ray would have done what was necessary no matter what, but he'd been lucky. Peter was alive and gaining strength fast. Egon caught his eye and nodded expectantly toward Ray, hoping the psychologist would take the ball and run with it.

Peter looked at Ray's bowed head and shot a questioning glance at Egon who nodded again. Peter grinned, his eyes warming, then he freed Ray's wrist and dropped his hand on Ray's shoulder, straightening up a little without pulling completely free of Egon's supportive arm. At the touch Ray jumped a little.

"Okay, Ray, let me get this clear," he said in a mock-stern voice. "You had a chance to save me or to save humanity, and you went for the world? Are we clear on that?"

Ray nodded penitently. "There wasn't anything else I could do, Peter. I'm really sorry. I should have thought of something..."

Peter was silent long enough to make Ray lift his face questioningly, his eyes seeking out Peter in hopes of reassurance. The psychologist shook his head at him, still maintaining the same expression. "You chose the world over me?" he repeated, pretending huge affront. "I'll have to speak to you most severely about your priorities later."

Ray gaped at him blankly, then, when Peter plastered on a big, silly grin, Ray smiled back, tentatively at first, then began to chuckle. "Gee, Peter, I think the rest of the world would have been pretty mad at me if I'd saved you at their expense," he replied, the grin broadening on his face. "Besides, you're one of the rest of the world, too. Either way you would have been dog meat if I didn't fire." Egon nodded with approval. It was a point he'd meant to make himself if Ray continued to display guilt, but Ray had realized it on his own, which was best by far. If anything permanent had happened to Peter.... Egon squelched the thought immediately. There was no point in engaging in such recriminations and speculations. Peter was going to be just fine.

Peter grimaced. "You had to remind me." He tightened his grip on Ray's shoulder, squeezing affectionately. "It's okay, kid. You did what you had to do and you did it good. So did Spengs here. I saw the tail end of that. At least you're not blind and deaf from it, good buddy." He lifted a questioning eyebrow at Egon. "If there's anything wrong, this is the time to admit it," he concluded expectantly.

"I admit I was temporarily blinded and deafened," Egon replied, "but it passed immediately without permanent damage. However, if you should choose to compare headaches...."

"Yeah, you're getting a bruise on your forehead, Peter," Ray noticed and reached out to touch it gently. "What did you do? It doesn't look like something the guardian would have done."

Peter felt for the place himself. "Oh well, that's when I whacked myself trying to jump into the mirror after Winston. It wasn't his turn and I thought maybe I could pull him back. Ever hit a mirror head on? I've gotta say it doesn't have a lot to recommend it."

"It's an experience I've managed to avoid until now," Egon replied dryly. "From the size of that bump, it's one I'll be careful to avoid in future, too. Thank you, Peter. Sometimes one can learn a lot from your excellent example."

Peter made a face at him and sat up a little straighter. The quilt fell away unnoticed and Ray gathered it up and tossed it into the nearest chair. Peter spoke after a minute. "Thanks, Spengs. Glad to know you're so concerned for my wellbeing."

Egon smiled in return. "I do have a question, Peter. How did you recognize the sigil of Nexa? It's something we never knew. Did Winston tell you?"

Peter shook his head. "He didn't know either." Then, the smile blazed upon his face, one of devilment that was pure Peter. "Come on, Egon, it was easy," he cried in sheer delight. "You're the one who's always telling me to pay attention to details, and to notice things, so I did. I can learn from your excellent example, too. It was written in the book, in black and white, right on the page with the prophecy. And you missed it."

Egon slapped his forehead in disgust as Ray scrambled to his feet and studied the book. "He's right, Egon. It's right here. There is so much design all through the book I thought it was just decoration and didn't look at anything but the words."

Peter started to stand, reached out automatically to brace himself with a hand on Egon's shoulder, and levered himself to his feet, reaching down immediately to offer the physicist a hand up. "So when do we get to see Winston do his magic act? I'll feel a lot happier about this whole game when the team is all together again."

"You mean when we have to figure out a way to close the Narrow Gate permanently?" asked Ray wickedly, nudging Peter in the side. "Because all those other times, we just slowed down what was coming. The Devourer is still ready to break free. And it's up to us to stop him."

"They better pay us triple for this bust," Peter retorted. "Because we deserve it."

"But they already agreed on a rate," objected Ray, shaking his head at his friend.

"That was before I knew I was gonna have to time travel and work into the night and get zapped by my friends, not to mention taking on one of the Old Ones, not once, but twice. I deserve triple pay for this one. We all do."

"There's Winston," Egon interrupted Peter's dreams of avarice, pointing first at the transparent image behind them and then at the clearer image in the mirror, gaining the undivided attention of the other two, who joined him in front of the glass, staring avidly into the reflection. Winston gripped his thrower in hand as a kaleidoscope of lights played over him, painting him like a church window mosaic, ever shifting into new patterns. Winston lifted his eyes to the mirror and waved, though Peter was pretty sure he couldn't see them with all that blaze of color. He hadn't been able to see Egon and Ray through it, once they were home again.

"Come on, Winston, you can do it," Peter urged him, crossing his fingers for luck and slinging his arms around his friends' shoulders so they stood together to wait for their forth member to do his job and come home. Egon reached up and draped his arm around Peter's shoulders, and Ray encircled his waist, and so joined they stood and watched Winston fire his thrower with deadly accuracy.

"He got it," Peter crowed when the proton stream hit its target. "He zapped the Maltese Falcon."

Ray chuckled. "It did kinda look like the Maltese Falcon, didn't it, Peter?"

"You got it, kid," said Peter in an atrocious Bogart imitation. Egon winced, but Ray only grinned brighter.

"He's doing it. Look at him. Right on the money. Isn't this great!"

"It is as long as the Devourer doesn't pop out and swallow him up," Peter said. "Because we could still go out in a blaze of glory a year or so ago. This time travel stuff gives me a headache."

"But you already have a headache, Peter," Egon reminded him, just as color blared out and then vanished as the mirror opaqued. "I suggest--" the physicist began.

"Way to go. My man Winston!" Peter exulted, waving his arms in the air and cheering.

"I suggest," Egon interrupted him right back in stern, commanding tones, "that we step aside, before Winston comes--oof!"

Winston shot out of the mirror and hit Egon head first right in the stomach. They tumbled backward, while Peter and Ray yelled a warning and grabbed for them, pushing them sideways before they could land in the pentagram. They wound up in a heap on the floor in front of the table, with Egon on the bottom, Winston's elbow digging painfully into his stomach and Peter's knee just missing his throat as the psychologist yelped sharply in sudden pain. Egon wheezed in a near-futile attempt to catch his breath.

Ray, who had managed to land on top, rolled off quickly and bounced to his feet, pulling Peter up after him. Peter levered himself up quickly, his face a little red, and doubled over again grabbing for his crotch. "Winston," he gasped painfully, "You're gonna pay for that one. Unless I can have a kick to get even."

Ray exploded with laughter and Winston jumped up, trying sternly to control the corners of his mouth. "Sorry, Pete. Better than getting incinerated, though. Sorry, Egon. I bet I winded you."

"You did," panted Egon, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. "However it was worth it to have you back again."

"Yeah, are you okay, Winston? We saw you blast the mirror."

Winston nodded. "Fine. I'm not so sure about Pete here."

Ray turned to the psychologist, who did not look happy. "Are you all right, Peter?" he asked sympathetically.

"I'll never be the same again," complained Peter so strenuously the other three realized he wasn't much hurt. Still Egon shuddered a little at the thought. Some injuries just seemed so much worse than others, and Peter hadn't felt that well to begin with.

"Ray?" asked Peter, lifting his head and trying to straighten up. "I take it all back. Getting zapped in the dark was nothing. Always glad to make a sacrifice in the name of humanity." By this time he was standing upright again, though his eyes appeared a little glazed.

"I'm sorry I laughed, Peter. Want to sit down?" Ray asked solicitously.

"No. I want to stand right here and not move for at least ten minutes," Peter replied firmly, shifting with aching carefulness. "Check on Winston, though. He got clawed up by the guardian."

The other two turned to Winston and started fussing over him, examining the bandage he'd fastened across his abdomen. "How bad is it, Winston?" Egon asked, gripping his wrist and taking a pulse. "You don't look like you're suffering from major blood loss, thank goodness."

"I'm not," Winston assured them, batting their hands away. "It's just a deep cut, messy but not serious. Peter saw me cleaning it up, through the mirror. When this is over, I might need a couple of stitches, but I'm fine as long as I don't have to lift weights or run a marathon. I bet I feel a lot better than Peter does."

"Thanks for reminding me, Winston." Venkman frowned at him sourly, though he couldn't hold a grudge for something that was obviously an accident. He curled the corners of his mouth up in a halfhearted smile and shifted away from the pentagram. He was starting to get his color back. Luckily it hadn't been that hard a blow. "Stupid place to put a pentagram anyway," he huffed, glaring at it reproachfully.

"No, it was put there for a reason," Ray replied at once. "Because if you're calling up demons out of a mirror, you want to trap them right away. That's why Cletus had his protection circle off to one side, not directly in front of the mirror, so when the demon came out, it would move forward first and be trapped before it would see Cletus."

"Yeah, and after he started trying for the old ones and Elder Gods, he needed the protection all the more," offered Peter. He still looked uncomfortable, but part of that could have been the psi backlash or the bump on his head. Egon was certain Peter would claim grievous bodily injury the minute they got home and expect to be waited on for the next few days.

"Started trying for the Old Ones or Elder Gods?" echoed Ray, his eyes lighting. "What do you mean? How'd you hear that?"

