[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

UPDATE: 07/13/2009-- Well, as promised I have put up the next part of the story on Page 2 of this post. Thoughts are appreciated!




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Prologue.......


"We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place."--Daniel J. Boorstin.


"All houses are haunted. All persons are haunted. Throngs of spirits follow us everywhere. We are never alone."--Barney Sarecky.


"I see a bad moon rising..I see trouble on the way...I see bad times today...don't go round tonight, its bound to take your life...there's a bad moon on the rise....Hope you are quite prepared to die...."---Credence Clearwater Rival, "Bad Moon Rising."





It was night. A deep, dark night. One of those nights, that if not for the bustle of civilization and its taudry lights, it would be so dark, that you would not be able to see your hand in front of your face. All round you, you can hear the buzz of insects and the far off flitter of a bat chasing its next meal. Above, in the city at least, you cannot see the stars.

Here, in the country, you can.
Millions and millions of brilliant stars, pin pricks of white twinkling light that may or may not hold the next great civilization and outshining all, the moon gleams a bone-white color, pockmarked with craters, round and full, like an all seeing eye that knows your very thoughts.


There it hung above the blue tinted night clouds, baleful, the Queen of Madness, its bone-like light touching everything, casting eerie shadows in the darkest hearts of places.
A lone tow truck rumbled down a simple two lane road, its engine rough and course with age, but still strong and full of the power it had in its younger days. It was an F-150, from around 1974. It was pea-soup green and had large rust patches covering its fenders. Its long square grille was faded, but the letters that spelled out F O R D across the top of the grille, had been polished to a loving shine.

In the back of the truck bed, various tools, in various states of disrepair, lay scrattered about in tool boxes, and every time the truck would hit a bump on the old road, the tools would rattle loudly, making a great racket. The truck's headlights, yellowed with age, lit up the gloom but seemed pale, compared to Great Luna's haunting light.
Inside the truck, a burly man sat behind the wheel. He was dressed in his favorite Carhart jacket, a thick thing, perfect for the chilly nights in this part of the country. It was just as faded as his old denim jeans were and surely as much as his old work boots.

On his head, perched an old John Deere farm hat that his father had gotten him for Christmas the year before.
Then dad had died.
The man, who's name was Charlie Porter, did not want to think about that. He had been close to his father.
Aren't all sons? he thought, chewing on the cigerette butt in his mouth thoughtfully before taking a deep, wonderful drag.
He knew smoking would kill him eventually, but hell, why not live while your're alive?

Exhaling a generous amount of carcinogens, he continued on his way, shifting gears like an old hand.
This old truck was the closest thing to a wife he had ever had, and probably ever would have.
The thought did not bother him.
Women were trouble.
Of course, that didn't mean they weren't fun. Just not enough fun to tie one's self down to. Taking a turn, he eased his foot off the accelerator.
Gradually, his mind drifted onto the task at hand. The job.

Charlie was a repo man. The dreaded repo man that everyone feared to see and some claimed they would fight to the death for their beloved cars. In the end, they all lost if they couldn't pay old man Sherman.
John Sherman was the owner of Sherman's Discount Auto, a tiny car dealership situated just outside Newcomb. And damn, old man Sherman was as stingy as they came. He didn't cut his customers a bit of slack. 1 missed payment and your sweet little ride was gone. Not that any of the car's Sherman sold were worth a shit anyway. Half of them would blow within a year.
Sighing, Charlie wasn't going to particularly enjoy this repo, however.
Thinking back to a few hours ago at the office, hearing Sherman rant about missed payments and lost dollars, Sherman had pulled out the books and tossed a worksheet to Porter.

Reading the sheet, he had seen that it was for Eugene Simmon's old Buick Regal.

Charlie, for the first time ever, had felt a twinge of guilt about taking a job from Sherman. Eugene Simmons was eighty two years old, was living off what little cash he had been able to horde away for nearly every one of those eighty years and usually came into town once or twice a week for a beer or to get groceries. He never hurt anyone and he was friendly. But he liked his privacy, which is why the old coot lived out in the damn near sticks outside Newcomb, almost all the way out to old Tahawus, the abandoned ghost town that had been empty of people for a while now, but still where a few mining operations clung to.

It was just over a thirty minute drive but it was a lonely one.
Looking down at his watch, Charlie saw that he had about ten more minutes before the turn off onto Old Simmons Road, which Eugene had named himself.
Shaking his head, (there wasn't much he could do about it anyway), he flipped on the radio and turned it over to country music and turned the volume up as loud as it could go.

Then he began to sing along with the lucious Mrs. Twain about who's bed had his boots been under.
Darlin, they could be under your's all night long.

*******************************

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Charlie Porter slowed his old Ford down and made a left turn onto the old dirt road that let back to Simmon's old cabin. With a jolting that rattled his many fillings, Charlie took the road, sending up a cloud of dust. Tall overgrown grass slapped his grille with a wet snipping noise.

Funny, he thought.

Old man usually keeps this mowed half way decently.
This grass hadn't been cut in several weeks obviously.

That made Charlie think.

In fact, no one had seen or heard from Simmons in several weeks. Two? Maybe three?
Suddenly, Charlie didn't feel like hearing Shania Twain belt out her songs anymore, and as the trees that lined the small dirt path grew thicker, and blocked out the moon light, he reached over and switched off the radio, and a deadly heavy silence set in, where even his truck motor sounded unusually quiet and subdued.
Something was wrong.

In all the years he had been a repo man, he could feel when something was wrong. It was a dreaded heaviness in your gut, a butterfly behind your breast bone.
Right now, as he drove with the windows down, with the dark woods all around him, he suddenly realized how far from town he was.
He wondered if the brick cell phone he had in his glovebox would even pick up a signal out here.
Stop it, he told himself, as he bounced over a particularly hard rut in the road.
Your're scaring yourself.

But he couldn't quite convince himself of that.

Nor, could he shake the haunting feeling that he was not alone anymore.
In fact, he felt like he was being watched. A nasty little voice in his head said,
"never know whats lurking out there in the woods...just beyond the treeline...stalking you..waiting for you to slow the truck down so it can jump through the open windows and bite your neck..and bite..and bite.."

"Shut up."

It took him a few moments to realize he had that aloud, and for a reason beyond ordinary compulsion, he rolled up the truck windows and slid the back window shut, clamping it tight.
After five minutes of jumping the truck over pot holes, mud pits and loose dirt and gravel, not to mention a veritable jungle of grass, Charlie pulled into the yard of Eugene Simmons.
There, a good thirty to forty feet ahead was the old cabin that Simmons called home.
Oh my God...Charlie felt his breath go out of him.

The house was completely overgrown, with weeds poking out of the edges of the foundations and the windows caked with mold and dust. All the lights were out and the front door stood open, like a black gaping maw ready to swallow whom ever was foolish enough to enter.
For a moment, Charlie felt a compulsion to turn his truck around then and there and leave. He though, call someone to come out here with you and
(Something is here)
help. Surely that was a good idea. Who care's if someone laughed at him.

