Originally published in Ouch 4

"This is stupid," said Winston. "What are we hunting for, anyway?"

Peter agreed with him. He frowned, eyeing the wooded terrain where the Ghostbusters had gathered high in the Colorado Rockies. While the scene resembled the forest primeval, and indeed had been largely untouched until the new development plan that meant to build a holiday resort on the site, the team was no more than a ten minutes' drive from a prospering strip mall complete with fast food restaurants, a country-western bar, and a health spa. Peter had eyed the mall longingly as they drove past it, hanging back reluctantly when he realized they were expected to hike the last mile, even though a graded road led into the trees. Unmercifully, the eager Ray had made sure his pack was as well-loaded as everyone else's.

"Come on, Ray, this stuff weighs a ton," Venkman had protested. "And we're so high here it's not that easy to breathe."

"It's not so bad, Peter. We'll make it. Besides, if we find the axe guy--or any Class 8's, we're sure going to need it."

Egon, who had accepted his pack automatically, had been too focused on his ever-ready P.K.E. meter to complain about the pack's weight and the way it seemed to weigh more at eight thousand feet.

The strip mall would have been more fun. At least it was a trace of civilization. Peter had never been very keen on roughing it.

The trail they followed had been man-made, gone over with a road grader, fresh gravel under foot. Ecto could have made the journey. Okay, so maybe the converted hearse was too low slung for such a rough track and the ruts were deep, but Peter would have preferred that than the trek over a trail where gravel twisted away underfoot. When the four Ghostbusters had finally emerged from the thickest part of the trees, they found themselves in a tranquil glen, the trees pulled back on one side to reveal a spectacular view of the continental divide, the great Rocky range rising out of blue haze, dark with pines on their lower elevations, the snow-clad peaks marching in a great barrier that stretched across the opening as if nothing, not even endless time, could ever break it down. Even Peter, that most irreverent member of the team, had been silenced, staring at the majestic vista in awe. He had to admit it was a great view--and it'd be even better if he had a girlfriend on his arm to share it with and a couple of lounge chairs from which to enjoy the view. Or if he didn't have to share it with Class 8 specters, or a possible axe murderer lurking in the forest.

It was quiet there. Too quiet. Even the bulldozing equipment parked behind them on the other side of the clearing seemed out of place, as if its presence was transitory and would simply melt away in the blink of an eye. He saw Winston shaking his head in disapproval, and could understand his friend's objection. They were here to help the developers. In spite of all the reassurances they'd been given, Peter abruptly decided that just maybe they were on the wrong side of this particular battle. This site shouldn't be developed. It was perfect exactly as it was.

"I am detecting peculiar readings," Egon announced as if he, too, were sympathetic, now that he had seen the site of Gloria Ridge, the Rockies' newest convention hotel. "While I agree that it would be a great pity to destroy such beauty, that decision is not ours to make. We have been hired to discover what's been happening here and to stop it before anyone else is injured or vanishes. We accepted a retainer and, I remind you, first class airline tickets to Denver. People have disappeared. Mysterious things have happened. That logger was severely injured."

Peter shook his head sententiously. "Tree-huggers with imagination," he speculated. "And don't tell me they never get violent to protect nature, because some of them do. Just ask Charlie Dawson. And it's just not being whacked with an axe that's his problem either. That guy's so far out of it he's nearly back on the other side." He shivered in remembrance of the encounter with the wounded logger.

"Yeah, Peter, but even the construction boss said the protesters had been well behaved this time," Ray disagreed, although he had been very sympathetic over Dawson's plight. "There's no suspicion any of them attacked poor Mr. Dawson." He drew a deep breath of the crisp mountain air--and another one. They were very high, over eight-thousand feet, and the air was much thinner than they were used to. All four of them had done a little wheezing on the trail, taking it much slower than usual because of the weight of the supplies. Standing here quietly allowed them to breathe naturally, but Peter hated the thought of running around with his proton pack on his back and exerting himself, at least until he could acclimate to the altitude--and that would probably take days.

Peter could see Ray eyeing the surrounding trees suspiciously. On the way up to the site, the occultist had reminded them all of the Ents, the tree people in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Now as they stood gathered there while Egon took readings, Peter stared at the towering pines through narrowed eyes. The first one that moved, he'd be in there blasting. Killer trees! He could almost feel them watching him.

*****

The call to the Ghostbusters had come a week earlier, from the corporate headquarters of Raleigh Investment and Development Corporation. A publicity flack named Michael Gunderson arrived at Ghostbuster Central to keep a scheduled appointment. He explained that mysterious happenings had set back the plans for a proposed resort hotel with a spectacular view, high in the Rocky Mountains.

"It's a strange situation, gentlemen," he explained, glancing around Peter's office with only a mild unease. Many people who showed up at headquarters expected ghosts to attack them at any second, others were complete skeptics, determined to convince the team there were no such thing as ghosts. Peter liked to spring Slimer, their ghostly mascot, on disbelievers. Gunderson, a slender, elegant man in a well-cut suit, merely glanced impatiently at his Rolex, pursing thin lips before he started his explanation. Peter's experienced eye moved over his outfit and mentally assessing its worth. Armani. Nice. Peter approved. When he'd reached the conclusion that Gunderson represented major bucks, he sent Janine upstairs to make coffee. "You know, that good stuff, Janine, the gourmet coffee." When she had cast him a mutinous glance, he'd wheedled, "and you can drink it yourself today," batting his eyes at her appealingly. She didn't fall for it. She never did.

"Be still, my heart," muttered Janine, but at least she had obeyed. Their secretary never let them down--in front of a paying customer. Her glare at Peter indicated to all the team that she would find a way to collect payback when Peter had been given plenty of time to forget payback was coming.

Sipping his expensive coffee, Gunderson explained, rather haltingly at first, causing Peter to eye him with skepticism. PR types didn't usually find it so difficult to put words together. He considered himself the Ghostbusters' public relations expert, and he'd never have stumbled around like this while making his pitch.

"I've seen Gloria Ridge," the flack said slowly, one hand idly disarraying his pale yellow hair. "It's one of the most beautiful places I have ever been--if one likes nature in the raw. The thought of eyeing that view from the terrace of one of Raleigh's premiere hotels is more my style, complete with an excellent martini, stock market reports, fax machines, e-mail, the whole nine yards. An international conference center. A plus for the nature types who want to preserve the scene. The conferees will enjoy the view from inside the hotel; every conference room will look out on spectacular scenery. We'll also be open to select nature groups, tours that we will sponsor, carefully screened to keep out the types who will despoil our natural setting."

"Yeah, you're not making a deal now," Peter reminded him, irritated at the pitch because he could recognize it as that. "We aren't the ones you need to convince. Are you sure your troubles aren't coming from environmentalists?"

"Dr. Venkman, we work with environmentalists whenever possible," Gunderson defended his corporation. "We know building a site like Gloria Ridge impacts the environment. We know it's easier for corporations to pay fines after the damage is done than to avoid the damage in the first place but if you check us out, you'll find we've worked to prevent the damage whenever possible. We've studied impact reports, questioned the local nature types. We can't please them all, of course, but you will find that Raleigh does not have a bad reputation with nature lovers. Naturally we're impacting a beautiful site, but we're not threatening an endangered species, either animal or plant. We genuinely mean it when we say we'll screen the nature tours we sponsor."

"But you're still taking a beautiful spot and turning it into civilization," Winston replied.

"Nothing is wrong with civilization," Gunderson replied. "And while it's true some die-hard tree huggers hate what we're doing, they haven't done anything violent to stop us at Gloria Ridge. The incidents we've had--well, frankly, gentlemen, they're beyond the realm of what a tree-hugger might do. At first when people started walking off the job, we thought the environmentalists were getting to them, threatening them, buying them off. But it wasn't that. At least none of the ones who stayed reported being threatened--or even approached. What's more, the ones who left didn't take their possessions. They were simply--gone."

"What, then?" Ray asked. He'd been listening quietly, rather a first for Ray, who had an opinion about everything under the sun. "Ghosts? Native American spirits? Poltergeists?" Okay, he'd been quiet for a reason. He'd been thinking up options.

"The team had to cut down some trees," Gunderson replied. "This is going to sound peculiar, gentlemen, and I didn't believe it myself until I spent a few days out there and saw it with my own eyes." For a moment, hopeless disbelief shone in his face, the desperate wish that he could admit to dementia or even alcohol-induced confusion. "The gang boss, Redlund, showed me a map, which trees they meant to take down, which trees they had taken down. They had the felled trees to prove it. I saw them."

Egon lifted an eyebrow, followed immediately by his P.K.E. meter. When he detected no readings from the company flack, he appeared disappointed. Peter was, too. Gunderson acted so spaced he might almost have been possessed. Peter was intrigued to find out he was simply reacting to what he'd seen.

"So what happened?" Peter asked. "Somebody stole the trees you'd cut?"

"Somebody--put them up again, Dr. Venkman," Gunderson said, his face white. "Oh, not the same trees, they were still down. The stumps were still there. But practically on top of them there were new ones, just as big, slowly absorbing the stumps of the ones that had been cut. Redlund said the men had been away for the Fourth of July weekend, and when they came back, they could hardly tell where they left off; it was just like before." He stared at the four Ghostbusters desperately. "That's not natural. Tree-huggers couldn't possibly manage anything like that. It's impossible. Fully grown trees can't spring up in a weekend and I know of no technology that could simulate it. Holograms might appear real, but they wouldn't feel real to the touch, and there was no equipment there to generate holograms in the first place. Believe me, we checked."

"You mean it's ghost trees?" Ray blurted joyfully. "Wow, did you hear that, guys? Ghost trees? This is so great! We've gotta head out there and check it out." He bounced up and down on his toes, as if he meant to get a running start.

"For ghost trees, they were remarkably solid, Dr. Stantz," Gunderson disagreed. He flicked an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve. "The men cut one of them down. It was just as susceptible to logging as the earlier ones. Redlund wanted them to see it was perfectly natural, to stop any superstitious fear."

"Natural? Not like any 'natural' I ever heard," Winston muttered under his breath.

"Killer trees, I like it," Peter said, then he shook his head. "On second thought, I don't like it. I sure won't 'pine' away if I don't go out there to get to the 'root' of the trouble."

"Fascinating," Egon breathed.

"Wow, Egon, it's like the Utah Tree Incident of 1913," cried Ray. "Some people tried to cut down some trees, but the trees didn't want to be cut down and they marched on the town and attacked the townspeople."

Peter eyed him strangely. "Marched on the town, Ray? I think you had too many Wheaties for breakfast this morning. No, I know--you're barking up the wrong tree."

"Well, it wasn't very well documented," Ray conceded reluctantly with a grin at Peter's lame pun.

"So what happened after that?" Peter prodded, turning back to Gunderson. "Did you chop down more of them?"

"No, because there was an accident...." His voice trailed off. He didn't want to relate this part of the story. Peter could tell. The reluctance was written all over Gunderson's face.

"What kind of accident, man?" Winston demanded. He sounded like he'd suspected all along there was more to the story than he'd heard so far.

"Logging has come a long way from the days of Paul Bunyan," Gunderson said. "Yes, there are still axes, but it's not a case of a couple of guys with axes or a big saw just doing a tree at a time. While they were working on the new tree, they heard someone yelling in the woods, and when it fell, they went to investigate. They found one of the loggers there, bleeding to death."