"I talked to the guy for a long time. Once he realized we were the Chosen, he stopped fighting us. He doesn't like us much, but I don't think he ever liked anybody much except his wife," Peter explained, grinning at finding himself the center of attention. "I saw him in the mirror, and for some reason I could talk to him there. I think it's because he's dead, because I couldn't talk to you guys when I saw you in there and had to try sign language with Winston."

"Yeah, and you need to brush up, Pete, because you don't remember enough of it," Winston chided.

Peter slanted him a sideways grin. "Don't push it, Zed," he warned. "Paybacks are hell, remember?"

Winston slapped him on the shoulder. "You'll live, homeboy."

"Yeah, but will I enjoy it?"

"You couldn't talk to us because we were in different times, Peter, and the sound wouldn't carry," Egon explained, cutting short the period of frivolity. "But Cletus died here."

"Yeah, he threw himself into the mirror to block out the Devourer," Peter explained. "It was gonna get away from him and break out into the world and he knew it so he used himself to block the gate."

"Wow! That's why they didn't find his body," breathed Ray. "His physical self got sucked in and he died in there and kind of became the mirror, even the house. He could be in any time or even go back and forth. I bet he could stop lesser ghosts from rousing the Devourer too. But some of them were just too powerful." He ran his finger down the page where the prophecy was written. "Isn't it something, guys. We were part of an ancient prophecy. Just think of it. Even before we were born, we were destined to become Ghostbusters and take on those particular ghosts so we could come back in time and do this."

"Now there's an idea I'm gonna spend the rest of my life thinking about," Peter muttered. "That's spooky, Ray."

Ray's face lit up. "I know. I think it's really spiffy. Wow. Makes you wonder what else is in this book."

"I truly hope there's an answer to our main problem," Egon answered.

Peter's eyes rounded and he stared at Egon, his mouth falling open unhappily. He clutched dramatically at his heart. "I didn't hear that. Tell me I didn't hear that, guys? You mean getting zapped in the tunnel and walking through transparent teammates and nearly getting emasculated by somebody I used to call my friend isn't the main problem?" Peter demanded, outraged at fate, though not really at Winston. "And on my day off, too! It's not fair."

Winston grinned broadly and poked him in the shoulder. "Hey, Pete, I was right. You do need a scorecard. Remember Egon's readings before Mrs. Pettigrew even showed up at the firehall? Something nasty was about to break through? That's the other reason why we're here. Because the Devourer's still in there and he's still hungry, right Egon?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

Winston grimaced. "I didn't want to do any more gods," he muttered.

"The Devourer's not really a god, Winston," Ray corrected him, happy to share his knowledge on the subject. Egon was beginning to believe there were few entities obscure enough to stump Ray these days. Gozer had thrown him at first, but that was back when they were just starting out, and since then Ray had amassed a very complete library at headquarters and pored over it in his spare time, encouraging the others to do the same. He and Egon studied and catalogued and even added information to the Tobin computer program back at headquarters. Egon had designed a database of his own to catalog entities according to class, mythos, intentions and various other useful bits of information. Ray loved to play with it, and now he had more to share. "Well, he's sort of a god, but he's a dark god. He's like Cthulhu in a way, even if Lovecraft didn't write about him. He's sort of from another dimension, and maybe he's a god there, but not here. Only he's a really nasty one."

"Yeah, and Cletus brought him here on purpose," Peter retorted, making a face at the mirror.

"I don't suppose he told you why?" Egon asked. That had long puzzled him. Cletus Vanderberg was an occult expert. He had to know the type of danger he'd be letting himself in for if he tried to summon something as mighty as He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, yet he had done it without hesitation.

"Sure he did," Peter agreed. "Spilled his guts to me. But then that's what they pay me for, after all. He was hung up on his dead wife. He knew some of those old gods could bring people back from the dead. All his research from 1927 on was slanted that way. He wanted to play resurrectionist." Peter shook his head. "I told him he was probably too late. She'd have been all nasty and wormy by then." He shivered elaborately, though he was clearly regaining his equilibrium as well as recovering from the kick he'd taken by mistake. He even came over to the table, moving only slightly stiffly.

"And he thought the Devourer was the one to call?" Winston asked in disbelief. "Just on the name alone, I'd have thought he'd have wised up. That wouldn't have been my first choice if I'd wanted to bring somebody back from the dead."

"There are rumors that some of the Old Ones can recall people to life," Ray explained. "Even in the Necronomicon it says Marduk can do that. He should have tried to summon Marduk instead of the Devourer. At least he was benevolent, trying to help people instead of hurting anybody, and going down so he could stop Tiamat from trashing the city. I think that's why Marduk's energy never triggered the gate. All the ones we had to stop in there were malevolent."

"So old Cletus got the wrong number," Peter said, shaking his head. "And now we get to pick up the pieces. Why did I think this job would ever be easy? How do we do it, Ray, you boy genius you?"

Ray scrunched up his face in an agony of concentration. "That's a tricky one. What do you think, Egon? Would destroying the mirror do it?"

"Hey, happy to oblige," Peter said, reaching for this thrower. Egon caught his wrist to stop him and shook his head.

"No, Peter. That would be the last thing we could do. All it would do would be to open up the gateway completely. Right now the Narrow Gate is bound to the mirror. The guardian dwelt in the passage between. I'm not sure which side he was supposed to guard, but he is no longer there. If he was supposed to prevent anyone from entering through the mirror, we're no worse off than before. But if he was a watchdog to the Gate of Tears, that means the passage is now open."

"Yeah, and it means the passage has been open for a couple of years," Winston offered. "I don't like the sound of that."

Egon again shook his head. "No, I don't think that's the case," he said. "Time ran normally within the gate. It was not part of the time shift, simply the means to get there. A time machine might be based in the present, ejecting its passengers into past or future. The corridor did that."

"So let me get this straight," Peter said. "The guardian vanished just now when Ray trapped him. That means any minute now The Devourer could realize he's got safe passage through the corridor and out this end? Can we go home now?"

"That's the last thing we can do, Peter," Egon said sternly. "We must find a way to block the gate permanently. Do you know any ways to do it, Ray?"

"I've heard of a few, but they're all lengthy rituals," Ray replied. "Two of them call for blood sacrifice."

"Yeah, Cletus used a goat and a couple of chickens," Peter offered with a grimace. They didn't find their bodies in the room, either. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"I don't want to wonder," Winston said darkly. "And I don't want to perform any blood sacrifices either."

"You got it," agreed Peter. "Come on, Ray, there's got to be a way that doesn't include the trashing of small animals."

"The way is obvious, though dangerous," Egon replied. "We will have to sever the mirror from the Narrow Gate."

"Yeah, I thought that's what we had to do," agreed Peter. "The problem is how. I hope this isn't another one of those 'cross the streams' numbers. I don't think Vanderberg will pay us if we total his house."

"Crossing the streams. Hmm." Egon considered the possibility. "It might well serve as a last minute solution if nothing else has worked, but I would hesitate to do it, because the chances of our surviving it are not high."

"Then scratch that from the list. I've come too close to being trashed already," Peter retorted. He was clearly regaining his equilibrium and Egon was glad to see it. "So Ray," Peter continued, draping his arm around the occultist's shoulders. "You said 'two' of the rituals needed blood sacrifices. What other ways do you know?"

"Well, one of them involves a lot of chanting. Certain words of power can shift the balance even with a gate like this."

"And do you by any chance know these words of power?" Peter changed his grip until he had Ray in a mock chokehold.

"Well, no, but we can find out," Ray volunteered. "I bet Cletus even has some of the right books here. I think Egon and I should study them, and I can't do that if I can't breathe, Peter," he concluded purposefully, wiggling free and heading for the bookshelves.

"He's wanted to do that ever since we got here," Peter said to Egon in an undertone.

"As have I, Peter. There is clearly some worthwhile material here. It's interesting that the Vanderberg family would choose to preserve this room. Even the paint on the pentagram and the circle is fairly fresh as if it was touched up regularly."

"Come on, Egon, I can't buy somebody in the Diplomatic Corps painting arcane signs on the floor," objected Winston.

"He didn't," Peter said with suddenly realization. "I betcha Pettigrew did. He obviously knew a whole lot more than he ever let on. I wonder if he had ever seen Cletus."

"If Cletus needed the place maintained, I bet he'd talk to Pettigrew," agreed Ray in an excited voice. "This is great. Do you think Cletus pulled him into the mirror?"

"Why would he do that, homeboy?" asked Winston, wandering over to join Ray in front of the bookcase. "I don't see what good it would do. Cletus might have taught him a lot about magic and rituals and stuff, but the guy was a handyman, not a practitioner of magic. The only reason we could do any good in the mirror was because we had our throwers."

"No, wait, there's a really good reason for Darius to disappear." Ray gestured eagerly around the room. "If he vanished without a trace, what was the first thing that would happen?"

"You mean besides his wife getting all shook up?" asked Peter. He frowned, then brightened. "Hey, I think he's got it. We'd be called in, because the place is a haunted house. How else were we supposed to get out here right on time. Of course Cletus wasn't that enthusiastic about us at first. He didn't know we were the Chosen."

"Yeah, but something had to happen." Ray grabbed down a couple of heavy tomes from the shelves, sneezing at the dust he'd stirred up. "Okay, even if he didn't really want our help, I think he knew he had to have it. Because he'd blocked the way before, but he couldn't keep doing it. Once he was dead, his power to block the gate would gradually dissipate. So even if he didn't want us, he might have decided to bring us here. Even if he didn't help us, something might get done. Then when he realized we were the Chosen, he started helping us." Does that make sense?"

