GOBLINS

by Sheila Paulson

Originally published in Ecto-1

"The beast's eyes glowed yellow in the sullen darkness." No, damn it, that wasn't quite right. "The beast's eyes glowed red in the sullen dark." Better. Douglas Duke lifted his fingers from the keyboard and ran them through his already disarranged hair, making it stand up in shaggy, blond spikes. He caught a glimpse of his frustrated face in the mirror--god, he looked older than his forty-five years tonight. Why was this so difficult? Was he losing his touch? Was it the dreaded (gasp) writer's block?

The specter of his literary rival, Stephen King, loomed largely over him. It was a fluke the names were similar--King and Duke. One local critic who had not looked favorably upon his latest work had made the snide comment that even in the world of horror novels, a King outranked a Duke any day of the week. The critic had even dared to suggest that Duke had changed his name on purpose to compare himself with the master. It was a damned lie. He'd been born Douglas Duke and that's what he'd stay. Blast them, anyway. He'd show that fool critic. He'd show everyone--if only the words would come. This time, he would create something special, something terrifying, something real.

With a frustrated sigh Duke turned away from the keys and picked up the little idol he'd discovered in a whirlwind tour of Greece last fall. He supposed it was just cheap, tourist junk the way most of it was. Hardly a relic of the Golden Age. Tourists were forbidden to remove anything from an archaeological site, and that probably extended to locals snatching souvenirs to sell to the tourists. It didn't even look Greek, come to think of it, not unless one went back to those more primitive statues he'd seen in the National Museum in Athens. Never mind that. He hadn't been treasure hunting, merely selecting something he liked. Besides, it felt good in his hand.

"Dammit," Duke muttered aloud, his thumb caressing the cool stone of the statue's belly. "Why can't I get it right? Bestsellers for years and now this. I can't even create one simple goblin to terrorize one small town. That's all I ask, just a vicious goblin, with glowing eyes--and wings." He brightened at the thought. "A winged goblin that walks upright, that snatches away children and small animals. Yeah, that's the ticket. I can see its twisted little face right now. Ugly mother. Glowing yellow eyes, I think. Red's trite." He sat there in the twilight glow from the windows that looked down over the hamlet with the corny name of Apple Dell. "I'll show that worthless critic that Douglas Duke hasn't lost it after all. I'll change the town just enough. I'll terrorize Apple Dell. Let's see now, what shall I call it in the book? Pear Creek? Banana Boat?" He chuckled to himself and turned back to the keyboard, typing furiously.

*****

Night rolled gently into the peaceful valley while the last rays of the setting sun still brushed the steeple of Apple Dell's Presbyterian Church and the two white towers of the old Anderson place now owned by that crazy writer from back east. The rolling hills, a remnant of the glacier that had once reached this part of Iowa, tended to create hollows that darkened early.

In one of them, Wilbur Roberts' Guernsey cattle started the walk home to the milking machine. Cows are not renowned for their vast intelligence, but a full udder is a powerful reminder and every day they trekked up the hill toward the farm yard. Wilbur had started to wonder why they had come in earlier the last two nights. It was early June--the days were getting longer not shorter. He scratched his head, momentarily shifting the earphones of his Walkman off his ears right in the middle of Rigoletto. Wilbur Roberts liked the opera, though he had scant chance to see it live. Maybe, if everything went well and Junior came home from ISU, he and Betty could get away for a long weekend and see the newest performance at the Civic Center in Des Moines. Wilbur smiled to himself. Des Moines was hardly a cultural center, but it outclassed Apple Dell.

That was when he saw the herd coming, and he stopped dead, yanking off the earphones to listen. They weren't plodding up the hill in their usual way, they were stampeding, bawling in stark terror. Something down in the darkening valley had spooked them. Maybe it was a wild dog. Jack McKinney claimed something had been at his chickens a couple of nights ago.

Wil yelled and waved his arms, diverting the stampede and turning the cattle toward the barn. In the well lit yard, their panic dissipated and he was able to direct them easily, though he raised his voice and hollered for Betty to come out and help him.

That was when he saw the marks on the back of one of the cows. They were long and deep, a series of slashes, stained red with the animal's blood. They weren't deep, but they puzzled him. A set of three parallel scratches ran along one flank, and a second set of three scratches, this one slightly deeper, went right down the beast's back.

Wilbur had never seen anything that made marks like that. Not once.

Betty must have heard the alarm in his voice because she had the twelve gauge in her hand. "It's loaded. What's wrong?" She passed him the shotgun, her eyes roaming around the yard.

He pointed at the animal, and her eyes widened. "Good god, Wil, what did that?"

"Tell me and we'll both know." He had counted the herd automatically as they came in. "We're missing two. I'm going to see."

"But, Wil, it could be dangerous? Could it be a wolf?"

"Not around here. Somebody would have seen it. Besides, wolves don't make marks like that. I've never seen anything like that. Whatever it is spooked them good and proper. You don't think it could be... " He let his voice trail off. Hadn't there been something in the Des Moines Register the other day about cattle mutilation? Somewhere just over the county line? What caused things like that? A coven? UFOs? Crazy kids out causing trouble? Geez, that was all he needed.

He took out the strongest flashlight he had, flipped it on. "Stay in the house, Betty. This could be trouble."

"It couldn't be some gang?" she asked, her thoughts running slightly more prosaically--and more realistically--than his own. He shrugged. "Lock the door."

The valley was dark, though the sky behind him still held the coral and orange remnants of the sunset. It was in the shadows beside the creek, where the stand of willows draped its branches low over the water that Wilbur found what he sought. At first he thought the cow had simply lain down, then something dark moved abruptly. It was about the size of a five or six year old child, but it moved much faster than a child would, scuttling along on short, twisted legs. For an instant it turned toward the flashlight allowing him a glimpse of a pointed face, a gaping mouth ringed with teeth like tiny spears, and hot yellow eyes. It was a creature out of nightmare, blood dripping from its thin lips. When Wilbur let the flashlight go to pull up the shotgun, it spread leathery, batlike wings that had been folded behind its shoulders and simply flew away.

"Jesus, God," Wilbur muttered, stunned into blank disbelief. He hadn't really seen that, had he? But his disbelief was shattered when a second beast rose from a dark lump a short distance away and flew after the first, its wings beating against the darkening sky. He loosed both rounds after it, but it was already out of range.

With shaking hands, Wilbur picked up the flashlight and turned it toward the nearest cow. What he saw made his stomach turn and he backed away, a hand pressed over his mouth. The creature had been eating it, tearing away great chunks of its side. He saw part of a rib protruding before he turned and fled back to the house. Maybe somebody from the animal research labs over at Ames might have an answer. Wilbur had none. What he'd seen was too bizarre to be real.

In the morning, when he led the experts back to the valley, the two mutilated animals lay there at mute witness to the creatures he'd seen in the night.

Wilbur doubted he would ever be comfortable going out into the darkness again.

*****

"They want us to go where?" Peter Venkman asked skeptically. The brown haired Ghostbuster raised baleful eyes from his plate of scrambled eggs to the much-too-enthusiastic face of his younger colleague, Ray Stantz. Ray always got excited about new cases--and he hadn't been out until nearly 2:30 the night before.

"Iowa," Ray replied. "You've got some relatives back there, don't you, Peter?"

"Yeah, an uncle and a couple of cousins," Peter admitted. He'd spent some good vacations on the old farm when he was young, but give him cities every time these days. Once Ray had dragged them all to his cousin Sam's dairy farm, and Peter had discovered that Sam--short for Samantha--was the only advantage of the trip. No, Peter Venkman was a city boy and happy to stay that way. "You're not saying we have to go to a farm again?" he asked unhappily.

Winston Zeddemore put down the newspaper and regarded Peter with a twinkle in his eyes. "What's wrong, Pete? Afraid they'll have you milking cows and gathering eggs and doing--well, whatever it is people do to hogs?"

"They eat them," Peter said darkly. "I'm a scientist, not a farmer. What's wrong? Somebody see another werechicken?"

That made Egon Spengler, the fourth member of the team, push aside his plate and favor Peter with a mildly resentful glance at the reminder of one of his more unpleasant experiences. "I'd prefer to avoid werechickens, Peter," he said. "What is it, Ray?"

"Cattle mutilations," Ray explained in a much more subdued tone. Not even he could find anything in that to be excited about. "Some farmer named Roberts saw two strange creatures attacking his cattle. They had wings and fangs and walked upright like people. It's exciting, Peter. I want to run it through Tobin's right away. They faxed us a composite drawing based on the farmer's description." He held out a sheet of paper. Egon took it from Ray's hand and stared at it. "It bears some resemblance to a goblin," he observed.

"I thought goblins were benevolent spirits," Winston objected. "Or am I wrong?"

"Not always, Winston," Egon replied. "They can be malicious."

"Sometimes they're nasty in books," Ray volunteered. "Look at Tolkien and the orcs."

"The orcs were fictional, Ray," Peter reminded him. "We're talking about reality here." He snatched the drawing and made a face. "Now there's something not even its mother could love. Nasty teeth. This does not sound good."

"Look at the notes," Ray urged. "You're right--this could be nasty. We've got to bust it, Pete."

"'Glowing yellow eyes,'" Peter read aloud. "'Moves fast on the ground, flies faster.' I don't like this, Ray. If this thing finds beef tasty on the hoof, he might like scientists even better." Though he had faced all manner of ghosts without hesitation, he didn't like this one bit.

"Let's run it through the computer and see if we can find a match," suggested Egon, abandoning his breakfast without hesitation. Ray and Winston followed him. Peter shoveled a huge forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth, then, grabbing his glass of orange juice in one hand and his toast in the other, he hastened after them. It wouldn't do to miss anything.

When he arrived in the lab, Egon was already running the program. "Hmm," he said, as screen after screen of nasty beasties scrolled past. "There seems to be no exact match. I tried cross-referencing and nothing comes close to that picture. I'm finding components of various creatures but it's as if a mad scientist had taken a part here and a part there and put them all together any which way."

"Ve haff vays of designing monsters," Peter muttered in what he considered an excellent imitation of Dr. Frankenstein. "You don't suppose somebody's making them on the assembly line, do you, Egon? You know, Monsters 'R' Us?"

"Maybe it's just a species we haven't met before," Winston suggested, peering at the screen. "It's close enough of some of those other--whatever they are--to be kin to them. And we're supposed to go out there and catch them?"

"Who's paying us?" Peter asked suspiciously. Sometimes Ray volunteered their services free simply because he liked busting ghosts so much. Peter always insisted they were in it for the money and he liked to be sure there was a paycheck in each bust, but he liked it, in his own way, as much as Ray did."

"Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa," Ray explained. "I know a man there, Jerry Hill. He's got a degree in animal husbandry. He works in the National Animal Disease Center. The agriculture program in Ames is topnotch, and they do a lot of research. When Jerry saw the cattle from several counties in middle to eastern Iowa and heard the reports of the creatures, he remembered me and called. He wants to avoid a panic, and he thinks we could fly out there and stop whatever it is before it gets out of hand. He says papers like the National Enquirer are already getting curious."

"Oh, great, reporters," complained Winston. Peter, who enjoyed free publicity, decided that wouldn't be so bad. He could think of other problems, though.

"Suppose these things are corporeal, Egon?" he asked. "If they're causing physical harm they might be physical themselves. I'd hate to get out there and find out we couldn't trap them." It was not a happy thought. He didn't want to turn into a goblin's dinner.

""We got the Bogeyman, and he was corporeal," Ray reminded him eagerly. "Egon's atomic destablizer will do the job. We've used it before and it worked great. The streams can contain entities other than ghosts, anyway. I think we can do it. The farmer who saw them said there were two of them."

"That he saw," Winston corrected balefully. Like Peter, he'd brought some of his breakfast with him. Now he finished his coffee and set aside the cup.

His motion reminded Peter of the toast in his hand and he took a bite. Munching contentedly, he watched Egon pushing buttons on the computer. "What about it, Egon?" he asked. "You've got some great ideas already, don't you, you kidder?"

"I will need further information before I can formulate a reasonable theory," Egon remarked without turning from the screen. "While the rest of us pack, I will contact the university and see what else I can learn. We have too little information."

"Do you think we should take Slimer?" Ray asked. The little ghost had joined them at the start of breakfast, but when he had tried to snitch a piece of bacon from Peter's plate, the psychologist had complained so loudly that Slimer had drifted off in high dudgeon.

"No way," Peter replied at once. "You know how airlines get when we bring him along. He's more trouble than he's worth. I say we leave him this time. He'd only be scared of the goblins anyway."

Ray nodded reluctantly. "Maybe you're right. He'll be okay here. Janine can take care of him. I'll go down and let her know what we're doing. You and Winston can pack our stuff." He clattered off happily.

Peter grimaced after him. "I knew it wouldn't be long before we were doing all the work," he said in an aside to Winston.

Winston nodded. "I wish I could take Ecto-1," he complained as Egon started printing out his data. "You never know when we might need her."

"Maybe ISU will give us a car," Peter suggested as he and Winston started for the door. "After all, they're expecting us to do their dirty work for them. I t hink a limo would be great, don't you?"

*****

Somebody ought to tell them this isn't a limo," Peter grumbled eight hours later as the Ghostbusters and Dr. Jerry Hill stood outside the Des Moines airport. Peter rotated his shoulders, trying to ease out the kinks of nearly four hours of sitting in a small seat and an almost equal amount of time waiting for their flights to be called. Iowa State University had flown them to Des Moines coach.

The scientist, a portly man of Ray's age with a lot of premature grey in his shaggy, brown hair, had just led them to an aging brown panel truck that bore the name, "Iowa State University" and the school's logo in a stencil on its side. The vehicle had clearly seen a lot of use, most recently hauling bales of hay. The seats in the back were detachable and had not been firmly bolted down when they were last replaced. Peter sat down cautiously, rocked the seat gently to test it, and tried to find something to hold onto.

"You can use this truck," Jerry offered, beaming at Ray and his companions as he climbed into the driver's seat. Egon climbed in beside him, leaving Ray and Winston to crowd in beside Peter. "It belongs to the department and it should hold all your equipment. We'll pay for the gas. Just give us the bills and we'll reimburse you."

"What a relief," muttered Peter under his breath. Ray flashed him a dirty look and elbowed him in the ribs.

"Ignore him, Jerry," he told his friend. "Peter complains on general principles."

Jerry turned around in the seat and grinned at Ray. "Don't worry, I'm used to it. This baby goes better than she looks." He started the truck, which ran with a smooth purr, put it into gear and, with a squeal of tires, headed out of the airport and into the rush hour traffic on Fleur Drive. Fortunately, it was mostly going the other way, for Jerry was almost as erratic a driver as Ray. He complained loudly about the traffic, which appeared mild to the four New Yorkers. Of course the city of Ames was a lot smaller than Des Moines. Hill probably wasn't used to it.

"We'll drive to Apple Dell tonight," the ISU professor continued as their route led them up a hill and presented them with a superb view of the Des Moines skyline and the gold dome of the Iowa State Capitol Building. "It'll take us about an hour. I brought hard copies of all our files on the creatures. You can study them over dinner. There's a Holiday Inn along the Interstate and the food's decent there. We ate there last night when we went to investigate. Sandra's waiting there. She'll let us know what she's learned today and she can drive me back."

"Sandry?" asked Peter hopefully. The presence of a woman on the investigation made it more appealing.

"Sandra Dillon," explained the professor. "She's a veterinarian who's been trying to determine what could have wounded and killed the cattle and other, smaller farm animals. So far, what she's encountered defies conventional solutions. That's when I thought of Ray."

"Jerry spent a semester at Columbia when I was a freshman," explained Ray. "It was before I'd met you guys. We were both new and both from small towns and we gravitated together. He transferred out to ISU after that, right around the time I met you, Peter. We've kept in touch."