"Death?" Peter echoed hollowly. "Nobody said anything about death."

"He didn't die, of course," Gunderson said hastily. "He was rushed to the nearest hospital immediately. But it closed down the site immediately and he's still alive. He'd been attacked with a logging axe."

"You mean one of the men you had working up there tried to kill him?" Winston prompted. He rolled his eyes unhappily at Peter.

"Evidently. Whether it was a personal grudge or a part of a plan to shut down the operation we haven't been able to find out."

"He couldn't tell you who'd chased him with an axe?" Peter asked suspiciously. He didn't like the sound of this.

"He hasn't been able to tell us anything, Dr. Venkman," Gunderson said reluctantly. "He revived, and his injuries can be treated. It's believed that, except for some scarring on the injured leg and the possibility of a limp, he will make a full recovery--physically."

"Physically?" echoed Ray, a distressed expression darting across his face in ready sympathy. "What else is wrong with him?"

"No one knows," Gunderson admitted. "But we fear he may have seen whatever it was that happened to the trees after they were cut and then came back, because he woke up screaming in what I'm told is the most acute terror anyone involved had ever heard, and then he entered a state which has been described to me as catatonia."

"And you want us to go out there?" Peter screeched. "When there's an axe murderer running loose out there who's so scary he makes people catatonic?" He didn't want to expose his buddies--or himself--to that kind of crisis.

"There's no evidence of an axe murderer, Dr. Venkman," Gunderson said, patting the air with his hands in a placating gesture. "Every axe on the site was accounted for and each was tested in the lab. While one of them was found to have human blood on it, it was a minute amount, of a different type than Dawson's, and the logger who had been using it had sustained a very slight injury to his shin with it that had caused the bleeding. No one on our crew did anything to Dawson."

"At least not with a company axe," Winston argued. The team's mystery expert, he'd be the best one to notice discrepancies in the PR man's story. "Even if every one of yours is accounted for, that doesn't account for all the axes in the rest of the world. Tree-huggers, somebody with an 'axe to grind' against the company, someone with something to hide. Even one of the loggers who brought in a separate axe. There's a lot of people who could have attacked Dawson."

"Yeah, and they might still be out there," Peter complained. Ghosts didn't faze him, not even haunted trees did, but maniacs with sharp weapons were a whole new ball game.

"There has been a thorough police investigation, as well as a company one," Gunderson replied. "It's an ongoing investigation. The odd factor is that Dawson had not reported to work that morning. His bunkmate hadn't seen him the night before and it was thought he'd taken off like the other missing loggers. However he reached the site, he didn't come in any known vehicle. There is some speculation he was involved with whoever wants to prevent Raleigh's use of the site and had been up there all night, although no evidence of a campsite has been located nearby. There will be a security team up there at the site, gentlemen. We wouldn't expose you to possible axe murderers without proper protection. The local sheriff's office will handle whoever attacked Dawson and possibly removed the other missing men. It's the trees we can't deal with. Whether the two are connected we have no way of telling."

"Was it definitely a logging axe that hit Dawson?" Ray asked suddenly.

"The doctor says the wounds were consistent with attack with a logging axe, Dr. Stantz. Why?"

"Not a tomahawk?" Ray frowned. "Or some other kind of axe? Wielded by someone who doesn't want the site developed? Was there any evidence there was ever an Indian Burial ground at the site? That could stir up a lot of hot tempers, not to mention unhappy spirits."

"None that we found and no Native Americans have been on our case. Our chief of security is Native American, and he doesn't seem disturbed by any mystical mumbo jumbo." Gunderson shook his head. "I honestly don't know more, men. I wish I did. I can't explain the 'ghost trees' any more than I can explain who attacked Charlie Dawson or why he's retreated into catatonia, and I don't know where the missing men are. I don't even know if there's a connection between the trees, the attack, and the disappearances. It's entirely possible one of the men brought in an axe separately and attacked Dawson because of a personal grudge, and then tossed the axe. All he'd have to do is throw it over the edge of the mountain; in such rough country it would be a complete fluke if it were ever found, although there are search parties checking out such a possibility."

"Maybe it was a ghost logger, to go with the ghost trees," Peter said with flippancy, but it wasn't complete flippancy. Of all of them, Peter, the psychologist, could guess what could drive a man to catatonia, and he didn't enjoy any of the options. "I'd like to see Dawson when we get out there," he'd asked.

"I'll arrange it, but I don't think he'll be able to give you any information, unless he's come out of it by then."

He hadn't. When the team arrived in Colorado, they went first to the hospital in Denver where the company had arranged for Dawson to be brought. Peter went into the room, accompanied by Egon to take P.K.E. readings while the other two waited in the doorway. Springing too many people on a disturbed patient was never very smart, but Peter wanted someone there to monitor Dawson with Ghostbuster equipment in case his condition was psi induced.

Peter could still remember the sight of the logger lying there limply on his bed, and it was not a pretty sight. Dawson had been a big man, large-featured, a blunt nose, a heavy brow with a straight, black line of brows that met over his nose. Under the tan that came with working out of doors most of his adult life the pallor of illness had begun to make inroads on his complexion. An IV dripped fluid into the back of his hand, electrodes monitored his vitals, and one heavily bandaged leg was elevated in traction. His eyes were open--the nurse said sometimes they opened for a time but he never seemed to see anything before they closed again. Peter knew that was probably a simple reflex and that it might have no bearing at all on his level of consciousness.

Bending over him, Peter took hold of his hand and gave it a squeeze. Putting on his most soothing voice, he spoke very softly so as not to alarm the man in case a part of him could still hear and understand. "Charlie? My name's Peter. I'm here to help you. I heard about the big mess out at the site. Pretty nasty stuff. Ghost trees? I'd be spooked myself, and I'm a Ghostbuster."

Charlie stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, but the fingers in Peter's grip were not entirely limp. They moved feebly. Peter couldn't tell if that was a reflex or if a part of Charlie knew someone was there and was trying to respond. "That's right, Charlie," he encouraged, bending lower to put himself into the man's line of sight. "I'm a Ghostbuster. I'm out from New York. We know there's something going on out there and we're here to stop it."

No response. Charlie seemed dedicated to silence. Peter's words didn't appear to ripple the surface of that flat calm. The fingers moved feebly when Peter spoke but stilled when he was silent. A reaction? A sign of awareness?

"Most peculiar, Peter," Egon said in an undertone.

Venkman glanced at him quickly. "Tell me, Egon, but not very loud, okay?" He didn't want to distract Charlie in case the hand movement meant something.

"I'm picking up extremely high residual readings, but they're not class 3's, not the ghosts of human beings. In fact, although the readings are inconclusive, they could be off the scale--except they're fading gradually. Anything this powerful would take a long time to fade away. They are possibly Class 8 and they are dispersing with uncanny slowness."

"Tell me I didn't hear that," Winston muttered in the background, to the accompaniment of Ray's eager, "Wow!"

"Class 8?" Peter stared at Egon. "What's Class 8? That's more powerful than demons. I don't like the sound of this."

"Various elementals are Class 8, Peter. I'll know more when I have had time to do further research. Mr. Dawson himself is not a Class 8, but he has been exposed to one. His own biorhythm readings are extremely weak," Egon went on. "But presumably that is what you'd expect in such a situation."

"Physically for sure," Peter said with a gesture at the IV, the bandaged leg. "And who knows what his mental state is, especially with those Class 8 readings. I'd be surprised if his biorhythms were anywhere near normal."

"Maybe the trees attacked him," Winston muttered in an undertone.

The hand tightened violently on Peter's fingers, causing him to let out a yelp of pain. Egon jumped for him automatically, blocked by Peter's body from seeing what was wrong. The man's eyes focused on Peter, he blinked very awkwardly as if his eyes were dry or if he'd never tried to blink before, then his gaze sharpened. With a horrified yell, he yanked his hand out of Peter's and tried to scramble toward the head of the bed, brought up short by the traction. Realizing he was trapped, Dawson screamed and went on screaming, his expression full of a horror the likes of which Peter had never seen before. And, in his job, he'd seen a lot of terrified people.

The medical alarms went off and in seconds the Code Blue team was there with a crash cart. Peter grabbed the first doctor and explained to him what had happened in deliberately professional terms. Fortunately for him and his team, the doctor had seen Dawson go off like that before, when he had first aroused, so he didn't choose to eject the Ghostbusters from the hospital. Instead he ejected them all from the room but Peter.

By the time Peter, the doctors, and the nurses had managed to calm Dawson down again, he was once more catatonic. "Sorry, guys," Winston said when Peter joined him, Egon, and Ray in the nearest waiting room. "I didn't mean to set him off. I shouldn't have mentioned the trees like that."

"We don't know that you caused his reaction," Egon replied. "Unless, of course, he actually was attacked by the ghost trees."

"Yeah, I suggested that to the man's shrink," Peter said, "but he was--not enthusiastic. Guy has all the imagination of a block of wood. He says anything to do with ghosts is nonsense and won't let me near Dawson again even though that other doctor, Clement, was on my side. But that's not the deal, guys. Dawson's not totally out of it. He was with it enough to squeeze my hand--and not just once which could've been a reflex. He did it when I talked to him. Each time I said something. He knew I was there. When Winston mentioned a tree attack, he nearly took my hand off."

"Yeah, but he knows something so horrible he can't face it," Winston pointed out, decidedly unhappy about the incident.

"I don't think tree ghosts sound so scary," Ray disagreed.

"No, but you love the unexplained, Ray," Egon reminded him. "You're accustomed to entities that would send many people screaming into the night. From these readings, we have an incredibly powerful entity to contend with. When he started screaming the readings intensified. His mental state is definitely psi-induced."

"Yeah," Peter said. "I don't think there's a crazed axe murderer out there--at least I hope like heck there isn't. I think it's something a lot weirder than that. Maybe the trees are mad at the loggers and they're fighting back."

*****

Peter thought of that now as they stood at the site of the future hotel, staring around the clearing. A few downed trees suggested what had happened here, but Peter could only make out a couple of stumps--he counted two, no, three. That meant some of the towering trees that soared up to the sky weren't real trees but strange phantoms. Eerie. He didn't like the feel of the place.

The 'security team' Dawson had mentioned were real, but they were camped down near the highway. They reported no one had tried to enter the site and assured the Ghostbusters they made several sweeps a day. Peter had been completely underwhelmed at their diligence. The team had needed the gate unlocked to drive in and park Ecto, but a chain-link fence wasn't proof against a determined intruder.

In case the axe murderer was a real, physical being, lurking in the woods with a grudge against anyone at the site who went off alone, Egon had set one P.K.E. meter for generic biorhythms before they started down the graded road to the site. He'd filtered out their own readings and boosted the device to report at the maximum distance. If anyone came within five hundred yards of them, the meter would react--loudly. Dawson had been alone in the woods when he was attacked. Peter didn't plan to get into his situation or allow any of his team to do the same. The thought of vanishing into the trees for a whiz didn't appeal; for once he would live with the port-a-potty on the far side of the clearing.

"So what 'peculiar' readings are you picking up, Egon?" Ray asked, glancing up from his own meter. "Gosh, it's pretty here."