Something was badly wrong here.
Killing his truck engine, he considered leaving the headlights on.
Just as he reached for the door handle, the lights died.
On their own.

He felt his blood stop. What the hell? This battery was brand new.
Swallowing, he found that his throat had gone unexplicably dry. He considered saying f*** this and going back to the shop in Newcomb, but the fact that he needed the money to feed himself and his dog for the next two weeks was almost as strong as his fear.

Reaching over in the dark to his glovebox, his fingers, now shaking slightly, they finally found the box latch and flipped it, spilling open the glove compartments contents all over the seat.
The warm comforting glow of the glove box light did not shine out.
The battery was dead.
How? he felt his mind scream.

In the span of five minutes, he had gone from feeling guilty and somewhat cocky, to down right terrified.
That's all he needed was to go into that damn house and find old man Simmons, sprawled out on the floor, his flesh bloated from the gases as his body decayed, his arms and legs, stiff from rigormortis splayed at wide angles and his glassy eyes glaring up from empty sockets asking "WHY?"

Shuddering, he put the thought out of his mind and Charlie felt his hand grasp the familiar metal tube that was his trusty flashlight. He felt a bit more and then found yet another piece of metal that he found far more comforting.
It was heavy, oblong and cold, cold as winter's ice.

Switching the flashlight on, it clicked to life in a brilliant white glare that hurt his eyes. Swaying it down, he shone it on the .45 caliber pistol he carried with him at all times as he slid out the clip and checked its ammunition.
It was a full clip, fifteen rounds of high power death to anything mortal and alive.
The copper shells of the bullets shone with yellow fire and that gleam grew muted as Charlie shoved the clip back into the pistol, cocked it, metal ratcheting against metal, and slid it into his waist band.

Knowing he had to make a choice, he made one and reached over and took the door handle in his hand and pulled.
The soft click of the latch releasing was horribly loud and the door did not squeak as he opened it. Stepping out, he stood to his full hieght, a rough and rowdy six foot four, and shut the truck door behind him, the sound of the metal slamming on metal nearly causing him to jump out of skin.
All around him, he could feel it.

A thick, heavy oppressive...thing.
He found he had a hard time breathing.
Soon, he felt his skin grow cold with a clammy sweat.
He couldn't see his own eyes, but he felt them dialate.
Gathering his wits, he felt the hefty wieght of the gun in his waistband, pressing against his bare skin just above his underwear.
No one would mess with him.

No one was stupid enough to go after a man with a gun.

Crunching over the dirt and grass, he moved around the front of the truck and shone the flashlight along the ground, looking for signs of life or any sign that the old man was outside...he didn't want to go in the house. Then he saw the car.
The Buick Regal, parked deep inside the shed, underneath that old brown tarp that Simmons kept over it's faded paint.

Steeling himself, he moved into the open shed. Once inside, the darkness swallowed him completely and only his light gave him the ability to see for about ten feet in front of him. Stopping at the rear fender of the car, he reached out, and ran a finger down the tarp.
It came away covered in filth and dust.
This tarp hasnt been moved in weeks.
Then he saw something else, higher up, on the roof.

Something wet.

He felt his gut jump.

It was dark, almost black, and it shone in the light like oil.
Reaching up, he touched his finger to it carefully.
It was cold, like ice, and thick, like congealed blood.
Gasping, he pulled his fingers back, expecting to see red, but instead, saw a thick viscous black jelly like slime.
Puzzled, he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

It wasn't grainy at all, but slick and it was sticky, like tar and colder than dead meat.
Gingerly, Charlie brought it up to his nose to see if it was oil.
He nearly vomited when he inhaled.
The stuff smelled like rancid meat.

Quickly, he wiped his hands on his pants leg. He could feel the stuff through his jeans.

WHAM!

Screaming for his life, Charlie felt himself move faster than he ever had as a tremendous crash came from behind him.

He nearly tripped he was moving so quickly and then he turned, expecting to see a horrid thing or a murder with an axe, but instead, only saw that a rake had fallen over, upsetting an old metal tin of nails and screws, probably overturned by his own clumsiness.
Slowly, his heart rate returned to normal and the adrenaline faded.
"Damn it," he kicked himelf mentally.

Cursing, he turned to move into the house. He knew he had to find the old man and check on him...the hell with taking the car. His truck was deader than four oclock and he wasn't going to tow of a car with a dead truck...let alone a dead man's car.

"Shut up." Charlie told himself again, louder this time.
Mounting the crumbling steps to the front porch, Charlie stood outside the open door, which did not move or make a sound, as if frozen with its dark mouth open in an eternal scream.

Around him the darkness seemed to tense up, like it was holding its breath.
Stepping forward, Charlie stuck his head inside the dark doorway and shone his light into the one room floor that served as Simmons living room and kitchen.

The light pierced the darkness.

The room was in disarray.

The rocking chair was in splinters, and the recliner was flung up against the far wall, snapped into, its stuffing and springs hanging out like metal and cloth intestines. Crazy shadows flew up the walls as the light moved from side to side.

The room stank.

Like death.

Like decay.

And there, below the sick sour sweet smell of rot, was a different smell. That of ....sulfur.
There on the walls...more of that black ooze.

And there, on the wooden floors, smeared in the shape of four long scrapes was a dark maroon stain.

Jesus...

Charlie then realized what he was looking at.

Blood.

Blood in...claw marks.


Summoning up the last of his courage, he called out, his voice meek and suddenly choked.
"...Simmons?"
No response, only the unearthly quiet.

Then, Charlie made a mistake and later, he would realize it, but far too late.
He stepped across the threshold and stepped into the house.
The door way into the kitchen stood dark as a tomb, and the light would not pierce the gloom. He felt eyes on him, watching him, scenting him out.
He felt his skin crawl at the thought.
He knew he wasn't alone.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

The stairs.
Someone was on the stairs.

Swinging the light up to the stairs, Charlie stood petrified in terror as something moved down the stairs from the tiny second floor that served as Simmon's bedroom...something he could not see.
The room grew cold.
He realized that he could see his breath.
It condensed into small short-lived clouds in front of his face.

Creak.

Then a long drawn out creeeeeeeeeeak, followed by the scrabbling of claws and what sounded like lighter footfalls on the old wooden stairs.
An animal...what kind of animal couldn't you see?!
His fear finally took hold and he turned and bolted for the door.
The door slammed in his face and the lock turned.

"f***!"

Charlie grabbed the door and began to shake it as the foot steps descended the stairs, followed by those horrible dragging claw-skittering sounds.
He felt it, growing closer, savoring his terror, drinking his fear like a fine wine.
The door would not budge.