Peter remembered Christmas cards that came from Iowa each year that he always expected to be his, but which turned out to be Ray's. They must have come from Hill.

"Ray says you have relatives in Iowa, Peter," Hill said. "Anywhere near Apple Dell?"

"Further east," Peter confirmed. "Over near Iowa City. I haven't been out here in years. My dad stops in sometimes when he's passing through."

"Egon opened the folder Hill had given him and leafed through it. "This is interesting, Ray," he remarked. "The teeth and claw marks in the wound match no indigenous animals."

Peter hummed the Twilight Zone Theme. "Ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night," he said. "What makes them think it's ghosts or goblins?"

"The farmer saw them," Jerry replied.

"The farmer might have wanted to sell a story to the Enquirer," Peter returned. "Come on, there's more to it than that."

"It says here," Egon replied, "that traces of saliva were found in the wounds. That would require an elaborate hoax indeed. Studies on the saliva are incomplete but they're finding it hard to match. They've tried everything from wolverines to vampire bats to demented humans, and nothing pairs up."

"Oh," said Peter, thinking it over. Creatures that ate their victims lacked a certain appeal. At least he'd be facing them armed with his proton pack and thrower. If the beasts were corporeal, maybe they couldn't be trapped--but a proton stream at full power could cause their molecules to separate and the entity to disintegrate. These suckers didn't know who they were messing with.

Once on the Des Moines freeway, it took them little time to reach Interstate-80 and take the ramp east. It was June and the weather was decent, sunny and not too hot. They'd have sunlight for almost three more hours, time enough to arrive, eat, and reach the site of the last manifestation before dark.

"We don't want to get there too early," Ray said cheerfully. "These babies don't show up before sundown anyway--at least not so far."

"Good," replied Peter with heavy sarcasm. "We're going out in the dark in a place where they like to come, without street lights or backup. I like it. It's a good plan, Ray."

"Well, they're not likely to come to us. Besides, they can't be worse than some of the other nasties we've trapped. Isn't it exciting, Peter?"

"Sure, it's exciting--until something tries to eat us. Then it'll stop being exciting and start being terrifying."

"Scared, Pete?" teased Winston.

"Wouldn't you be?" Peter grimaced expressively.

"It's not my favorite way to spend the evening," Winston concurred. He stretched his legs as far forward as they would go, causing the seat to rock back and forth. He and Peter steadied themselves against their respective doors and Ray grabbed the back of the more solid front seat. Peter sighed. It was going to be a long trip.

*****

He was till griping when they pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn just off the Interstate, half a mile from Apple Dell. Climbing out of the old truck, he stretched and flexed his shoulders only to come to a complete stop, staring in delight at the vision that was approaching. She was blonde and gorgeous, probably around thirty, wearing tight blue jeans and a tee shirt that did amazing things for her figure. If this was what it was like in the farm belt, maybe he'd been hasty to condemn it without more thought.

"Sandra," cried Jerry enthusiastically, trotting forward to meet her.

"Hi, Jer. These must be the Ghostbusters." An ever-so-slightly skeptical expression crossed her face, but it faded when all four men stampeded to greet her. Peter wondered how Egon managed to be first in line for the introductions. For a man who was usually too caught up in his work to notice women, he never hung to the rear when an opportunity came to meet a pretty one. "You devil, Egon," Peter muttered under his breath.

Jerry performed the introductions and Sandra held out a hand to each of them. Her grip was firm and her smile warm and friendly.

"We're glad to see an expert," Egon told her before Peter could get a word in. "I hope we can sit down and go over these findings before you return to Ames."

"I hope you'll have dinner with us," Peter invited her in his most charming voice. "We can talk about saliva and teeth marks and all that nasty stuff after we eat." He held her hand a little longer than the others had and was gratified when she didn't pull away.

"It's hardly dinnertime conversation," she agreed. "I'd like to hear about your Ghostbusting adventures. We read about you occasionally but it's hard to imagine what it's like. I've never seen a ghost. Until I started checking my findings on this, I wasn't sure I believed in paranormal activity."

"If you ever do find a ghost, we'll bust it for you," Peter promised. "We'll give you our special discount rate."

She smiled up at him, her dimples showing. "Here I thought you'd do it free."

"We will," Ray promised before Peter could volunteer their services. "Peter's the one who makes sure we get paid for our jobs and it makes him a little mercenary."

"Hey. Somebody's gotta see that the bills are paid," Peter defended himself.

Before he could endear himself to Sandra any further, Jerrry slid his arm around the woman's shoulders and she put hers around his waist. For the first time the psychologist noticed the diamond ring on her engagement finger. Peter sighted. He should have known. The good ones were always taken. He noticed Ray grinning. Ray must have already known, the rat, and never said anything. Peter muttered, "Typical," under his breath. The guys never let him have any fun.

*****

After checking into the Holiday Inn and snatching a quick meal in the hotel restaurant, the Ghostbusters and the two scientists from the university gathered in the bar and spread out their graphs and charts on the table. Six heads bent over them as the men and woman examined what they knew and suspected so far.

There had been no manifestations prior to Saturday night. It was Thursday now. The attacks on cattle, hogs, and, once, a hen house, had all taken place between dusk and midnight within a ten-mile radius of Apple Dell. That was enough to use this place as their headquarters. Apparently no people had yet been attacked, though there were several missing person tales that didn't sound promising. So far, the incidents had been kept quiet, though one story about cattle mutilation had leaked out and appeared in the Des Moines paper. Apple Dell had a weekly paper that came out on Saturday, whichw ould probably be full of the incidents.

"Wilbur Roberts got the best look at them, on Tuesday night," Sandra said. "I've spoken withhim. He seems like a good witness. He's not the type to lose his head and I don't think he's a publicity seeker. He's relatively sophisticated, knows he could probably sell the story to a supermarket rag and make some bucks but has chosen to keep it quiet."

Peter speculated that the man could clean up later when the truth came out, but thought better of saying so. "Wilbur?" he echoed skeptically. "Doesn't have a talking horse, does he?"

Sandra's dimples showed briefly. "It is a bit of a stereotype, isn't it? No, Mr. Roberts is an opera buff."

"Indeed?" Egon brightened.

"Now you've gone it," complained Winston. "We'll hear nothing but opera the rest of the night."

*****

Wilbur Roberts was a pleasant well-spoken man in his late thirties, and his wife Betty was attractive enough to win Peter's eye. Ray watched his friend bestow upon her one of the admiring looks he excelled at, one that women enjoyed even when they weren't remotely interested in playing. Mrs. Roberts blossomed under it. Ray smiled at Peter fondly; he never gave up.

As Wil led the way down to the place where he had seen the creatures, he and Egon discussed opera. Since none of the others enjoyed the subject enough to appreciate the conversation, Ray spent his time looking around and taking periodic P.K.E. readings while Peter and Winston discussed last night's Mets game.

It was a pretty place. The setting sun cast a golden glow upon the cornfields, but the valley where the cattle grazed was already sinking into shadows. Ray had always pictured Iowa as a flat with field after field of nothing but corn or soybeans, but it was hilly enough here. When he commented on it to Peter, his friend said, "Blame it on the ice age. Glaciers and stuff."

"The ice age? Oh yeah. Disrupted the terrain, I suppose. The terminal moraine." He looked around enthusiastically. "I didn't think you knew things like that."

"I used to date a geologist," Peter replied. "Remember Jenny Archer? We spent a week camping in country like this once."

That must have been ten years ago. Funny the esoteric information that Peter remembered. Even more so the things he felt he had to excuse his knowledge of.

"We're coming up on the spot now," Wil observed, pointing. "See, here comes the herd. I've got to get back and set up the milking machines, but this is where I saw them." He gestured to the bank of a stream that danced and gurgled over rocks. "It was down there by the creek." He pronounced it, 'crick.' "The little monsters had two of my cows down on the ground. Both dead." He grimaced, memories etched vividly on his face. "It was darker than now, and I had to put my flashlight on. I hope to God I never see anything like that again. It looked at me and it was aware. I knew it wasn't an animal looking at me. It was intelligent, I'm sure of it. But it was cold inside and out--it had no soul. I can't get it out of my mind. I can't think of anything more frightening than intellect without a shred of conscience, without even awareness that a conscience exists. A relentless and savage awareness. I can't describe it right. It wasn't that they were greedy or hungry and wanted the cattle for that. It was as if the cattle were there so they just took them."

The intensity of the farmer's description sent a chill rippling up Ray's spine, though he knew what the man meant. They had encountered entities like that before. The first time was always a shock because most people had trouble envisioning pure evil until they actually saw it face to face. Ray himself found it difficult to understand that human beings could be like that. Ghosts and nether entities were another story. They were bound to have different values.

Egon pointed his P.K.E. meter at the site, studied the readings, then frowned and shook his head. "Nothing. I'm not even picking up any residual readings. Perhaps we shouldn't expect anything more after forty-eight hours."

As Wil had remarked, the cattle were climbing the hill toward their home barn. It was quiet with the tranquil peace of twilight, even the breeze stilled. As the brown and white animals reached the top of the hill and the sound of their passage faded, Wil called farewell and hurried after them. The four Ghostbusters waved to him and turned for one final look at the site before they returned to the farm. This looked like a wasted trip.

The flap of great wings sliced through the silence, causing all four men to raise their heads in search of the source of the noise. Overhead hovered two black shapes, bigger than anything winged had a right to be, feet tucked up against their chests. They wore no clothing, but their bodies were covered with a thick, coarse brown hair. The last shreds of daylight touched their faces, revealing a savagery and hunger, and in the thickening twilight, their eyes glowed yellow.

"Trouble at twelve o'clock," Peter called, pointing. "What are those things?" He grabbed his thrower automatically and powered up.

"Goblins," Winston replied. "They look like their pictures, don't they? Too bad."

"I'm reading a negative valence," Egon returned, his eyes flashing from the meter to the creatures and back again in fascinated absorption. "They have a physical form, but they're not entirely corporeal. I theorize that, should it be necessary, they could pass through solid objects just as ectoplasmic entities do."

"Well, let's pass them through the traps," Peter suggested hopefully, drawing a bead on the nearer of the two beasts. Seeing the action, the two drew apart as if they were smart enough to suspect they would be harder to hit that way.

"The throwers might have no effect upon them," Egon replied, stowing his P.K.E. meter and grabbing his proton rifle anyway.

"We've got to try," Ray returned as the two goblins displayed an interest in the Ghostbusters, flying around them in ever-narrowing circles. He fired eagerly.

The glowing proton stream shot out and struck the first goblin full in the chest. The creature emitted a shriek that stabbed their eardrums and shook itself free, gabbling to its companion in rage. Maybe it was a language. The other Ghostbusters copied Ray and fired too, stopping both creatures in mid-flight. They raged and howled as they struggled against the confining streams, then, without real effort, they slipped sideways as if they could phase in and out of reality, freed themselves from the confining energy, and dove at their adversaries, forcing them to draw back in two groups, Ray and Egon stumbling toward the creek and Peter and Winston backing toward the trail. One of them dived straight at Peter. With an involuntary, "Ahhh!" he jumped backward, tripped on a projecting rock, and sat down hard, though he never ceased firing. Winston leaped toward him to make sure he was all right, taking aim at the entity as he approached and yelling a warning to Peter to keep his head down.

Ray found himself and Egon crowded against the bank by the second entity, and he made hasty adjustments on the thrower, powering up full with a tight beam. As the goblin came in low, barely missing taking the top of Egon's head off, Ray fired again, hitting the beast dead on. Egon yelped and flattened himself on the ground. When the beam struck, the goblin gave a tremendous wail, then, with a shower of fire, seemed to disintegrate in midair, shooting sparks in all directions. It was like a fireworks display, green and red and yellow light erupting in a giant sunburst. Ray ducked involuntarily and lost his balance, his ankle twisting beneath him as he pitched forward face down in the creek.

"Ray!" Egon's concerned shout rang through the night and he heard the physicist scrambling down through the rocks at the water's edge, splashing toward him.

"I'm okay, Egon," he called back as he struggled to sit up. The creek was cold. He propped himself up with one hand against a rock, while water swirled around his waist, his knees protruding to form two little islands. Spitting out water, he continued with delight, "I got him. Wow, that was great! I tightened the stream and when it hit him, he just blew up." He dashed water from his eyes and looked past Egon to see what the other two were up to.

Still seated, Peter adjusted his thrower, too, and raised it as Winston reached his shoulder. "You hurt, homeboy?"

"Not so much as I'll hurt that thing," Peter replied fiercely, taking deliberate aim.

Before he could fire, the second goblin swooped away, squealing and growling with rage and panic, ducking and darting about in the sky to evade the streams as it rose higher and higher. It vanished into the growing night while Egon waded into the stream to haul Ray to his feet.

Stowing his thrower, Ray took Egon's hand and let himself be pulled up. His turned ankle gave and he winced and nearly fell, causing Egon to grab him around the shoulders and steady him until he found his balance. "Did you hurt your foot, Ray?" he demanded anxiously.

When Ray tested it with a couple of cautious steps it twinged but not badly. He was sure he'd do a lot better on solid ground. His boot had probably saved him from a bad sprain. He was lucky. "I think I turned it, but it's okay," he replied. There was only minor discomfort. When he had his bath tonight, he'd soak it and that should take care of the problem. "I'm fine, Egon. It's slippery here. Watch your step. We don't want two of us drenched to the skin. Gosh, I hope my pack's okay."

"You're sure?" Egon studied him seriously as if he expected Ray to confess to a compound fracture.

"I'm fine." He raised his voice so the others could hear them. "Wow! Did you guys see that thing come apart. Wasn't it great?" He hurried toward Peter and Winston. His foot throbbed slightly as he walked, but it wasn't that bad. He'd be fine by morning.

"Yeah, Ray, it was great," Peter replied in a voice that lacked conviction, allowing Winston to haul him to his feet and pausing to rub his rear end. "Next time, let's fight it where we can see what we're doing." He shuddered elaborately. "Nasty things. Nasty."

"Okay, Pete?" Winston dusted him down.

"Everything but my dignity," Venkman replied stiffly.

"Is that where your dignity is?" Ray cried with glee, winning a sour look from his friend, though Peter's eyes twinkled. Peter enjoyed that kind of banter.

Egon bent over the P.K.E. meter, making minute adjustments, his face intent. It was nearly dark now and he had to squint to see them properly. "These readings are unique," he observed, trailing around the valley as if checking for pieces of the destroyed goblin. "I've never seen anything like them. It's as if the goblin wasn't real."

"Wasn't real?" Peter cried in protest. "Come on, Egon, it attacked us. It made Ray take an unexpected bath and nearly took the top of my head off. Worse, those things killed cattle and ate them! They might decide people are even more tasty. How can you say they're not real?"

"I didn't say they weren't real. I said it's as if they weren't real."

"Thanks for the clarification, Egon," replied Peter with heavy sarcasm. "I understand it perfectly now."

"I meant, Peter," Egon said dryly, "that these readings indicate the goblins may have been created recently rather than evolving in another dimension or crossing from a nether realm."

"Created?" echoed Ray, fascinated. "Why would somebody do something like that?"

"I told you it was Monsters 'R' Us," Peter remarked with grim satisfaction. He studied the darkening sky through narrowed eyes. "Now all we need to do is find the lab of Dr. Frankenstein."

*****

Douglas Duke put his head in his hands and sat shuddering in front of his computer screen. It was happening again. He would sit down to write, and the next thing he knew he would have completed pages of text--pages that he didn't remember writing. He scrolled the text back, glancing at this and that. Ghostbusters? He couldn't put the Ghostbusters into his book, not without first obtaining their permission, or the next thing he knew, he'd be facing a lawsuit. Worse, the monsters had attacked them, and it was sheer luck that none of them had been hurt. He...

Wait a minute. It wasn't real. It was only letters on a screen, a just story. Wasn't it?

