Ghostbusters (10 page)

“Yeah, but it only appears as a color form,” Abby said, somewhat deflated. Erin could barely process what they were saying. Her brain was so overrevved it felt like it was vibrating, a tingling that matched what was going on in her fingertips and toes. Almost to herself, she said, “What just happened?”

Abby looked up from the camera. “‘What just happened'?” She grabbed Erin and shook her. “We saw a ghost!”

That rattled her right out of her stupor. “We did!” Erin cried, goo sluicing off her in swaying strands. Not just goo, she realized. Ectoplasm! “We saw a ghost!”

They jumped up and down, shrieking with joy. “Ghosts are real! Ghosts are real!” Their chant echoed down the street; pedestrians turned their heads, passing drivers looked puzzled.

For Erin it was more than the most astounding discovery in the history of humankind, it was redemption, absolute redemption.
I'm not crazy! I was never crazy! I didn't make it up!

Ghosts are real!

 

8

The Mercado, one of Manhattan's iconic Art Deco structures, loomed over Forty-ninth Street like a falcon on a cliff. Commuters rushed through its wide shadow, absorbed in the mundane and the trivial, unaware that deep in the bowels of the building, doomsday had already dawned.

He could see them in his mind's eye—the staggering drunks, the bullying teenagers, the women decked out like fashion models, the Wall Street wolves—sheep, all of them, lambs to his slaughter. He fervently hoped in their death throes they suffered the torments of hell, but he knew advancing The Plan was far more important than the extremis of individual agony. To everything there was a season—and an expiration date. The time was nigh to open the mythic gates, and he could not miss his window of opportunity.

Soon,
he thought, the word both a promise to those insectoid humans scurrying inanely several stories above him, and the mantra that animated his every waking moment. But it was not a prayer. Prayers were never answered; he had firsthand knowledge of that. All through middle school, he had prayed for an end to the bullying, the beatings, and the shame of his public torture. Although the little Ohio town of Middlebury had been started by Quakers, there was no brotherly love anywhere in sight. Night after night he had fervently prayed for a towering volcano to emerge like a monstrous pimple from the flat ground of the town square and spew white-hot lava all over every inch of it, paying special attention to the football stadium. No volcano had appeared.

Nor had the zombie apocalypse.

And Julia Roberts had ignored his selfie video inviting her to prom.

But down through history many of his fellow Illuminati had been similarly abused, scorned, and reviled. He saw now that his trials and tribulations had been tests, and that he had proven himself worthy by reaching deep down to find the means to survive. And to prepare his unthinkable revenge.

The headquarters of this impossibly great but nearly invisible man was located in the apartment building's cluttered basement maintenance room. The humble cot and rust-stained sink told one story about his life, but the framed diplomas from Stanford and MIT on the cracked and peeling wall told another: here dwelled authentic genius. Unappreciated, overlooked, hounded, ridiculed. They would pay for dismissing him so easily. Those who had directly done him harm and all their kin—down to the last monkey standing, they would pay. If only Dr. McNulty, his old physics professor at MIT, could see him now, on the verge of rewriting the very nature of existence, he would have been so proud.

Donning his official jacket, he meticulously fastened the row of brass buttons. Chin lifted, he gazed at his reflection in the mirror and recited his morning affirmation:

“You will do a great job today.”

Though he wore the uniform of a high-end maintenance man, to him it was a kingly robe, the mantle of his station. Though his face was a little on the round side, his bearing and the unholy light in his eyes was that of an emperor. His name was Rowan North, and no power on earth could stop The Plan. As had become his habit, he continued programming his brain:

“Your potential is matched only by your ambition. Trust in your abilities and the universe shall bend before your will.”

A voice blared from the tiny speaker hanging from a nail on the wall.

“Rowan, we've got a clogged toilet in eighteen forty-three. It's bad. Like, biblically bad. Get on it ASAP.”

“Absolutely,” Rowan said. “Nothing would make me happier.”