"It's a beautiful site," Egon confirmed. "My readings are class 8, as one would expect after what we took when we visited Dawson. But they have...now this is most peculiar." He fiddled with the dials.

"What, Egon?" prompted Winston, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder.

"There are class 3 elements mingled with it."

"Golly, you don't think the missing guys were killed and you're getting readings of their ghosts?" cried Ray, his eyes huge with distress.

"Somebody made a good go at offing Dawson," Peter reminded him. "If his buddies are out there in pieces, their ghosts might be pretty fed up." The thought of discovering dismembered corpses among the trees made him shudder.

"This area has been searched thoroughly," Egon reminded him. "Multiple bodies would have been discovered. The readings I detect are inconclusive, not as if there were class 3 specters present, but as if..." he frowned. "It's not quite like residuals. It's more like a general overlay."

"Egon, hey, Egon," cried Ray, staring around with fascinating. "Maybe this really was an Indian burial ground. That would probably account for the readings."

"Not necessarily, Ray," Egon corrected. "Cemeteries in general don't give off class 3 readings."

"Haunted ones do," Ray pointed out unanswerably. "And something weird's sure going on here."

Winston shrugged, busy stacking their supplies. "We're not gonna camp here overnight?" he asked.

"It might be necessary," Egon replied. "I want to take readings of the trees, to see if I can determine by readings alone which of them are the 'ghost trees'."

Peter sure couldn't tell. Well, there was one over there with the edge of a stump sticking out of it about ankle level, and he'd bet good money that was one of them, but none of the others were quite as noticeable. He nudged Egon with his elbow and pointed. "How about that, Spengs? It almost seems fuzzy at the edges where they meet. That's gotta be one of them."

"Hmmm." Egon's glasses slid down his nose, and he started for the 'ghost tree' with utter fascination. Drawing his thrower, Peter moved with him. He didn't want any trees sneaking up on his buddy while he was so caught up in his investigation.

"Wow, look at that." Ray came running over, sticking out a fascinated hand to touch the place of joining.

Peter grabbed him by his proton pack strap as his fingers found the spot, and heaved him back. "Not so fast, Tex. Last time anybody was attacked, somebody was messing with one of these trees. Let's not risk a repeat performance."

"You called that one, Pete," Winston agreed. He took a protective stance where he could watch the clearing, particle thrower in hand.

"It didn't hurt me, Peter," Ray said with mild reproach. "It just felt like a tree. I couldn't tell any difference by touch. But, gosh, it's so weird there where the stump and the new tree actually meet. It's like a dimensional opening."

Peter's eyes followed Ray's gesture. The occultist was right. At the joining place, he could detect a shimmer, a faint edge of mistiness, as if neither were completely solid. Yet when Ray wiggled free of Peter's restraint and poked his hand into the middle of the fuzziness, his fingers came up short as if touching no more than actual bark and wood. Egon's meter made an odd noise.

"Hmm," said Egon, pushing his glasses into place when they slid down his nose. "Fascinating."

"What are you getting, Egon?" asked Ray, sitting back on his heels, his hand hovering over the point of joining without touching it.

"When you first touched it, the meter gave a surge as if the power had shifted," Egon replied. "It faded as soon as you took your hand away."

"That's it, no more touching the trees," Peter decided. "Hear us, Ray. Be a good little boy and keep your hands to yourself." He shook a warning finger at the eager occultist.

"It's not like I wanted to hurt it, Peter," Ray said reproachfully, but he let Peter tug him to his feet and away from the ghost tree without real protest. "I only want to find out what's happening."

"That's fine, when there isn't some crazy person out there in the woods with an axe," Winston replied. "This is a weird place, guys. Anybody but me feel like we're being watched?"

Now that Zeddemore had mentioned it, Peter could feel it, a strange, eerie sensation as if there were dozens of eyes upon him, staring with a strange concentration. With a shiver, he wiggled his shoulders in their pack straps to ease the itchy sensation. He glanced over at the meter atop the stack of supplies, the one attuned to human biorhythms. It hadn't gone off. Ray bounded over to it and peered at the tiny readout screen.

"Nothing, guys. Not a trace of anybody lurking in the woods. Just us. So whatever's watching us isn't a living person."

"And my P.K.E. readings aren't specific either," Egon replied. "I believe we're sensing the ghost trees, gentlemen. They might be ectoplasmic, although Ray says they feel real, but they don't set off the meters the way ordinary ghosts do."

"Well, that'll make me sleep great tonight," Peter complained. He didn't like this place. Sure it was scenic, but it was not welcoming. In that moment, he didn't believe a hotel could ever be built at Gloria Ridge. The very trees would reject it. And who would want to come and stay at a hotel where people got sliced and diced? Peter knew he sure wouldn't.

"Yeah, the trees watching us," Winston muttered. "This is not a lot of fun, guys. I sure don't feel welcome here."

"It's not that bad," argued Ray. "After all, we don't mean to chop any trees down. We just want to make sure nobody else will be hurt."

Egon glanced at his wristwatch. "It's shortly after one," he announced. "Unless something happens to wrap this up sooner, I believe we should stay the afternoon. There's been no indication of manifestations after dark, but what we're detecting now is not enough for us to bust anything. Short of blasting the ghostly trees, which I am reluctant to attempt without further information, I think we should simply stay here this afternoon, taking readings."

"Waiting for the axe murderer to strike," Peter muttered under his breath. "For the other blade to drop." He caught Winston's eye and they exchanged a grimace. Neither one of them meant to move very far from a weapon--or from the rest of the team.

They made camp, a rough camp without tents since they did not intend to spend the night--at least Peter hoped it wouldn't come to that. Egon set up a perimeter of detection devices geared to pick up any changes in readings, hints of dimensional gateways, or cross rips to parallel universes. He enjoyed himself mightily. He always did when he had a chance to play with his toys, thought Peter with a grin.

Ray was all over the place, darting here and there, trying to discover which trees were the ghostly ones and which weren't. He put up stakes with yellow markers in front of each one he identified, and then went around again, examining each one, taking notes, touching the bark gently, probing with his fingertips. Peter kept an eye on him as he did that, but it didn't seem to hurt him, and none of the trees pulled up roots to chase him or swung angry branches at him. Periodically, Egon took readings of him to make sure he was unaffected by whatever had driven Dawson to his unfortunate state, and seemed satisfied each time that Ray was unaltered and uninfluenced, and that the rest of them were too.

Winston prowled the perimeter, thrower lying ready across his arm, his attention at full strength. While his team worked he meant to make sure no one got the drop on them. Peter could see him sinking his concentration into his surroundings, familiarizing himself with the normal sounds of the site so that any change would draw his undivided attention. Watching him as he moved through the glen, Peter could imagine him on patrol in Vietnam. He must have been just as alert, just as braced for trouble, when he was there, as he was now. He wasn't much for talking about his war experiences and Peter had never pushed, but he was glad to see that something useful had come out of them.

As for Peter himself, he fetched and carried for Egon or Ray, complaining all the way, partly because that was his nature and partly because they expected it. He hung over Egon's shoulder and stared at readings, prevented Ray from wandering off into the forest no less than three separate times, and greeted the security team when they made a sweep around two-thirty. No one had shown any interest in the site, the team explained. They would do the outer perimeter of the Raleigh property and swing back in about two more hours.

"Use the walkie talkie if you have any trouble," the head security man, Cory Jameson, instructed. Of evident Native American blood, he was tall, strong-featured, determined, as if he'd seen it all, and was prepared to handle it all without effort. He had a rifle under one arm, and an alert, ready appearance, as if he could take on a squad of armed ninjas without even messing up his hair. The men in his team were even bulkier and tougher than Jameson. Peter was glad they were nearby. He couldn't imagine any axe murderer in the world willing to take them on.

By three-fifteen, Peter was heartily bored. The equipment still held Egon's interest, Ray remained as bouncy as Tigger, and Winston hadn't lowered his guard. Peter would have liked to lower his and take a nap, but he suspected he wouldn't get away with it. To test the possibility, he flung himself down on the grass near the vista of the continental divide, folded his arms behind his head, and closed his eyes.

"Try to keep it a short nap, Peter," Egon chided automatically. "The rest of us are working."

"You mean you're standing around staring at screens? Egon, nothing's going on here. Unless we actually do something to provoke an incident we could be here until the snow falls. Nobody's gonna pay us if we don't do any more than this." He opened one eye to survey Egon, who had not lifted his eyes from his equipment.

"Actually, I am gaining completely useful information," Egon replied. "Readings like these are so unusual they will give me hours of study. We must learn what happened here, Peter."

"Maybe the walls opened between this world and the next one over," Peter mused lazily, plucking a strand of grass and chewing it between his teeth. "And what we're seeing is the overlap."

"Wow, Peter," cried Ray, charmed with the theory. "That's really cool. You know, it could be, too. If the two worlds were close enough to each other, and if nobody else was around, it would explain why the 'ghost trees' were so solid. And it might explain what happened to those missing men. They just wound up on the other side. I wonder if there'd be a Denver in that world, too. I wonder how different it would be from our own."

"The readings don't support such a theory," Egon replied dryly, although Peter could tell he enjoyed the idea. "And it certainly does not explain what happened to Mr. Dawson. Theorizing is all very well, but unless the theories fit the facts and accumulated data, they are merely idle speculation."

"Somebody in the other universe has an axe fetish," volunteered Winston. "And he's the one with the axe. He pops over and gives anyone he runs into forty whacks. That's why they couldn't find any blood on the local axes." Clearly he was speculating for the fun of it and didn't believe a word of what he was saying.

Peter closed his eyes and let the others' voices wash over him. Nobody with an axe was going to pop up and do a Lizzie Bordon on him, not with his friends around. Even if a Demento on the other side liked hacking up innocent loggers, Egon was rarely wrong about such phenomena as alternate universes and parallel dimensions and he wasn't going along with such possibilities now.

Peter slept. And when he slept, he dreamed. The dream was strange, brightly technicolor, as vivid as Disney animation, the colors all slightly off natural as if someone had painted the entire world in bold primary colors under the light of an alien sun.

He saw the clearing and his friends moving about as if he were awake. They shimmered around the edges as if they were too bright with glory to be viewed head on but must be seen out of the corner of one's eye. He watched Ray dancing excitedly around the clearing, laying his palm on one treetrunk then spinning away to stroke another, turning his head to call over his shoulder to the others. When he spoke, his words were distorted, unnatural, high-pitched and rapid like a phonograph played at the wrong speed. Weird.

In another way it was like a film, Peter realized. His viewpoint was the spooky one of lingering behind Ray, shifting sideways when the occultist turned his head, the way a camera angle will indicate someone is being followed. Sublimely unaware of his 'pursuer', Ray moved enthusiastically through the clearing, pausing to take a reading, turning aside as he spotted a new tree a ways inside the forest. He said something over his shoulder to Egon, who replied in the same high, quick gibberish, then he started forward, meter held high. Peter could hear Winston call something, too, but once again, he couldn't understand the words.

The brightness of the unnatural light pressed around Ray so tightly he stopped dead, lifting his head, pausing, alert and wary. So uneasy was Peter he struggled to awaken but the dream held him in its prison. Ray? Come on, Ray, get out of there! His sleeping self cried desperately, but Ray didn't hear him. Instead he took a step deeper into the trees, holding out his hands as if he could snatch chunks of brightness out of the air.