Peter fanned his hands at the dust from the books Ray had dislodged. "Yeah, it might. But then where's Pettigrew now?"

"In the mirror?" volunteered Winston.

"If so, we would have encountered him in there, or else the guardian would have got him," Egon corrected. "I think not. Though I'm not certain what kind of man Cletus was, if we're right, Pettigrew helped him over the years. It would be a harsh reward to subject him to the guardian.

But Peter's face had lit as with an idea. "No, wait a minute. I don't remember much about being microwaved in there, but for a while I thought there was somebody else there trying to help me. It was before Ray came because he was still firing. I didn't remember it very well and I don't know even now whether or not I was imagining it. But maybe it was Pettigrew--or even Cletus. If he could help me, maybe he could help Pettigrew, too."

"You mean he's in there and if we separate the mirror from the Narrow Gate we'd kill him?" asked Winston. "Oh, man, I don't like that. I don't know the guy, but he sure deserves a lot better than that, especially if he helped Peter."

They exchanged a look then they moved over to the mirror. Peter tapped the glass. It was solid and unyielding. "Back up a little, guys, and let me try something," he urged, waiving them to either side. When they'd cleared back, Peter leaned first left and right, his eyes traveling over the surface of the mirror.

Light flashed out of it and thunder roared.

When Peter picked himself up from the floor yet again, he was beginning to feel very frustrated. He hurt all over, in places he didn't know could hurt and in places he never wanted to hurt, and he was not a happy camper. "Guys?" he asked worriedly, glancing hastily to either side, his own aches and pains forgotten in his concern for the other three. The lights in the room had flickered but the electricity hadn't gone off which was just as well because it was very dark outside.

He spotted them in the act of picking themselves up from the floor and checked each one of them in turn to make sure they weren't hurt. "That wasn't fun," he said.

"No, but at least it wasn't the Devourer, Peter," Egon replied, his P.K.E. meter in hand. "The readings are higher, and the ambient energy level has risen yet again. I theorize it won't be long until there's enough power for the Devourer to come through. And what's more," he announced, "I'm picking up class four readings now. Cletus, I presume."

Peter's gaze flew to the mirror. There he was, all right, standing within his circle, looking into the glass at Venkman, his arms folded across his chest.

"You wished to speak to me," he said. "I'm here."

"Hey, I can hear him, too," Ray enthused. "This is great. You really have a great library, Mr. Vanderberg."

"I am--delighted you feel that way. Please feel free to avail yourself of it," returned the ghost with heavy sarcasm.

"You summoned us here," Egon said, stepping forward so he could see the ghost and positioning himself at Peter's elbow. "We have theorized you drew Darius Pettigrew into the mirror so we would be called."

The ghost did not seem happy. "This was always my responsibility, as I told your companion." He nodded at Peter. "But of late I began to realize I could not do it alone. I knew of you Ghostbusters. As I am now a part of this house, I was able to watch the passage of the years, to listen to the radio, to watch television, and I learned of you. When the family was in residence, I would watch what they did, but when they were not home, I would on occasion avail myself of the service on my own. Ghosts have always been portrayed unrealistically on television. Such programs as Topper and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir--" He made a disgusted sound midway between a snort and a groan. "I found the news of the world of far more import though I despise the glorification of violence and the way the media tends to make heroes out of the more dramatic villains. No doubt they would have made one of me, had I lived in your benighted time."

Ray was staring wide-eyed, and Egon, too, while busily taking readings, had become caught up in the ghost's words. Peter shook his head, and said, "Okay, everybody's a critic, but if we could cut to the chase here..."

Cletus glared. "Another fault of your time is your impatience."

"That's good, coming from you. Anyway, we're gonna have to close down the Narrow Gate, and that means severing it from the mirror. If you've got Pettigrew in there, you better send him out."

"I find threats both tedious and boring," snapped Cletus. "However, you are correct. He has served his purpose and may now go home. I suggest you step aside unless you want to risk another fall, or, even worse, the pentagram. It is warded and will destroy anything below what you consider 'class seven'." He lifted an amused eyebrow. "Yes, I know of you. I have, in fact, studied you when possible. You, Dr. Venkman, are a frequent guest on the talk shows. You are a frivolous man, though your concern for the welfare of your friends does you credit." He waved his hands in a shooing motion. "Step aside. I do not have time for this."

Peter grabbed Egon's arm and pushed them both away from the mirror, leaving Ray and Winston on the other side. "Get ready to grab the guy when he comes out," he warned. "We don't want him making an ash of himself."

The mirror pulsed again and Darius Pettigrew stepped free of the glass as easily as if he had been jumping off a bus. In his late fifties, he wore a short beard that was going to grey and his brown hair was a little long. He was clad in his handyman clothes; blue jeans and a chambray shirt, with heavy work boots, but there was an intelligent gleam in his eyes that belied the rustic laborer appearance suggested by his outfit. He edged sideways to avoid the pentagram and paused to stare at the Ghostbusters.

"Son of a gun, he was right," he muttered, shaking his head. "He said you boys would come and here you are." He glanced around, saw Peter, and nodded. "You nearly bought the big one in the tunnel, lad. Ayuh, that was a close one."

"Thanks for the assist," Peter said brightly. "Your wife called us in. Nice lady. Very worried. I think you ought to go down and grab the first phone and let her know you're okay."

"I will. But you boys better watch out, because the Destroyer is hard on my heels. He's coming, and I don't think the guardian's there any more to stop him."

"Why didn't he stop you?" Winston asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"Because I protected him," intervened Cletus, his voice emanating from the mirror. "What good would he serve me if I sent him to his doom. In all my work, I never killed anyone, and while I agreed with Ivo Shandor that much of society was too sick to survive, I always felt society would destroy itself without my intervention. Yes, I made a mistake when I summoned the Devourer, but I did what I could to atone for it. I can only say I was obsessed with grief at the time. We all do insane things when our worlds are destroyed. I simply had the power to do worse than the ordinary fool on the street."

"I'd better call my wife," Pettigrew said, edging toward the door.

"Go home, my friend," Cletus called after him. "You have served your purpose and can do no more here."

"Yeah, he's right," Ray called out as the man started for the stairs. "It's gonna be really dangerous here and we might not be able to protect you."

"Good luck, lads," Pettigrew urged over his shoulder. His footsteps sounded gradually fainter as he made his way down the spiral staircase. The door at the third floor of the tower banged behind him and then there was silence from the lower floors.

"Okay, now let's get down to serious business," said Peter determinedly, shifting back into position so he could meet the ghost's stare. "Do you know how to free the Narrow Gate?"

"If I could have done it quickly, I need never have died," he replied wryly. "Surely your friend would have told you as much." He nodded toward Ray. "There is a ritual. I do not know if you will have time to perform it but you must try."

"I don't like magic rituals," Winston muttered under his breath.

Peter couldn't say he was very keen on them either, especially since none of them had any particular skills in that area. Peter wasn't sure he believed a lot of it anyway, though his belief system had broadened considerably as a result of the job. He'd seen too many strange and mystical things to close his mind to the possibilities. Sometimes he just had to get away from it all, take a gorgeous woman out for an evening of dinner and dancing and no mention whatever of Ghostbusting just to prove to himself the world was the way it always had been. But he wouldn't have given up his job for anything, and there was nothing in this life or any other that would have made him give up his friends.

"Which book is it?" Egon queried practically.

"Uses of Magic by Magister Raleigh," Cletus replied.

"We don't have to behead any goats with this, do we?" asked Winston suspiciously.

Cletus' mouth quirked in a near smile. "No, Mr. Zeddemore. No animals will be harmed in the production of this ritual."

Peter grinned at the ghost's parody of the disclaimer often seen at the end of films. He began to suspect Cletus hadn't been quite as black as he had painted, and his main crimes were too great an interest in the occult without proper restraints and choosing to love too well.

Ray held up one of the two books he had pulled down from the shelves. "Way ahead of you, Mr. Vanderberg. I've got it right here." He set it on the table, flipping pages eagerly, slowing down when he realized he was crumpling the corners of what was obviously a very old and valuable book, and turning them much more carefully. Egon joined him, his face intent. Together they studied the various rituals. Intrigued, Peter and Winston wandered over and Peter leaned against Ray's back and peered over his shoulder.

"It doesn't even have page numbers," the psychologist complained. "How can you find what you want."

"It's an old book, Peter," Egon replied. "Books were not always numbered. This one will require particular study."

"I know what I want, Peter," Ray added, still turning the pages, each motion careful and wary, afraid the pages would crumple away to dust at his touch. "I wish I had some rubber gloves. The acid in my skin can damage books this old. This one shouldn't be sitting on the shelf here. It's too valuable. See how the spine is damaged just from the weight of the book."

"And this concludes today's lesson on the preservation of rare and ancient manuscripts," Peter said with a smile. "Fine, Ray, but I think stopping the Devourer is a lot more important than messing up a corner of a page here."

"Not if vital information is on that corner," Egon chided. "You will note, Peter, how small the margins are. The very words we need could well be damaged if Ray is not careful."

"Oh, well, when you put it like that...."

"And you faulted me for impatience," Cletus called from the mirror.

Peter grimaced. "Any idea what part of the book Ray should be checking?" he asked. "I mean if the Devourer comes out, it isn't just gonna be us who buys it. It's gonna mean no more TV for you. Or for anybody, but that's our problem."

"Don't bait the ghost, Peter," Egon said over his shoulder. "He has, in fact, been immensely helpful already. Without his sending Mr. Pettigrew into the mirror, you might have died in there and, with you, all of us when you were no longer there to perform your task as one of the Chosen."