He saved the file then got up and crossed to the window. He worked in the round west tower of the old Anderson place, a room he'd chosen for the atmosphere and the view, and because it was too far away to hear the telephone. His wife Elaine screened all calls and left him alone while he was writing. After nearly twenty years of marriage, she knew when he was on a roll and shouldn't be disturbed.

If that were so, why had she looked so pale and shaken this morning? If anyone should be pale and shaken, it was he.

The dreams had been terrible. Their utter reality had nearly convinced him he was waking, until he found his feet climbing the stairs to the top tower room, the one above his writing room, that had always been locked. There he found the goblins, nine or ten of them, sitting in a circle, watching his arrival with pitiless amber eyes. When he found himself in their midst, they bowed to him in order, their folded wings tipping forward like demons' wings.

"You are the creator," one of them had intoned in a voice that held nothing of humanity. "You are the maker. You cannot unmake us, not without destroying the world. We will feed as we choose and you will hide us. Should you reveal us, you and the female will be the next to die."

"No," he gasped, staggering backward. "No, it's a dream. It isn't real."

"You know it is," the largest goblin told him. "You know it is, for you made us. You cannot unmake us. When we have devoured all else, we will come for you."

"No. NO. NO!" Screeching in panic, he crashed down the stairs in a barely controlled fall and huddled in front of his computer. Was it true? Was it only a nightmare?

He could hear them now, chittering sounds through the ceiling above him, scratchy footfalls too heavy to be squirrels or rats, accompanied by the ominous rumble of their voices. How could he could hear them now, while he was certainly awake?

They were real. They had to be.

"Oh, God." Duke buried his face in his hands once more. The goblins had claimed he'd created them, but how could he have done that? All he'd done was to describe them and their nasty actions in his book. If that were all it took to make a monster, then Serena, the Vampire, should be 'living' in Manhattan drinking the blood of gullible stockbrokers and the ghouls of Salem should have trashed half of Oregon by now. Why had it gone wrong this time? Why was this time different?

"Douglasssss. Come to ussss, Douglassss." Their crooning voices wove a soft and threatening spell that carried to him through the ceiling, demanding his presence. With a shudder he felt himself drawn to his feet as if by invisible strings. He could no more resist them than he could fly out the window. Staggering like a zombie, he abandoned the computer without shutting down, entered the hall, and plodded up the spiral stairs one resisting foot after the other.

The horde of goblins were waiting for him, lining the walls of the circular room that was mysteriously lit by a blue fire in the center of the Turkish carpet. The hovering flames cast eerie shadows, illuminating the creatures' faces from below, making them even more horrible than he remembered them.

"The creator," one of them snarled in acknowledgment of his arrival. "You have brought destructors to us. For that, you shall pay."

"Destructors?" he echoed blankly, struggling hard to think. "You said you couldn't be unmade."

"We cannot."

He made a hasty count of the implacable beings, shuddering at the sight of their savage yellow eyes. "Yet one of you is missing." Suddenly he knew. He couldn't unmake them. He couldn't reformat his disk and wipe the story. He couldn't burn his hard copy. Even assuming that would unmake them, he couldn't risk it. If they were right about their unmaking causing the end of the world, the price would be too terrible to contemplate. But they had just admitted they were not invincible. If he could not unmake them, he could destroy them singly--or someone else could. The Ghostbusters? Was it possible that they were really here in Iowa? If so, he could find them, recruit them, confess his mistake, whatever it was, and they could stop the goblins. If anyone in the world could put an end to the ancient evil he had awakened, it would be New York's team of paranormal eliminators.

Duke started backing for the door. They were on him before he could go two steps, forcing him down on the floor, tearing at his hair, his clothes--his flesh. In stark terror he watched them bending over them, looming closer, mouths gaping open, saliva dripping from their bladelike teeth. Their horny little fingers grasped his arms to halt his struggles. His bladder failed him. Sobbing out his dread, he squeezed his eyes shut tight and waited to be devoured.

"The threat will be dealt with," one of them intoned inches from his face. "Tomorrow we will stop these humans. We will drive them back. Then we will feed unchecked. No one can stop us now."

*****

Ray emerged from the motel bathroom warm and comfortable once more after the shower to counter the effects of his unexpected dip in the icy stream. His soaking wet jumpsuit had been taken away to dry by someone from housekeeping, and now Ray was clad in his pajamas. His ankle didn't hurt any more, even when he walked over to the double bed he'd be sharing with Peter. The university had been too cheap to spring for two rooms.

"Have you found anything, Egon?" he asked as he propped his pillow against the headboard and leaned against it, accepting the can of soda Peter passed him and sipping slowly.

"Not really," replied the physicist, intent on his reading. He was seated at the table near the window with charts and computer printouts spread out before him. "We can't learn a lot from the telephone book, and the desk clerk didn't know anything useful, even when Peter tried to bribe him. I did run a check on your proton pack, though, and it's fine. I even tested it in the parking lot."

"He should've sold tickets." Peter stretched out on his stomach beside Ray, his feet braced against the headboard, and looked at Egon, who picked up his copy of Tobin's Spirit Guide and started flipping through the pages. "We had tourists from ten states out there asking for our autographs."

"Peter loved every minute of it," observed Winston with a grin, stretching out his hand to rumple Peter's hair as he passed the psychologist on his way the bathroom and his own shower.

"Die, Zeddemore," retorted Peter, but without malice. The admiring tourists must have put him in a better frame of mind than he'd been after their bout with the goblins. Now he propped himself up on one hand and leaned sideways to look at himself in the mirror, smoothing his hair into its usual tidiness.

"I thought it was women who always looked in the mirror," Ray teased.

Peter shook his finger at him. "Very sexist, Ray. We've got to teach you the proper attitude toward women one of these days." He waggled one of his stocking feet in Ray's face and Ray batted it aside with an exaggerated grimace.

"Not till after your shower, Peter."

"What I fail to understand," Egon put in, ignoring their good-humored frivolity, "is the suddenness of this outburst. Nothing comparable has ever been reported in the vicinity. It isn't natural."

"Natural, Egon?" echoed Peter, rolling over on his side and watching the blond man. "Flying trolls aren't natural. That's the whole point. Do you still think we've got a monster maker lurking around doing exotic gene splicing in a secret lab?"

"It makes a peculiar sense, Peter." Egon took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Those goblins don't match anything in either Tobin's or Who's Who and What's That. In fact, from my research, I've been able to identify various parts of different recorded trolls, goblins and spirits, not to mention elements from Frazetta paintings and even a hint or two from the Lord of the Rings movie."

"Wow!" cried Ray, sitting up so quickly that his pillow fell to the floor. "That does sound like somebody's making them from scratch, doesn't it? They're letting their memories run wild, snatching a bit from here and a bit from there." He retrieved the pillow and fluffed it up. "You know, they reminded me of the Witch's little pals from The Wizard of Oz, too."

"Let me get this straight." Peter stood up, peeling off his shirt and hanging it on the arm of the chair in preparation for nabbing the next shower. "You're saying that somebody--some human type--is actually making these things? For real?" His voice rose disbelievingly on the last word.

"It's the most likely possibility I've conceived so far," Egon returned. He put his glasses on again and they promptly slid down to the end of his nose. "What I fail to understand is how--and why?"

"I can think of a couple of reasons." Peter sat down on the foot of the bed and peeled off his socks as he spoke. "Revenge--and publicity. Not to mention the crazy scientist who fakes what he's looking for to make other people believe in it, like some of those weirdos with the phony Loch Ness Monster pictures." Though Peter liked to wear a frivolous face, he hated it when people doubted his genuine abilities and failed to take him seriously as a scientist. They'd all encountered suspicious people who believed the Ghostbusters were crackpots. A genuine crackpot wouldn't rate very highly with Peter--or with any of them.

"Revenge I can understand," Egon replied, "and I can believe someone might try to fudge it, though I deplore such unethical behavior. But publicity?" He raised a questioning eyebrow at Peter.

"Sure. For a new movie or something. Hype. Get a lot of free publicity in the National Enquirer and then start ads for the movie."

"Yeah, but Peter, they've caused actual damage," objected Ray. He massaged his foot gently, feeling for swelling. There was some, but nothing serious. "Something from ILM wouldn't eat cattle," he insisted. "Besides, how could it fly away like that. Special effects rely on a blue screen. What we saw was real."

Peter nodded. He took his wallet out of his pants pocket and put it on top of the TV before he folded them over the back of the chair. His shorts had big red hearts on them. "Yo, Winston," he bawled at the top of his lungs, "you gonna use all the hot water?"

"They'll hear you in the next room," Egon chided.

Peter ignored that. "Come on, Spengs, you really think some nutcase out there is making monsters and sicking them on cattle--and Ghostbusters?"

"They would have killed us if they could, Peter," Egon replied seriously, meeting the psychologist's eyes. "No matter how they were brought into our world, the danger is very real."

"I really needed to hear that," complained Peter as Winston emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, buttoning the top of his pajamas. "All yours, Pete."

"There better be hot water." Peter snatched his pajamas from his open suitcase and ventured into the steam-filled room, batting at the clouds with his hands as he went. "Oh, good, you made me a sauna." The door banged shut behind him.

"Egon says somebody's creating monsters," Ray told Winston. "Isn't it exciting? I can't wait to find out who's doing it. Now that we know how to stop them, this will be fun."

Winston exchanged a doubtful look with Egon and shook his head ruefully. "The boy has the weirdest concept of fun I ever heard of," he announced. "Come on, Egon, shove that pack over. I want to get some sleep. If we have to spend tomorrow tracking down mad scientists, we're gonna need all the rest we can get."

*****

The trouble with tracking down mad scientists, pondered Egon the next morning, was that they were hardly likely to advertize in the yellow pages. When the Ghostbusters drove into the hamlet of Apple Dell, the physicist could imagine nowhere less likely to feature as the center of this unexpected turbulence. It looked like something out of a fifties movie or a town where The Beaver might live. Picturesque, its streets lined with maple trees, the village was quietly minding its own business when the four of them drove the Iowa State truck into the town square and pulled up beside the park. A statue of the traditional Civil War figure on a horse was such a cliche that Egon frowned at it in mild amusement.

When they got out of the truck in their jumpsuits, wearing their proton packs, they were immediately mobbed by children who danced around them crying, "It's the Ghostbusters! Wow! The Ghostbusters are here."

Peter responded immediately, talking to the children, breaking the ice, and fielding their questions. Ray and Winston joined in, too, while Egon took P.K.E. readings, hindered by the more scientific minded of the children. By the time they'd conversed with the local youngsters for five minutes, none of them had a shred of shyness left and they were clamoring to tell all their own ghost stories.

"... and when they got home," one small boy was bellowing when Peter finally held up a hand, "they opened the car door and there was a bloody hook on the handle."

"Yeah, I know that one already," Peter told the boy, but without criticism. "It's a good story but what we want to hear about are goblins."

"You mean like those things that got Mr. Roberts' cows?" one of the children asked. "We never saw any of those. They only come at night."

"How long have they been coming?" asked Ray.

"Just a few days," an older boy replied. "We thought it was some crazy trick at first, then all those scientists came and now you're here. That means it must be real."

"It must be," agreed Winston. "Who do you think might try that kind of a trick? It doesn't sound like something you'd hear of very often."

"Probably that weird guy," one of the girls put in before anyone could speak. "You know, that one who writes all those horror books that Mom won't let me read." She grimaced in disgust at the problems which accompanied being eleven.

"What horror books?" asked Ray, interest creeping into his voice.

"You know," the girl said. "Douglas Duke."

"Oh, him. The bargain basement Stephen King," Peter identified him. "You mean he lives here?" He glanced around the square as if expecting to find a sign that read, "Apple Dell, home of Douglas Duke."

"Yeah, in the old Anderson place." The oldest boy pointed to a huge white house with twin towers that sat on the highest point of the town. A mid-Victorian monstrosity, it boasted both a round and a square tower and some red brick on the facing. If anything, it looked like the type of place where the ghosts of broken hearted lovers drifted gently through its dusty halls trapped into repeating a frozen moment in time.

Surprised at himself for conceiving such a romantic image, Egon blinked and turned back to his colleagues, who were staring at the old house, obviously impressed.

"Wow, Douglas Duke," breathed Ray, wide-eyed. "I've read all his books. Maybe we should go up there next."

"And then what, Ray?" wondered Peter, regarding his younger colleague fondly. "Ask him if he knows any local goblins? The man's a writer, not a mad scientist. He only invents monsters on the printed page."

"Yeah, but he writes about the occult, Peter," argued Ray, determined to carry out his plan. "That means he knows something about ghosts and goblins. He has to listen to local legends to dream up his next story ideas. Stories like that might turn up in his next book. If anybody knows what's going on around here or has a theory about it, it'd be Duke." He tried to urge Peter toward the truck. "Come on, guys, it'll be fun."

"It can't hurt," agreed Winston, slinging a companionable arm around Ray's shoulder. "I'm with Ray. It'd be neat to see what he's got to say, even if he doesn't know any more than any other local. I've read a lot of his books, too. He's not a bad writer. He tells a solid tale. I enjoyed Serena."

"I liked that one, too." Ray grinned. "It was all about vampires in Manhattan. It made a great movie, too. I saw it three times. So what do you say, guys? Can we go see him? Can we, huh?" He eyed them appealingly like a child asking for a new puppy.

"Down, boy." Peter winked at him, grinning indulgently. He was no more proof against Ray's pleading than the rest of them were. "Why not, unless Egon's solved it while we stood here?"

"I wish I had, Peter." Egon shook his head regretfully. He doubted the writer could help them, but he might have heard some local stories. He'd probably been interviewing people since he got here.

They headed back to the panel truck, Venkman dispersing the children good humoredly. They followed at a distance when Winston put the truck in gear and headed for the white house on the hill, only to fall back reluctantly at the edge of the park. Peter stuck his head out the window and waved at them before pulling in again and turning to Ray, who sat beside him in the back seat.

"We'll let our boy genius handle this," he suggested, clapping the occultist on the shoulder. "He's the expert."

"Hey, great," Ray burst out enthusiastically. "I got Duke's autograph once at a book signing at Murder, Ink," he added.

"Then he's sure to remember you," murmured Peter under his breath.

"I bet he might. We had a nice talk. He was a friendly guy. We talked about Ghostbusting. He wanted to know if he could play with the concept in a book. I told him he'd better talk to you about it first, Peter."

"Well, he never did," responded Peter as they parked in the driveway of the big mid-Victorian house, right beside a sheriff's car. Peter fell silent and all of them stared at it, wondering if it had a connection to the goblin problem. It could mean they were on the right track. "I don't like the look of that," Egon observed as they got out of the truck and started for the wide steps that led up to the double front doors. The square tower rose above it, four stories high. A plaque set beside the door announced that the tower was a copy of the one at Terrace Hill, the governor's mansion in Des Moines, which had been built in the 1860s, ten years before this house.

"It might just mean that he and the sheriff are buddies," disagreed Peter, bounding up the stairs past Egon to ring the doorbell. Ray was close on his heels, falling back when the door opened immediately and a young black man in a sheriff's uniform emerged. He was about thirty and looked like he worked out. The short sleeves of his uniform were tight around his bulging muscles. When he saw the four men in their proton packs, his eyes widened in amazement and he grinned, flashing dazzling white teeth at them.

"Hey, it's the Ghostbusters. You're just the guys I want to see. I'm Ron Kimball, deputy sheriff. I was just on my way to look for you." He looked slightly embarrassed at his interest in them.

They stared at him in surprise. "Are we under arrest?" Peter asked with a grin.

The uniformed officer smiled in return. "No, not today. You must know this is Douglas Duke's house or you wouldn't be here. Mr. Duke has vanished."

"Vanished!" echoed the four men. "What do you mean, vanished?" Winston demanded.