A swirl of luminosity, like free-floating sparks of sunlight, darted around him, tossed on an invisible wind. The golden glow was everywhere, blazing up so dazzlingly that, for an instant, it was all Peter could see.

When it faded, Ray was gone.

Peter erupted from the depths of the dream's control like a man plunging out of the sea, shaking away the shards of the dream like drops of water. "RAY!" he screeched at the top of his lungs.

"Whoa! Bad dream, Pete?" Winston asked, staring at him in surprise. Egon, too, lowered the magnetometer and turned to stare at his distraught colleague.

"Peter, what--" he began then, as if he could sense Peter's urgency, he glanced around. "Ray?"

"RAY!" Peter screeched, bounding to his feet and starting for the place he had seen Ray vanish in the dream.

"How'd you know he went there...." Winston's voice trailed off as it hit him that Ray hadn't answered Peter's urgent call. "Oh, man," he groaned. "Ray! Haul your butt back here or I'm gonna fricassee you!"

Egon dropped the magnetometer and snatched up a P.K.E. meter, twisting the dials as he ran for the place Ray had vanished. The readings must have stunned him, for he stopped abruptly, gazing at the readout screen in shocked realization.

"He's gone," he breathed in disbelief. "I can't pick up his readings at all. This is impossible. He couldn't simply vanish before our eyes."

"I saw it, Egon," Peter babbled, darting into the trees, stopping at the place where the sparks of light had surrounded Ray. "I saw it in my dream. Everything looked funny, and you guys sounded like the Chipmunks, and Ray was right here when light swirled around him like leaves in the wind and then he was just gone." He groped about blindly as if Ray were still here, only invisible, but his questing hands found nothing. "He disappeared, just like all those loggers." And only Dawson came back, horribly changed. Peter shuddered.

"You couldn't have seen it in a dream," Winston objected, then fell silent when Egon lifted his hand. "That's crazy, man. You had to be...." His voice trailed off as he realized Peter did know what happened, so he must have been able to see it in the dream, as unlikely as that sounded.

"Something did happen at this very spot," Egon spoke gravely, his face utterly expressionless. In a crisis of this magnitude he had a habit of sucking his emotions inside and attempting to rationalize them. The effort always hurt, Peter could tell. "The meter is reacting. There are faint residuals of Ray's biorhythms, but they're gone, fading into the overall readings at this site. Something happened here. It wasn't precisely a cross-rip, but it was a paranormal incident."

"But where's Ray?" Peter screeched, batting at the undergrowth as if Ray were hidden there.

Egon brought the meter around and aimed it right at Peter. The antennae extended slightly, the little lights beeping. "How odd. Whatever happened did involve you, Peter. I would theorize that what you saw in the dream is exactly what happened. Somehow, you were granted a 'vision'."

"Come on, Egon," Peter said urgently, moving to the left and pawing through the brush there. "How could I see what happened to when I was asleep? My eyes weren't open."

"Because it was not a normal sleep," Egon replied ominously.

"Then what?" Winston asked. He was armed and ready, prepared to blast the first thing that moved.

"I suspect the class 8 entities have been watching us. I don't know why they would choose to take Raymond, unless he was simply the first one of us at a slight distance from the others. But I suspect they are present now, watching us, possibly to see how we react, possibly to determine which of us to take next."

"And present in my dream?" objected Peter. He straightened up, met Egon's eyes, and continued desperately, "Does that mean I'm gonna be next? I'll have my thrower. I can rescue Ray."

"Ray has his thrower, Peter," Egon reminded him. Worry flashed between them. Most of the men had not returned when they disappeared from the site. Only Dawson had come back and he had returned mutilated and insane.

"Yeah, then why isn't he using it?" Peter cast a glance over his shoulder. "Egon, in the dream, something was following him. I couldn't see what it was because whatever it was, was in me, only not like I was possessed, but like I was given my own private film festival. I couldn't see it because I was seeing out of its eyes. It was like a spooky movie when you can tell the hero's being followed, like something about to jump out and grab him. I couldn't do anything about it, but I could feel it." He shuddered reminiscently.

"That sounds nasty, Pete." Winston gave him a reassuring clap on the shoulder.

"It was weird, but it didn't feel nasty, just strange," Peter said honestly. "At least not until Ray disappeared." He described the disappearance in as much detail as he could while the other two listened, Egon taking readings the whole time. "I didn't even realize he was going to vanish until it happened," he said. "I'd have stopped him...." His voice trailed off. "Ray was grabbed and I just watched," he concluded miserably.

"Peter," rumbled Egon's reassuring voice, "you were, in essence, possessed. You were shown a dream image. You had no way of realizing what you saw in the dream was, in fact, happening in reality. We don't know that even now."

"I think we know it, Spengs," Peter argued. "Because this is where I saw Ray disappear and this is where your meter says something weird went down. I didn't save him." He scowled, full of self-disgust.

"None of us did, Peter," Egon reminded him. "Not yet."

"Yeah, Pete. You were asleep, under the influence. Egon and I were wide awake and he told us what he was going to do."

"Hmmm." Egon waved the meter in Winston's direction, then at himself. "Perhaps we were all slightly influenced."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Peter said. "That's worse. That means we can all disappear, one by one, and there's nothing we can do about it. Come on, Egon, there's gotta be a way to make sure we aren't all grabbed. We can hardly save Ray if we wind up trapped with him. We've gotta get him back!"

"Don't forget how smart Ray is," Winston encouraged. "He's probably with those missing loggers right now, working on a rescue. Before you know it, he'll have them all organized and there'll be a big plan. He'll bring them all back."

That sounded like something Ray would do, all right. But Peter didn't have a lot of faith in that scenario. He could still remember the stark horror in Dawson's face when he'd started screaming and the dark shadows in his eyes. His was not the technicolor vision of Peter's dream. It was a harder, darker world where people could be nearly killed, where the missing returned changed horribly. If the entities could stroll into his dreams and influence his waking buddies, how could the Ghostbusters ever hope to stop them? And how could they protect themselves from disappearing, one by one, the way Ray had disappeared? Could they bring Ray back at all? They had to. They needed him. They couldn't manage without him.

"If we were all influenced, we must find a way to prevent that from happening again," Egon said, aiming the meter deeper into the trees along the ridge. He shook his head and pointed the device back at the small clearing. "The readings are stronger in the clearing," he said. "Come on."

They returned to the clearing. Ray wasn't there, of course, but Peter was still disappointed. He couldn't help hoping for a positive answer, even when a part of him feared a return like Dawson's. "Ray!" he hollered at the top of his lungs. "Wherever you are, give us a sign. If you can't talk, make a noise, anything. We'll find you, and that's a promise from Dr. Venkman. Ray!"

No answer. Egon frowned, fiddling with the meter, his mouth a tight line across his face. "These readings are so diffuse it's impossible to pin them down to a specific site," he said. "But they are also fractionally stronger than before." Peter knew the expression on his face; he'd seen it on those rare instances in the past when Spengler could not make sense of his readings. He was so used to putting together the clues into something that made sense. This time, with Ray missing, he couldn't do it. But he had to do it.

Suddenly a horrible theory burst into Peter's brain that made him freeze in appalled disbelief. "Egon! You don't think those tree ghosts use Ray's life energy--to make more trees?"

"You mean drain him so they can put another tree up?" Winston cried, his eyes wide with dismay. "Just drawing off his life energy. Oh, man."

"Hmm." Egon's jaw clenched tight as he pondered the possibility. "While such a scenario should leave behind a body, it hasn't happened here, at least not that we've been able to find, not of any of the missing longer. Yet that could conceivably explain away the class 3 overlay I've detected here."

"You mean Ray's dead?" Peter could hardly frame the words. He felt as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. This couldn't be happening. They'd faced much tougher spirits than this and come out on top. Just because Ray had taken a few steps into the trees.... No, it couldn't happen like that. "He can't be dead, Egon," he insisted futilely.

"Dawson wasn't dead, Peter," Egon replied stiffly as if he found it hard to frame words. "Yes, he was injured, but there was nothing to suggest his life-energy had been siphoned off. The doctors would have commented on it, had that happened."

"How about his sanity, then?" Winston challenged. He wasn't happy about the question.

Peter shook his head, on slightly firmer ground. "No, Winston. You can't drain sanity the way you can drain your car's oil tank. Whatever happened to Dawson was so nasty he couldn't live with it. Shock-trauma. He was terrified. But he wasn't drained of his essence. Remember, I saw his chart. Whoever attacked him nearly took his leg off. The bone was completely shattered. It was a really brutal attack. That's why we have to rescue Ray right away. Not because his life energy's involved." He grimaced. "I don't want to see Ray like that."

"Our biorhthms are normal," Egon reminded him as if he found some hope in the fact. "Even yours, Peter, after that psi dream."

"Lucid dreaming?" Peter frowned. "I knew it was a dream the whole way through, Egon. It was almost like it had credits and subtitles. I was half expecting a cast list. But I wasn't having a prophetic dream. I saw it as it happened--as if whoever followed Ray and watched him let me see it."

"So, in essence, you were temporarily mind-linked with one of the entities," Egon said, frowning as he considered the implications of that possibility. "It didn't feel like possession?"

Peter shook his head. "I've been down that road before with Watt, and this was nothing like that. It was just like a dream. Nothing took over my mind, just showed me pictures. I wasn't scared or uncomfortable, Egon, not until I realized something was following Ray. And you guys weren't noticing anything weird about me, so it wasn't setting off meters or anything. And that means it could be here right now!" His mouth tightened, then he spun out into the middle of the clearing.

"Hey, Jack," he yelled, standing defiantly, hands on his hips. "Listen to me, because I mean it. Give Ray back, right now. You've got no right to him! Ray never hurt you. It's not in him to hurt a living soul. We came here to help because some poor guy got chopped into kindling. If you're tree ghosts, you know what that's like. Last thing you'd want is for it to happen to anybody else." He sneaked a sideways glance at Egon. "Any change in the readings?"

"Not an actual change," Egon responded. "But a stirring." He worked the controls to refine them as much as he could.

"Think they heard me, then?" Peter asked hopefully.

"I think they heard you in Denver," Winston replied with a crooked grin.

"I suspect the entities are aware of us," Egon concurred. "Whether they care what we say is another matter entirely."

"Care? They're gonna care," Peter insisted grimly. "Egon, they've gotta know we're not their enemies. We're not the loggers. We're not here to chop any trees."

"Interesting, Peter," Egon replied. He came to stand in front of Venkman, regarding him curiously. "You assume they are the enemies of the loggers."

"Yeah, Egon, we all assumed that from the beginning," Winston reminded him. "They attacked the loggers. They obviously don't want them here."

"Yeah, but it's because they're tree ghosts or something," Peter responded, trying to make sense of a situation that wasn't sensible. "We might be here to stop them hurting people, but we're not here to develop the site or change it. We're here only to make sure no people are hurt--including Ray. The tree ghosts should know we're only doing the same thing they are, protecting our own."

"That's what you think they did when they attacked Dawson?" Winston asked, shocked. "Tried to protect their own? Oh, man." He cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder.