He yanked it, and it buldged in its frame, but it resisted his every impact.
Then it was behind him.
He could feel its sickeningly hot breath, and smell its rancid stench, like a predator. He could almost feel its whiskery face on the skin of neck as it sniffed at him, like an appetizer.
Unable to take it anymore, he wirled around and shone his light where the creature had to be.
Nothing.

There was nothing there.
Then his light began to flicker.

"Oh hell no...shit...no.."

It grew dimmer and dimmer, as if something was pulling the power right out of the double D cells in the hand grip.
In the flickering light, he saw something...a shadow pool upon the floor, like black water.
He saw it ripple and flow, rising from the floor, forming a shape.
He saw four long legs form, the two front ones ending in paws tipped with claws the size of daggers and the rear legs, horribly malformed, like a mutilated jack rabbits.

He saw a spine form, and then shoulders, a long sloping body and a horrid long snake like neck.
In the dying flashes, his light caught the creature from underneath is terrible long fang filled jaws. Like a wolf's muzzle, its snout pushed out from the black liquid, revealing rotten flesh and oozing wounds, and the black bone beneath. Finally it formed completely, revealing a terrible creature, like a mix between a demonic wolf and a hyena, with a long sloping body, with deep black flesh and sparse burned fur.
It stank like death itself.

At first its eyes were closed...no..Charlie saw, frozen in sheer terror, watching the creature manifest before him, no...it had NO eyes, only black gaping sockets. Slowly, dim yellow light began to form in those sockets and finally, the light grew to eye sized orbs, brimming with hell fire..
It seemed to be gazing at the floor.
For a moment, Charlie hoped his mind would snap out of this nightmare, that he would wake up to find himself safe and home in his bed...

It was not to be.
He saw his light brighten for a brief moment, lighting up the creatures face in a horrible stark glaring glow before it finally sputtered, and went out completely, pitching him in the dark...with the creature less than two feet from him.
He could see its eyes gleaming in the dark...twin yellow fireballs.
A low rumbling sound began to fill the room.

A deep throaty sound, that sounded wet and resonant.

Charlie realized it was growling.

Charlie pulled the pistol, and not seeing where to aim it, opened fire.
The muzzle flashes lit up the room brilliantly, the stuccato booms filling the air with thunder and the creature screamed, roaring in pain as the sound hurt its sensitive ears.
It leaped back in a single unholy move, twisting its spine in ways that would have killed anything alive, like a great wolf-snake.

The sudden brilliant light and sound seemed to catch it off guard and Charlie took his chance. He turned and opened fire on where the thought the door latch was, and got lucky, and blew out the lockplate. Shouldering the door open, he ran for his truck.
He didn't hear the creature behind him.
He didn't care. All Charlie wanted was to go home.

Home where there werent any missing old men, or monsters from the tenth level of Hell itself.
Tossing aside the spent gun and light, he dove for the truck handle and yanked open the door, leaping inside, he slammed it shut and locked it behind him.
He reached for the key in the ignition and prayed the battery had rested and turned the key.
Nothing.

Damn!

Suddenly the truck dipped and bounced on its springs as the wolf-like creature leaped straight up onto the hood, landing like a cat, leering at him with its hideous decaying face through the windshield.

"Mother of God!"

Charlie screamed and jumped back, thumping his head hard against the metal frame of the truck.
He closed his eyes in pain as they watered from the sharp blow and when he opened them, the creature was gone.
Scanning around him, he saw nothing.

Quickly, he dove for the cell phone in the glove box, fumbled with the box twist buttom, and finally, dropped the door open, grabbed the fat phone and powered it on, cursing the phone as it took its time to power up.
Suddenly outside he could hear it, stalking, prowling around outside his truck, growling low in its throat like a rabid dog.

Finally, the damn thing power cycled.

Quickly, he dialed a number he had seen advertised on the television but never thought he would need. He put the phone to his ear as the creature continued to stalk him outside his truck where it had him trapped.

Trapped the way a mountain lion had a deer.

Slowly, the growling became a snarl.

***************************

14 N. Moore St. New York, NY...

The old firehouse had sat in this part of the city for decades, dating back to 1912. Now, in 1987, it housed a new group of men who some people didn't trust.
Who some people thought were lunatics..or worse...con artist scamsters.
In reality, they were nothing of the sort, but stories get around, even if these same men have saved the city more times than you can count on both hands together.

Outside, a sign stood out on twin poles horizontally from the wall just over the huge double doors that many a fire truck used to come out of.
It glowed white, with a red circle in the shape of the infamous "NO" symbol and inside the symbol, was a glaring white ghost.
The old building was faded, a deep rusty red with white foundation bricks and old style architecture often lost on newer fire halls and public buildings.

Inside the garage sat an 1959 Cadillac Miller Meteor Combination Ambulance, painted high gloss white, with sweeping red tail fins. On the driver and passenger door was the same "No Ghost" sign as on the sign outside.
The long car's roof was littered with equipment and gadgetry, with lights and blue police light bars, now dark. It seemed to sleep, like a large big cat, ready and eager to move. Its orange New York license plate simply read: Ecto-1.

Directly in front of the old car sat a wide heavy oak desk and behind it a chair. On the desk was a computer, various files, invoices and a name plate that read: Janine Melnitz.

The garage entry area was huge and dark, the lights dimmed but not completely off. It was warm and inviting, like almost all old well loved buildings are.
Upstairs, four men slept in bunks, completely oblivious to the plight that Charlie Porter found himself in four and a half hours north west of Manhattan.

At the foot of one of the men's bed, a glowing green glob that had arms and a fat pudgy potato like body slept, snoring loudly, hovering like a futuristic vehicle.
All night long, the silence was total.

The Ghostbusters had not had a call in over a week, and that was fine with them. For the last few weeks prior, the paranormal activity in the city was running them ragged and they all felt that no ghost, was a good ghost.
Suddenly, the silence was split by the ear-splitting peal of the phone ringing.
It rang.
And rang.

Until finally, the floating miasmic phantom that was Slimer woke up.
Rubbing his yellow orange eyes, he groaned and floated down through the floor and hovered above Janine's desk. He watched the phone ring, its first open line light blinking like a mad hatter.

Normally, he would have woken up Ray or Egon.
But right now all he wanted to do was sleep.
Or maybe...get a snack. Yeah. A Snack sounded good.

Hovering, Slimer moved off towards the kitchen upstairs and the phone continued to ring.
Upstairs, Dr. Ray Stantz grumbled in his sleep.
Downstairs, the phone suddenly stopped ringing.

****************************

In his truck, Charlie Porter had dropped the phone to the floor, causing the battery to pop out of its duct taped casing.
There in his passenger seat, the darkness that had formed inside the house was gathering.
Outside the growling had grown louder.
But not because the creature was growling louder.
But because it was INSIDE the cab of the truck with him.