Peter's face had brightened, then it fell again. "I've got it. It wasn't me so much as my chance to take out Nexa all over again. I guess I can tell how much I'm valued around here."

Egon looked him right in the eye. "You are very valued and you know it, but telling you so always makes your head swell, and you can be insufferable as a result."

"Yeah, and you can be pretty smug, old buddy," Peter returned, grinning happily at Egon. No matter how grim things might be, Egon could generally win a smile from him if he tried hard enough.

"The ritual is near the end of the book," Cletus called out to Ray, ignoring Peter's and Egon's byplay.

"Yeah, I think I just found it. Hey, Egon, I need you. It's in Ancient Greek, and I'm not up on that the way I should be."

"Then allow me." Egon turned to the book and Peter followed him, leaning his elbow against Egon's shoulder and reading along with him, though of course he couldn't translate the passages even as well as Ray could. The only Greek Peter knew was fraternity symbols.

"Know any Greek, Winston?" he asked.

"Sure. Kyrie eleison. Kali mera. Part of it from the Mass and the rest is just 'hi there.' I sure can't read the stuff though I do know the Greek alphabet."

"We were in Athens once," Ray told Winston while Egon pored over the text. "Peter, Egon and I. We decided we'd spend part of the summer after Egon graduated and got his Bachelor's hitchhiking around Europe. My aunt Lois gave the fare to me for a present, and I think Peter's dad pulled some scam and raked in the bucks to send Peter over. We had a great time, and when we were in Greece, we all got familiar with the alphabet and a little of the language."

"Sure," Peter said now. "I learned how to order ouzo and retsina. Oh yeah, and Metaxa brandy."

"Yes, and how to say, 'you are very beautiful,' to every woman you met," Egon offered dryly without lifting his head from the text.

"So Peter spent the trip getting drunk and getting laid," Winston mused. "Very educational." He shook his head and Egon, smiling, returned to his perusal of the text.

"No, he didn't," Ray defended Peter. "We all had our share of ouzo. It's pretty powerful. You know what they say about it. One ouzo and you're a bird. Two and you're a crazy bird. And three and you're a dead bird."

"That sounds like Pete's kind of drink all right," agreed Winston.

"But Egon and I didn't like retsina," continued Ray, a remembering look upon his face.

"It tasted like kerosine," Egon put in.

"Yeah, Egon knows the taste of all the major brands of kerosine," explained Peter. "He does research on that kind of thing, that and planning to drill holes in his head. Besides those girls all had brothers. Big, tough brothers. It was more than my life was worth. But I liked the ouzo."

"This is interesting, Raymond," Egon cut in. "It would seem the ritual calls upon certain words of power which, if strong enough, would detach the mirror from the gate and render it inert."

"Is there a problem, Egon?" asked Ray, who had heard the same tone in the blond's voice that Peter had.

"Yes. This is sheer superstition. It isn't based on scientific principles at all," Egon announced in some disgust.

"Oh, is that all?" Peter demanded. "You had me worried there for a minute. You know, Spengs, jumping in and out of mirrors isn't exactly based on Newtonian physics either, but we've been doing it all day. We're messing with another dimension here, and Ray here told me once that when you do that different rules apply."

"Well, they do," Ray agreed. "Come on, Egon, you have to know that. We've time traveled, and your soul was once used as a trampoline. We've got a little green ghost at the firehall who can eat cakes bigger than he is in one gulp. It might all be science we just haven't understood yet. I mean the law of gravity was in effect before the apple fell on Newton's head. Just because people didn't know about it didn't make it any less valid, did it? Maybe this stuff--" and he gestured at the book, "is something we haven't figured out yet. After all, a lot of people didn't believe in ghosts until we learned how to measure and detect psycho-kinetic energy and started using the meters."

"But this is still superstition," Egon insisted. "I've never been entirely comfortable with this kind of thing."

"Come on, Egon, when the Ghostmaster shrank us, Janine used a spell to bring us back to our full size and you didn't object then," Peter reminded him, grinning.

Egon's eyes narrowed. "I can't help remembering the dragon," he said obscurely, and Peter suddenly remembered the dragon the physicist's ancestor had conjured up. Egon had not been happy with that ancestor, considering him a disgrace to the line of scientists and scholars he was so proud of, and in the end he'd felt sorry for the dragon because the guys had been forced to put it back to sleep.

"Yeah, but the dragon was still real," Peter reminded him. He slid his arm around Egon's shoulders. "There are folks who would say the Devourer isn't scientific either, big guy, but that won't stop him from coming through, and this might. We're running out of time here. I say we go for it." He gave Egon's shoulders a squeeze and let go. "So what do we have to do?"

Egon relaxed and smiled. "You're actually right, Peter. This is an historic occasion. Very well. Let's do it. I'll transcribe the ritual, though it will need to be conducted in Greek. First we'll need to light all the candles we can find."

"Have we got candles, Mr. Vanderberg?" Winston called in the direction of the mirror.

"There were always a supply of candles in the drawers," the ghost replied, and Peter reached for the nearest knob and pulled out a drawer. He found candles all right, along with several shrunken heads and a row of candle-holders in the shape of bird claws. He started pulling them out, avoiding the shrunken heads which bore no resemblance to the obvious fakes sold in novelty stores. He had a pretty good idea these were the real thing and that made his skin crawl. He wondered what Cletus had used them for and then decided it was probably a lot better if he never found out.

Ray opened another drawer and joined in the search. At Egon's direction they filled all the wall sconces, set up the holders they found all around the room, banked them on the window ledges and on the table around the two open books, and went back for more.

"Untended fires are dangerous, boys and girls," Peter said in the tones of one giving a safety lecture. "Don't try this at home without a grown-up to supervise you."

"Make sure none of them are in a position to set a fire," Egon instructed. "Destroying the mirror by burning the house down won't close the gate."

"Thank you for that safety tip, Egon," Peter called, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. He generally carried one though he didn't smoke and tended to be vociferous in his protests to those who smoked around him, all the more so because he'd done it in high school and, having quit, now had self-righteousness on his side. He'd been the one to protest the most about all the smoking they'd been portrayed as doing in the first movie. "Geez, around our equipment and everything. You'd think they thought we were dummies," he'd complained. Now he began to light the candles.

Egon's P.K.E. meter had remained activated all this time, though the physicist had adjusted its sound level down so it wouldn't intrude on their research. He'd been taking periodic readings and checking the mirror before setting down the device. All at once, it began to beep audibly again, its antennae shooting upright in a quick surge, little lights blinking so fast they seemed to be lit continuously.

"That doesn't look very good," Winston observed, his match an inch above the candle he was lighting. "What does it mean, Egon?"

"It means we may have run out of time," Spengler replied, straightening up and pushing his glasses into place on his nose. He looked around at all of them. "I shall start the ritual while you finish lighting the candles, but remember, if this fails, we may have to cross the streams to force the Devourer back into the Narrow Gate, the way we did with Gozer."

"I didn't like that," Peter said ruefully, remembering the explosion and fire and all the marshmallow cream scattered everywhere, mostly on his friends. He didn't even want to guess what kind of nasty residue the Devourer would leave behind. "It worked, though. Couldn't we just melt off all the symbols on the mirror and hope for the best."

"That wouldn't work, Peter. If the Devourer weren't coming through it might be a very good safety precaution, but right now we're faced with an immediate crisis." He picked up the book, balancing it across his left forearm, and used his right forefinger to pinpoint his place. Striding over to stand before the mirror, he said to Cletus, "I suggest you withdraw from there unless you wish to be trapped with the Devourer."

"I am a part of this mirror," the ghost explained. "If the ritual works, I will be free from it at last, but you must hurry. I have no desire to exist in the Devourer's realm."

Egon nodded, acknowledging the ghost's courage, then he began to read aloud. "Keep lighting candles," he said in an aside, as Ray pulled open a cabinet beneath one of the bookshelves and found several more boxes of them and started passing them up to the other two.

The room was a blaze of lights, flickering flames casting bizarre and conflicting shadows that danced in all directions, the guys' outlines crossing and blending across the ceiling.

In contrast and counterpoint, the mirror emitted light, too, the first brilliant shades of emerald, vermillion, amber, the sign of the coming of the Devourer. Just like a stop sign, Peter thought irreverently as he watched them uneasily, flickering in no particular pattern, each color distinct as it emerged from the mirror.

Egon's P.K.E. meter lay on the table, blinking and shrilling as if it were about to implode, until Egon nodded at it warningly and Ray hurried over to shut it off. "I guess we know he's coming," the occultist muttered to himself. "We don't need a meter to tell us so."

"Yeah, it's not as if he keeps it a secret," agreed Peter. "What are we supposed to do while Egon spouts this gibberish?" he asked. "You wouldn't think we'd be the 'Chosen' if all we had to do was light candles."

"You will need to carry them around the room, Peter," Egon said over his shoulder. "However, the black ones are the ones that are wanted first." He gestured with his shoulder at the four black candles that sat on the table next to the huge book containing the prophecy. "Each of you take one, and go to one of the corners of the room."

As they complied, he went after the fourth one, balancing the book awkwardly in his left arm while he grabbed the candle with his free hand. "As of now, the mirror can fill the room, expanding the gateway until it even grows beyond the tower. We must draw in the space it can occupy by moving toward the mirror, candles in hand, as I recite the next passage. If we can complete this part successfully, even if the Devourer enters the room, he can go no further than the mirror--without intervention."

"And just what form is this intervention going to take?" Peter asked uneasily as he reached his designated corner. This sounded bad.

"Other ghosts," said Ray at once. "They'll sense him and come, and if enough of them come, the barriers will go down. But it'll delay him and give us time to finish the ritual, if we're quick."