With a flourish he picked up his tool kit. Couldn't forget the rubber gloves and plunger, though; he'd definitely need them. Soon he would use a far more powerful plunger and send this planetary cesspool swirling and sluicing down the drains of hell. The very same hell that was constantly moving and shifting behind the many mirrors in his room—agonized shapes, melting faces, claws, immense scales, yellow fangs, leaping flames. As he smiled into it, his own reflection was superimposed upon the shadowy creatures of the abyss. Oh, how he would rejoice when the world burned.

“And the universe shall bend before your will,” he finished in a voice gravelly with emotion.

As he turned for the door, ready to go to work, the things in the mirror slithered, rustled, and pulsated, pushing against each other impatiently.

*   *   *

Erin Gilbert's fingers dug into the arms of Dr. Filmore's office chair as she stared in horror at the video playback the dean of her department was showing her. Never had one woman soared to such dizzying heights of discovery only to plummet to the depths of abject horror. There she was, jumping up and down with Abby and Holtzmann, shrieking, “Ghosts are real! Ghosts are real!” at the top of her lungs, like she'd just won the Powerball.

Dr. Filmore put the video on pause. Her face was in close-up, smeared across the entire screen. To quote some of her students, she looked “way dorky.”

“Dr. Bronstein saw this on Reddit.” The dean's expression was stern. “It was reblogged from a Dr. Abigail Yates's Web site—Ghost News. I hadn't heard of that publication.”

Think fast,
Erin told herself. She forced what she hoped was a look of sheer, flabbergasted astonishment onto her face. “Wait. You don't think that's
me
in the video, do you?”

The dean turned to look again, and after satisfying himself, he stared at her without blinking.

Denial was second nature to her. She had learned that survival meant denial. It meant that therapists eventually stopped asking questions and left you alone, and that the kids at school finally got bored and found someone more interesting to bully. And with that in mind she said:

“But this isn't something I'm really involved with. Truly.” She added a couple of head bobs to hard sell it. But it didn't appear that Dr. Filmore was in the market for prevarication. His blank expression did not change.

“I hope you understand that when we give someone tenure, they represent this institution,” he said. “They affect such things as grants and our standing in the collegiate rankings.”

Oh no, not my tenure. But this should not affect my tenure. It's not like the book. It was a spontaneous moment. He doesn't know the context. We could be practicing for a play, or playing a joke on someone, or—or—

Her only option was to try to shift the context, put a different spin on the video. She forced a wide smile, leaned back, and made her hands into a pair of finger guns.

“Gotcha! Ha!” she said. “You should've seen your—”

“Please, don't pretend this is a prank,” he said.

“—face,” Erin finished weakly. “Okay.” Deflated, she lowered her hands to her lap.

“I'm sorry,” the dean said. “This just isn't what this institution is about.”

“It's not what I'm about, either!” she pleaded. “I'm about real, serious science. And I want to work at a university that takes that as seriously as I do.” She swallowed down her fear and cranked up the wattage on her fake smile even higher. “That's why I conducted this test, so congratulations, Dr. Filmore.”

She extended her arm to shake his hand.

“This is just uncomfortable now.”

Deny that this is happening. And it won't be.

“Well, my class starts in an hour, so I'd better get back to it.”

Dean Filmore said nothing as she jumped up from the chair. The way he looked at her she could have been a bug on the wall or a bit of loose fluff on the carpet.

*   *   *

The box containing the gathered contents of Erin's office was very heavy. She shifted it in her arms and trudged through the hallway of the physics building. Students and faculty milling in the corridor watched her, and she could hear them whispering. Her cheeks blazed.

The whispering and snickering behind her grew even louder. At least this was her last trip through the gauntlet.

It was a true walk of shame.

She turned and looked down the hall a final time, a game smile plastered on her face—and once again let fly with a denial:

“Just taking my plant for a walk,” she proclaimed to all the people staring at her. She raised and lowered the heavy box. “Getting a little exercise. Woo-hoo!”