Charlie felt his heart leap into his throat as the stench hit him and he saw the seat depress with the wieght of the monster as the window glass froze over with ice crystals.
Slowly, it formed out of the black ooze like it did before, seeming to materialize out of the seat itself, growing up to a terrifying size, its eyes forming in its head.
Charlie realized he couldnt run.

He couldn't hide.
The growling became a death snarl and he felt himself held in place by invisible paws and then, the paws became all to visible, the claws digging into his shirt and he felt something press up against his face and slowly, its horrid malformed snout and skull became totally visible.

The thing was sitting in his lap and it was nose to nose with him, drooling what looked like black ooze. For a moment, it sat there, looking in the eye with a sick demented gleam in its eyes.

Charlie realized...it's enjoying this.

Blindinly fast, it opened its tooth filled maw, and with a bone shattering roar. it dove at him.

The last thing Charlie Porter can remember thinking is that he wanted to die quickly.

The creature had other ideas.

The sound of the cab muffled his screams and finally, they were drowned out by the low powerful baying of a wolf that ended in a high pitched scream of a beast not of this earth.

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

"Get up! NOW!"


Suddenly and without warning, Dr. Peter Venkman, parapsychologist, lady's man and manager of the Ghostbusters, found himself unceremoniously dumped onto the hard-wood floor, in a rather rough fashion.

He ended up going head over heels out of his bed, face first on the old rug that covered the dorm room floor, breathing in a copious quanity of dust that had probably been there since the firehouse was built, with his rear end and legs sticking out uncomfortably in the air, like the prongs of a spear.

"HEYOOOMMPH!" was all that he was able to get out as the air rushed from his lungs. Around him, the other Ghostbusters, Ray, Egon and Winston, were getting similar treatments.

Within moments, all four men were on the floor in their pajamas, none too thrilled with their rude awakening. Getting to his feet, Peter was about to launch into a less than becoming curse-filled diatribe but when he saw who his tormenter was, he quickly swallowed his words before they could leak out and cause more trouble, as he was prone to do.

In fact, shutting up was probably the smartest idea he had so far, and it was only eight oclock in the morning.

There, standing in the middle of the room, was a man who's girth made Jabba the Hutt look by far and large (no pun intended) positively petite. He was dressed in a rumpled dark blue suit, with a white undershirt stretched to its limits, with its buttons threatening homocide from the stress on them, with his collar hanging open casually. On his head sat a beat up old hat, the variety only seen in cheap detective movies. The man's face, while plump and round was deadly serious.

In fact, Peter thought it vaguely reminded him of a shark, only that the shark he had seen was far friendlier. His badge on his identification card clearly marked him as a special investigator for the NYPD.

"Hey what's the big idea?" Ray grumbled, rubbing his head, his red and white striped pajamas wrinkled and dirty from his sudden spill, his auburn hair touseled as if he had been through a windtunnel.

When Ray caught sight of the man in the room with them, he promptly snapped fully awake.

"Officer Frump! What brings you here---"

"Shut up, Stantz!" Frump growled.

Ray shut up faster than a fish gulping hot air.

"Here," Frump boomed, tossing Egon his glasses, which Egon put on while rubbing the sleep from his eyes, "I wanna talk to you. All four of you. Downstairs. Five minutes."

With that, Frump turned and stormed out of the dorm room, slamming the double doors behind him hard enough to jar the lamp on Peter's nightstand, and very nearly shaking Lucious Linda in all of her half-naked glory and glass from the stud she was hung to the wall with.

"Geesh..you'd think the guy never of a telephone.." Peter snarled, and popped his back, the satisfying crack of his joints feeling fantastic. He had been sleeping so good too, once again, in a fantastic dream with Michele Phifer which would have---

The double doors opened again, this time, only a crack and Frump wedged his large head through, nearly dislodging his hat.

" I heard that, Venkman. I mean it. Downstairs in five minutes OR ELSE!!!"

WHAMMM!

The doors slammed shut again, vibrating the floors and walls. Dust fell from the ceiling and Peter shook it out of his eyes. The other Ghostbusters looked at Venkman and all three of them had the same look on their face.
Peter turned around. " What? I didn't do anything...I swear."

Behind him, Lucious Linda and her frame came crashing off the wall, the glass breaking loudly.
Peter grimmaced.

"This had better be worth it, or I swear, I will seriously consider justifiable officer-cide myself..." Grumbling, he went over to the closet and grabbed a clean uniform, and a shirt, and made for the bathroom. Behind him, Winston looked over to Egon.

"What do you think Frump is on about?"

"I don't know, Winston." Egon replied in his usual deadpan, completely awake as if he hadn't been snoring just three minutes previously.

Ray shrugged. "If Peter is involved, it can't be good."

That being said, the three of them moved to their closets and began dressing and each one of them kept a close eye on the clock.

Frump wasn't one for idle threats.


By the time all four Ghostbusters had shaved and showed and dressed in clean flight-suit uniforms, it was well past eight in the morning. Janine herself wasn't supposed to be in until nine thirty.

By nine fifteen, all four men were sitting in Peter's office downstairs, with Frump leaning against the waist high wooden railing that seperated the office from the rest of the garage and Janine's work space and filing cabinets.

Frump seemed to be mulling something over, and he was quiet and thoughtful, and his beady black eyes were as sharp and penetrating as ever as he took in each Ghostbuster. Each Ghostbuster's uniform was a different color, something Melnitz had thought of no less, Frump thought.

Venkman's was a dark brown with deep blue green cuffs, and his pant's legs were untucked, messy as always. The color matched Venkman's messy yet styled brown hair.

Spengler's was an aquamarine, with pink cuffs, something that Frump found highly amusing, which clashed like light and day with Egon's blonde pompadour and red glasses.

Zeddemore's was a cream white color with red cuffs and Stantz was the only one who still wore the tan flight suits the Ghostbusters used to wear three years ago. Frump wondered what happened to those old uniforms.

Then he realized, he didn't care.

Peter sat at his desk, which was piled with stacks of paper, file folders, invoices, snack bags and a name plate that read "Dr. Peter Venkman".

Slimer, the creepy green potato shaped glob, floated above, near the cieling, nearly invisible, wanting to avoid being seen by Frump, who did not like the little green spud.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Peter couldn't take the silence anymore.

"I trust you have a good reason for barging into private property without a warrant at the crack of dawn?" he snapped, leaning back in his chair propping his boots up on the desk, still not happy about the early morning wake up call.

Beside him, Ray leaned against the bookshelf behind Peter's desk, expectantly watching Frump, as if the large man might suddenly do a trick.

Could probably make Shamu jealous, Peter smiled to himself.

"Easy, Dr. Venkman. Your're not in trouble this time, though one can always hope," Frump said, crossing his arms, while Peter did his best to hold his tongue and ignore the jibe, "but, recently there have been some things up north that we, being the police, and I know I am going to regret even asking, need your help with."

Instantly Ray became more alert, as did Winston and Egon, but Peter's eyes narrowed.