"Sure and then fight umpteen million ghosts," muttered Winston. "To think I could've been working construction with my dad."

"You love this, Winston," Peter reminded him.

"Yeah, when we're winning."

Egon gestured them to move closer to the center of the room as he started reciting again. He had to hunch over once to keep the book from falling, and Peter winced and held his breath until Egon stabilized it by bringing up his knee to prod it back into the curve of his arm. When he started reading again, the four men advanced on the mirror, candles in hand, trying to time themselves to reach the mirror at the same moment.

Peter looked into the glass and saw the Devourer looking out.

"He's in there, he's in there!" he babbled, fighting down the urge to fling his candle away and run as fast as he could and never look back. The Devourer was worse in person than he was in the book, bigger, meaner, hungrier. Peter shivered at the sight of the slobbering mouth, the hard, black eyes. He was sure the Devourer was watching him, reading to jump out of the mirror and take a big bite.

"Yes, Peter, I know," Egon replied levelly. "He's not actually in the mirror per se, however, but he's now in the corridor. Cletus' hold is weakening. He can't maintain it. Hurry."

"Egon, I'll take an SST if that will help," Peter volunteered as the four of them met and surrounded the mirror. "Now what?"

"Now we each reach with our free hands, and clasp the arm of the one beside you," Egon instructed. Peter was to his left, so he slid up his right hand holding the candle so Egon could grasp it without dropping the book, while he reached out to grab Winston's hand with his left. Winston reached behind the mirror for Ray, who edged up to the right side of the mirror and curled his fingers around Egon's right wrist.

"Excellent," Egon breathed and began to speak rapidly in Greek. The surface of the mirror puckered and twisted, pulling itself and the frame out of shape as if it were no longer glass, wood and brass but a new and unfamiliar malleable substance, and a long claw emerged right through the glass and poked at Egon, who jerked himself sideways to avoid being skewered and nearly dropped the book in the process.

"Look out, Egon!" Peter started to free his hand to grab his thrower, but Egon cried:

"No, Peter! Don't let go! Whatever you do, maintain the grip, everyone."

"But he's gonna get you," Peter yelled, his voice shooting up an octave as another claw emerged and poked at Egon, just barely brushing one of the straps of his proton pack before it withdrew again. Egon sucked in his middle and arched his body backwards to avoid it, then straightened again.

"Hang on, don't let go," Egon cried and began to read faster. The glass churned and bubbled like the clouds in a tornado sky, stretching and popping as more claws pointed through. Egon's words almost ran together, he read them so fast.

The colors erupting from the mirror were so brilliant and bright it hurt Peter's eyes to look at them but he didn't dare to look away. He could see the snout of the Devourer now, limned against the expanding glass that flowed like molten metal, adjusting its shape to the monster that was struggling to break through. The snout itself nearly filled the glass, but the frame, too, was growing, expanding, growing taller, then wider. Peter knew if it became much wider it would break the grip the four men had on each other and force them back, their job unfinished, and he clung to Winston's wrist, feeling Egon's fingers digging into his forearm hard enough to leave bruises, the book balanced jointly between them.

"Anybody notice this mirror is getting a whole lot bigger," Winston called in alarm. "We can't hold it much longer."

"Just hang on as long as you can," Ray warned him. "Egon's nearly done with this part."

"This part?" Peter cried incredulously. "How much longer does all this fun and games last anyway?"

"It's a long ritual, Peter," Ray chastened him. "All we're doing now is making sure the Devourer can't get out of the tower. We still haven't severed the mirror from the Narrow Gate."

"Oh. Good." Peter glared at the entity, wincing as the mighty head shifted, revealing daggerlike fangs. "Why do they always have to have such big teeth?" he demanded unhappily.

"The better to eat you with," Winston replied sotto voce. "Except this sure isn't Grandma's house and I'd take the big bad wolf any day over this character. Can't we use our throwers, Egon?"

"No," replied the physicist. "Not yet."

Suddenly the Devourer surged forward and his snout finally emerged from the glass. He opened his mouth and nipped at Egon, who gasped out three quick words then jerked back just in time to keep from being swallowed in one gulp. "It's done," he panted, gesturing them to move out of range.

"You mean he can't get out?" Peter asked hopefully as they let go of each other's wrists and moved backward hastily to avoid the snapping teeth. The mouth was as tall as Peter, and he suspected it would be bigger still if it could get out of the mirror and expand to its full size.

"Not yet," Egon replied, setting aside his candle and flexing his fingers with relief. "All we've done is trapped him in this room."

"In this room? With us? Goodie." Peter helped him lay the book on the table; it was huge and heavy. "What does the rest of the ritual do?" he asked.

"It forces him back into the corridor," Egon explained. "Once that's happened, if we detach the mirror from the Narrow Gate, he'll have no choice but to retreat through it, because the corridor will collapse and there will be nowhere else for him to go but oblivion. I doubt he would choose that option."

"It sure wouldn't be my first choice," agreed Ray, coming around from behind the significantly larger mirror. "Gosh, the frame is all twisted, isn't it? It was a nice mirror before. I thought maybe we could have kept it, you know, so it would be safe."

"I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want it in the firehouse," Peter disagreed. "Anything that can pull Ghostbusters into the past isn't something I want to keep around after tonight." He looked at the growling beast who made quick, darting snaps to test the field that enclosed him. "Especially when something like that might come out of it."

"It's going to start attracting ghosts any minute," Ray said, picking up his own P.K.E. meter and making quick adjustments on it before turning it on. "I filtered out the Devourer," he said. "He's too close and too powerful and the meter would blow up otherwise. I want to see if any other ghosts are coming."

"And?" asked Egon as he studied the page in Uses of Magic.

"The readings are starting to climb. If we don't hurry we'll be hip deep in them before midnight. And if we can't get it done, every ghost on the Eastern Seaboard will be here before morning."

"You're a regular Pollyanna, you know that, Ray?" Peter asked teasingly. "So come on, Egon, you nutcake, tell me you've figured out how to make Mr. Big Teeth go bye-bye?"

"The ritual is geared to force him back into the mirror, but I am not certain it will be strong enough to do it. The author of this book foresaw demons as the main problem. He didn't anticipate anything as powerful as the Devourer. None of our traps would hold him, so we simply can't trap him, and even if we spread him around through all the traps, I doubt the containment unit could hold him indefinitely. He'd cause a steady drain of power. We can't use the equipment that way. I'll try the text, but I'm beginning to believe crossing the streams might be our only option."

"Too bad we can't use his lights like a traffic light," Peter said. "It's all the right colors. What are those colors for, anyway, Egon? Ray?"

"I thought it was something like light from a prism," Winston offered, "you know, breaking light down into its component colors."

"Yeah, but green isn't a primary color," argued Ray. "It should be blue if that were the case."

"Okay, but you said the natural laws were different in the other dimensions, Ray," Peter reminded him. "Maybe they have different primary colors, too."

"Impossible, Peter," Egon replied. "Though I do believe the colors to be significant. Still, it may have something to do with the visible spectrum of light in that dimension, which could vary. I wonder if I could adapt the thrower to produce light that would be harmful to the entity. You'll notice he has timed his arrival to be in darkness. If his visible light spectrum is different from our own, it's entirely possible we could adapt our throwers to emit energy that would reflect colors harmful to him and thus drive him back voluntarily."

"Yeah, with those big eyes, it might even blind him," Winston agreed. "I like it. Can you do it?"

"I'll have to take readings. Ray, you can pronounce ancient Greek, even if you can't translate it all, can't you?"

"I think so," the occultist replied.

"Good. Then you continue the ritual. Just read this passage here. It doesn't require any accompanying action. While you do that, I'll see if I can get readings that will determine the entity's light perception. A hot blue light might affect it enough to make it withdraw."

"I thought green was a combination of blue and yellow, Egon," Peter argued. "And you're not talking about infrared or ultraviolet here are you? Maybe if we stuck a black light in one of the light sockets...."

"Black lights give me a headache," Egon replied as if that were the deciding factor. "Remember, we are dealing with an alternate dimension. In our dimension and in the structure of our vision, the visible spectrum has wavelengths between 3,800 and 8,000 angstroms and when it is of the right intensity it invokes colors in the eye. The visible spectrum ranges from red to violet. This appears to be a constant."

"Thanks for the science lesson, Spengs," Peter muttered with a grin.

"Well, I've heard of science fiction stories where the aliens saw a different range of visible light than we do," offered Ray breaking off his hesitant reading of the ritual words to argue his point.

"That was fiction, Raymond."

"Yeah, but it's possible we're getting these colors because they are the ones he can see best," argued Ray, "so I think it's worth a try. If it doesn't work, we've only lost a little time, and we can still cross the streams if we have to. Only I hope we don't have to."

"Gotcha," agreed Peter. "Okay, Egon, what do we do?"

"I'll have to adjust the throwers," Egon replied, unshipping his own and beginning to tune it with a small screwdriver he produced from his pocket, his face screwed up in concentration. His glasses slid down his nose, and Peter leaned in to push them into place with his forefinger. "Thank you, Peter," said Egon, not sounding especially grateful. "Keep reading, Raymond. I believe you're having an effect." Ray grinned and continued spouting his butchered Greek.

Peter shot a nervous glance at the beast's monstrous snout. It hadn't withdrawn and it still took angry bites of the air in front of the mirror. Peter wondered what would happen if it pitched forward and hit the pentagram.

"Hey, Egon? What if Winston and I pushed the mirror over? Wouldn't he land in the pentagram?"

"Yes, Peter. However, he is too powerful to be incinerated. He is also large enough to shake himself free, though not with complete impunity. He would be burned, but not fatally, and I suspect it would make him quite angry."