I have lost it all. This is the dark night of my soul. At three forty-seven in the afternoon.

The corridor was as endless as her despair.

And her anger.

It did not abate as she caught yet another cab, briefly panicked at the thought that she no longer had an income, and clenched her hands tightly in her lap. The contents of her office, of her entire academic life, sat beside her. So few objects when you considered how long she had worked at Columbia. It was all so wrong, so unjust.

“I have an article coming out in
Nature,
” she growled through clenched teeth.

“Hey, that's swell,” the grizzled cabbie said. “Is that like
Playboy
? Because you know, they're going to stop having nudies.”

“No.” Tears welled. She was so frustrated, and that was such a stupid question. “But that's very forward thinking of them,” she managed to say. “Women should not be objecti—”

“Can't compete with the free porn on the Internet,” the cabbie elaborated.

“Oh.” She chewed the inside of her cheek and stared out the window. The world was no longer her oyster. It wasn't any kind of shellfish. It was a gasping, dying striped bass yanked from the Hudson River.

“Throw it back, throw it back,” she whispered. If only she could start this day over. This day should have been illegal from the get-go.

“My brother-in-law told me once him and my little sister thought about making a sex tape,” the cabbie informed her. “To make some dough, you know? Like them Kardashians. I liked to deck him.”

Erin balled her fists and dug her nails into her palms. Abby had promised to take down the book. How had she not realized that posting that idiotic video would be just as problematic for her, if not more?

Because she is obsessed and self-centered, and always has been.
As Erin answered her own question her simmering fury spiked and hit boiling point.

“You'd do okay in the free stuff,” the man said, still prattling on about pornography. “Well, here we are.”

Erin handed him some money, grabbed her carton, and slid out of the rear of the car. The cabbie frowned at her. “Hey, there's no tip.”

“Here's your tip,” Erin said. “Don't be a pig anymore.”

“Hey, what's your problem?” the man shouted through his open window as she walked away. She wobbled under the weight of the carton, ignoring the cabbie's long, colorful string of X-rated words.

Perfect, just perfect,
Erin thought. She staggered into the hallway and headed toward the stairway to the basement. Her back muscles were screaming. When she reached the door to the Paranormal Studies Laboratory, she set down her box, straightened, and kicked open the door.

Hell hath no fury like a college professor fired.

Abby and Holtzmann were bent over a piece of equipment. They looked up in surprise as Erin stormed in. The sight of them sent her even further around the bend. She was so angry she was frothing at the mouth, as if she had rabies.

“Well, I hope you're happy,” she snarled. They were puttering away, their TV on, not a care in the world. Oblivious to what they had done to her with their stupid Reddit. She needed to smash something, anything, but preferably something expensive and irreplaceable. Snatching up a likely contraption from a worktable, she raised it in blind fury.

“Noooo! We'll all die!” Abby and Holtzmann shouted together.

Erin froze. Very carefully she set down the device, then grabbed an ammeter to throw.

“Noooo! We only have one of those!” the two yelled.

She put that down, and feeling suddenly desperate, snagged an empty soda can.

“Okay,” Holtzmann said. “But can you throw it at the recycling can?”

“Rinse it first, please,” Abby added.

Erin stomped over to the sink and turned on the water, began to rinse the sticky can.

“How could you
do
that?” she ranted into the sink, but loud enough for the people on the floor above to hear. “How could you put that online? I was
fired
! Everyone was watching. I was completely humiliated!”

She heaved the can into the recycling bin and slumped onto the couch.

“Maybe all this is a bad dream,” she said hopefully. Then she started lightly slapping herself on the face. “Wake up, Erin.”

Holtzmann hurried over, and pretending she just wanted to help, started slapping her, too. Erin shoved her away.

“All right, knock it off,” Abby said in a tone that said she meant it. “Now, I'm sorry, but we saw a
real ghost.
How long have we been looking for that? And she was beautiful, Erin.” She nodded at her friend. “Well, until she dislocated her jaw and ectoprojected all over you. But even that was beautiful.”