Kimball shook his head. "Things like this don't usually happen in Apple Dell. His wife says he was working on his new book last night but he didn't come to bed and when she went up there to investigate, she found the computer had been left on. His car's still here, in the garage." He pointed to the side of the building. "We've searched the house, but he's nowhere inside unless he's deliberately evading us. Mrs. Duke says he'd never do anything like that."

"Wow, an actual disappearance," breathed Ray. "Do you think it's ghosts--or something to do with the goblins?"

"He probably saw a critic coming," offered Peter.

The uniformed man grimaced, his skepticism showing. "Listen, my friend, I don't believe in ghosts and goblins--at least I didn't until two nights ago when I saw Wil Roberts' dead dairy cows. Nothing I ever saw or heard of made those slash marks."

Peter exchanged a frowning look with Egon. This disappearance must have something to do with the 'haunting' in the area. It was too great a coincidence otherwise, unless Duke had used the commotion raised by the goblin infestation to do a bunk.

Kimball held up the Manila envelope he'd been carrying and showed it to them. "This is what made me want to contact you, though."

"What is it?" asked Winston. "Something to do with the goblins?"

"It's the rough draft of what Duke's written so far in his new novel. His wife found this part of it this morning when she was looking for her husband and it scared her. I want the four of you to look at the latest section, what he must have written last night, then tell me we're all crazy."

Behind him the door opened to reveal a tired faced, though attractive redheaded woman in her late thirties. "I thought I heard voices, Ron." She stared at them in disbelief as if finding goblins on her doorstep would be less surprising. "You must be the Ghostbusters." Peter introduced them in turn. "We heard you were coming, but... " She shook her head uneasily, clearly disturbed by their presence. "I printed out the latest installment of the manuscript this morning. Doug must have thought it would be fun to play with it, but I can't see... " She broke off what she'd been about to say and gave her head a shake as if in denial. Holding wide the door, she made a gesture of welcome. "Come in. You can read it and see what you think. I want you to know that Doug wrote this around eight-thirty last night. I went up to ask him if he wanted dinner and he was typing frantically. When he's that deeply into a story I've learned to leave him to it. He was on a roll." She sighed suddenly. "Usually he gets such a look of unholy glee when it's going well, but last night--" she shuddered. "Last night he looked like he was undergoing medieval torture. He was writing frantically, but his face was full of the most horrible pain. I was afraid for him, but when I tried to interrupt, he snapped, 'Not now, it's coming,' and I left him to it. I shouldn't have." She guided them down a hall with a parquet floor bare of furniture except for one bland table topped with a vase of flowers.

"It was an hour later when I went up again and he was gone." She shivered as she led them into the living room and showed them chairs. The room bore no resemblance to the house's exterior, decorated in a modern and functional style which spoke of temporary dwellings and which had nearly as much charm as the Ghostbusters' hotel room. Mrs. Duke waved them to chairs and when they were seated, she asked, "Coffee?" and started for the door.

When all of them had their cups, she continued her story. "I looked at the computer, wondering if he'd left me a note," she explained. "There was nothing, but I saw that he hadn't printed the last pages out, so I did. I wanted to see if there was anything in them that might explain where or why he'd vanished. Sometimes he needs to research something and he'll come down for one of his books or to phone the library. But it was just part of the story--about goblins, and the four of you. Ron had me print it out--he thought it might help."

"What?" Egon reached for the manuscript pages. Kimball passed them over and Egon skimmed them, his eyes widening in disbelief. It was impossible. What Duke had written was a description of last night's encounter with the two goblins, in some detail. Not everything was there. The banter was missing, and Ray's turned ankle had been overlooked, but his fall into the stream was there and the fireworks display of the exploding goblin had been detailed with a colorful description.

"What is it, Egon?" demanded Ray. "Your face is pale."

"This is impossible," Egon burst out, shocked. He had witnessed a great many 'impossible' things since he and his friends had begun the Ghostbusting business, but this disturbed him. "He wrote about our encounter last night. Are you sure he did this last night, Mrs. Duke?"

"Of course." She hesitated, running a frustrated hand through her auburn tresses. "At least I'm sure he was typing frantically around eight or eight-thirty. He may have added something later, but there isn't enough of it to suggest he worked all night. Why?" Her fingers were tight around the cup she held, causing her knuckles to whiten. She was under tremendous strain and Egon wondered if all of it was because of the disappearance of her husband.

"Because this happened to us last night--around nine o'clock," Egon explained to her gently, "just as he wrote it."

"You mean he wrote about our encounter with the goblins?" Peter's eyebrows shot up and he snatched the pages from Egon's hand and skimmed them hastily. His mouth fell open as he read. "He wrote this--before it happened?"

"Wow, precognition," cried Ray, taking the sheets from Peter and poring over them, too. "This is really great! Has he ever predicted the future before, Mrs. Duke?"

She stared at Ray as if he'd lost his mind. The cup clattered against the saucer and she looked down nervously and set the china aside, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. "Doug can't tell the future, Mr. Stantz. He never could. It's them."

"Them?" asked Peter in a voice that struggled to sound normal. Egon suspected he was fighting the urge to make some smartass remark but unwilling to do it in the face of the woman's unhappiness. Peter had a gigantic soft spot for women in distress be they anywhere from eight to eighty. "Do you mean the goblins?"

"I haven't seen them," she denied hastily, averting her eyes, "but they're here. Doug did something and now they're here. I don't know what he did and I don't know why, but he knows. They came to him in dreams the night before last and I saw them, too. I think they took him away." She broke down and cried, burying her face in her hands.

Peter patted her clasped hands. "Hey. We'll find him. We'll stop them, too. That's why we're here. Do you think you can tell us everything you know about them. The more we know, the easier it will be to stop them."

In response to the soothing quality of Venkman's voice she controlled herself and raised her head again, scrubbing away the tears with her fists like a child. Peter captured one of her hands and squeezed it. "Go on. Tell us about it."

"Well, I woke up yesterday and I knew they were here. You've seen them, you know how horrible they are." Her eyes darted timidly from one man to the other, avoiding the more skeptical Kimball. "They told Doug he'd made them. He was panicked. I've never seen him so scared. Even though it was a dream, I know it was real, that it was happening somewhere I'd never seen."

"They told your husband he'd made them?" Ray echoed, intrigued. "You mean he didn't know?"

"I don't think so. He wouldn't have done it deliberately. Doug's a gentle man, really. Though his books have their share of blood and gore, I've never seen him hurt another human being. He's wanted to dismember a critic or two, but that's normal. He was shocked and horrified." She discovered Peter was still clasping her hand and delicately pulled it free. Peter smiled his best reassuring smile at her and allowed her the space she needed.

"What else did they tell him?" asked Egon. "It could be very important if we're to stop them."

She shuddered, the tremors rocking her entire body. "They said they couldn't be unmade," she related in a voice barely above a whisper. "They said that trying to unmake them would destroy the world."

"Let me get this straight, Egon," Peter said, rolling his eyes while the corners of his mouth turned up crookedly. "If we try to destroy them, we'll destroy the world? Don't you think that'd be bad."

"No, Peter," corrected Ray hastily, shaking his head. "We can destroy them. I destroyed one last night, remember, and the world is intact. Unmaking them is different. That's erasing them as if they hadn't been, and the power it would take to do it would be incredible. If Mr. Duke found a spell to bring them into existence, we can't use a reverse spell to eradicate them, that's all. We have to use more conventional ways, and we're good at that."

Egon nodded. "Exactly. More important now would be to search the house." He drew out his P.K.E. meter and activated it. "I'm picking up scarcely any residual energy, but that ties in with what we were reading last night."

"We already searched the house," objected Kimball with a frown as if he had taken Egon's words as a slur on his professionalism.

"No, let them search, Ron," Mrs. Duke corrected softly, climbing to her feet, prepared to lead them through the house. "They didn't mean we weren't thorough. Their equipment might find things we couldn't see." She started for the door, squaring her shoulders in determination to leave no stone unturned in the search for her husband.

The equipment did its job, guiding them unerringly to the top of the round tower at the back of the house, were they were confronted with a locked door. Mrs. Duke frowned at this obstacle. "We've never had a key to this room. It was locked when we bought the house and it's been locked ever since. We talked about hiring a locksmith, but we never got around to it. We didn't need the space."

"I've got a locksmith for you," Peter declared, leveling his particle thrower at the door and taking careful aim. His martial stance made Egon wonder if the psychologist had been watching too many Rambo movies lately. "How's this?"

After a moment's consideration she nodded. "Of course. Go ahead. Do whatever you need to do."

The door might have resisted more conventional means of gaining access, but it was powerless to stand up to a proton gun. Under his deadeye aim the lock melted and the door swung inward to reveal a round room with windows on all sides above a circular window seat with cushions that encircled the room. Most of the windows were open to the air and their entry surprised three pigeons, which panicked and fluttered around the room until they hit an open window and vanished. Of the goblins and Douglas Duke there remained no trace.

At least there was nothing visible. Noticing pigeon droppings on the seat cushions, Egon sought goblin droppings, too, as he moved into the room with his P.K.E. meter held out before him. The device recorded an faint copy of the negative valence he had observed last night, but, as before, the goblins' traces didn't linger long after their departure. He found nothing concrete to mark their presence, either, but a heavy, acrid odor hung in the air that made their noses wrinkle in disgust and the Ghostbusters nod in remembrance.

"They were here all right," Winston announced, examining the room through narrowed eyes as if he expected them to pop in again at any second. "I can smell them."

"Slimer could smell them back in New York." Peter pinched his nose shut between his thumb and forefinger.

"Yes, they were here," confirmed Egon, watching the disappointing readings on his P.K.E. meter. "What do you get, Raymond?"

Ray had donned the ecto-scopes, and was frowning as he scanned the room in the modified goggles that allowed a clearer view than was ordinarily possible into the spirit world. Images were recorded as if they were heat traces.

"Heavy residual markings, Egon," he replied, pointing to the rumpled cushions. "They were here all night, I think. Probably left just before dawn. The readings are fading now, but I think there might have been a dozen of them." He pointed to the marks on the cushions. "I can see where they were sitting--each place is glowing faintly red with the scopes."

"There's this, too," Peter discovered, pouncing triumphantly to snatch a sheaf of papers in which someone, evidently Duke had scribbled notes in a crabbed script. The papers were crumpled up and daubed with ominous brownish stains. He stared at the first pages and his face fell dramatically. "I think this is bad, guys," he complained and read aloud. "'When the Ghostbusters attacked the goblins a second time, they discovered to their horror that the creatures had learned to shield themselves against the strength of their energy beams. No matter what they tried, the beams bounced harmlessly off the creatures' chests.'"

Egon exchanged a grim and knowing look with Ray. "They learn fast, don't they?" asked the occultist, removing the ecto-scopes to reveal worried brown eyes. "They can make him write anything and it will happen. What else does it say, Peter?"

"Not a lot more. Just that we try to shoot them and they laugh at us and get away. At least they don't eat us."

"It doesn't say how they shield against us, does it?" Egon asked, though he doubted the goblins would have allowed them any such advantage.

"Just something about body armor," Peter replied. "There's a lot in here about how funny they think it is. They have a weird sense of humor."

"They left it as a warning not to try again, Peter," said Ray, taking the two sheets from the brown-haired man and scanning them quickly. Suddenly new possibilities shone in his face and he started to smile. "Body armor?" he murmured thoughtfully. "The beams bouncing off their chests? I wonder."

"What, Ray?" Egon asked, intrigued by the speculative nature of Ray's voice. The younger man was intelligent enough to make sense of every possible clue, and he understood a lot of the 'fine print' when it came to occult sciences. If anyone could resolve the goblin problem, it was Ray Stantz.

"We have to assume that Duke got in over his head," Ray continued eagerly. "He only wanted to write a book about goblins, not make them for real. He's not helping them. They're holding him prisoner, but he's fighting them the only way he can, on paper."

"He would," put in Mrs. Duke from the doorway, a smile of pride upon her face. "He'd fight them as hard as he could. He's never been a coward."

"What are you saying, homeboy?" Winston asked, eyeing Ray expectantly.

"Well, it's obvious," Ray cried, his eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "I think they have to stick to the exact letter of what he writes. Body armor, get it?"

"We will if you tell us," Peter urged him, anxious for the solution. "Come on, boy genius, stop patting yourself on the back and fill us in."

"I bet this is all extremely accurate," Ray replied, grinning at Peter. He stepped away from Winston and made sweeping gestures with the hand that wasn't holding the ecto-scopes. "Don't you see, he means just what he says. Body armor shields the body. It might not shield the head. If that's what Duke meant when he wrote it, we'll have smaller targets than before, but we can still stop them. I think he figured out how to get around them but but it will only give us the one chance. They'll compensate quickly, so we have to be bang on target."

"You think Duke's intent is strong enough to get around their manipulation?" Egon asked seriously. It should prove difficult for one man to stand against a dozen of the savage creatures, especially when he knew what viciousness they were capable of. They would probably reward betrayal with death.

"We have to assume he isn't insane or out for blood, Egon," Ray continued earnestly. "His wife says he'd never hurt anyone so that means unless he's lost his mind he'll still be that kind of a person. He's trying to think up every safeguard he can, even though he can't slip many of them by. If he made the distinction in his mind it might be enough."

"Okay, Ray, let's say you're right," Peter agreed. "That means we blast them in the heads--smaller target, right? If Duke's on our side, they'll still go poof like that one you zapped last night." He frowned suddenly. "What you're saying is that we have to go back and find them again tonight?" His enthusiasm dropped to zero.

"Yeah, Peter," agreed Ray bouncing up and down on his toes. The movement made Egon remember Ray's injured foot. It must be all right today. "It'll be great," the occultist concluded. "We'll get 'em this time."

"You have a weird idea of what's great, buddy. Hitting a moving target--probably lots of moving targets--in the dark, moving targets that can manipulate Duke?" Peter asked incredulously, exchanging a doubtful frown with Egon. "The minute they see us getting in a few head shots, they'll make him change what he wrote before, right?"

"Yeah, but we'll get in a few good shots by then," argued Ray, "maybe even finish them off. We have to do it, Peter. Besides, it'll be fun."

"We couldn't write our own ending?" Winston suggested, frowning at the papers. "Maybe Duke's not the only one with power over them."

"Let me." Peter grinned brightly, took a pen from his pocket and scribbled busily on the paper before passing it to Egon, who took it and read aloud.

"'To the goblins' horror, they realized that they were dying. They had succumbed to the common cold, a virus to which they had no resistance. Within hours they were too weak to fight the Ghostbusters. By midnight, all of them were dead meat.'"

"Very clever, Peter," Egon approved. "If the writing in itself has any power, that might work. If only Duke has any control, however, we'll still have to fight them tonight." He wondered how much control, if any, Duke had left. The brown stains on the paper could be nothing but dried blood, a fact he had been reluctant to share with Duke's wife. Though the blood could have come from superficial wounds and small cuts, it would still alarm her and the knowledge would do no one any good.

"You had to say that, didn't you?" Peter lamented, taking back the papers, folding them, and stuffing them inside his jumpsuit. "Here I thought I was going to turn into the next Stephen King."

"You mean Orson Welles, Peter," Ray corrected, recognizing War of the Worlds as the source of Peter's inspiration. "Or even H. G. Wells?"

"Probably the Gene Barry movie," Winston suggested with a grin. "Whoever it was, I was still brilliant," Peter claimed complacently, buffing his nails against the front of his jumpsuit.

*****

Twilight settled slowly over Apple Dell and the surrounding hills and valleys. The Ghostbusters had spent the afternoon searching for potential hiding places for the goblins. Since they had not yet appeared in full daylight, it was likely they had sought a dark and shadowy place in which to await darkness. Locals pointed out several promising caves, but perfunctory searches revealed no latent P.K. energy. Winston suggested barn lofts, but there were so many barns in the area that they could never search them all in one day, so they contented themselves with searching the ones closest to the last known sighting. As the day wound down toward evening, they headed back for Roberts' farm, the place the goblins would expect to find them.