"Well, hey, then let's pass on that," Peter decided quickly, uneasy with the thought of angering the slavering monster. He was bad enough the way he was right now. "Just a thought."

"It was not a bad one," Egon replied. "There, I'm done. Now to consider. Would it be more effective to alter all four of them and present him with a concentrated beam, or to try one first to make sure it works?"

"Four would hurt him a lot more," Ray volunteered.

"Keep reading," the other three chorused. As Ray had spoken the foreign words, the mirror had seemed to contract slightly as if seeking its natural shape. It had curled in around the entity, causing it to bellow and shake its vast head in a vain struggle to free itself. It was powerful enough to shift the mirror sideways though, and Winston had to jump back in alarm to keep from being knocked down by the dancing looking glass.

"Hmm, that could be very bad," Egon observed as he powered up his thrower.

"Bad? You know I hate it when you say bad, Egon," Peter wailed.

"If the mirror shifts physically outside the zone in which we've bound it, the Devourer might break free, at liberty to roam at will.

"Oh, great, Egon," moaned Ray. "You'd better do something, because I'm at the end of that section and I don't think it worked."

"You'll have to zap him," Peter encouraged the physicist. "We'll be right behind you, and if it doesn't work we'll cross the streams."

Egon braced himself, spared one quick look at each of his friends as if to acknowledge the risk he was about to take. "It has been an honor working with you gentlemen," he said, and stepped in front of the mirror, thrower firmly gripped in both hands. The other three moved with him, automatically shifting to avoid the pentagram. To Peter's horror, the mirror shifted with them, the entity tracking them, aware of their movements. Peter wasn't sure if it had understood what they meant to do or not but maybe it had. That made him really nervous. He could see the gleaming black eyes behind the snout, still confined within the mirror, but watching them with intelligence. Whether it could outsmart them or not he didn't know. The odds were no one had ever used high tech against it before, or spoke English to it, if it came to that.

"We're with you, Egon," he said, reaching out to drop a hand on the physicist's shoulder. "Go for it, big guy."

Egon powered up and fired, the energy stream erupting from the thrower in a burst of brilliant blue sparks. He aimed directly for the creature's closer eye, the beam lancing into the mirror on a direct line with his assumed target. The beast bellowed a cry of acute pain and the whole mirror lifted right off the floor, hovering above them. It tried to slam down on Egon's head, but he darted sideways at Peter's and Winston's warning yells and it just missed him. One of the feet that supported the mirror snapped right off, but it didn't matter because the mirror no longer needed it for balance. It wasn't sitting on the floor; it was jammed on the Devourer's snout, moving about as the powerful entity shook its mighty head.

"Gosh, Egon, look out," Ray cried. "It doesn't like it."

"Adjust your thrower, Ray," Egon called, dancing back and forth to avoid the mirror as it came at him again and again like a sledgehammer in an attempt to drive him right through the floor.

The blue light obviously hurt the entity, because every time Egon fired and struck the target, it roared and thundered in pain, shaking its great head as if to dislodge the agony. So while Ray worked frantically to adjust his thrower to emit energy that was bright blue and Egon played dodge-em with the mirror, Peter powered up his own thrower and let plain old proton power do its work, gesturing for Winston to join him. He was pretty sure the normal throwers would do no more than provide an irritant, but if it distracted the Devourer from slam dunking Egon until Ray was ready to provide backup, then it was worth it.

When Peter's stream hit the entity right on the end of the nose, it roared, shook its massive head and turned around, looking for the new annoyance. Winston fired then, hitting it full in the mouth, and the bellow that emerged was enough to shake the room. Half-deafened, Peter stood his ground and fired again, then Egon took a shot aimed at the eyes once more. That was the deciding factor. It slammed itself at Egon with the speed of an express train, and Peter powered down and jumped for the physicist to tackle him and get him out of the way.

He was an instant too late. The mirror crashed down, just grazing Egon with its pounding force, but it was enough. Egon's body jerked then he tumbled to the floor in a welter of arms and legs like a marionette whose strings have been cut, his glasses flying free and landing with unerring accuracy in the cushion of the softest chair in the room. In a fierce adrenalin rush Peter forgot his own lingering weakness and grabbed the physicist, seeking shelter for them to retreat to until Ray was ready. Winston poured on the power full blast with his thrower but it wouldn't be enough.

"The circle!" Peter heard the voice not with his ears but directly in his mind, and surprised himself by recognizing it as Cletus. He was already moving in the right direction, and he remembered the ghost had used the circle for protection when conjuring up spirits. Maybe it would still work. Besides, he thought as he scooped Egon up in his arms and jumped for the circle a second before the mirror crashed down in the spot where the unconscious man had been only seconds before, there's nowhere else to go.

The mirror jerked and hovered overhead, the beast cranking his head backward and forward as if his prey had vanished without a trace. Peter put Egon down carefully, hoping his abrupt movement had done no further damage. He looked down into the shuttered face, noting the start of blood on his forehead from a hairline cut just above the temple. "Oh, damn it, Egon," he muttered and rammed his fingers up against the side of Egon's neck to feel for a pulse, his own heart hammering so hard he wasn't sure if what he was feeling was Egon's pulse or his own.

Yes, it was there, it was beating, Egon was alive. Peter allowed himself one blinding flash of relief, lowering his face against Egon's hair, then he said quietly, "Sorry, Egon, I'll get back to you when I can." Sitting in the middle of the circle with Egon sprawling across his lap, he pulled the other man up against his shoulder and felt along the cable for Egon's modified thrower. Pulling it to him hand over hand, he grasped the handle at last, aimed it at the hovering mirror and fired the bolt of brilliant blue directly into the creature's face.

Since Peter and Egon appeared to be invisible to the Devourer from their place within the circle, the painful light must have seemed to appear out of nowhere to half-blind the huge entity. It bellowed again, and Peter groaned at the noise, wishing the circle blocked sounds as well as it blocked the monster itself. Against his shoulder, Egon moved feebly, but he didn't rouse, and Peter freed one hand from the thrower and wrapped it around Egon's shoulders to hold him in place. His fingers encountered something they shouldn't. Egon's shoulder felt wrong.

"Think he dislocated it, Pete," Winston called as if he'd seen the realization on Peter's face. "It looked like it grazed his head then whacked him on the shoulder. I can see him breathing. No, don't look, keep firing."

Peter obeyed, resting his chin against the top of Egon's head, and shifting the circle of his arm to avoid doing any further damage to the injured shoulder. The thrower seemed light in his hand and he realized the new configuration wasn't sending as much power through as normal. Just as well since nothing but the necessity of saving one of the guys would have made him loosen his grip on his friend. "Hang in there, Egon," he muttered to the unconscious physicist. "I've got him on the run."

"Okay, Peter," Ray hollered, the worry he felt for Egon thinly disguised in his voice. "I'm ready. Let's get him. I'll take his left eye, you take the right."

"Gotcha," agreed Peter. "Now!"

The two blue streams lashed out at the entity, and this time it howled like a dog and shook its great head so violently it nearly dislodged the mirror. Neither man stopped firing, Winston darting around behind Ray, trying to make sure the creature wouldn't turn his head and put itself out of Peter's range. It quivered and shook with each beat of light as if it were suffering exquisite torture, jerking at the mirror with great, convulsive heaves that rocked not only the mirror but the tower itself.

Peter held Egon against his heart and poured on the power, everything narrowed down to two things, his worry for Egon and his need to stop the beast. The rest of the world was remote, unimportant, as he fired until his hand began to tremble with the need to steady the thrower. It wasn't really that heavy, until he had to hold it for long periods of time, and then it always seemed to weigh a ton. He realized as he struggled to keep it aloft how drained and worn he really was, but he couldn't let himself think about that. There was no choice; if he flagged now, his teammates would be toast. Bracing himself, he clenched his teeth and continued firing.

The Devourer kept shaking and yanking at the mirror, and all at once, with an audible popping sound, his head retreated from the glass. One long taloned hand reached out for a second, but Winston's thrower at full streams sent out an energy pulse at it and it pulled it back. The instant the entity no longer impeded the glass in the mirror, both the Devourer and the reflection of the room vanished, the glass opaquing. Quivering, the mirror twisted, arched, and shifted back to its normal shape, then with a bang, the glass shattered, making Winston and Ray duck for cover, and Peter fling himself over Egon, shielding him with his own body. He felt a few shards of glass bounce harmlessly off his pack and something light hit his head and fall away again. Broken glass rained down upon them, pattering around like raindrops, gradually fading to one or two late tinkles of sound, then silence.

Peter lifted his head, shaking it to dislodge any small fragments of glass. He shot one glance at the mirror that slanted sideways against the table, all the symbols melted from around the frame. It looked like it had been in extreme heat that had made the metal melt and run like wax. A few shards of glass still clung to the edges of the mirror, but that was all.

"Anybody get skewered by all that glass?" he asked anxiously.

"No, we're fine," Winston told him. "How's Egon?"

Peter bent over his unconscious teammate, easing him carefully flat with special attention paid to the injured shoulder. Winston had been right. It was dislocated all right, and it was going to hurt like hell when he woke up.

If he woke up.... Head injuries were nothing to mess with. Peter stiffened himself against the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach and dug into his pocket for a something he could use to stop the bleeding. He found a handkerchief--the team carried them more to clean the equipment in an emergency than for the normal reasons people had them, and this wasn't the first time Peter had used his as a makeshift bandage, the work being dangerous even when there weren't Old Ones to mess with. Folding it carefully, he pressed it against the cut on Egon's forehead and looked around for something to hold it in place.