"With what? A mugging? We're ghostbusters not crimebusters. We already did that stint, remember?"

A derisive snicker escaped Frump. He remembered all too well when the Ghostbusters had temporarily became the mayor's taskforce on crime when paranormal activity dropped. They had single handedly broken up one of the most corrupt criminal syndicates in the city's history. Frump still felt a spot of jealousy about it, and didn't care to show it.

"Actually, Doctor Venkman, " Frump put a nasty emphasis on the 'doctor', " these occurences are more up your alley."

With that, the cop reached into his oversize coat pocket, and drew out a small glass sample jar, sealed with a steel lid, and slammed it on the desk hard enough to rattle Peter's teeth.

Any remark that Peter was going to let loose died in his throat, as he got a good look at the substance within the jar. It was thick, and blackish red, like tar, but also slowly bubbling and shifting, as if it was alive. It resembled nothing more than old motor oil and something else that Peter couldn't put his finger on...
...dried blood? He shuddered unconsciously.

"Wow!" Ray exclaimed, moving from his perch leaning on the shelf and coming up to Peter's desk, dropping to eye level with the jar, crouching, totally entranced by the goop in the container.

"Yuck. Looks like the gunk that came out of that old sludge pit we fought that earth spirit in..." Winston said, crinkling his nose in disgust.

"Fascinating." Egon said, and reached into his pocket, pulling out his ever present PKE meter. The man never left home without it, Peter grinned.

Pulling out the antenna, Egon clicked the probe out, and turned the power switch to on. With a wreeeeeep, the meter came on, its twin left and right side antennae perking up, like an interested dog, the LED lights on the ends blinking yellow furiously as the meter beeped incesently.

On the meter's screen, numbers and a frequency sine wave flowed and blipped, the glow of it casting an eerie greenish white glow on Egon's face and glasses.

"Does it register on the meter?" Ray asked, still crouching next to the jar.

"Certainly. It appears to be high-band ectoplasm, though its frequency pattern is the strangest I've ever seen....almost as if..." Egon's deep bass voice trailed off.

"As if what?" Winston querried, looking over Egon's shoulder, his dark skin also cast in the greenish glow from the meter's readout.

"I'd rather not hazard a guess until I know for sure," Egon said, shutting down the meter and putting it on the desk. "Officer Frump, where did you get this sample at?" he asked, adjusting his glasses on his aquline nose.

Frump shook his head. " You'd better be ready for this. We found this stuff all over the place a few hours north of here, near Newcomb, almost at Tahawus, at the scene of two dissappearences. The sheriff's office up there got stymied, so they sent it to our forensics lab here in Manhattan---"

"And you coulnd't figure it out, so you brought it here?" Ray finished.

Nodding, Frump continued. "We have reason to believe that the dissappearences are related to this...slop. That and we found all kinds of wierd tracks in the house and around the property up there at the scene of the crime."


Peter, who had been sitting quiety, spoke up.
"You keep saying a crime, Frump. What exactly makes a disappearence a paranormal occurence?"

Frump looked up at Venkman and glared daggers at him.

"Because, Venkman, whenever one person goes missing, its considered a missing person's case..where two go missing in the same place, its considered strange...when you have a total of four dissapperences all within a year of each other in the same area, and each time you find this black gunk and weird footprints, you begin to think outside the box."


"Careful. That might be dangerous for you...outside the box and all," Peter grumbled under his breath.

"What did you say?" Frump growled, nearly crossing the desk completely he was leaning so far over it, that his girth hit the jar, nearly sending it crashing to the floor; Egon moved quickly, and barely caught it, while Ray jumped back out of Frump's way.

Nose to oversize nose, Peter stared Frump down, and then realized that the cop would dearly love to find something to charge him with and probably could, Peter thought darkly, it might be best to not press his luck.
For now.

"Nothing."

"That's what I thought."

"So, you have four disappearences, each one with this black slime and strange tracks. What kind of strange tracks?" Winston asked, taking a seat on the edge of the desk between Peter and Frump. Best not to take any chances, he thought. Frump pulled back and stood straight once more.

"Animal tracks, Mr. Zeddemore. Animal. Canine."

"Maybe scavengers or feral dogs?" Ray tried.

"No, Stantz. These are huge. Bigger than any wolf track...and they are burned into the ground or whatever else they tend to be on."

"So, what do you want us to do about it, we aren't dog catchers." Peter snarled. His temper had not improved as the minutes ticked by.

"We, being the city of New York and Newcomb, would like you, all four of you, to investigate, and find the missing people and stop whatever is kidnapping people up there in those woods." Frump said, stepping back, crossing his ape-like arms.

"And, as much as I hate to admit it, Newcomb is willing to pay you double your normal fee for your.....help." Frump acted like the word help had nearly choked him.

" 3,000 dollars?"

"Yup. IF you solve the problem and get the people back...alive."

Ray looked positively ebulient. "Can we go, Peter? PLEASE?! I've always wanted to visit Tahawus!"

"Ray, what in the world is in Tahawus?" Peter asked, dreading the answer.

"Well, for starters, its---"

Peter cut him off quickly and looked to Winston. Winston shook his head. "I say we help em, Peter. Someone's gotta go after those people if they are still alive...and stop whatever it is from taking more."

Desperately, Peter looked to Egon.

"The trip itself could prove highly enlightening as well as finding the source of this high-band ectoplasm. Its got a electro-paraphysical-configuration that I've never seen documented before."

Grumbling, Peter gave up. The Ghostbusters had never had an easy time working with the police, of any city or county, and in fact, had had several nasty run ins with them whilst trying to save the city.

It seemed like to Peter, that the cops never wanted their help unless it was a dire emergency, and even then, tended to stiff the Ghostbusters as a company and as individuals when help was provided...not to mention refusing to pay them. Besides, Frump had a known grudge against the Ghostbusters, and Peter in particular.


Standing, grudgingly, Peter extended a hand out to Frump.

"You got us."

Frump took Peter's hand in a crushing grip, using much more force than needed.

"You can't imagine my relief."

Reaching into his jacket, Frump pulled out a thick file folder and tossed it on the desk, where it landed with a thick FWUMP.

"Inside is all you need to know, including lodging vouchers and the location. Your contact is Dr. Joe Bassle, a forensic investigator. I'll call ahead to let them know you will be on your way. Try be up there within 24 hours..."
Frump said, turning and walking away.

At the end of the garage, the secondary door opened and Janine stood there, the early morning sunlight flooding the dim garage, casting her in shadow. She saw Frump and didn't say a word.

Janine wasn't a fan of Frump either.

The sunlight made Frump's shadow suddenly enlongate, and grow, stretching back and up the far wall as he left. As he passed Janine in her blazer, blouse and mini-skirt, he barely noticed the woman, with her large dangly earrings and horn rimmed glasses, short but neat red hair and brilliant green eyes.