"We really don't know what happened to Dawson yet," Egon reminded him. "But if they were the ones that did it, their attack must have seemed to them to be poetic justice." He grimaced. "That attack took place while one of the ghost trees was being cut down."

"But Ray's not a logger," Winston objected, raising his voice slightly as if to make the point to the ghost trees. "He'd never hurt a tree. Does that mean Ray won't be hurt like Dawson?"

"If they can tell the difference between us and loggers," Peter started, hating the thought. "One human might be just like another to them, loggers, environmentalists, any of them. Some humans hurt them. They might think of all humans as tree-killing monsters and not even care that a lot of us want to protect the environment." He raised his voice again, "Ray! Wherever you are, if you can hear me, we're gonna find you. Tell them you're not one of the loggers! Tell them we won't chop down so much as a twig." That didn't mean they wouldn't blast a ghost tree or two, but he wouldn't do anything like that unless he could be sure of Ray's safety.

"Hey, guys?" Winston's voice was abruptly filled with doubt. "Weren't there three more stumps over there." He pointed behind Peter, where the remaining stumps from the felled trees had been.

"Yeah, all the rest had been replaced with the ghost ones," Peter replied, uneasiness making the hair rise on the back of his neck. His eyes followed Winston's pointing finger, and he froze. Maybe the idea of drawing energy from the missing men to replace the trees wasn't out of the ball park after all. Because now there were only two stumps. Where the third had been was only a ridge around the edges of the towering new tree. Ray had gone--and now a new tree stood here. Horrified, Peter made a connection that might be a wild leap--but might be true.

"RAY!" Peter yelled. He charged over to the tree but stopped short of touching it. "Egon," he cried, "can you tell if Ray's energy has been absorbed to make this tree--if this tree might actually be Ray?" Winston froze in shock at the words and Egon's hand tightened around the handle of the P.K.E. meter so tightly his knuckles whitened. Peter and Winston fell in, one on either side of him as he came up to the tree.

Egon moved the meter up and down its woody surface, frowning. His glasses slipped down toward the end of his nose and he barely caught them before they would have fallen off. He shook his head. "No, Peter, I can't determine a correlation between the energies of the tree and Ray. I can detect strong class 8 readings, and fainter class 3 readings, but those readings are not specific." He added apologetically, "As you know, it's not always possible to detect a link between someone's living biorhythm readings and those of a person's spirit after he has died."

"Died?" echoed Winston miserably. "Oh, man, Egon, don't tell me Ray died to make this tree?" Peter froze, holding his breath for the physicist's reply. This couldn't be happening!

Egon shook his head, but he did it doubtfully. "I don't know," he said simply. "I believe we would have a greater correlation between these readings and Ray's if that were the case, but it is not something I can prove." His eyes looked hollow and sad behind the lenses he had just shoved into place. "What also alarms me, gentlemen, is that there are still two stumps remaining. If the trees have somehow used the missing loggers--and Ray--to replenish the grove, that means two more of us could--"

"Die?" Peter breathed. Horrified, he took a step closer to the tree and put his palm against the rough bark. "No way, Egon. Ray's not dead. I know he's not. We'll get him back. Do you hear me? We'll get him back. And we won't let them take any more of us." He took a step back from the tree and reached out to encircle Egon's wrist with a firm grip. As if he'd sensed what Peter needed, Winston moved into place beside him and gripped Peter's other arm.

"Nobody's taking any more of us," Winston said. "We'll call the security team up here. Nobody goes off alone for an instant. Ray went into the trees. We won't try anything like that. No way."

"Peter, you saw what happened," Egon reminded him. "Did you feel any malice in the sensation? Did you believe anything was attempting communication? Any information you can give us will help Ray."

"I don't know," Peter wailed, frustrated and annoyed with himself. Maybe if he'd been more with it, he could have awakened and stopped the trees from grabbing Ray. Never mind he'd tried to wake up and couldn't. That didn't help Ray. "It was just a dream, Egon. I didn't feel any communication. I could see what was going on but I didn't understand it. It was like somebody was letting me see what happened but I didn't quite realize it might really be happening. Either it made so much sense to them that they didn't think explanations were necessary or they didn't care. The colors were brighter, the sounds were different, everything was distorted. Just like a dream."

"No, Peter. Just like the viewpoint of a being whose sensory perception is different from our own," Egon corrected. He might be upset and worried, but it hadn't stopped him thinking. No matter the crisis, they could rely upon Egon to come up with answers, even when he was all torn up inside. "Class 8's are not traditional ghosts, in spite of the fact that they might be ectoplasmic. Their perceptions of the universe are bound to be vastly different from our own."

"Bottom line. How does that help Ray?" Winston asked. His fingers trailed wistfully across the bark of the tree.

"As of yet, I don't know," Egon replied sadly and bent over his meter as if he hoped to find a solution there.

Peter tightened his grip on Egon's wrist for a moment, then he let go. "We'll get him back," he repeated. "We will, Egon. I know we will. You'll figure out a way. You always do, when the chips are down." And he hoped his words weren't whistling in the dark.

*****

It all happened so fast that Ray didn't know it was happening until it was all over. One moment he was moving through the trees, the next minute the universe was different. The light changed, growing brighter, the colors sharpening until the world was vivid and glorious. Towering above the clouds, the high, terrible spine of the Continental Divide hovered in the air like the spires of a vast castle. The air was fresh, crisp, full of incredible scents he'd never noticed before, and he felt more alive than he had ever felt in his life, as if he were connected to all of it. Suddenly he knew he could reach up and touch the sky and at the same time sink his fingers down into the depths of stone and bedrock that made up the Rocky Mountains, and join with them. He was a part of everything, and the joy that burst through him was unlike any joy he had ever felt before.

Thought wasn't necessary because he knew everything. He could simply exist and the universe was him, and he was the universe. It was so beautiful he could not tear his eyes away from the spectacle. A part of his mind breathed, "Wow," but it wasn't necessary that he acknowledge the glory, simply that he exist, absorbing it.

For what seemed like an eon, he let himself drift, a part of something so vast, so spectacular, that there was no need of his own consciousness. His former self was so much smaller than what he had become that he couldn't even look back. He didn't even want to. Why did he need the old, constrictive life, when he had the entire universe at his fingertips.

Fingertips? At the realization he could no longer sense his fingertips, or any part of his body, the first faint edge of Ray-ness drifted into his awareness. He frowned, wondering what had happened. Or rather, he tried to frown.

He couldn't sense himself, couldn't feel his arms and legs. He had no body, yet he was part of a body so vast it encompassed the entire world.

It wasn't even frightening. He could think, but the urge to do so was muted. What did any of that matter when he was part of the very act of creation, the ongoing rebirth of the cosmos?

Face lifted to the sun, he let the light dance around him in brilliant bursts, like a kaleidoscope. It was too beautiful to witness head-on. He had to absorb it through his very pores rather than taking it in through his eyes and ears. He could see and hear, but it wasn't the way he had seen and heard before.

Oh, gosh, guys, this is incredible.... he thought, then the concept of what he'd thought hit him and he jerked, caught himself as he realized he was trapped, unable to move, unable to do anything but absorb the universe. That frightened him, and it reminded him of what he had been before. Where he'd been.

The guys?

The guys!

He wasn't the cosmos, expanding and blossoming. He was Ray, and he wanted his friends. He struggled to call their names, but he could make no sound. Fear trickled down into the core of his being.

Abruptly, his three friends were there in front of him, staring at him in wide-eyed horror. They couldn't see the glory; there was none of his transcendental joy in their faces. What they saw pained them greatly. They were anxious, afraid, and that made him grow uneasy. What had happened to him to put such fear and worry into their eyes?

And they were talking urgently, their mouths moving, the words emerging high-pitched and squeaky, like cartoon chipmunks. Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. A part of Ray smiled at the mental comparison, and the recognition made him feel more like himself. The vastness of the cosmos slipped, sending a thread of uneasiness pulsing through his essence. The faces of his friends, alarmed as they gazed at him without recognition, began to worry him. What had happened to him? What was going on? Why couldn't he understand them when they talked? Why weren't they talking to him, asking him questions? Was he hurt? Unconscious? Oh, gosh, what if he was dead? Was that why it felt so strange? Maybe that was why he felt like he was part of everything and so distant from his own life. He was dead!

He wasn't ready to die.

Egon moved the P.K.E. meter over him and Ray could understand that; he could see what they were doing, even if they were distorted, too bright, almost unreal.

"Help me!"

But the frantic plea for help didn't make any noise. He couldn't hear himself talking. He could only try to talk, struggling to vocalize even the simplest phrase. He couldn't feel his lips, couldn't move his arms. He was trapped, frozen. He didn't know what was happening. Panic surged through him and he struggled frantically--or tried to struggle. But he couldn't move. He was trapped!

Guys, you've gotta help me.

But they didn't hear him. They didn't react. They only went on talking in their chipmunk voices, staring up at him, clearly worried, but less alarmed than they would be if they were staring at his dead body.

What's wrong with me?

Abruptly, Peter reached out, put his hand on Ray's chest, and said, "Ray. I'm here. I understand. I hope you can hear me." His voice was strangely distorted, but it was understandable.

Ray felt a surge of relief pulse through him. There was hope. The guys knew he was in trouble. They'd figure it out. They'd help him. They had to.

The cosmos surrounded him, vast and frightening. The glory was gone, replaced by a growing terror. He didn't understand. He wanted to go home.

*****

"Whatever we do, we stick together," Peter said fiercely, glancing around the clearing.

"You bet we do," Winston agreed. "The security team's gonna be here any minute. They'll search for Ray. They'll find him. How far could he have gone anyway?"

Egon frowned over his P.K.E. meter. "I don't understand this," he said. "There's no evidence of Ray's biorhythms here, yet I keep feeling that Ray is present, that he's watching us. I have no scientific basis for such an assumption, but I can sense Ray's presence." He looked up, his eyes grave and worried. "The dream sensation you felt, Peter.... I suspect all of us have been influenced to a degree."

Peter shuddered. He didn't like the idea of that, and he didn't want to be drained and absorbed to make a replacement tree, if that was really what had happened to Ray. He'd seen a program on TV the other day where a mummy had drained living people to go on living. But it had left behind desiccated bodies. So far the only good thing about the whole crisis was that they hadn't found a body. It didn't mean Ray was safe or that they could rescue him, but it meant they still had hope. Peter wasn't much for hope; his nature was too cynical for that. But he wouldn't deny Ray any possibility. "Come on, Egon, this is all just crazy. Lots of trees have been cut down everywhere. Logging's been going on for years and years. This kind of thing doesn't usually happen, just because somebody needs wood to build a house or make paper. Somebody would have noticed. If loggers disappeared all the time, we'd know about it."

"No, but those trees are just ordinary," Winston put in. He heard what he'd said and frowned, snapping his fingers at the dawning realization. "Maybe what we've got here is--something else. You know, sentient trees. Ents. Whatever. The next stage in tree evolution. If they're intelligent, they're fighting back in the only way they can."

"That's an imaginative theory, Winston," Egon replied. "But what we have here isn't living tree people. These are Class 8 entities. Physical entities, to be sure, but entities. Tree elementals, perhaps."