"Tell me again why coming back here is such a good idea, Egon," Peter demanded as they followed the path down to the valley, ducking past the brown and white cattle in Roberts' herd as they plodded stolidly home to be milked.

"Because this is where we met them last time. If they want revenge, they will hope to find us here, Egon explained."

"You mean we made them mad and then came looking for them?" Peter demanded incredulously. "We're so brave. You forgot something, Egon."

"What's that?" Spengler asked warily, as if sensing one of Peter's jokes.

"The targets we should have painted on our chests."

"Thanks, Peter," Winston groused sourly. His eyes were busily scanning the sky.

Ray smiled. He knew they were going to be targets, but they were targets every time they went hunting for ghosts, so this time should be no different. The goblins were nowhere near as deadly as Gozer or Samhaine. If Ray was right, and he was almost a hundred per cent sure he was, this would be like a shooting gallery at the carnival. The only difference was that no one was waiting to give them a prize for each goblin they blew up.

They hung close together as they reached the valley floor, automatically forming a circle, their backs together, so that they could scan the sky. Peter pulled his proton rifle first and balanced it in his hand as if it were a high powered rifle.

"Let me at 'em," he growled under his breath. "Tex Venkman is ready to set a new skeet shooting record tonight."

As if on cue, the goblins arrived, gliding in low along the creek, a dozen of them, wings beating loudly in the quiet of the early evening.

"Incoming," hollered Winston, powering up his proton pack. The rest of them followed suit, checking the settings on their throwers. "Think that's all of them?" Ray asked as he took aim at the nearest one. "Unless there are a few guarding Duke," returned Egon. "Look out, they're coming in fast."

The goblins were much quicker than Ray had expected. Maybe they'd had Duke write that into the story, too. Ray fired at the nearest one and missed when it swooped sideways so fast that the wind of its passing ruffled his hair. He let out a yell of astonishment and fired at a second one. This one was slower and he hit it right on target. With a fierce shriek that hurt their ears, it faltered, plunged out of the sky and crashed into the creek bank before it exploded into a fireworks display like the one the previous night. Maybe without a direct hit, it took longer to build up to detonation.

A shot from Peter took out a second one, and it staggered in midair, skidded sideways and landed hung up in a tree. Branches and leaves showered outward in the force of the technicolor blast.

"Yahoo!" bellowed Winston in triumph, ducking low to get a better angle on a third one. It went off in midair in a shower of red and green sparks.

The other creatures retreated, chittering among themselves just out of range of the proton streams, casting baleful glares over their shoulders at the Ghostbusters, their wings beating fast enough to hold them in a hovering position.

"We've got 'em on the run," cried Peter eagerly. "Come on, guys, let's take 'em." Venkman started toward the goblins, drawing a bead on the closest of the creatures and firing as he approached. It faltered, fell and burned.

The rest of the goblins went straight up, roaring their fury, hovering above them so high that they appeared no bigger than bats. For a long time, they milled around up there.

"I don't like that," Egon said gravely. "They're up to something."

"You just figured that out, did you?" Peter's eyes narrowed as one of the creatures peeled off to the north and streaked across the sky like a rocket. "Get a fix on the direction if you can, Egon," he added. "I bet he's heading straight for Duke to make him alter the book. Is there any way we can hit them up there?"

"Could we cross the streams?" Ray wondered.

Egon frowned. "It might give us the additional height we need, but there's not enough reality to the goblins to warrant it. Even if we hit them, I think the danger from doing so would be worse than the danger from the goblins. The energy exerted could very well create the same amount of power as unmaking the goblins would."

"In other words, we'd go boom," muttered Winston. "How far away do you think they've taken Duke?"

"Closer than we'd like," Ray replied. He shielded his eyes with a hand across his forehead, trying to make out the distant shapes against the fading light of the sky. "You can bet that they'll be shielded against the throwers soon. They'll make sure Duke is more exact next time."

"We blasted four of them," Peter offered, knowing as well as Ray did that it wasn't enough.

"They're coming back!" Winston shouted, pointing.

"Fry 'em," ordered Peter. "Let's all aim for the same one and see if that works."

It didn't. Though all four streams hit the target selected and briefly held the goblin pinned, it was evidently unharmed. Ray whipped out a trap and stomped it open, wincing as the movement recalled his injured foot. The brilliant wedge of light from the miniature containment device shot up to envelop the struggling creature, but a moment later it broke free of both streams and trap and soared skyward again, snarling and growling at them in fury. The goblins congregated in a solid phalanx and started down again, clearly determined to win this battle.

"It's time for Plan B," said Egon hastily.

"What's Plan B?" Peter yelled back.

"Run away!"

"Gotcha."

As one, they fled along the stream bank, heading for the path up toward the Roberts farm. Ray found himself bringing up the rear, his thrower powered up full, hoping to fight a rear guard action if necessary. He had guessed right about the creatures' vulnerability but he'd never dreamed that they could correct it so quickly. He should have anticipated that. His failure to do so had put his friends in grave danger.

Then a rock rolled away under his injured foot causing agonizing pain to shoot through it so intense that it would no longer bear his weight. His foot slid forward and sideways and he pitched over backward to land flat on his back so hard the fall drove the breath from his body. He opened his mouth to call for help but he couldn't catch his breath. Desperately he struggled to draw air into his lungs.

The creatures dove on him like jets on a strafing run, four of them grabbing him, one of them taking each arm and leg. Before he could get his breath to call to his friends, he was borne aloft by the creatures, their horny fingers scratching his flesh. Wheezing for breath, he struggled furiously, but to no avail. They flew low along the creek bed again so that they would not stand out against the sky. By the time Ray could find his voice to cry for help, he was out of sight of the other Ghostbusters. At the first squeak of sound he produced, another goblin flew in close and clouted him across the face so hard that everything blurred around him and he nearly lost consciousness. No matter how hard he fought, he couldn't break free.

*****

"Hey, guys, wait a minute," Peter sputtered, glancing over his shoulder. "Where's Ray?" He planted his feet firmly on the ground and gripped his thrower, reading to take on five dozen of the monsters if that's what it would take to retrieve his friend.

"Where are the goblins?" demanded Winston, skidding to a stop and staring up at the sky. "Oh, man, they must have caught him."

"He was right behind me," Peter objected as if that should make a difference. He'd heard Ray thundering along behind him as he ran.

Ignoring the threat of goblins, the three remaining Ghostbusters raced back to the valley floor, searching for an injured or fallen Ray behind every bush and in the depths of every shadow, but unless he was well hidden he had vanished completely. They shouted his name at the top of their lungs but no one replied. Peter ran along the creek bed, his eyes on the water, jumping nimbly from boulder to boulder. Wherever he was, Ray wasn't lying face down in the stream, one of the first thoughts that had occurred to him. He pushed the possibility from his mind and tried to think of another place to check instead of with the goblins that had vanished into the night. He scanned the willows that drooped their branches into the water as if expecting to find them sitting there like buzzards bending down at their prey.

"There!" With a sudden shout Egon pointed at a distant blur of motion where the creek met the far horizon. "There they are! They've got Ray!" Some of the creatures had bunched together and it was possible to see a dark, inert bundle dangling below them beneath the beating wings.

Cold fury ran through Peter's veins. They had Ray and he wouldn't let them keep him, even if it meant going into their den single handed and offering himself in trade. "Let's go," he insisted, turning in that direction, prepared to race after them.

Before he could take the first step, Egon grabbed his arm. "Wait, Peter."

"What do you mean, wait?" he screeched incredulously, struggling to pull free. "They've got Ray. We've have to get him back."

"We can follow faster in the truck," Egon returned, his mouth drawn in a tight line, his eyes filled with fear for his missing companion. "His ankle must have been worse than he thought," he added as he freed Peter's arm and started up the hill toward the farm yard where they had left the brown truck.

Peter did a double take, grabbed Egon's arm in turn and pulled the taller man around to face him, staring at him through narrowed eyes. "His ankle? What about his ankle, Egon?" he snarled. "This is the first I heard anything about his ankle."

"Last night when we were fighting them," Egon explained hastily, "he turned it when he fell into the creek. He said it wasn't serious."

"Egon," said Peter in a very quiet voice, glaring at the blond man, "Ray would say it wasn't serious if it was a compound fracture of both legs and you know it. How could you let him come tonight if he was hurt? Did you mean to give them a hostage?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Peter. He wasn't hurt," Egon replied defensively, meeting Peter's furious eyes with quiet intensity. "I watched him off and on all day and he wasn't limping. I didn't overlook the possibility."

"Ray isn't here, Egon." Peter spat out the words with fury. "In case you hadn't noticed, they've taken him with them. They wouldn't have him if you'd bothered to tell anybody what was wrong." He turned his back on Egon and added, "Come on, Winston, let's get back to the truck." He freed the physicist's arm and pushed past him without another word, heading for the truck at a dead run.

"Come on, my man," he heard Winston urging Egon. "We've gotta get Ray back from them before they hurt him. Peter will see reason."

"I watched him, Winston. He was all right," Egon insisted, but he came too. They thudded into the Roberts' yard, where the farmer was waiting with his shotgun in hand, clearly expecting trouble. He jumped at the sight of them, peered past them as if expecting goblin pursuit, then did a quick tally with his eyes, realizing that one of them was missing.

Peter dived for the truck without even acknowledging the man's presence. There wasn't time to be sociable, not if they intended to find Ray and rescue him before the creatures decided to take revenge on him for the deaths of their comrades. One or more of the Ghostbusters had been captured by nasty entities before, but none of them had been prepared to serve them up as the main course.

"They captured Ray," Winston called to the farmer. "We're gonna try to follow in the truck. You know this country. Want to ride shotgun and point out the landmarks? We can sure use your help."

Recognizing a good idea when he heard one, Peter slowed long enough for the farmer to join them. Roberts didn't hesitate. "I'm going with the Ghostbusters, Betty," he bawled in the direction of the house and jumped into the back seat of the truck beside Egon. The minute all of them were in, Peter floored the accelerator and they rocketed off down the driveway toward the road. They hadn't found the goblins during their afternoon's searches. Now it was different. Now they had to find them.

"How'd they get the boy?" Roberts asked, climbing forward to hang over the back of the seat beside Peter. "Did you get any of 'em?"

"Four of 'em," Winston confirmed when neither of the others deigned to answer. "There were eight or nine left, and they figured out how to shield against us again."

"They took Ray because somebody didn't bother to tell us that he was hurt last night," Peter said furiously, his fingers clenched tightly around the steering wheel. "Damn it, Egon, didn't it occur to you that he wouldn't be able to keep up if we had to run for it?"

"He was keeping up," Egon replied. "I saw him right behind you."

"So now it's my fault?" Peter shot back, too angry to rein in his all-too-volatile temper. He skidded on the gravel of the drive as they pulled up to the back road that ran between the farm and Apple Dell. "Quick, Roberts, they were following the creek north. How do we get that way?"

"Turn right and then right again at the first intersection. I'll direct you after that."

"Peter," Egon began as Venkman stomped the accelerator to the floor again and leaned forward, his eyes raking the sky.

"Shut up, Egon," he returned. "Just shut up and let me drive. You've done enough already."

"Cool it, Pete," Winston tried to intervene, but Peter's concern for Ray was so intense he had to attack. If anything happened to Ray... He wouldn't let himself consider the possibility any further. The goblins hadn't killed Duke yet. They had gone to him to change the story to reinforce their armor against the proton streams. If they hadn't killed him, they wouldn't kill Ray. They couldn't.

"It wasn't Egon's fault," Winston insisted.

"Tell me that when we've got Ray back," Peter growled and refused to answer when Winston pressed him.

*****

They drove through the thickening darkness, following the hasty directions Wil Roberts provided in response to Peter's questions. Eventually they found themselves on a narrow, twisty road that followed the creek, deeply rutted and obviously seldom used that grew worse and worse until it dwindled into two wheel tracks in the dried mud.

"Hunters come this way in the fall," Roberts explained, leaning forward as if it would help him to see past the headlights. He must be uncomfortable with the tensions within the truck, but he was determined to help and Winston was grateful for his presence, which kept the group under a modicum of self control. Peter still seethed with the anger Winston suspected was a defense mechanism. The psychologist was worried sick about Ray, refusing to face the possibility that he was already eaten. The easiest way for him to deal with his anxiety was to blow it off in outbursts of anger. His temper came quickly and went as fast, but this time Winston was afraid it would last longer. If they didn't save Ray... No, he didn't even want to think about that.

Egon had retreated into a hurt and huffy silence in the back seat. He had turned on his belt flashlight, passed it to Wil to hold, and busied himself tinkering with his P.K.E. meter, making minute adjustments with a tool from the miniature kit he carried in one of his pockets.

"What're you doing, man?" Winston asked him softly, hanging over the back of the seat for a better look.

"I'm adjusting the P.K.E. meter to detect Ray's biorhythms and boosting the gain," the physicist replied in a voice devoid of any emotion at all. Unlike Peter, who used anger as a shield, the physicist sounded as cool as Mr. Spock. People who didn't know Egon very well occasionally made that comparison, but this was the first time Winston had ever considered it valid. Egon generally kept his cool but he didn't repress his emotions to do it. He simply had his act together, and his calm tones never quite managed to hide his wicked sense of humor or the gleam of affection he felt for his friends. Now his voice held all the emotion of a Vulcan, as if he had retreated so deeply into his surface persona that he had made it real. Only a person who knew him as well as Winston and Peter did would have heard the thread of pain that wove its way beneath his iron control. It stabbed at Winston, and he glanced sideways at Peter to see if he'd noticed, but Peter's face didn't change at all. In the darkness, it wouldn't be possible to detect the subtleties of his expression, but Winston knew him as well as it is possible to know another human being and he would have sensed any softening in Peter's anger, even in total darkness. There was none yet.

"You mean you'll be able to detect Ray with it?" Winston prodded hopefully.

"The range will be limited, but it will give us a better chance than we've had so far." Egon could have been giving a lecture on applied physics for all the feeling he allowed into his words.

"Then what, Egon?" Peter asked icily. "We just walk up and ask for him back? You haven't found a way to stop them yet, have you?" He made it sound as if Egon had deliberately neglected that possibility.

"Shut up, Pete," hissed Winston, tired of the whole argument. "In case you'd forgotten, the most important thing is getting Ray back, not scoring points against Egon. He never meant for Ray to be caught. He loves Ray as much as you do. He's hurting, too. I think you should remember that." He sucked in his breath and added the clincher. "Ray would want you to."

Peter jerked as if he'd been struck, then he made a dismissive gesture. "Leave it alone, Winston," he ground out, refusing to concede the point. "No, man, I can't. They snatched Ray so they'd have something to hold against us. It was their fault. It won't help you to blame Egon for it."

"Ray wouldn't have been there if Egon had told us he had a bum ankle, Winston," Peter insisted. He could be the most stubborn man Winston knew. The black man closed his eyes for a minute, praying for the wisdom to get through to him.

"Says who, home boy? You? Come on, Pete, you know Ray. Do you think he would have stayed back at the hotel or even at Wil's house while we took the risks without him just for a bunged up ankle that hadn't slowed him down all day? We don't even know if his ankle actually gave out on him. They may have just caught him. Even if it did, he's an adult. He could have said something about it. It was his own choice not to."

Peter doggedly ignored the voice of reason. "Roberts," he said to the farmer who had sat silent through the argument, "you know this country. If the goblins are nocturnal, they'll go to ground in the daytime. Can you think of any caves or shelters or even abandoned buildings where they might hide out? They came at us along the creek and went back the same way. I'm betting they're hiding somewhere in that direction."