His face white Ray knelt opposite him, wide, concerned eyes meeting Peter's before looking down at Egon. He held out a strip of Winston's ever present duct tape. "Tape it in place," he said. "We can always clean him up later."

Peter obeyed as Winston came up behind Ray, cutting free another strip. "I knew this stuff would come in handy some day," he said. "How's Egon?"

"Don't know," Peter replied. "He's breathing regularly. I think he's only stunned. Yo, Spengs?" he tried wishfully. "Can you hear me?" Egon didn't stir or make a sound. Peter sighed.

Ray secured the last piece of tape and lifted one of Egon's eyelids, then the other. "His pupils are equal and reactive," he said. "It looked like a glancing blow to the head. His shoulder took the worst of it." Carefully he eased Egon's arm into a more comfortable position. "We'll have to take him straight to the hospital."

"Check for broken bones," Winston urged, kneeling beside Ray and dropping a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I don't like the idea of moving him, but I sure don't want to wait here any longer."

"We'd better immobilize his arm," Ray offered in the background. "When he wakes up it's really gonna hurt and we should have the hospital put it back rather than any of us trying it."

"Good idea," agreed Peter, who felt a little sick at the thought of trying to force Egon's shoulder into place on his own, or even with the others' help. "So what should I use?" He moved Egon's arm carefully, placing his hand across his stomach.

"What do you think?" Winston hauled out his roll of duct tape again. "I'm gonna write to the company and let 'em know how useful their stuff is. This ought to keep his arm in place, don't you think?"

"Great idea," agreed Ray as Winston began to unroll strips of the tape. He and Ray carefully bound Egon's upper arm against his side so he wouldn't move it inadvertently when he woke up, while Peter held the limb steady. Fortunately for the physicist, who would have been in a lot of pain during the process, he remained unconscious while they worked, though that didn't reassure Peter or the others any.

When they had finished, Winston looked around the room. "Ray, what about the gateway? Did your spell finish it, or is there more to do?"

Ray frowned, glancing over at the mirror. Peter shot a look in that direction, too, but the mirror looked perfectly normal, for a piece of furniture that had been tap dancing around a room. He returned his gaze to Egon, resting the back of his hand on Egon's forehead to try to tell if he was feverish. He didn't think so, but then Peter was probably a little feverish himself from that energy backlash and the boot in the family jewels so he wouldn't be the best one to judge. He couldn't tell for sure. He let his hand slide down across Egon's cheek, to come to rest on his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath his fingers. "Anybody see his glasses?" he asked. It seemed important that Egon have his glasses.

Winston retrieved them and passed them to Peter, who checked to make sure they weren't broken then settled them carefully on Egon's face and slid them into place with his forefinger. The gesture tugged at his emotions, and he glared at the mirror as if it were alone responsible for his friend's condition.

A hand came around his wrist and pulled. He looked down to see Egon squinting up at him blurrily, his eyes half unfocused but holding awareness. "I can adjust my own glasses, thank you, Peter," he said in a voice that was not as steady as Peter would have liked.

"Egon," Peter cried in relief. He would have liked to give the physicist an enthusiastic hug, but he was afraid any motion would be bad for him right now, so he put his hand on Egon's good shoulder and squeezed. "You scared us, big fella." Sitting back on his heels he realized he was grinning like an idiot.

"I think I scared myself." Egon frowned, pain clearly visible on his face. "Is my shoulder broken?" His voice was carefully level as if he would be moaning in pain if he didn't control it. Peter winced at the sound of it. He'd dislocated his shoulder once and while it was something that could be easily treated at the hospital, it was not fun.

"Hurts, does it?" Winston asked, leaning over Ray's shoulder and gazing at Egon sympathetically. "Stay quiet, big guy."

"It does hurt--considerably," Egon admitted, gnawing on his bottom lip. His breath caught and he tensed up against a wave of pain.

"It's only dislocated," Ray reassured him quickly. "I know it feels bad, Egon, but it's nothing permanent and we'll get you fixed up as soon as we can. Peter's right, you scared us. From where I was sitting it looked like that mirror nearly took your head off."

"Yes, my head hurts, too," Egon confirmed reaching up his good hand to feel for the injury, shifting his fingers exploringly across the bandage. Peter caught his hand in both of his own, squeezed it, and pulled it away from the injury, moving carefully not to jar the downed man's shoulder.

"Easy, Egon. Let it alone. You'll mess up my expert surgery."

"You mean the team's expert bandaging," Winston corrected.

"Whatever." Peter smiled down at Egon. "Then we'd better head for the nearest hospital to get your shoulder popped in, and Winston stitched up. You look lousy, pal, and I for one prefer you healthy and picking on me to flat on your back."

"So do I. Besides, I want a doctor to test you and see if you're recovered from the energy feedback," Egon agreed, shifting slightly to ease his shoulder, then gasping at the movement. Peter caught his good shoulder again and gripped it reassuringly as a wave of pain ran through Egon. Finally the physicist relaxes as it eased a little. "Assuming, that is, that the gateway has been severed from the mirror," he concluded, looking up questioningly at his friends. Trust Egon to go right to the heart of the matter, no matter how terrible he felt.

"Oh yeah," Ray sounded surprised, glancing up from the P.K.E. meter in his hands. "It sure is. I was just checking to be sure."

"Nice of you to tell us, homeboy," Winston muttered. "We weren't sure if we were done or not."

"Well, we might not be if not for that blue light," explained Ray, getting his second wind now Egon was conscious and alert. "Our problem was that the Devourer was nearly in our world, sort of like a salesman with his foot in the door. If we could get him out of there, then the part of the ritual I read would keep him out and sever the door forever. But he didn't want to let go. I think he was stuck in it. But he hated that blue light so much he finally yanked free, and that's when the ritual words kicked in. The mirror's just a mirror now and all those symbols are gone. The Devourer can't come back, at least not here and now. And we're the only ones besides Mr. Pettigrew who know anything about the Narrow Gate."

"Then I think it would be a very good idea if we went through these books and made sure none of them that mention it are out where people can find them." Egon tried to sit up and sagged back, clutching at his shoulder, the color draining from his face.

"Let that be a lesson to you," Peter said sternly, putting his hand flat against Egon's chest, fingers splayed, to hold him down, "not to try anything until Dr. Venkman says you can. We'll help you up, but only after you tell us if you think you have any internal injuries or if anything might be broken." He hated it when one of his buddies got hurt. Egon had a tendency to seem invulnerable and it was always a shock when he proved he wasn't--and when he let it show.

Egon considered it while Ray and Winston ran their hands over his limbs to make sure, then shook his head. "No, I'm sore, but nothing feels serious except my shoulder." His eyes were clearer now, and when they helped him up very carefully, he blinked hard a few times, caught his bottom lip between his teeth once more, and then relaxed slightly, though he still braced himself against new pain as Peter steadied him carefully to make sure he had his balance. "Thank you."

"What about Cletus?" Peter asked as they guided Egon to the nearest chair. "Was he destroyed when the mirror blew up?" Suddenly he realized it mattered to him quite a lot. Though Cletus had precipitated this whole mess, even down to causing Egon, Winston and Peter to be injured, he hadn't done it out of maliciousness or a desire to put the 'fools' in their places, but instead he had done it for love. Peter could understand that motive even if Cletus' goals had been misguided. The more he'd talked to the ghost, the more he'd seen past his smug contempt for humanity and realized that beneath that cold exterior was a person who had given his own life to save the world. He hoped Cletus hadn't been deresolved in the blast.

"I am here, Dr. Venkman."

Peter didn't loose his grip on Egon's arm, but he brought the unsteady physicist to a halt and turned. Without the mirror to reflect him, the image was no longer clear, but Peter could see the outline of the man in the brown pants and vest standing in the white circle where Peter had shielded Egon from the Devourer.

"So what happens to you now?" Peter asked while Ray and Winston eased Egon down on one of the hard chairs and began to gather up their equipment and blow out the candles that hadn't been snuffed out in the wind of the mirror's mad dance.

"You could always trap me and put me into your containment unit," Cletus responded. "I would be with other ghosts."

"Yeah, and most of 'em aren't as literate as you," Peter replied. "I don't think much of that idea." He couldn't trap someone he'd talked to, had come to know, and the guys had better not suggest it. "But there's nothing for you here."

Ray held up his P.K.E. meter. "All that power is gone. I'm only reading you now. Even the ghosts that started coming when the Devourer nearly broke through are gone too. Either the blast discorporated them or they panicked and ran. Or flew. Or whatever."

"I merely hoped to be with Anne again," Cletus said sadly, looking very lost and very human. "I should have known she would never come back to me. She found her peace and would not leave it for a lost soul such as myself." His shoulders slumped. "If you will not trap me, I will stay here and guard my family, though they are often gone."

"And watch reruns of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?" Peter hated that. Cletus might have endangered the world but he had helped the Ghostbusters save it. He deserved better than this. "Can't you, well, pass on? Maybe you could go looking for Anne. I don't think you're bound here any more, now that the gate is closed."

"Yeah," agreed Ray hastily, shooting a curious glance at Peter as if he were almost, but not quite, surprised at Peter's sympathy toward Cletus after all he'd put them through. The occultist grinned then turned back to face the ghost. "I was reading about it in the book after I first went back in time and it said you had to atone for what you did no matter how long it took or how great the task, but you did that. You got us here and helped us, and we closed the Narrow Gate and blocked off the Devourer, so you don't have to stay here any longer. You paid your debt. You're free."