"Yeah, and they're just here minding their own business when loggers show up and start killing them," Peter said, then broke off with an angry gesture. "It's like I can see their point of view. And I don't want to see it, not when they've grabbed Ray! I just want to save him, not start a campaign for tree rights."

"We must understand this," Egon insisted. "What happened in this spot to make it different from any other wilderness area? The walls between worlds are thin here? Or Ray's burial ground theory? This whole glade possesses an odd overlay. It's stronger when I focus on individual trees. Some trees here are simply that, ordinary trees. Others are something more."

"Because of those missing loggers?" Winston asked.

"You think each of these trees used to be a logger?" Peter asked, horrified. His eyes trailed around the clearing, half-expecting to see frantic, trapped faces peering at him through the bark, wild, staring eyes glowing with fear on each trunk. But all he saw was trees.

Egon's eyes widened and he stared at Peter, shaken to the core. "My god," he breathed.

"What? Come on, Egon. What?" Peter exchanged an alarmed glance with Winston. He caught the physicist's arm and shook it lightly.

"Dawson was found injured by an axe--right after the loggers tried to chop down a ghost tree that had sprung into place where they'd already cut one down," Egon said. "What if he really was attacked by loggers?"

"They tested all the axes," Winston reminded him. "Those forensics boys don't make that kind of mistake."

"They didn't test them for tree sap," the physicist responded. "Suppose every time a logger vanished, a new tree appeared. When one of the new trees was chopped down, in essence, killed, Dawson reappeared. Suppose Dawson had become the tree? Aware of his surroundings, unable to speak, to identify himself. Helpless to prevent the murderous attack upon him. Once the tree was felled, whatever bound him to it broke and he was free, but free with the human equivalent of the tree's wounds."

Peter opened his mouth to refute such a ludicrous theory, but then he fell silent, gazing at the tree that had sprung up when Ray disappeared. "No wonder he's reacting like that," he said, picturing Dawson's terrified screams. "Imagine it, Egon, knowing you're about to be attacked, feeling every blow, unable to scream, to ask for help, to plead with the attackers to stop." He shuddered. "God, Egon, this is really crummy. All these trees--" He made a wide gesture. "Every one of them could be one of those missing loggers. And this one...." He went up to the new tree and put his palm against its bole. "This could actually be Ray." And what if the loggers showed up, determined to chop down the Ray tree? They'd have to go through the Ghostbusters and their proton streams to get to him!

"But the readings...." Winston protested with a gesture at the P.K.E. meter in an attempt to refute the theory.

"Human biorhythms wouldn't be able to overwhelm class 8 readings," Egon said, adjusting the dials again. "There would be no conclusive way to tell."

"Ray?" Peter pressed his palm hard against the trunk. "Hang in there, Ray." Suddenly he remembered how everything had sounded in his dream. "I'm gonna try something," he explained hastily, then he made himself speak extremely slowly. "Ra-a-ay. I'm here. We understand." He dragged each word out. "I hope you can hear me." Turning to the others, he said, "In the dream we sounded too fast like the wrong speed on a phonograph. Maybe they live more slowly than we do. I want to let him know we figured out what happened to him. If he's conscious in there, maybe he'll be able to hear me if I talk slow."

"It's working, Peter," Egon cried with sudden excitement. "The readings jumped when you spoke. I still can't quite detect Ray's actual readings, but when you spoke so slowly, the tree did respond. I believe it heard you."

The three of them stared at the tree in dismay. Realizing what had happened to Ray didn't mean they understood it. Or that they could reverse it. Or keep it from happening to two more of them.

Winston copied Peter, putting his hand on the tree bark as if giving Ray an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "Hang in there, homeboy," he said in the same dragged-out tones Peter had used. "We're gonna pull you out of there."

"What made them pick Ray?" Peter said uneasily. "Simply because he was alone for a second?"

"Or because he touched all the trees?" Winston theorized. "They might know what he was up to." He shook his head. "No, if those trees are loggers, they wouldn't want Ray to share their fate, would they? It's gotta be the energy from the fallen trees." He gestured nervously at the downed trunks.

"That may have something to do with it. But I don't believe it even required Ray to have physical contact with the ghost trees," Egon responded. "I believe that the need to replace the missing trees was so great that it would have happened anyway." He lifted his head from the meter and stared directly at Peter and Winston. "I wish I knew a way to reverse the process. We must reverse it. We must bring Ray back. And the loggers."

A distant shout echoed through the trees, and Peter turned to see what it meant, hoping for one futile moment that Ray was free and calling to them. It wasn't Ray's voice, though. When he turned, he saw something that stunned him when his eyes passed the two tree stumps that had been there moments before. "Egon!" he squawked, grabbing his arm and gesturing wildly in their direction. "Those last two trees are back. Look!" He glanced hastily at Winston to make sure he was still here and saw him regarding the trees with utter disbelief.

Egon waved his meter at the two new trees that towered overhead. They were very new, the edges of the stump much more visible than it was on the Ray tree. "How very odd," Spengler murmured. "How could that have happened?" He went over to them and took readings up close. "They're similar to the other tree, mostly class 8 but with class three readings woven through it. I don't like this."

More distant shouts echoed through the forest, growing closer, different voices calling names. "Edison!" "Davis!" There was no answer to the calls, but the voices grew nearer and nearer. Winston tightened his grip on his thrower. The meter set to detect biorhythms pinged.

A moment later, Jameson and his team burst out of the trees at a dead run and stopped in the center of the clearing, rifles in hand. Uneasiness radiated from the squad and they cast nervous glances over their shoulders. Peter didn't like the sight of that. They were trained men, tough and burly; it shouldn't have been so easy to alarm them. "You haven't seen anything weird?" the head man demanded, stalking up to the Ghostbusters and glaring at them as if they were to blame for everything that had gone wrong. "Have you figured out what's happened to the missing loggers yet? Two of my men are missing. They just vanished, not three minutes ago."

"Vanished while you were watching them?" Winston asked in astonishment. "Oh, man, this is just like Ray. Did you see some really bright lights?"

The security team bunched closer, forming a rough circle facing outward, weapons ready. "No," Jameson admitted. "We didn't see it happen. But they were on point. One of them yelled--and yeah, there was something bright in the distance, but we couldn't tell what it was. When we reached their last known position, there was no trace of them and that weird light was gone." He gazed around the clearing as if the missing men were there and he'd happened to overlook them. "You haven't seen them? And where's your other man? What the hell's going on here? I don't like this. It feels wrong, somehow."

Egon gestured at the place where the last three stumps had been. "There," he said, pointing. "When we first arrived on the scene, there weren't three trees, there were three stumps, leftover from the initial logging. Now they've returned. Ray disappeared first and one of the trees appeared immediately afterwards. We just noticed the other two new trees when we heard you shouting. We don't understand it yet, but this section of forest refuses to be cut down. When a tree is felled, someone must replace it. We think that's what happened to the missing loggers. Every tree that was cut down has been replaced--with a human replacement, in the form of a tree."

Loud scoffs and jeers rang out from the security team, but Jameson narrowed his eyes and followed Egon's gesture. He stalked over to the trees, ran a tentative finger over the point of joining, then he turned back, frowning, gesturing his rebellious and skeptical men to silence. "I've seen a lot of strange things in my life," he burst out. "But never anything like this. We knew the trees were coming back, but nobody wanted to believe it. And I don't think it occurred to anybody to relate that to the missing men. How could we think such a thing? Is it ghosts?" His anger had faded as he stared at the three newest trees. Doubt and worry had replaced it. "I thought I was up to anything," he admitted. "But this--I haven't got a clue."

"We don't totally understand it yet, either," Egon replied. "However, since there are no more stumps, it may be that the rest of us are safe now."

"Whoa, wait a minute, Egon," Peter objected. "I don't care if we're safe now. We've gotta save Ray. And all these other guys, too. Obviously we can't chop the trees down. That's what happened to Dawson."

Jameson was quick. He ran a hand through his jet-black hair and frowned. "He was a tree, and when they chopped him down it was like they attacked him? God, I hate this. But it makes a crazy sense."

"You believe that, Cory?" one of the men asked him in astonishment.

"There are three people missing, and the trees are back," Jameson replied. "Spengler's explanation fits what happened to Dawson. I never could find evidence there'd been a lunatic with an axe up here. I'm an expert tracker; I'd know if someone had been lurking that day. Besides, I never liked the thought of the company working in a place like this. I talked to the Raleigh guys about it, but they didn't want to listen. This is a sacred place."

"How do you know?" Winston asked, intrigued. Peter wanted to know the answer, too. The team had encountered a few spots over the years that were oddly mystical. Peter didn't understand how such things worked but he'd seen too many oddities to doubt they were real.

"My grandfather is a Navaho shaman," Cody replied. "I know a little of the old ways of the Dineh. Even though I live in a different world than he does, I still value what he knows, what he has to offer. He's an educated man, not a primitive, but his degree from Harvard didn't do anything to interfere with his old beliefs and his connection to the world around him. The world is not too small for both viewpoints. Grandfather came to see me a week ago. He knew something had happened, even though I had not been home to Shiprock for over a year and hadn't talked to anyone from home about what had happened here. He said, 'That place is not for you. It is not for hotels. You will find nothing can be built there.'

"Well, I asked him what he meant, of course, but I had an idea. There are sacred places, places where the old powers linger, and this is one of them. Places like this defend themselves."

"But how do we get Ray back, and your two men, and all these other guys?" Peter complained. "We can't leave Ray like this. Even if I have to start blasting everything in sight--and that's the last thing I want to do. Can your grandfather do anything?"

"He wouldn't try. He said it is not his place. Can't you use your equipment to free them?"

Peter pulled up his thrower, but Egon waved a hand in disagreement. "No, Peter, don't." When Peter would have argued, he said, "You saw Dawson. He was freed from whatever impetus was upon him. If we start blasting, we might free Ray, but free him neutronized. The cure could kill. And he would feel it all through his body--and his spirit. You would turn him into another Dawson. That's not the answer. It can't be."

"Okay, yeah, Egon, you're right," Peter said, lowering the thrower hastily. Blasting Ray wasn't the answer, of course, not if it affected him like it had Dawson. There was no telling Ray could understand their actions in his present state. With a sigh, Peter put his hand on the tree bark again. There had to be a way to reverse the process. "But what do we do?"

"Could we use the traps?" Winston suggested. "Draw off the energy without attacking anything?"

"The traps themselves aren't going to work against class 8 entities," Egon reminded him. "Not even all four throwers at full stream might do that. You remember the water elemental we trapped on the roof of headquarters. We didn't have the power to stop him with our standard equipment. We used nature, a lightning bolt, to complete the job. In this instance, blasting is not the solution. And I don't think I'd want to risk lightning, either. That could kill Ray."

"So you're saying we write Ray off?" Peter knew that wasn't what Egon meant, but if the physicist had no answer, Ray might be trapped like this for always. Peter shivered, resisting an urge to throw his arms around the tree and try to pull Ray free of it physically.

"Maybe we have to make Raleigh agree to give up their plans for Gloria Ridge," Winston offered.