He pulled the truck to a stop at the top of a rise and switched off the headlights. Darkness settled around them like a shroud. The sky still held that colorless hint of brightness which means that the onset of total darkness is almost here. They could not distinguish features of the countryside in any detail, but it was possible to pick out groves of trees, the barns and outbuildings of farms dotting the landscape, and the general contours of the land. Overhead, stars sprang out, so many of them that Winston stared, briefly enraptured. New York was so bright that he never saw anything like this at home. The great, glowing band of the Milky Way ran across the sky like a river. He couldn't remember a view of the night sky so spectacular since a few night patrols in Nam.

Shrugging away the unhappy images evoked by that particular memory, he scanned the countryside for potential goblin retreats. "They probably won't be at an occupied farm, will they?" he asked, mentally dismissing the groups of buildings that were displaying lights.

"Somebody would've reported 'em if they were," the farmer concurred, "at least unless they took everybody prisoner or ate 'em." He shivered. "I hate to mention it, but I saw what they did to my Guernseys. Who's to say they'll stop there."

Peter's shoulders went even more taut than before and Egon flinched in the tiny glow from his penlight. He made a minute adjustment with a shaking hand and fumbled with the screwdriver which skidded across the metal of the P.K.E. meter's casing with a screech like chalk on a blackboard before it clattered to the floor. Egon reached for it, his face a Vulcan mask.

"Dale Rottinghaus lost his farm a couple of years ago," Roberts offered hastily, his voice apologetic. "There were a lot of foreclosures that year. It hasn't been an easy time for farmers. Anyway, the bank owns the place and it's just sitting there moldering away. Damn shame. It's about two miles from here," he added in clarification when Peter whirled around to stare at him expectantly. No one else they'd questioned had mentioned the Rottinghaus farm and their searches had not led them in this direction until now. It might be the best lead they'd had.

As Peter turned, Egon bobbed up with his tool and they came abruptly face to face. Roberts raised the flashlight beam he'd directed at the floor to help Egon find his screwdriver, presenting both men an excellent view of each other. In the pale white glow, Peter and Egon stared at each other at a distance of about two feet.

Egon's face was still pseudo-Vulcan but, to those who knew him, it held a desperate worry that he tried helplessly to suppress when the light hit him. He bowed his head, shoving his glasses so fiercely into place that they rebounded off the bridge of his nose and slid off entirely, exposing eyes that were blurred with worry and full of pain.

Peter's jaw was clenched so tightly that it must have hurt. His desperation was concealed behind an implacable drive to rescue Ray no matter the cost or who paid it. If he realized how much Egon was hurting, he shunted away the knowledge immediately. Winston wasn't sure if he saw the brief glitter of answering unhappiness in Peter's eyes or not, but Venkman concealed it, scowling and heaving a controlled sigh that might have been interpreted in a dozen different ways. "Where is it?" he asked Roberts in such an urgent voice that the farmer blinked in surprise and pointed automatically off to their left to the shadowy outlines of a barn and silo, a big, two story house and various outbuildings, black against the last remnants of twilight in the western sky.

"There," he said simply.

Above the barn, like a sentinel, a creature larger than a bird flew slowly in lazy circles, guarding the hiding place of the goblins.

"Yahoo," bellowed Winston exultantly. "We got 'em."

"Great, Winston," Peter replied sourly, putting in the clutch and allowing the truck to coast in that direction though the road bore away from it to the left. "What do we do when we get there? Talk them to death?" Without waiting for an answer, he asked Roberts, "How do I get there fast without being seen?"

"If you follow this road, it will coast down behind that rise, see, there?--and you can come up on foot right into the back yard. There's a ravine that Denny Rottinghaus and I used to play in when we were kids, with an old culvert. Unless it's blocked, we can take it nearly to the house, and then use the house as a shield to approach the barn. They're probably in the barn."

"That's my man." Peter left the truck's headlights off and, without starting the truck, let its momentum roll them down the ever fading trail they'd been following. "Those goblins are toast!"

"Wait, Peter," Egon insisted. "We know the throwers are useless against them. What are you going to do?"

"I'll wring their necks with my bare hands if I have to," Peter spat back. He sounded mad enough to do it, too, as if adrenalin would endow him with the strength of ten. Studying his friend, Winston suddenly realized how David must have looked when he went bravely off to confront Goliath.

"I've got my shotgun," volunteered Roberts, "and a pocket full of shells. I couldn't stop the goblins with it the first time but that was before I knew what I was up against."

"If the throwers can't stop them..." Peter began, but Egon cut in sharply.

"They haven't warded themselves against buckshot, Peter. Perhaps there will be no effect, but it's possible that a physical attack may work." As if that gave him an idea, he began to make adjustments on his thrower.

"And it's possible it won't. You said these things were barely real, Egon." He didn't sound any more forgiving than he had earlier, but at least he was talking to Egon. Winston silently crossed his fingers.

"They're here and they can manipulate physical matter," Egon replied. "If they can do that, physical matter can manipulate them. I should think a shotgun blast will have scant effect at any great range, but up close it just might be our only chance."

"Then I'm taking the gun," Peter insisted. "I'm going in there, and nobody's stopping me."

"Wrong," Winston interrupted automatically. Peter going in with a gun would be just plain stupid at this point.

"Damn it, Winston, Ray's in there. I'm going and you better not try to stop me."

"I'm not trying to stop you, Pete. I'm reminding you that, of all of us, I'm the one with combat experience, unless Wil was in Nam, too." The farmer shook his head. "I came up against the V.C. hand to hand a few times. They aren't quite as nasty as goblins, but they fight mean. I know you're street smart, Pete, and you can fight, but I'm the one with actual training. Which of us do you think will give Ray a better chance to come out of this alive?"

Peter hated that. Winston could see it in the sharp, hasty glance he cast at him. He nodded once, his face unreadable, his mouth twisted downward. Winston shook his head and wished this were over.

"I've modified my thrower," Egon offered in a very quiet tone. "I boosted its power above the standard gain. It will fire in short, narrow controlled bursts with double the punch of a regular particle emitter. The power won't last as long, but I believe it will punch through any armor the goblins force Duke to design for them."

"It'd better," Peter replied simply. "Okay then, here's what we do. Winston you and Egon--" his voice soured at the name, proving he was still clinging obdurately to his grudge--"ride shotgun on this raid. Wil, you stand by in the truck. You're our getaway driver. While you guys distract the mothers, I'm going in for Ray." His tone brooked no argument and Winston exchanged a resigned grimace with Egon as he realized it would take a force more powerful than two men, even two of his best friends, to change Peter's mind. "Right?" he asked coldly.

Winston raised an eyebrow at Egon, who probably couldn't see it in the darkness. The physicist nodded anyway, and Winston heaved a bitter sigh and repeated:

"Right."

`They left the truck at the end of the ravine when it coasted to a halt against a rock that made a nasty sound underneath the vehicle. Winston groaned. "ISU will probably make us pay for that," he muttered.

Peter ignored the remark completely. He didn't try to start the truck, knowing the sound would carry in the silence of the rural night, but he pulled Roberts out of the back seat and pointed him at the vehicle. "Take a look under there and make sure it isn't anything that'll stop our getaway," he said. "We might need this truck to escape in a hurry."

"Whatever you say, Dr. Venkman." From the nervous agreement in his voice, Roberts would probably have stood on one foot and sung Madonna's latest video had Peter demanded it of him. It would not have been a good time to cross the man.

"I thought he was gonna show us how to get through the culvert," Winston objected.

"Oh, that's easy, Winston," Wil replied. "You can put the light on now, Dr. Spengler. They can't see us from here. Just for a second. Yeah, right there." He pointed down the ravine to where it narrowed abruptly while Egon followed the gesture with the flashlight beam. A concrete pipe nearly big enough for them to walk upright in protruded from the hill. Water sloshed out in a thin trickle as if someone had left a tap running.

"Used to be the run off from the hogs," explained Wil. "Most of that now is overflow from last week's rain. We had enough rain this spring to drown a duck. Looks to be drying up again this month. I'm lucky I put any crops in, the way it was going. It'll be a bad year and there'll be a few more places go the way of that one up there." He shrugged philosophically. "I think the truck's okay," he concluded. "Good luck, boys."

"Thanks, Wil." Winston shook his hand and turned to find Peter already at the culvert and Egon hurrying after him.

"Wait, Peter." the physicist called after his heedless colleague.

"The hell I will. You saw that paper they made Duke write on just like I did. In case you didn't notice, Spengler, that was blood. They're not exactly gonna give Ray the key to the city. I just hope they dine fashionably late."

"Damn it, Peter, I never intended any harm to Ray," Egon shot back, finally goaded beyond endurance, catching Peter's arm and pulling him around to face him. Peter jerked free, his hands coming up and beginning to curl into fists.

"Whoa, easy," Winston cried hastily, jumping between them. "I bet Ray would just love to see you two fighting like this--his two best friends, more interested in blaming each other for his predicament than rescuing him. You should both be ashamed of yourselves."

Peter shot one savage glare at Winston, his face stark and telling in the starlight, then he climbed into the culvert and splashed forward without another word. Egon drew a calming breath and retreated into Vulcanness. He followed Peter, but not before Winston saw a gleam of unnatural brightness in his eyes that might have been the product of fury--or misery. Zeddemore figured it had to be the goblins' eating habits that made them both overreact they way they did.

"I hate this," muttered Winston, and, grasping the gun so it wasn't pointed toward his companions, he hastened after them into the tunnel. Somebody had to keep those two crazy scientists out of trouble.

Peter groped his way along without a light, but Egon must have considered that inefficient because he snapped on the pocket light again and directed it past Peter to check for obstacles. Peter snarled, "Good, go ahead and tell them we're coming," but he raised no more of a protest than that. The light helped him detect and step over a knee-high branch that would have sent him sprawling, but he didn't withdraw his complaint. Sometimes Peter could be a real shithead. If Winston hadn't known it was because he was afraid of what might happen to Ray if they delayed, he would have taken great pleasure in thumping his buddy.

The culvert did a dog-leg turn midway along, curving them in the direction of the farm buildings. He called out a soft warning. "Hold it a minute, guys. Egon, douse the light."

Spengler obeyed and after a moment, a circle of grey appeared in front of them, revealing the other end of the tunnel. "We'd better not use the light from here," Winston concluded. "If they're flying recon, they might see a glow from the entrance and be waiting for us."

It meant slowing down, a fact that did not sit well with Peter, though he said nothing about it. They could hear him stomping about, kicking stray brush out of the way and once muttering a curse when his toe ran up against a piece of solidly lodged debris.

Soon they were free of the culvert, lying on a lip of ground and peering cautiously over at the deserted farm.

Nothing moved nearby but when Winston rolled over on his back and squinted up at the star field, it took only minutes to detect the winged shape that swooped in widening and narrowing circles overhead. "There's one sentry up there," he breathed, jamming his thumb at the sky.

"There might be others on the ground level," replied Egon. "We need to be closer to the barn."

"Okay," replied Peter, so used to working with Egon that he did it in spite of his anger. "See that hedge? If we can work our way along it, we can come within ten feet of the house. Once up against the house, we can use it as a shield until we reach the porch. There will probably be bushes and we can use them, too. The hardest part's gonna be on the other side. Maybe I should go out as bait and lure in a few for you two to trash."

"Hardly sensible, Peter," Egon said with heat. "The last thing we want is for you to be caught, too."

"No, Egon," Venkman's reply held the offensively patient tones one used when talking to a half-wit. "The last thing we wanted was for Ray to get caught."

Egon flinched. "I might have lost one friend tonight, Peter," he said. "The last thing I want to do is lose two." Though not the most demonstrative of men he put his hand on Peter's arm in one final attempt to make peace.

Peter shrugged it off. "You should have thought of that before," he returned adamantly. "We'll go as close as we can. When they come for me, you two blast 'em and I'll make a run for the barn."

"Might be Ray's best chance," conceded Winston. "When they know we're here, they're gonna do something with him, even if it's just to move him."

"They might kill him, Winston." Egon's voice was dead level.

"They will anyway." He put his hand on Egon's shoulder and squeezed. "We have to get backup to him. They'll have one helluva time going through Peter to hurt Ray."

Peter was already moving, running along the hedge toward the house. "Damn," muttered Egon and hurried after him, Winston bringing up the rear, ready to use the shotgun the first time a goblin flew within range. If that didn't work, he still had his thrower; there might still be flaws in the armor--hands and feet were smaller targets, but they could be unshielded, though he doubted it.

Undetected, they circled the house and stood pressed against its shadowy bulk beneath a small maple tree. Winston held his breath. In the hayloft opening above the barn door, two goblins sat unmoving, staring out into the night. Winston could see the pale yellow of their glowing eyes. Could they see in the dark? Did they know the Ghostbusters had come to retrieve their own?

"Ready, guys," Peter breathed. "I'm gonna lure those two away from the barn. Maybe the rest are out eating cattle." His face was twisted with something Winston belatedly recognized as fear. These goblins had really got to Peter, but that hadn't stopped him. Winston shook his head at Peter's courage.

"Ready." Winston raised the shotgun, and Egon drew his thrower and powered it up. The reassuring hum of the proton pack seemed obscenely loud in the still of the Iowa night.

The two goblins stiffened; they must have heard it. Realizing that, Peter let out a wild yell in an attempt to cover the sound and burst into the open space between the house and the barn. Raising his useless thrower, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Ray! Are you in there?"

All hell broke loose.

*****

Ray felt like he'd been mauled. When the goblins dumped him on his stomach in a bed of straw, he gasped and choked and tried to fumble his way upright only to collapse again as his injured foot protested under his weight.

He moaned and rolled onto his back, harder than he had expected with only one foot to use. For a few minutes he lay there, feeling as if he'd been dribbled down the court and slam dunked. The creatures' claws had gouged little holes in his sleeves and pant legs and not to mention the flesh of his arms and legs. Most of the wounds were scrapes and scratches but there was a deeper one near his right shoulder and another on his left leg where he could feel the wetness of blood against his pant leg. His proton pack had been discarded in flight so he was weaponless.

"Easy, easy, don't move around too much. They'll ignore you if you don't cause any trouble."

Ray looked up at a middle aged blond man with straw in his hair and a wicked scrape down his left cheek. His face was familiar from many book jackets and one autograph session, and Ray began to smile.

"Mr. Duke," he cried happily, remembering at the last minute to mute his volume. "I knew you were still alive."

"Will you keep it down," Duke snapped, making lowering motions with both hands as if trying to quiet an orchestra. "They forget about me most of the time. The last thing I want to do is remind them. They might realize they're hungry."

"Sorry," breathed Ray in a much softer tone. "They made you complete the body armor just now, didn't they?"

The writer nodded. "I was afraid they'd get to you, but there isn't a lot I can do against them. They control most of what I write."

"How did you do it?" Ray asked eagerly, fascinated by the process. "How did you bring them to life?"

"Damned if I know." The writer raked shaking fingers through his unintentional punk haircut. "Suddenly they were alive. That never happened to me before." He squinted at Ray in the dimness of the barn. "I know you, don't I? You're Ray Stantz. We met once."

"I didn't know if you'd remember." Ray smiled. "The guys will be looking for me. Let's plan how to help them when they come. What you did with the body armor was great. There must be a way to use that."

"They're careful," Duke replied. He helped Ray sit up and brushed him off. "Are you hurt?"

"A few cuts. I sprained my ankle, though. I don't think I can run for it."

Duke heaved a sigh. "That limits us. Let me strap it up." He grabbed a cloth that might once have been a towel which was hanging over the railing beside them. Ray eyed his surroundings as the writer ripped it efficiently into long strips. He wasn't surprised to find that they were in a barn loft. He was willing to bet that the ladder had been removed and that there was no easy way down to the ground level. Beyond Duke, he could see two of the goblins outlined against the night sky in the opening there.