Janine had to move out of his way to let the large man out and Frump crossed the threshold, but before he left completely, he turned around and faced Janine and the Ghostbusters once more.

"Be up there within 24 hours, Ghostbusters, or else."

Finally, he turned, and slammed the door hard enough to jar dust loose from the cieling.

For a few moments, everything was silent and slowly, Slimer faded back into visiblity and drifted to hover next to Peter's shoulder. Janine looked like a deer in a spotlight. " What was that about?" she asked, her thick Brooklyn accent twanging off the walls.

"Wait until you hear it." Ray said and Janine moved over to her desk and the Ghostbusters came around out of Peter's office and began to fill her in, while Slimer hovered over their shoulders, scratching his head.

****************************
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[Fritz]

I can't believe I hadn't commented on this one yet...

Interesting set up. Captures Frump and his relationship with the Ghostbusters very well. And some Now Comics references--I loves me some Now Comics in jokes.

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

Its awesome to get a kudos from the man himself! I heard things were rough for your right now Fritz, and I hope things are getting better. I work on this fanfic nightly so hopefully it will turn out better than Exodus, which is right now, in limbo. wish me luck.

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

********************************************



For the last several hours, the Ghostbusters had been crammed into the Ecto-1, the big old car's engine purring solidly, and outside, the day light was fading as night approached.

Egon and Ray had wanted to leave immeadiately, but two emergency calls came through earlier that afternoon; one was a Class 2 Animator at the docks, and personally, Peter himself though he would never get the smell of fish out of his hair and clothes again, and then there had been a Class 4 metamorph in the women's center downtown...Ray had nearly fried one of the alderwomen with a misplaced ion stream.

The poor woman had looked like a fish out of water...that was as soon as Winston had put the flames that were consuming the lime green dress she was wearing.

In the seat next to Peter, Winston had an easy grip on the steering wheel. Peter was never surprised at the gentle way Winston babied the old ambulance, and Winston never failed to get the best out of the car, and it was his pride and joy.

It was a big car, and Peter had to admit, it took skill to handle her like Winston did, with a practiced hand and a keen eye.

At over twenty one feet long and nearly ten feet high, Ecto-1 nearly dwarfed most cars on the road and with her siren and blue police bar lights, one in the front and one in the back, plus the four smaller spot lights on each edge of the roof, flashing, she was an impressive sight to behold.

Ray sat on one of smaller chairs that used to be where a medical technichian would administer to the paitient, looking out the window, lost in the crazy thoughts Ray tended to think.

Egon, meanwhile, was in the bench seat, behind Ray, across from the proton pack storage rack, with the files and papers spread out on the floorboards in front of him, deep in thought, his blue eyes flickering from page to page behind his glasses, and Peter could practically hear the gears in his mind turning at full speed.

Finally, after five and a half hours of no one saying a word, Peter couldn't stand it any longer.

"Egon, anything the rest of us should know about?" he said, turning around in the front seat, putting an arm around the headrest.

"Hmmm," was Egon's only reply as he turned the next page and began looking at the photographs that were paperclipped to what appeared to be Peter, to be a dossier.

Frowning, Peter tried again. " Care to put that into words?"

Egon was so absorbed he didn't even look up when he did reply. "Fascinating."
Scowling, Peter turned around and fished around in the front seat floorboards and found an empty soft drink cup from one of Slimer's fast food binges.

Yech.

Winston would have a fit if he found garbage in the car. Better for Slimer if he didn't...

Peter chucked the cup at Egon, hitting him on the head, not hard, but enough to get his attention.

"Gahhh!"

Chuckling, Peter watched as Egon shot him a dirty look and straightened his glasses. "What?" Egon snapped, rubbing his head where the cup struck.

"Well, I was wondering if you could fill us in on what we are about to risk life and limb for." Peter replied, turning back around to face Egon and Ray.

Winston looked up into the rearview mirror, then shifted his eyes back to the road. "Yeah, what was Frump really on about anyway?"

Egon cleared his throat and began shuffling the papers he had spread out into a neat pile.

"From what I can tell from these police files, a total of four people have gone missing from early 1985 until now, August 1986, and each time, it was around the same general area of the Tahawus Woods, just outside of Newcomb," Egon took a breath and placed the items back into the folder, closing it and nestling it in the seat beside him, "and from what the photos show, each victim was taken in a very violent manner, often leaving behind large canid tracks that are burned into the earth, and alot of that black ectoplasm."

Ray turned away from the window.

"So what do all the attacks have in common?"

Egon shook his head. " Besides location, the tracks, the slime and the fact that they were all late at night, nothing."

"That'll teach em to pick strays, " Peter quirked.

"This is serious, Peter. People are vanishing." Ray added, looking back at Peter.

"I wish we had brought the slime with us, " Ray said thoughtfully. " We could have used the PKE meters to run scans."

"I already have it running through the spectrometer. I told Janine to keep an eye on it and give us a call on the car phone when its done." Egon said.

"Good. It should only take a few hours at most then." Ray said, satisfied.

That seemed to settle the conversation for the time being. All four men were tired and irritable from being on the road for nearly six hours.

"How much farther, Winston?" Peter asked.

"About another half an hour at most. We should be hitting Newcomb any time now."

"Good. Wake me when we get there. I need my beauty sleep." Peter said, yawning and within moments of laying back in the seat, he was gone, snoring lightly.

In the back, Ray had moved out of his seat and joined Egon on the bench seat, reviewing the files and photos and Winston, ever the pillar of strength, kept driving as the sun sank even farther down in the sky and he wondered to himself, what on earth was waiting for them up in the dark woods of Tahawus and what secrets lie just beneath the skin of reality, down deep in the blood of the underworld where the things unseen lurked and prowled for the unwary.


**************************************

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

**************************************


Janine Melnitz for the last half an hour had been closing up the office, finishing the last few invoices and filing them away for mailing tomorrow. Standing, she straightened out her clothes, her light blue miniskirt contrasting sharply with her darker pink sleeveless shirt and green earrings.

Pushing up her glasses on her nose, she blew a strand of her red hair out of her face and grabbed the protective cover for the computer monitor from the bottom drawer of her desk and slid it over the screen.

She wondered why she was even bothering because she wasn't going home tonight. She was going to stay in the firehouse in case the guys needed backup or help while they were in Tahawus. After the emergency calls that afternoon, the office had actually quieted down and Janine had been able to catch up on her work first and then on her reading later.

She and Slimer had lunch from Fionelli's Italian Diner down the street...not that Slimer really ate as much as scarfed everything whole but the smelly green ghost was like family, as much as he got on her nerves at times.

Crossing the garage, she locked the large double doors and bolted the smaller door, and once the building was secure, she turned down all the lights in the office area except the small desk lamp on her desk and she was about to head upstairs to the lounge when she spotted the black ooze in the jar on Peter's desk, where Egon had left it after they had th emergency call.