"You think they'd do that?" Cory Jameson demanded. "I know they're a good company to work with because they really are environmentally conscious. But I'm not sure they'd write this place off and take the loss on the basis of what they'd consider a crazy theory. I'm not sure they'd believe people were turning into trees. If I hadn't been involved in all this, and if not for my grandfather, I'd have thought you Ghostbusters were a pack of lunatics. Half of my men do think that." He gestured at the security team who were clearly uneasy, but skeptical, too. Cory's background might permit him more ready belief, but even he was uneasy, doubtful. Corporate executives wouldn't buy the story for an instant.

"Maybe we can talk to the trees," Peter said. "After all, there must be something here that knows what it's doing. They don't want to lose their tree buddies. They have to see we don't want to lose Ray, and those security guys were only doing their jobs, not chopping down trees. We talk to Raleigh and make them give it up--but we've gotta have a sign of good faith first."

"I can bring the construction team up here," Jameson offered. "But that's not what you want, is it?"

"They only work for Raleigh. They don't make policy decisions," Peter argued. "And I'm not leaving Ray like this while we send for the big boys." He whirled out into the middle of the clearing. "Yo! Tree people." Remembering the speech discrepancy, he slowed his voice. "Tree guys. We want to have a pow wow." He could hear Winston in the background explaining to the team about the speeded up sound of their speech in Peter's dream. The security guys retreated to the background but Cory Jameson edged up beside Peter and called out in slowed-down speech in a language Peter had never heard before; probably Navaho.

For a long moment, nothing happened, then the clearing shifted before them and the Technicolor vision of his dream filtered across their eyes.

"Whoa," breathed a stunned Jameson, jerking back. "I feel like I'm about to go on a vision quest."

Peter heard uneasy exclamations from the security team, who could evidently see it, too. Conscious of Egon and Winston at his back, Peter moved a step closer to Jameson. "You know about this stuff? What do we do?"

"I'm a modern man, Venkman," Cory replied. "I only know a little, the way kids know about fairy tales. I have more belief than the man on the street. But I'm not my grandfather. I don't know any answers."

Peter had been afraid of that. Which meant it was up to the Ghostbusters. Probably the best thing to do would be to talk to the tree people, listen to their demands. Reason with them. Make them go away. After all, he'd fast-talked Nexa. If he could do that and make it give all three of the guys back, maybe he could try something similar here. Only difference was, he'd reinforced his argument to Nexa with the microwave emitter. And he didn't think a threat would work here, even assuming any of their equipment would work without endangering the lives of the missing men.

"Let me try something, guys," he said. Carefully he unhooked his proton pack and slid his arms free of the straps. Passing it to Cory, he took a step closer to Ray's tree, slowed his speech and tried again.

"I want to talk to you. Is there any way we can communicate? I'm not armed. I put my weapon away as a sign of good faith. I won't do anything to risk my friend." He gestured at Ray's tree.

At first, nothing happened, then, abruptly, a new tree sprouted right in front of him, a tiny sapling, spurting up out of the loamy earth. It grew to Peter's height and stood before him, thickening out until it took on a manlike shape, developing a bulbous head, and branchy arms. A face formed on the head, vaguely elfin, glowing with a green aura so bright it made Peter squint. At once the shimmer eased back to a bearable level. Peter could hear the security men gasping and exclaiming behind them, hastily shushed by Cory Jameson. Egon's P.K.E. meter squealed with overload and Winston shot question after question at the physicist.

"Hi, I'm Peter Venkman," Peter said to the tree being. "We came because people were disappearing, and now you've taken my friend."

The creature studied him thoughtfully, the projected face shimmering as if it were a mere image. "You are of the race of killers," it said contemptuously.

Peter opened his mouth to deny it and remembered cutting brush for campfires, using things made of wood, reading books. He used the products of trees, whether he had ever harmed one personally or not. "Maybe," he conceded reluctantly. "But we didn't come here to hurt you. You can't judge every human by loggers, and even then loggers aren't bad guys. They're doing their jobs."

The tree face contorted with scorn. "Your reasoning is alarming," it said.

"I know it is," Peter answered. "My people don't think of trees as sentient. Maybe we're ignorant, and you'll probably say that's no excuse. But you have to know not every tree in the world is like you."

"The children of this world have no awareness," admitted the tree man.

"So you dropped in from another world and found this place? Beautiful spot. I can see why you liked it and decided to move in. But if your kin here have no awareness, then you have to understand why our kind did what they did. We're starting to learn it's a bad idea to harm trees, although not everybody's ready to believe that yet. But we never met anyone like you before."

"My kind finds your people abhorrent," the tree man accused.

"Yeah, and sometimes I have to say they're right on the money," Peter said. "But to steal humans and take away their lives isn't exactly friendly. Some of us might say that your kind was abhorrent for doing it."

"You are the first ones to try to communicate with us. We could see a form of sentience in your kind, for you use tools, but you could not communicate before. Your kind never tried."

"Yes," Egon said, stepping up beside Peter. He, too, had shed his proton pack and thrower. "We came here to discover what had happened. And you took away our friend. We need Ray. We can't do without him."

"Why not?" the tree being demanded.

Peter took a deep breath. "Because he's our brother," he said. "Not by blood, but because we're a family, and we love him. Do you understand about love? You must have grieved when your kinsmen here were killed by mistake. That's how we feel. We want our friend back."

"And the others? Do you want them back, too?"

"Is that a trick question?" Peter muttered in an aside to Egon. The physicist nodded at him encouragingly, and he slowed his speech again. "I don't know those guys personally, but I want them back anyway. They didn't know what they were doing. They acted in ignorance. I know it seems creepy to you that they cut down trees, but imagine an inanimate life form in your world. If someone came and killed it would you hurt them?"

"All life is precious," the tree being said. "Your argument is devious."

"You aren't from this world. You can't judge this world. Those loggers attacked your kin by mistake. We won't let them do it again. This isn't your world. It's not as kind a world as yours must be. But we have to have Ray back. Is he really part of that tree?"

"He is the only survival for Mularik," the tree man said. "Mularik must root again."

"So you would sacrifice Ray's life for Mularik's," Peter pointed out. "It seems your people and mine aren't that different after all. Ray wasn't here when your kin were destroyed. Ray isn't the type to destroy. If you can feel anything of what he's like, you have to know that."

"Can you tell what Ray's like?" Winston asked, stepping up beside Peter and Egon. "Or did you just take him without bothering to find out?"

"The one called Ray is a part of the cosmos," the tree man replied. "We felt his joy, his ecstasy to be as we are. Should I force him back to your narrow, limited existence?"

Peter cast a worried glance at Egon. Dawson had been hysterical, then catatonic. Maybe it wasn't the horror of what had happened to him that bugged him, but the emptiness of being drawn away from what the tree man described, like being ripped from the Nexus in that Trek movie. "Ray loves new experiences," Peter agreed. "But he's still Ray. He isn't one of your people. And what happens when this Mularik gets his essence back, or whatever? You dump Ray anyway? Or does Mularik overwhelm his essence and swallow him up? I think it's time you cut the holier than thou act. Ray probably loved the experience. That doesn't mean he wants to stop being Ray. Give him back. We need him."

A branchlike hand shot out and encircled Peter's wrist. For an instant he felt a swirl of glory, a vast joy as if he had been made a part of everything that ever was. But only for an instant. Then he was surrounded by something he couldn't control and he was scared to death. He struggled wildly, and Egon leaped forward and tried to pull him free.

At once the tree man let him go. "You did not enjoy that?" it asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, for a second," Peter admitted, "but it's not the way we work. We're not made to live like that for always. We're not you. Don't try to pretend you think you're stealing people for their own good. You go into Ray's head and you ask him. Ask him about us, ask him if he wants to come back. Ask those other guys. Ray won't want to stay there forever. I know he won't."

"You would risk his freedom on that assumption?"

Peter hesitated, casting a doubtful glance at Egon, who lifted an eyebrow, considering it. It was Ray they were talking about, Ray who could make friends with monsters and become excited about demons in the sewers. Ray loved new experiences. He was inclined to get caught up in them. If Peter answered wrongly, and Ray was still thrilled with that universal glory, Peter might be condemning him to staying that way. But Ray was such a loyal friend that Peter really had no doubts he would choose to come home, given a chance.

"Ray is one of us," Winston said determinedly. "It's not a risk for us. We know where he belongs."

Egon nodded. "Ray will have undoubtedly enjoyed the experience. But he will want to come home now."

"You guys called that on the money," Peter insisted. "He's ready to come back. You check and see." Because, in the end, it came down to trusting Ray. And Peter did.

"Very well. I will check." The hand encircled Peter's wrist again. "And you will be there too, so you will see that we are an honorable people." He pulled Peter into a state of cosmic tranquility unlike anything Peter had ever known. But he stayed aware of who he was, what he was, what he wanted. The clearing faded, and the mountains and the sky dominated everything. He could see Egon and Winston staring at him in alarm, but he gestured with his free hand to reassure them. The experience was not as intense as that first moment earlier, but it was strong. Peter could see why the tree man believed such a state would be tempting, but it didn't tempt Peter. Being with the guys, his friends, was what meant the most to Peter, and he didn't want to give that up, not for anything. Suddenly he felt a touch on his other wrist and knew without even glancing in his direction that Egon had encircled his arm with a tight and reassuring grip to tether him to his own reality.

"Ray?" Peter called into the vastness the tree man showed him. "Can you hear me?"

"P-peter?"

The voice was faint and doubtful, shaken and afraid, then he cried, "Peter!" in a glad voice. Squinting into the brightness, Peter saw Ray, strangely changed and luminous, his face emerging from the trunk of the tree, carved in bark. His eyes were huge and awed, but fear lingered in the back of them. "Peter, I'm a tree," he cried. "All those new trees--they're the missing men. I can hear them pleading for freedom. Oh, gosh, Peter, they're so scared. They just want to go home."

"You hear that?" Peter said to the tree man. "You aren't giving them a gift. You're driving them crazy. You're every bit as cruel to them as you said they were to you. And you're worse, because you did it knowingly, and they did it without knowledge." He looked past the being that held his arm. "Ray? Hang in there, Tex, we're gonna pull you out of there, and that's a promise. Are you okay?"

"It's really neat, Peter." Then his voice faded and his image in the bark was small and anxious. "But I don't want to stay like this forever. I want to come home. And so do those other guys. They're really scared."

"Then we'll get you back, Ray." Peter wanted to lunge for the tree, grab Ray, and yank him free of it.

"Do you know what happened?" Ray asked. "Every one of us, we're the 'ghost trees'. Only there's another entity in here with each of us. I couldn't feel it at first, but now I can--and it's growing stronger. Those loggers are scared because they can feel it taking over, sucking them in. Absorbing them. You're not a tree, are you, Peter? What about Egon and Winston? Are they okay?"

"I hear you, Ray," Egon said abruptly, right at Peter's side. The grip he had around Peter's wrist must have enabled him to hear Ray's words. "None of us have been transformed into trees. We'll get you back. This has all been a misunderstanding."

"Yes," said the tree man suddenly. "A very sad misunderstanding. We did not know what your world was. We only saw the beauty--until it was too late. We did not see the danger until many of us had been cruelly slain."

"And our people didn't know they were conscious beings," Egon put in. "True, not everyone here would care, but there are people who do. You came across from another universe, didn't you?"

"The walls that part our worlds are thin here. We saw this beauty and came here to enjoy it. As you measure time, we came here more than a century ago. All this time we have had the beauty of this spot. Until now. Then suddenly, unwarranted attack. We did not understand. We fought back as only we knew how."