Cletus looked surprised as if the thought had never occurred to him. As soon as he considered it a whole new look passed over the cynical face, probably a look he'd rarely worn before, one of hope. "Maybe you're right, Dr. Venkman, Dr. Stantz. Maybe I could find Anne. Maybe we can be together." He looked around hopefully as if he were seeing huge vistas blocked to the Ghostbusters, then he turned toward Peter again. "I think you're right. I can see the way. I don't need to stay." He paused. "Tell Darius goodbye for me. He has been a friend these last years, though I didn't realize that until tonight."

"I will," Peter promised.

"Then I'll go, Dr. Venkman."

"Hey," said Peter quickly, finding a smile though it was shakier than he had expected. "My friends call me Peter."

Cletus actually smiled in return. "Thank you, Peter. And I am proud to call you my friend." He stopped then, his head cocked in a listening position, then he turned abruptly, his eyes growing wide and his face filling with joy. His lips moved, breathing the word, "Anne," and before Peter's startled eyes, he blurred, faded, and was gone.

"He dispersed peacefully," said Egon in the background, his voice quiet.

Peter blinked furiously a few times before he turned back to his friends. He wasn't sure he wanted even them to see him being so sentimental. But Ray jumped to meet him and slung an arm around his shoulders. "That was great!" he exulted. "He gets to be with his wife after all."

"That was great indeed, Ray," Peter said, unable to hold back a huge smile. "Really great. Only don't any of you tell Slimer I made friends with a ghost or he'll never let me live it down." He shook his head, still smiling, then his eyes fell on Egon, who was watching him with a fond and tolerant look on his face. "Come on, team," he urged. "It's the hospital for us." He cast one look around the room to make sure all the candles were out then hurried to Egon's side and slid an arm around the taller man's waist. "Lean on me, Spengs," he urged. "I don't want you taking a tumble down those stairs."

Egon's shoulder was put into place and he was checked out for a concussion. Because he'd been unconscious the hospital wanted to keep him overnight. It was past midnight by the time the Ghostbusters finally arrived at the emergency room, though, so he said he would simply go home and go to bed. As he spoke rationally about what to look for in the way of symptoms for complications, the staff was inclined to let him go, as long as the other three promised to watch him. The doctor examined the slight gash on Egon's arm and checked the cut on his forehead but neither needed stitches, just cleaning and dressing. Winston had to have six stitches and make a lot of explanations about how he'd gotten such a long slash across his stomach. The late night doctors were fairly blasé but Winston's tale of the guardian startled even them.

Peter's test readings startled them a little more. They thought he'd received an electric shock, but he was doing so well they didn't recommend a treatment other than the suggestion he take it easy the following day. As for his other injury from Winston's boot, it hadn't even left a bruise, to Peter's tremendous relief. The doctor who examined him said he didn't foresee any problems. Peter grinned hugely at the news.

Ray didn't have a scratch on him. He had come through the whole thing with nothing worse than a gouge out of the sole of his boot.

Before they had left the Vanderberg house, Peter had called Janine to say it was over and they were all safe. He explained about Egon's shoulder and Winston's injury in such a way as to reassure her. During the hospital sojourn, Ray rang up the local police and told them they were done in the Vanderberg house and that there would be no further trouble with mysterious lights. Since Mrs. Pettigrew had already phoned to report her husband's safe return home, the police weren't very surprised and, as Ray told the guys as they headed back to Manhattan, not very interested either. They had theorized that Mr. Pettigrew had gotten drunk and fallen asleep somewhere in the house, probably under one of the dust covers.

It was sometime after two a.m. when Ray pulled Ecto into the firehall and all of them heaved a great sigh of relief. Days like the last one were not at the top of their list of favorite things to do.

Janine lifted her head from her desk where she had been dozing and flew to meet them, accompanied by Slimer. As Peter helped Egon out of the back of Ecto, where he'd been lying down, the secretary cried out in alarm at the sight of his sling and the dressings on his forehead and arm, her face paling as she fussed over him. "Oh, Egon, you look terrible."

"Thank you, Janine. You, of course, look fine, even in the middle of the night. What are you doing here so late?" He submitted with amazing docility to the kiss she bestowed on her cheek and let her slide her arm around his waist, pulling his uninjured one over her shoulders. Peter eyed these signs of fondness with amusement and curiosity. Spengs was a dark horse all right.

"I made soup for you, because it sounds like you didn't have anything to eat since lunch," she explained, the picture of virtue. "Peter wasn't telling me everything, I know that. And just look at you. Winston, from the way you're moving, that hurts more than you want us to know. And I don't know about you, Dr. V. You sounded funny on the phone, and you look like you've been on a three week binge."

"Yeah, Winston kicked--" Ray began.

Peter gave him a quelling look. "I am suffering," he said with great dignity, "from psi feedback because Ray blasted me when I was trapped between dimensions. It feels like the end of a three week binge, though, and without even the fun of all the partying first. I plan to sleep all day tomorrow and the first spud who dares to touch me gets thrown in the containment unit forever. You got that, Slimer?"

The ghost that was hanging anxiously in the air studying the four of them shivered elaborately. "Got it, Peter," he piped up, drifting over to Ray for a consolatory hug and for protection from Peter. "Egon hurt," he pointed out, his voice a little nervous. Slimer didn't like it when the guys got hurt, though he could be distracted from even major injuries with promises of food.

"Yes, Spud, Egon's hurt," Ray explained, adding reassuringly, "But he's going to be fine. We all are. We stopped a really nasty ghost, one of the worst we've ever encountered. It's a good thing you didn't come with us."

"Yeah and we helped another one disperse peacefully," Winston added, a contented smile on his face. "That part of the job I like."

"Me too," agreed Ray while Egon nodded and Peter grinned broadly. Ray held up his P.K.E. meter and ran a test, pointing the device here and there to compare results, then lowering it with a smile. "That ambient psi is all gone, too. Things are back to normal. Isn't it great?"

Peter slid in beside Egon while Janine guided him up the stairs and both of them helped him sit down at the dining table, making sure he was comfortable, though he claimed his shoulder felt much better, only a dull ache unless he moved it quickly.

"Hot soup and then you're going to bed," Janine told the Ghostbusters as firmly as a traditional Jewish mother. Peter suddenly thought of Egon's mother and the foul concoction she dosed them with when one of them was ill and hoped Janine wouldn't call her in the morning for the recipe. After all he'd been through today, he wasn't sure he was up to that.

"Gosh, Janine, it's awfully late for you to go home. Want me to drive you out to Brooklyn?" volunteered Ray around a cavernous yawn. He'd been known to make such offers in the middle of blizzards, floods and hurricanes, and sometimes Janine even took him up on it.

She noticed the yawn, compared it to Winston's bandage, Peter's frazzled look and Egon's various injuries and shook her head firmly. "Not on your life, Ray. The way you guys look, even you, you need help in the worst way. Even though I want you to know, Dr. Venkman, that this isn't in my job description, I'm staying over and making sure you guys rest. I may even tuck you guys in, though it's not gonna be a habit."

"You're all heart, Janine," Peter teased her. "And don't worry. I can slip it into your job description in a minute. I like being tucked in. And I make you a solemn promise. If you try to make me rest, I'll rest. It's what I'm best at, after all. Isn't it, guys?"

"Well, that's what I thought this morning, I mean yesterday morning, when you were sacked out, Peter," Winston returned, flopping into his chair and sticking out his feet under the table. "Tonight I think I'll give you a little more credit than that."

"So will I," Ray agreed. "You did good today, Peter."

"We all did," Egon agreed, settling himself into the chair very carefully so as not to jar the still-tender shoulder. "It was not, however, an experience I should care to repeat."

"Gee, Egon, I thought it was great," Ray said. He was too tired to sound as enthusiastic as usual. "Saving the world more than once in one day is pretty great, and we got to travel in time and everything."

"Yeah, and you got to zap me, and Winston got to kick me," Peter said, his chin in his hands. He yawned halfway through. "Sure you don't want to take a shot at me, too, Egon?"

"With one arm?" Egon asked. "Only if you allow me time to recuperate first."

Peter stuck out his tongue at him.

"Gee, Pete," said Winston, "With your chin in your hands and your tongue out, you look kinda like that gargoyle on Notre Dame in Paris."

Peter lifted his head, from his hands and straightened up. "It's so nice to get the respect I deserve," he said. "I don't have a sign taped to my back that says 'kick me', do I?"

"We won't kick you any more," Ray promised. "Besides, we're a great team. We shouldn't be kicking, we should be celebrating. Because we're all alive, and we're all brilliant and even when we're in different times we work just great together."

"Yeah, we're the best," Peter proclaimed with a delight so strong not even the big smooch Slimer dropped on his cheek was enough to dampen it. "Yo, Janine?" he called, pushing the spud away wearily, and favoring the secretary with a big, wicked grin. "Where's that soup you promised us. I just love being waited on hand and foot."

"You'd better watch yourself or I'll pour it down your neck," Janine promised recklessly, though she was smiling to herself as she vanished into the kitchen.

"Think she means it?" Winston asked.

"Probably," Peter said. "The way my luck's been running." He caught himself and looked at each of his friends with huge satisfaction. There had been a few times tonight when he wouldn't have believed this moment was possible. "No, I take that back. We're all here, alive and well, at least relatively well. I'd say we're all incredibly lucky, wouldn't you guys?"

Egon smiled. "Very, Peter."

Ray nodded, looking as if he could still bounce around the room in spite of his fatigue, and Winston leaned over and ruffled Peter's hair. "You got it, homeboy. And tomorrow, we'll all take a leaf out of your book." When Peter cocked an eyebrow at him, he said, "This time, we'll all sleep till noon."

They were laughing and teasing each other with unimpaired delight when Janine returned with a tray of steaming soup bowls and started passing them out.

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