"This is going to hurt," Duke told him, "but I'll have to take your boot off. Grab onto something if you want to."

"Just don't yell?" Ray asked wryly. He bit his lip and waited, nodding at the writer to go ahead.

The pain was really nasty. Ray's body tensed like a drawn bow and he tasted the warm metallic tang of blood where his teeth dug into his bottom lip. Though Duke did his best to be gentle, he couldn't help flexing the ankle and when the process was finished, Ray sagged against the straw, limp and sweating. If they had to run for it, he was finished.

"That's an ugly sprain," Duke informed him as he wrapped it in his makeshift bandage. "You'll probably be laid up a good four to six weeks."

"If I'm not dead in four to six minutes?" countered Ray. "Come on, Mr. Duke, how did you do it? Tell me about it."

"I've spent the past day trying to figure that out, Ray," answered the writer, tying the last strand of towel into place and helping Ray to rest his foot on a thick pile of straw. As the sharpest pangs faded into a dull throbbing ache, Ray gave a sigh of relief.

The older man plopped down in the straw beside him. "They're listening to us," he said. "Thought I'd better warn you. You're wearing the look of a man about to start making plans."

Ray nodded, starting to think of alternate solutions. He was never short of ideas. Instead of offering any suggestions aloud, though, he leaned against the straw, waiting for the pain to abate in his ankle.

"I think it was the statue," Duke said out of the darkness beside him. "It's old, a relic. I picked it up in Greece, but I don't know what it is. Smuggled it back because I thought it might be a valuable artifact and they don't let you bring them out of the country. I had writer's block and I was damn frustrated. I was sitting there cursing my inability to find a solution to the block, holding the statue and wishing I could write, and suddenly there were goblins in my head--these goblins."

"Wow, that's incredible. We'll have to zap it and see if we can decontaminate it, or else lock it up in the containment unit." Ray thought furiously. "It must have granted your wishes. That's why you can change them the way you did. They know it, too. If we don't stop them soon, they'll get greedier and nastier and pretty soon they'll take over the whole world. They have to keep you alive until they become invincible. If they haven't realized that yet, they will soon." Duke grabbed his head in his hands and bent forward despairingly. "Oh, God, Ray, what am I going to do?"

An idea nudged at the back of Ray's mind, not his own idea and not even Peter's though that was what had made him recall it now. He couldn't explain in words because the goblins were sure to hear him. He'd just have to hope that Duke was quick on the uptake and knowledgeable in his field. Carefully he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a tiny notebook, small enough to be concealed in the palm of a hand. Another search rewarded him with a stubby little pencil. Watching the goblins to see if they'd noticed, he pressed the two items into Duke's hand. The writer stiffened, then turned blankly to Ray.

"Wait," the occultist breathed. He gestured for the writer to conceal the writing equipment and when it was stashed away, Ray began coughing and sneezing and choking. Anyone who knew him would realize he was overdoing it, but the goblins were newly created and hardly subtle yet.

"Silence," snarled one of the goblins from the window. Ray blinked at it in astonishment. He hadn't yet realized they could communicate in English.

"I'm sorry," he called humbly, raising his voice. "But I can't help it. I caught a cold."

"We do not care about your 'cold'," the creature replied haughtily.

"Sorry. I caught it from my friend, Mr. Welles," he concluded without daring to look at Duke. "Orson Welles."

"Silence!" thundered the creature.

Ray put his hand over his mouth to demonstrate his good faith and retreated into obedient silence.

For a long moment, nothing happened, then he felt a tremor. It took him a moment to identify it. As he sat there, shoulder to shoulder with Douglas Duke, the writer's body quivered as if wracked by tears.

Astonished Ray gaped at him, then his eyes widened as he realized that the older man was not weeping but struggling to restrain shouts of jubilant laughter. He knew. He had understood.

They waited as long as they dared, both of them knowing Ray's friends were on the way to the rescue with proton packs and throwers that could not stop the goblins. Then Ray hunched forward on the pretext of examining his injured ankle and Duke sank deeper into the straw as he bent over Ray's tiny notebook and wrote furiously.

Five minutes later, Ray felt a nudge in his side and he slid his hand back to receive the notebook again. Looking around for concealment, he settled for his abandoned boot, pushing book and pencil down in the toe where it wouldn't be readily obvious. Neither man spoke during the process or even afterwards. Instead they leaned back against the bale of straw, donning identical expressions of resigned unhappiness. Just for one moment, their eyes met, and Duke allowed one eyelid to lower in a confirming wink. There was nothing to do but wait.

Ten minutes later Ray heard Peter's voice raised in a demand for reassurance in the farmyard below.

When Peter shouted, the two goblins in the window dove for Ray and Duke, settling on their stomachs, glowing yellow eyes boring into their own. "Silence!" one of them hissed in a stuffy voice. "S-s-silence. Achoo!"

The other one wheezed, "Not a sound!" the 'n's vanishing into the 'd's of heavy congestion.

Overhead, wings beat as more of the creatures awakened from the rafters and zoomed for the windows to dive bomb the hapless Ghostbusters below. Ray couldn't see clearly with one of the monsters sitting on his chest, but he noticed that one of the creatures missed the opening entirely and crashed into the side of the barn beside it, thudding to the floor and rising groggily, shaking his head as if he were dizzy.

Peter called a warning below and Ray opened his mouth to reassure his friends, but the goblin jammed one hand against Ray's lips and another around his throat. Duke was already muzzled by the creature who held him, but his grip was none too steady. The beast was breathing raggedly through his mouth, his glowing eyes dulled and watering.

A shotgun blast rang out below and Ray jumped involuntarily at the unexpected sound. The enraged screams of goblins mounted in their intensity, and, over them, Ray heard sharp humming bursts that were not quite the normal sounds of a particle thrower in operation.

"Get 'em, guys," hollered Peter. "Hang in there, Ray, we're coming." The words were a promise that warmed Ray's heart. He had known all along that the guys would rescue him.

"Ray!" Peter was in the barn now. Unable to reply, Ray lifted his good foot and thumped it against the loft floor in an attempt to signal Venkman and let him know that he had survived.

"Coming," bellowed Peter. Somewhere behind him, the shotgun sounded twice in rapid succession followed by a bang close at hand as Peter found the discarded ladder and slammed it into place.

"Go for it, Pete," Winston bellowed. "We'll hold 'em off."

"Ray!" Peter's persistent drive brought him to the top of the ladder. Ray could see him over the drooping wingtip of the goblin that held him prisoner. The beast went into a coughing fit and loosened his hand and Ray sucked in breath to cry, "Peter. We're here."

"Ray. Where are you?"

Stantz struggled wildly to buck off the goblin and call an answer but it rallied slightly, yanking him to his feet and pulling him awkwardly to the edge of the loft.

"You can still die," it wheezed, its breath coming irregularly. Ray felt the hands that held him over the drop weaken.

"Peter! Help!" he screamed.

"Ray!" Peter flung himself forward on his stomach as if sliding for home plate just as the goblin collapsed. Ray started falling only to be pulled up short when two hands encircled his left wrist and tried to haul him to safety. The goblin's claws scrambled for a purchase on Ray's back, its weight dragging him down as one claw caught on the strap of his proton pack, but Peter yanked with all his strength and the force of his pull dislodged the creature. It fell, shrieking, and the thunk of sound it made when it hit the barn floor far below was unpleasantly reminiscent of a watermelon bursting open after a high speed impact.

"Come on, Ray," Peter urged, "Give me your other hand. I can't hold you like this. I think you need to go on a diet."

"I've heard that before," Ray muttered, trying to swing his other hand up, fumbling for Peter's grip.

He didn't see the goblin that had been holding Duke enter the fray. Weakened as it was, it had no strength to fly, but it hit Peter in the middle of the back, grabbed him by the hair and whacked his head against the rough floorboards of the loft. Peter's grip loosened and he went limp.

Ray dropped like a stone.

Peter's blackout was so momentary that the falling man had time to hear him scream, "Ray," in pure anguish before he hit.

"Gotcha."

He crashed into reaching arms that broke his fall and tumbled painfully to the ground on top of someone else, who wheezed painfully once and didn't move. Someone else pulled free of the tangle and bent over him anxiously. "Ray? Egon?"

"W-winston?" faltered Ray blinking up dazedly at the black man.

"Yahoo!" exulted Winston. "Pete, he's alive. We got him. He's okay, you hear me?"

"Alive?" Peter's voice held that hesitant note people adopt when they are sure they are being lied to for their own good. "You better be right."

"I'm all right, Peter," Ray called reassuringly, though he knew he wasn't really. His ankle hurt like blazes and he felt shaken and dizzy, but he had survived. Dropping him must have scared Peter as much as it had Ray.

"Egon?" Winston's voice demanded with sudden pain.

Ray went cold. Two of them had caught him and only one of them was talking. He shifted painfully, realizing that Egon had broken his fall. Scrambling free of his friend's still form, he stared down at Egon, whose face was lax in unconsciousness.

Peter slid down the ladder as if it were the fire pole back at headquarters and dropped beside Ray to pull him into his arms. "Ray! We thought you were goblin casserole." He hugged Ray with all his strength, rocking him gently back and forth.

Ray realized that being prisoner had been the easier part of the adventure. At least he'd known he survived, something his friends couldn't have guessed until now. "I'm all right, Peter," he said, adding gently, "but Egon's hurt."

Peter didn't react to the news the way Ray had expected him to. "You wouldn't have been caught if it weren't for Egon," he snapped.

Ray was so astonished at his friend's unexpected fury that he dropped his arms and stepped back. "What?"

"Hey, guys, come on, he's hurt," Winston urged anxiously, bending over Egon. "He has a lump the size of the Bronx on his forehead."

"It's my fault," Ray acknowledged in a small voice. "He did it to save me."

"After he endangered you in the first place," Peter insisted doggedly.

"Shut up, Pete." Winston's voice was ragged with shock. He pushed past Peter and snatched a lantern from the wall, shaking it to see if it contained any oil. It took only a minute to light it, and he brought it back, placing it on the floor beside their unconscious colleague. Gently he straightened Egon's arms and legs.

Peter stared at Egon as if he'd just realized the other man was unconscious. His eyes widened with stunned disbelief, then he shook himself as if coming out of a trance and caught his wrist to take his pulse, his face paling.

"What happened to him, Winston?" he asked.

"I fell on him," admitted Ray in a small voice. "He and Winston saw me fall and tried to catch me."

"After I let you go," Peter berated himself.

Ray jumped as a flopping noise from the loft made the three of them raise their heads, then it settled into silence again. A minute later Duke appeared at the top of the ladder. "That's the last of them gone," he announced with triumph. At the sight of Egon sprawled unmoving, his jubilation faded and he scrambled down to join them.

"You couldn't help dropping me, Peter," Ray ventured. He knew Peter was upset and Ray didn't want that. All of them were worried about Egon and that had to come first, but Ray hated to hear that note of self-reproach in Peter's voice. "The goblin bounced your head off the floor, remember?"

Winston ran his eyes over Ray as if to check for injuries, his fingers pressed against the pulse in Egon's neck. "What the hell happened to those goblins?" he demanded. "They just died! We were ready to kick ass and they died."

"That was Peter's idea," Ray murmured, proud of his friend, "by way of War of the Worlds. I had Duke kill them with the common cold."

"Say what?" Winston raised an eyebrow, stared at the author then turned back to Egon, running a testing hand over the supine man's body to check for fractures.

That aroused Peter's curiosity. "What are you talking about? I knew I was a genius but what did I do this time?"

"It took Duke to write your cold scenario, and that's what finished them," Ray explained, eager to share the credit. "If I hadn't been caught, he never would have thought of it and the goblins would still be going strong." Seeing Peter examining him with his eyes, he added, "They didn't hurt me, Peter. Really."

"That one meant to splat you on the barn floor." Peter looked shaken. He was probably imagining a different scenario, one in which Ray had suffered the same fate as the goblin who had tried to drop him. Ray smiled at him reassuringly. He knew that Peter sometimes worried about him like a big brother even though he could take care of himself perfectly well. Brothers did that. "I'm all right, Peter. But Egon saved me and he's hurt."

"He's just knocked out, I think," Winston reassured them. He clasped Peter's shoulder and shook him lightly. "His breathing sounds pretty good. How's that pulse?"

"It's a little fast, but not too bad," Peter responded automatically as he realized he was still holding Egon's wrist. "Hey, Egon," he prompted anxiously. "Come on, big fella, wake up."

"What did he do, Peter?" Ray asked gently, touching Peter's shoulder.

The unexpected question startled Peter into raising his eyes from the unconscious man. He stared at Ray in surprise as if the answer should be obvious. "What?"

"You said it was Egon's fault I was captured, but that's not true," insisted Ray, gripping Peter's arm to make his point. "He was nowhere near me when I fell. I was trying to be careful because I'd hurt my ankle yesterday but a rock rolled out from under my foot and I went down. That's when they caught me. It was nothing to do with Egon," he concluded patiently.

"Yes it was, Ray," Peter insisted, though Ray's words made him shoot a sideways glance at Egon before turning back to the occultist. "He said he knew about your foot."

"Yeah, but he thought it was okay," returned Ray immediately, anxious to correct Peter's misconception. "I thought it was, too, until we started running. I told him I was fine and he believed me. Why shouldn't he?" Ray was confused by Peter's attempt to blame Egon.

"Because he should know you well enough after all these years to know you'd say you were okay if you had a burst appendix," Peter explained carefully. There was a lot of pain in his eyes. Peter usually dealt with his worry with a ready quip, not this darker humor and it worried Ray.

"I think it was because we thought you'd be dessert," Winston offered. "We were all a little jumpy, not just Pete, especially since we knew the throwers didn't work against them. We weren't sure how to get you back."

Ray shook his head with a gentle smile and patted Peter's arm, his willingness to absolve everyone of blame radiating through the barn. "Come on, Peter, you know Egon. If he hurt his ankle, he'd say so and that would be that. He would probably expect me--or anybody--to do the same. He'd consider it the rational thing to do. I knew I'd weakened my foot, but it wasn't bothering me so I didn't make a fuss. Egon believed me. If he'd thought I was really hurt, he'd have protected me just like you or Winston would. It's not Egon's fault I was captured--it's my fault, because I didn't tell him the truth." He raised earnest, pleading eyes to Peter. "Come on, Peter, don't blame Egon. Don't be mad at him. It wasn't his fault." He looked at the unconscious man unhappily and faltered, "I just wish he'd wake up."

Peter stared at him with an uncomprehending expression. There was no trace of the frivolous man who held pain at bay with a ready quip or a smartass remark in his face tonight. "Ray, I-- Damn it, I thought you were gonna be eaten." He shuddered elaborately. "I don't know why but there's something about the idea of that--it just feels worse than getting killed any other way." He dropped his eyes, embarrassed. Ghosts didn't devour people as a general rule, but Ray realized that Peter was always the one who complained about spirits with nasty teeth. Maybe he had a complex about it. Psychology was Peter's field but Ray knew enough to understand that childhood terrors could come back to haunt you years later. Look at Egon and the Bogyeman. Maybe this was Peter's Bogeyman. "So you jumped on Egon?" Ray ventured cautiously, reluctant to make Peter feel any worse. Peter had always been there when Ray needed help, always ready to offer the right words to make everything better. The occultist hoped he could do the helping this time. He stared earnestly into Peter's eyes. "Don't blame yourself. Everybody overreacts sometimes. We all get scared. Egon won't hold it against you when he understands--I bet he doesn't now. I'll tell him if you want me to. It's my fault anyway for being clumsy enough to fall and hurt my ankle. It was just a stupid accident. Besides if Egon hadn't tried to catch me now, he wouldn't be hurt."

"No matter whose fault that is, kiddo, it isn't yours," Peter insisted, reviving magically at the sound of Ray's blame. "I don't want to hear you say that again, understood?" He grabbed Ray's shoulders. "It's. Not. Your. Fault."