She felt a sudden jump in realization as she remembered that Egon had asked her to run it through the analyzer. How could she have forgotten??

"Darn it. I'd better run this goop through." she said more to her self than anyone else. Crossing over the railing to Peter's desk, she scooped up the jar in her hands.

As soon as her hands touched the jar, the lights flickered, very faintly.
A cool breeze began to blow, although none of the windows was open and it faded as quickly as it came.
Janine didn't notice the lights, but she did notice the breeze. Looking around, she checked to see if any of the windows were open.

None were.

Shrugging, she chalked it up to Slimer. "Stupid ghost doesnt even need windows...always leaving em open..."

Taking the jar, she mounted the stairs and moved to the second floor and opened the double doors into Egon and Ray's lab across from the dorms. Flipping on the light, she took a quick survey of the room and every inch of it was filled with equipment she couldnt even begin to name.

The spectrum analyzer was against the far wall, and it resembled nothing more or less than a giant copy machine with enough buttons to make an nuclear technichian go cross eyed.

Egon and Ray had built it back in their college days at Columbia, and originally it had been used to analyze the para-spectragraphic layers in substances to determine if anything psychokinetic was present and to establish baselines for all ectoplasmic forms. Ray had been wanting to move it into the downstairs lab in the basement but Egon didn't want it moved down just yet.

Egon also wanted to upgrade the machine to read and analyze photographs but he hadn't had time to yet. Why they even needed this machine was beyond Janine, especially with the PKE meters...

In her head, Janine went over how Egon had told her to work the machine. She wasn't stupid, but she knew exactly what could happen when a wrong button was pushed....Cynthia Crawford from UBN News had nearly found that out the hard way, Janine recalled when Egon and Ray had nearly blown the second level of the station clear off its foundations.

The lab was nothing to mess with.

She set the jar down on the table behind her, and went over the analyzer. Finding the power toggle, she switched to the closed position. Instantly, the buttons and dials on the machine came to life and the room's silence was filled with a low frequency hum.

Lifting the cover on the top, she peered inside. There were slots for several glass test tubes all color coded and a scanner like device that would run beneath the test tubes once in place to take the actual spectrogram.

Egon had said to use the tube slot that was colored blue for high-band ectoplasmic liquids. Nodding, Janine moved over to the supply cabinet and opened it. Looking over the shelves she hesitated, reading the labels and looking at the various samples and jars.

Besides Egon's fungus collection on the first shelf, on the second were beakers and sample jars filled with every imaginable slime, tissue and entrail, of all colors and textures. Janine blanched at one labeled "Demonic Brain Tissue Type C" as it looked like it was alive and looking at her even though the shapeless gray-black mass had no eyes, nor did it have any recognizable features.

Still, it creeped her out. It felt like it was trying to burn its way through her thoughts. Shuddering, she moved on, her hand gliding over the containers. The one next to it looked like orange lava lamp fluid and it was in constant motion. The lid was tightly sealed and a warning label stuck crudely on it that read: "High Viscous Class Four Ecto-equilibrian Lubricant--VERY ACIDIC! DONT OPEN!--RAY"

It looked familiar, almost like that ecto-slime axle grease that the guys had brought up from the sewer back last summer when Ray discovered that the pillar of New York was real and nearly gave up his life in the process....not to mention nearly ruined her car. Grinning, she couldn't help but to love Ray...he was such a big kid.

Pushing aside the demonic tissue samples and other paranormal pus, she reached up and took down the clean beaker set and took a small beaker and a cork top. Moving back to the table, she reached for the ooze filled jar and without warning a blue-black bolt of energy snaked out and zapped her fingers.

Crying out in alarm and shock, Janine dropped the glass sample beaker. With a piercing crash and the tinkle of broken glass, the beaker smashed on the hardwood floor, sending crystal nuggets and sharp jagged shards everywhere.

The ooze filled jar teetered as if it had suddenly gotten a life on its own and glowed a brilliant blue and then stopped as suddenly as it began. Janine held her injured hand gingerly, her finger tips numb where the bolt had hit her.

Drawn by her cry, Slimer zoomed into the room through the far wall to see what was going on, leaving behind a greenish slime streak, blubbering and hovering around like an out of control green peanut.

To Janine his gibberish gave the faint impression he was asking what was going on.

"I don't know what happened. That stuff just zapped me!" she said, sucking on her finger.

The numbness was fading now, but it still smarted, like she had been stuck with a hot nail. Slimer zoomed in closer to the jar of gunk, getting as close as he dared, like a hunting dog cornering a dangerous animal.

He sniffed it, and it only re-inforced the analogy in Janine's mind, and just as suddenly as the stuff had zapped her, Slimer bolted away from it, screeching like a scalded cat and hid behind Janine, quivering.

"Slimer!" she said, pushing his cold hands off of her waist, "lay off me!"
Slimer clung to her like a week old puppy, clearly terrified.

Grunting, Janine grabbed the green ghost, who for the moment, was fairly solid. It was like grabbing a Jello cube...a very cold slimy cube.

Finally, she managed to free herself from the goblin and moved to the broom closet on the other side of the room. Grabbing a dustpan and a broom, she moved in to clean up the broken glass.

As she bent over to place the dustpan down, her wrist bangles on her left hand snapped and fell with a tinkle of metal to the floor.

Startled, Janine jumped back.

The only way her bangles could have possibly came off is if she tucked in her thumb and let it slide off...it couldnt just fall off....could it?

Carefully, she reached down and stretched out her fingers to pick up the broken bangles and a sharp pain shot down her wrist, a quick firey jab and scarlet was dripping from her hand.

In the half a second it took for the pain to register, Janine knew she had cut her hand on a jagged piece of glass.
A piece of glass that had moved on its own.

No.

Impossible. Slimer got one look at the blood and bolted back through the wall he came through moments before.

Shaking her head, she cursed, and moved briskly out of the lab and back into the corridor and threw open the bath room door clumsily with her right hand, fumbling for the switch, gritting her teeth against the burning slash on her index finger.

The light came on, flooding the small room. Turning on the cold water, Janine thrust her finger into the cooling stream that hurt at first and for a few moments, she saw stars but then the feeling was numbed as the temperature drew out almost all feeling.

With the water running over her finger, she reached up into the medicine cabinet, pulling open the mirrored door, and grabed the box of bandaids and peroxide.

The bleeding finally slowed and she cut the water off, drying the cut gingerly with a swatch of toliet tissue soaked in peroxide. Drying her injured finger off, she clumsily opened a fresh bandage and tightly wrapped it around, sealing the cut. For a few moments, her finger throbbed and then it when it was still, she looked down into the sink.

The white porcelain was stained a brilliant reddish pink, and she found herself wondering, how so much blood could come from such a small cut.

Cleaning the mess up, she went back to the lab and stopped short in the doorway.
The broom and dustpan were missing and the glass on the floor was gone.