"Our people did not know they attacked conscious beings," Egon stated. "Yours did."

Peter had a sudden feeling that wasn't the way. "Just a minute, Egon. We can put all that behind us." He turned to the tree man. "My buddies and I will do all we can to make sure no one else comes here to harm you, and we will, but we have to have our people back. Your folks are coming back, aren't they? They've got enough energy to keep on going even if you give everybody back?" He could sense Ray waiting breathlessly. "Ray?"

"I'm still here, Peter. I want to come home. But I don't want to kill any of the tree people to do it. They're really beautiful. Their lives are so different from ours you can't understand it. I can see through their eyes--and it's great--only not forever. But I won't let anybody hurt them."

"We will be weakened," the tree man replied. "But it is possible." It was silent a moment, then it spoke. "You have shown me that humans may possibly be good. Not all of you are butchers. We acted to save our wounded kindred--but you are correct; we also acted through revenge. This is not our nature. Contact with humans has changed us, corrupted us. When we have healed, we will return to our own world."

"How long will that take?" Jameson asked practically. "Because I can hold off the company, stall for you, but not indefinitely."

"Not long. Perhaps several of your days. We are not usually so quick, but we will do so since we must."

"And you'll give Ray and the others back?" Winston demanded anxiously. He wasn't aiming his thrower any longer.

"It will be hard for us, but we will do it," the tree man replied. "Because you communicated and reasoned, rather than attacking. If humans can do this, then we can no longer hate you completely."

The shimmer ran through the clearing, brighter than before. Abruptly Ray's tree quivered, trembled, and shook, then it shrank down to a smaller tree, and Ray's image surged forward, swelled and changed, popping out of the tree with an audible sound. He materialized a foot above the ground and would have fallen but his three friends had seen him coming and lunged for him. He sagged forward into Peter's arms, the other two steadying him as they lowered him to the ground in a near faint. His eyes were tightly closed, his face scrunched up, and he was shaking.

"Ray, come on, Tex, don't do this to us," Peter urged. "You're okay, you're free." He plastered his palm across Ray's forehead to check for fever while Winston took his pulse and Egon activated the P.K.E. meter and passed it over him.

"Oh, gosh," Ray breathed, opening his eyes and gazing up at them, awestruck. "Oh, gee, guys, that was so neat." He struggled to sit up but he was still shaking, and he seemed weakened.

Peter grabbed him and hugged him hard, drowning in his relief. "Maybe for you, Ray. Don't you ever scare us like that again."

"I was part of everything," Ray said in a small, wistful voice. "For a few minutes there it was the most wonderful sensation I've ever known." He wiggled deeper into Peter's hug and held onto him with a frantic need to be reassured. "And then I remembered who I was." He trembled and seemed grateful for the presence of his friends. "I could see you, and I could hear you talking, but unless you talked really slow I couldn't understand a word you said." He collected himself and pulled back, and Egon pulled him up, hugged him hard, then took another biorhythm reading. Winston gave Ray a reassured squeeze, too, then let him go, rumpling his hair with relieved affection.

Ray sat up, looking around the clearing. "Those loggers are going to be in a bad way, Peter. I wasn't in there very long, was I? They've been trapped a lot longer. They nearly lost their identities. They'll need our help." He struggled to stand, determined to plunge in and do what he could.

Peter glanced around the clearing in time to see the two security men pop out of their trees, leaving behind mere saplings even smaller than the one Ray had left. Their teammates caught and steadied them, but they shook off the effects, although their eyes were full of awe. Shaken, they tried to explain to their friends what had happened, willing to let the other security men support them, pat them on the back, and reassure them.

"The loggers saw what happened to Dawson," Ray said quickly as Winston helped him to his feet. "They've had longer to be absorbed. They'll need help, guys. Come on."

As he spoke the trees shrank and bunched and man after man fell out of them to collapse at the foot of the reduced trunks. The trees that remained were all much bigger than Ray's tree had been, but the loggers had been drained longer. Most of them were unconscious, although some of them were stirring, clearly shocked, deeply shaken.

Peter whirled to Jameson. "You better send for a bunch of ambulances and all the paramedics you can," he urged, heading for the nearest logger. "Because these guys are really gonna need help." He squared his shoulders and knelt beside the first logger, with the rest of his team behind him.

The man stared up at Peter with dazed and hollow eyes, then he turned his face away and began to weep. Peter knelt beside him and put an arm around his shoulders. "Easy, easy, you'll be okay," he said quietly.

"I can't," the man blurted. "I can't do it, I can't cut down another tree." He hid his face in his hands and sobbed like a brokenhearted child.

"It's okay, you don't have to," Peter soothed. "You didn't know what you were doing. You didn't know they weren't ordinary trees."

"Oh, god, Dawson--they chopped down Dawson," the man groaned.

"Dawson's alive, he's in the hospital," Peter explained. "We know what happened. We understand. You'll be all right." He wasn't sure about that. The loggers would be changed; their worldview had altered. Peter went around, talking to each of them, reassuring them, soothing them, listening when they broke down and ranted. Jameson was a real help to him; he seemed to know automatically the right things to say. And Ray was a godsend. He'd been through it to a lesser degree and he was a naturally empathetic man. Everyone was very busy for awhile. Egon took readings of each man while Winston fetched blankets and covered those who were still unconscious.

When Peter remembered to look for him, he noticed the tree man had disappeared. "And I never had a chance to say goodbye," he muttered facetiously, glancing over at Ray, who was squatted down beside one of the loggers, patting his shoulder and talking to him earnestly.

The sight of Ray, himself again if still a little pale and shaky, made Peter draw in a relieved breath and plunge back into his work with a lighter heart.

*****

"It's crazy," Gunderson said when the Ghostbusters met with him in his Denver office several days later. "But all the men tell the same story. I considered mass hysteria, but I don't imagine you four are prone to it, considering your line of work. In any case, there are no plans at this time to return to Gloria Ridge. And not only because every single one of the missing loggers has refused to return to the site. Jameson's grandfather showed up again. He's a shaman. This isn't his tribe's area, but he put on a good show in the boardroom. Said it wasn't a native burial ground but it was a mystical site and that it would be a sin against nature to exploit it. The guy has Harvard doctorates in business administration and in sociology. He's extremely credible. Showed up in a three-piece suit. There are a couple of company bigwigs who are--well, I'd have called it superstitious before now, but in this case, perhaps I see their point of view."

"You mean there won't be a hotel there after all?" Ray asked eagerly. "That's great."

"There's talk of making it a protected sanctuary," Gunderson explained. "Right now, while everybody's freaking, and those loggers are hospitalized, everybody's gung ho to protect the site. I can't guarantee the impulse will linger."

"The tree people will be gone in a few days," Egon replied. "We were at the site this morning. The readings have changed. Most of the 'ghost trees' have disappeared, even the stumps. By the end of the week, I suspect they will have all returned to their own world. We can't patrol the site indefinitely, but later on, when everyone conveniently forgets what happened there, the site will be 'safe'. I personally consider it a great pity to exploit a spot of such beauty but all we can do is give our recommendation."

"I appreciate that," Gunderson said. "You returned our missing men to us and gave us an explanation. Not everyone on the board is prepared to admit it, even if the loggers concur, but you won enough of a grace period for the beings to return where they belong. My secretary will give you your retainer on the way out. It's been an experience, gentlemen."

*****

"What about it, Ray?" Peter asked a week later. Back in New York, Ray had bounced back. He seemed like his normal self and Dr. Labraccio, the team's personal physician, had examined him and run tests to make sure he was all right. "To make sure he hasn't got sap in his veins," Peter had teased. The doctor had given him a clean bill of health. But the other three Ghostbusters couldn't help noticing there were times when he fell silent and seemed more reflective than usual. So Peter waited until he knew Egon was busy in the lab and Winston was giving Ecto-1 one of its periodic tune-ups before he found Ray sitting in front of the TV and plopped down beside him. "Are you okay? Really?"

Ray grinned up at him, sliding over to make room for Peter beside him. He hesitated a minute, then he nodded. "I really am okay, Peter. It's just...it's hard to explain."

"Was it scary?" Peter prompted understandingly.

"Well, it kinda was, but only when I realized I was trapped. Before that--gosh, Peter, it was beautiful. I've been thinking about it, and it isn't that it's always going to....unsettle me. It will for awhile because I saw something people aren't meant to see, and it was--glorious."

"Even those loggers saw that," Peter conceded. He'd spent a day at the hospital before they'd returned, counseling any of the loggers who wanted it. The reactions among them had varied widely. A couple of them scared Peter; he was sure they'd been so close to yielding up all trace of their own identity and he didn't know if they would ever function well again. Some were resentful, some were scared, and every one of them was uneasy. The two security men were nearly untouched by the experience and, like Ray, hadn't needed hospitalization. But the men who had witnessed Dawson's attack would take longer to bounce back. And Peter wasn't sure they'd do it unchanged. Even Dawson was showing slight improvement, but it would be a long haul for him.

Peter was afraid Ray, too, was changed by the experience, and he liked his Ray the way he'd always been.

"I feel sorry for those poor loggers," Ray said with ready sympathy. "They went through it too long. I'm lucky; I was there long enough to know the good parts, but I didn't have to go through much of the bad parts. I'd just started to worry when you figured out how to talk to me."

"So you're not going to always be missing part of that?" Peter asked.

"Not always," Ray replied. "Because I know it wouldn't have been for me. I'm just glad I got to see a piece of it. It was great, at least for a little bit. But this is better." He gestured around the firehall at his familiar surroundings. "I can't help thinking about it sometimes, but that doesn't mean I miss it, Peter. I'd rather be here with you and Egon and Winston. But I don't want to forget it, either."

"You sound like Egon, wishing he'd had a chance to experience it."

Ray shook his head. "Egon would have been fascinated, but he would have hated it in the long run. Egon has to know reasons, and when I was in there, nothing like that mattered. Only the universe mattered. It would go completely against Egon's nature. If it had to happen, I'm the best one, because you're so--well, so determinedly Peter, if that makes any sense."

"Is that a polite way of saying I have a swelled head?" Peter teased.

"Well, maybe but not in a bad way," Ray replied seriously. "Just like Egon--well, he'd hate most of all losing his own sense of self. And you know Winston's a practical guy. He wouldn't have liked it either. But I thought it was fun at first."

"Well, we're just glad we've got our Ray back," Peter said. His uneasiness had faded. If Ray was changed, it wasn't in any way that really mattered.

"I'm fine, Peter. But--"

Peter gazed at him in alarm. "But what, Ray?" Was there a side effect he hadn't imagined.

Ray gestured at the TV. "It's time for Scooby Doo," he said. "Can't we talk about this afterwards. This one is my favorite, the one with the giant mummy." He gazed up earnestly at Peter, thrilled about the TV show and eager to get back to it.

Peter threw back his head and laughed, then he reached out and rumpled Ray's hair. "Go for it, Tex," he encouraged. "At least you're not 'pining' away."

Ray's eyes sparkled. "No, but if you don't go away and let me watch my show I'm going to 'branch out' and short sheet your bed."

Grinning madly, Peter left him to it and started for the stairs to tell Egon Ray was back to normal.