"Well, it's not yours either," Ray shot back stubbornly.

"Look, guys," intervened Winston practically, "let's forget about blaming anybody and get Egon to a doctor. I think I hear somebody coming."

Ray heard the engine, too. Help had arrived--a little late. He glanced out the barn door just as the old brown truck edged its way into the yard and pulled to a halt. Wil Roberts climbed out and hurried into the barn. "Did you get 'em?" He saw them gathered around Egon with Duke standing in the background, and demanded, "What happened to him? Did the goblins..."

"No, I fell on him," Ray explained. "We've got to get him to the hospital quick. I'm sure glad you got here with the truck."

Venkman reached out automatically to help lift Egon, wrapping his arms around the blond man and burying his face in Egon's hair. "Come on, guys," he said without looking up. "Let's carry him to the truck."

Miserably Ray edged closer to help, though he knew he couldn't put weight on his foot yet. If Egon was seriously injured it really was his fault. He'd been the one to hurt him. What if it was more serious than Winston thought? What would they ever do without Egon? His imagination began to run away with him, as it must be with Peter.

"I'm sorry, Peter," said the dead man in a perfectly normal voice which was only slightly muffled against the front of Peter's jumpsuit. His arms encircled Peter, who jumped as if he'd received an electric shock. "I genuinely believed Ray was all right."

Ray's mouth fell open in astonished relief. "Egon!" he cried jubilantly. "You're all right. That's great! We were really worried about you." He smiled at his friend in wholehearted delight.

Peter erupted into furious movement, jerking free in shock. "Damn it, Spengler," he sputtered, only to bite his lip over the rest of his words. He gripped Egon's upper arms, staring at the other man who blinked at him dazedly, his glasses askew. Peter straightened them automatically. His eyes glittered in the dancing light from the lantern, a smile starting on his face as he shot a sideways glance at the others before he turned to Egon again. For a long time he stared at the injured man, then his mouth quirked faintly. "Are you okay, Egon?" He flung the question at him in the most offhand manner he could. Ray suspected he would break down if he let himself be serious.

"As much as possible with this headache," Egon replied levelly, with not a shred of malice. He didn't appear to hold a grudge for Peter's earlier blame. His voice was weaker than normal, but he really appeared to be all right. He stared at Peter solemnly then drew back to include Ray. "I'm all right, Ray," he said quickly. "I hope you didn't get hurt when you fell."

"Not as much as you did," replied Ray, hanging his head.

"Nonsense. I doubt I even have a concussion." He touched his head carefully as if a less cautious probe might cause it to explode.

"We can compare notes on headaches," offered Peter. "One of those goblins used my head for a ping pong ball up there and made me drop Ray off the balcony." His hands were still gripping the blond's arms as if reluctant to let go but at that reminder, his eyes raked Ray as if he might have overlooked a major injury.

"Barns don't have balconies," objected Winston. He caught Ray's eye and winked at him and Ray felt happiness begin to pump through his veins. It was all over and they'd survived. There might be rough spots ahead, but they were safe and--relatively--well.

"Says the farmer from New Jersey," Peter countered with relief. He helped Egon to sit up straight and pushed back the dangling blond hair to examine the wound, a rising knot that was already turning black and blue, on the middle of his forehead. "Janine's gonna fuss over you for weeks with this one, Spengs baby," he announced gleefully. "You'll be smothered in tender, loving care." Egon flinched, not so much from Peter's probing fingers as from the possibility of Janine's ardent attention. Winston snickered.

"Lucky Egon," said Ray with a smile. He enjoyed Janine's maternal tendencies, few and far between as they were.

"I want to call my wife," Duke said in the background. "And if I'm any judge, most of these guys should see a doctor as soon as possible. You're Roberts, right?" he asked the farmer. "Have you got wheels?"

"That's a great idea," Peter responded. "Ray? Egon? Shall we go see the nice doctor now?"

"I would say that was an excellent idea, Peter," Egon returned and climbed to his feet. When he wavered, putting a hand to his forehead, Peter jumped up and steadied him.

"Yeah," he agreed, "and it looks like the sooner the better." He and Winston helped Ray up and they started for the truck.

*****

The nearest hospital was in the town of Newton, west on the Interstate toward Des Moines. Several hours later found the Ghostbusters in the Skiff Memorial Hospital. Because he'd been unconscious, Egon had been admitted for observation, though x-rays and other tests had discovered nothing seriously wrong with him. Peter had been x-rayed too though his blackout had been so brief that it was unlikely he was hurt. Ray's ankle now sported an ace bandage while a pair of crutches and his boot were propped beside his chair. The last member of their group, Winston, had proven to be bruised from helping to catch Ray and he was being examined now.

Ray drowsed in his chair. Peter sat guarding his sleep, a contented smile spreading across his face. It was over and Ray was safe and well--relatively well, he corrected, adding the crutches into the equation. He wouldn't be doing any Ghostbusting for at least a month, according to the doctor.

"Sprains can be worse than breaks," the man had concluded as he finished wrapping Ray's ankle. "I recommend therapy as it heals to strengthen it. Talk to your own doctor when you go home."

Ray had nodded in ready agreement, and Peter had promised to make sure he did so.

Now Ray was sleeping. The sound of his gentle snoring barely disturbed the waiting room. Peter smiled fondly at him and climbed to his feet. He didn't want to wake Ray until it was time to return to the hotel.

Before that happened, there was one more task that needed doing. Shooting a wary glance at the nurses' station, he crept down the hall and let himself into Egon's room.

Egon's snoring was louder than Ray's but Peter was so accustomed to both sounds that he seldom heard them when he was trying to sleep. It was like white noise, each more noticeable in its absence than in its presence.

Peter slid a chair up next to the bed and dropped into it. He didn't want to awaken Egon, who needed the rest, but he hated to go away and leave a conflict unresolved between them.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there when Egon's snoring broke off abruptly. Peter jumped, startled out of a near doze.

He straightened in the chair. In the light from the open doorway he saw Egon rouse, lift his head, and notice Peter. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Peter. What are you doing in here? You should be back at the hotel sleeping."

Peter hung his head. He didn't like admitting he was in the wrong, but he had to do it. "I'm sorry, Egon," he apologized earnestly.

"You sound as bad as Ray." Egon caught the bed control device in his hand and raised its head until he was sitting up comfortably. He tried to fluff his pillow, but Peter snatched it, fluffed it for him and settled it behind Egon's head.

"I mean it, Egon. You should have belted me tonight. I deserved it."

"It wasn't that I was not tempted," Egon replied calmly.

"Why didn't you tell me to stop being such a bastard?" Peter demanded. "I treated you like shit and we both know it."

"Yes, you did." Egon studied at him seriously. "But I realized that you were worried about Ray, as I was. I understand, Peter."

Peter shuddered as he realized how lucky they were that Ray wasn't goblin food right now. The Ghostbusters faced serious dangers every day and most of the time Peter handled it with aplomb, but somehow this threat had seemed different. All the fear he'd repressed in his anger at Egon bubbled to the surface and threatened to burst free. "Damn it, Egon, he might have been eaten. That's the worst way to die that I can imagine." He shivered. "Then I dropped him over the edge of the loft." When Egon started to speak, he held up his hand to halt him and forged on. "I know I couldn't help it, but that didn't matter when he was falling--and then you were out for the count. I guess that was the payback, though that's not fair to you." He shook his head impatiently. "Shit, Egon, I can't take many nights like this one." He'd come in here to make up with Egon, to apologize, not to babble like an idiot. This was stupid though he was enough of a psychologist to know it would probably do him good to talk it through. "Next time, drop somebody on me. I deserve it."

"Peter." Egon could make his name sound more comforting than any words of support. Though it was not the blond's usual method of solace, two strong arms came around Peter and pulled him close. Venkman let himself ride with it, finding security in Egon's forgiveness. When everybody else was panicking and overreacting, Egon was there for his friends, calm and reassuring. Never one to refuse coddling when it was offered Peter burrowed into the embrace, listening to the steady and reassuring thump of Egon's heart beneath his ear. He'd lucked out tonight. They all had. He suspected Egon needed the hug as much as he did.

"It's all right, Peter," the physicist said quietly. "Why do you think I let you lambaste me like that? I was to blame. It was foolhardy to overlook Ray's turned ankle. You were correct about that. I am a fool to judge everyone else by the way I should behave in the same circumstance."

"Yeah, well, I was a jerk to take it out on you," replied Peter. "What I should have been doing was frying goblins, not dumping on my friends."

They were so caught up in their discussion that neither of them heard the shuffle-thump of Ray's crutches as the occultist worked his way across the room, not until he burst into furious speech just behind Peter.

"Stop it! You guys are always telling me I shouldn't blame myself for things that aren't my fault, and now you're doing it," he half shouted, causing Peter to jump and let out a squawk of surprise, pulling back from Egon and gaping at the new arrival. Neither of them were used to Ray Stantz shouting at them in anger.

"R-ray?" he stuttered blankly.

"Shut up and listen to me, Peter," Ray said fiercely, balancing himself awkwardly on his crutches. "You too, Egon. You should hear yourselves. Blaming yourselves because I got caught and for falling out of the loft. You couldn't help that, Peter. Don't you think that after all these years of Ghostbusting I can take care of myself as well as you can? You might as well say I shouldn't be let out without a keeper. Sometimes the odds go against us. I got caught because it happened, that's all. Besides, it was for the best because we wouldn't have beaten the goblins if I hadn't. You sound like a pair of fools. I'm tired of it. I don't want to hear one more word about whose fault it was, is that clear?"

Peter sneaked a sideways glance at Egon, who met it in surprise and dawning respect. "I think our little boy has grown up," the psychologist murmured.

"I'm not a little boy, Peter. Maybe I was stupid not to say anything about my ankle, but I'm not helpless."

"He's right," Egon confirmed. "He's the one who defeated the goblins after all."

"No, that was Peter," the auburn-haired man replied promptly, his anger cooling rapidly now that he'd had his say. Ray Stantz didn't have the remotest idea how to hold a grudge.

"Me?" squeaked Venkman, staring at Ray in blank surprise. He'd forgotten Ray's earlier explanation in the barn. "What did I do?"

"You dreamed up that War of the Worlds scenario, killing them with the cold virus," Ray reminded him. "Orson Welles, or H. G. Wells."

"Well, some Well(e)s, anyway," muttered Peter with a grin. Ray grinned back. "All I did was point it out to Duke and he did the rest."

"Our Ray is modest, isn't he?" Peter asked, clapping his friend on the shoulder with open affection. "I bet it wasn't that easy, though, kiddo?" Ray grinned a mile wide. "It wasn't so hard," he replied. "It was teamwork, that's all. It was great! We even did it without our packs."

"Exactly," returned Egon. "Though I should prefer them to be more effective next time. Now I suggest the two of you find Winston and go to bed. I, for one, will be grateful for a good night's sleep."

Peter grinned at him. "Thanks, Egon," he said softly. "You get that rest. You'll need it to stand up to Janine when we get home." When Egon grimaced expressively, he turned to his younger colleague and guided his awkward footsteps toward the door. "Come on, Ray. It's time to go to bed."

*****

The taxi deposited the four Ghostbusters in front of Ghostbuster Central late in the afternoon two days later. They had run tests on Duke's statue and brought it with them, safe in a ghost trap, to seal away, since the spell was an integral part of it. Now Duke's books would rely on his imagination, nothing more. After that, they met with Jerry Hill at Iowa State University, where they presented him with several goblin carcasses, much to the delight of the animal research staff. Following a fond farewell to Wil Roberts and Mr. and Mrs. Duke, the Ghostbusters were happy to return home. Peter had ISU's check in his pocket, Winston was eager to exchange the brown truck for the more finely tuned Ecto, Ray was becoming handy with his crutches, and Egon had recovered from his knock on the head, though the bruise on his forehead was spectacular enough to win him curious stares on the plane.

Janine saw it the minute they walked in the door. She let out a horrified shriek, ran the length of the garage and flung herself into his arms.

"Oh, Egon, you look awful! What happened?" She noticed the crutches then. "Ray, you too? I didn't know Iowa was so dangerous."

"I'm perfectly well, Janine," Egon replied, trying to dislodge her clinging arms without giving offense. "Ray fell on me."

"I couldn't help it, Janine," Ray defended himself. "A goblin threw me off a hayloft and made Peter drop me."

"I'm not sure I want to know." She brushed back Egon's hair and examined the multicolored bruise, then expanded her gaze to include the rest of them. "It doesn't sound like a positive experience. Next time you go out there, I'm coming, too."

"Raaay!" Slimer came swooping toward them, alarm on his face, his yellow eyes narrowed at the sight of the crutches Ray balanced on. "Oh, no, Ray's hurt." He embraced the occultist fervently, planting a big smooch on his cheek.

Ray grinned and tried to wipe the ectoplasm away without dropping his crutches. "Hi, Slimer. It's good to be home."

"Eeegonnn," Slimer cried next, hovering directly in front of the blond to study the bruise. "Oooohhh, nasty. Poor Egon." He hugged him hard. "Missed you, missed Ray, missed Peter and Winston."

"The only good thing about the past few days is that we did it without the spud," Peter remarked, just in time to a sloppy kiss from Slimer full on the mouth. He pushed the little green ghost away and scrubbed at the lower half of his face which was liberally adorned with slime. "Gross! What have I told you about kisses, Spud?"

"We missed you, Slimer," Egon informed the spud, a serious and intent look on his face. As one, his colleagues turned to regard him suspiciously. When Egon used that particular tone of voice, he intended mischief.

"Yeah, right," Peter scoffed. "Like the black plague."

"In fact, Slimer, Peter missed you most of all," continued the physicist. "He was telling me just now that he brought you a present--a box of jelly beans."

"Egon," growled Peter, realizing where this story was heading, "I'm gonna get you for this." He glared at his friend, but delight glowed in his eyes at the thought of being a recipient of one of Egon's pranks. Egon wasn't likely to tease him if he hadn't forgiven him for his lapse in Apple Dell.

"Jelly beans?" exulted Slimer, hovering expectantly before the psychologist. "Where jelly beans? Tell Slimer."

Egon flashed Peter a brilliant smile. "They're down the front of his shirt," he announced.

Peter's anguished wail echoed through the fire hall as Slimer pounced, slithered down the neck of Peter's shirt and proceeded to slime his chest in his futile quest for the promised treat. "You're dead meat, Egon," Venkman retorted when Slimer emerged and regarded him with disappointed eyes. The incident required--no, demanded--retaliation. He'd have to plan his revenge very carefully. It was going to be fun.

"Don't worry, Slimer, I've got a present for you," Ray offered, sticking both crutches under one arm to pull a box of candy from his jacket pocket and offer it to the spud. Slimer squealed with glee and devoured it in one gulp, box and all.

"It's good to be home," Winston remarked, bearing up to Slimer's belated greeting with good grace. "Isn't it, guys?"

Janine, her arm around Egon's waist, started steering him to a chair as if he couldn't walk unaided, talking about healing tea and how important it was for him to spend lots of time resting while she stroked his fevered brow. The physicist went warily, a lamb to the slaughter. Ray chuckled at the sight, bounced on his crutches and pondered the two flights of stairs that led up to their bedroom. There would be a few problems in the next week or so.

"Don't worry, we can carry you, homeboy," Winston reassured him.

"Slimer help, too," volunteered the ghost, grabbing Ray around the middle and lifting him right off the ground. Peter and Winston jumped forward to catch him before Slimer could extend his strength too far and drop him off another balcony. One was more than enough.

"And you said it was good to be home," Peter chastised Winston, his grin a mile wide. "Between Egon and Slimer, I think that on the whole, the goblins might be safer."

A protesting cry of, "Peter!" rang through the fire house. Everything was back to normal.