The only thing remaining was the small blood stains on the hardwood, and the jar of black ooze sitting on the table next to...
....a perfectly unbroken beaker.

"Slimer did you--?"

The ghost was no where to be seen. She stepped into the room and she felt it before she knew it.

The room was ice cold.

"Jesus...is the air conditioner on?" She moved over to the windows and checked. The air conditioner was off.

Her breath began to fog in the air before her eyes. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh. The glass in the windows froze over as ice crystals began to form, spiderwebbing out over the panes. Janine felt her eyes move to the jar on the table. It's glass wasn't fogged. Moving closer to the table, she reached out with her right hand and touched the container.

It was warm and pulsing, like a living thing.

Getting closer, she knelt with it, eye level to jar level, and she looked at it closely. She could almost see something moving deep it its ebony fluidic face...something was there...something primal...dark...hungry...

The jar leaped at her, clearing the table, driving itself right at her face.
Screaming, Janine leaped back, her heel catching on the rug, and before she could even think about loosing her balance, she dropped like a stone to land hard on her rear. Instinctively, she ducked the flying jar.

CRASSSSH!!

Her heart leaped up in her throat as the beaker hit the far wall and shattered into a million pieces, loosing the black fluid everywhere, on the walls and floor, like ichor.

Before she could move, the lights flickered and went out, plunging her into darkness.
For a moment, nothing happened. Janine felt her heart pounding.
Then she heard it.

The sickening scraping rasping sound...it was so close it felt like it was practically in her ears.

It sounded like dry flesh or sandpaper being dragged across the floorboards....and there was another sound....like a whispering sound, almost a crackling....like bacon frying.

Then she smelled it.

Like rotten meat...like the time when she was walking home to her aparment in Carnsie when she was eight...when she had stumbled across the dead dog in the road with its head twisted backwards and its eyes gaping up at her and its belly bloated and stinking with that same sickenking sweet rot smell...

Getting to her feet, she stumbled in the dark. The nearest proton pack was downstairs in the armory, and she knew that the traps were downstairs too.

Where on earth was Slimer? she wondered frantically.

She called out as the bacon frying cackling sound got closer, her voice a raspy whisper, heavy with fear.

"Slimer?"

Nothing, not a sound.

"Slimer!!!" she said more frantically.

The whole time she had been edging towards the lab door which was mercifully open and no more than six steps away. Freedom was close and safety. Fepar made her legs feel like rubber. If she could just get a pack...

Apparently, whatever was in that jar was not mere ectoplasm. It had been some kind of creature. Well, it had picked the wrong firehall to break into, Janine though, her anger overcoming her fear. She wasnt going out by a useless little black blob. Steeling herself, she dove for the doors, relying on her memory of where the firepole was, moving faster than she ever moved before, and behind her, the darkness moved as cohesive beast and lunged for the kill.

**********************************

Freedom.

Confinement. Cursed confinement, to be held and not be able to taste the life, the blood, the innocence of those shells that walked the earth as Mortals. A simple mind it was, but a mind none the less. It only served but one purpose...to fill the ranks of the One's army, to become a force of darkness, a wave of suffering, a blight on human kind.

Animal cunning, swift and heartless, to enter the flesh of those weak and pitiful, to invade and take, to kill, to destroy, to begin the way for the Seventh Age, to take a host. Yes, a host. The WOMAN's fear was extreme, but it could also sense a deep courage and a cunning of her own, one that if allowed to survive would make her Unsuitable.

Now.

It must be now.

That must be extinguished and her mind devoured in black ecstasy, lost in the jumble of souls. A fierce fiendish joy rose and flooded It's being as it leaped from the glass that contained it and dove for the Woman.

*********************************


Taking a chance, Janine leaped out over the landing and grabbed the firepole, loosening her grip, sliding, her stomach leaping into her throat with the speed of her descent. In a split second, she had slid down the pole, her heels thumping onto the cold tile and concrete of the garage. Above her she heard something new, a deep animal snarling, a deep growling.

Behind her, she heard something heavy land on the floor, shaking the ground.

Turning, she froze in mid stride, astounded by what she saw before her.

There, in the dark, lit only by the faint lights coming in through the windows, stood a creature, a beast, a demonic black hound, with a long sinewy body, snarling black lips, yellowed teeth, and flaming green eyes. Its body was like that of a wolf, only almost serpentine, and it had an intelligent cold gleam in its gaze that nearly paralyzed her.

It was bigger than any dog she had ever seen, bigger than a wolfhound that she had seen at the kennels when she was sixteen.

"Oh my God..."

For a moment, it stood there, its transparent black body steaming black tendrils of steam, its wicked eyes dancing with evil thoughts, and then it raised its front paws and stepped forward.

To her terror, Janine saw that whatever it touched burned, and its paws left behind flaming prints that burned quickly with a white hot blue flame, the concrete melting as it moved and finally crouched, preparing for the kill.

Drawing on the last of her courage, Janine flung herself at the supply closet that served as the armory next to Peter's office. Surprising herself, she didn't fumble with the door handle and the door came open without sticking for once. She expected to be pounced on at any second, to feel the hot breath to---

Nothing.

Stunned, she turned around and the beast was gone.

The only sign that it was ever there was the burned pawprints on the garage deck.

There wasn't a sound in the entire station.

"What the hell..."

Then she felt the cold thickness on her shoulder, dripping down her right side.
Reviled, she touched her right shoulder, and it came away wet. Looking at her fingers, straining her eyes, she saw it was some kind of slime almost like...

A shadow fell across her and she looked up..
..and right into the face of the hell hound.

It was clinging to wall like some unholy spider just above the door way to the armory, looking down at her, its face in a rictous grin, blocking the only way to any means of defense.

"SLIMER!!!!" Janine screamed, jumping out of the way of the beast's jaws as it lunged at her, dropping to the floor like a cat, landing easily in a predatory stance, its front legs splayed, head low, forcing her to keep it in front of her, her back to the supply room, knowing that if she looked away from it to grap a weapon, it would sieze her in an instant.

It had her cornered now.

Janine stepped back and felt something hard and metallic poke into the small of her back. Startled, she almost looked away from the slinking dog, but she didnt have to know what was behind her to understand what it was.

It was the bumper bar on the cyclotron of a proton pack.
Relief flooded her. Thoughts raced through her mind as her heart pounded with fear. Could she switch on the pack, unholster the thrower and blast the thing before it could rip her apart?

Suddenly, a wailing raspy war cry filled her ears as a brilliant green blob streaked through the air, arms made into fists, face filled with fury.

Slimer!

She had never been so happy to see the little spud.

"Slimer!! GET HIM!"

The beast whirled around, roaring in surprise and anger to face Slimer as the green ghost came in for a dive bomb attack.
Janine took the chance, turned and grabbed the proton pack, lifting its heavy bulk onto her back, the thick shoulder straps falling into place as she hastily buckled the waist belt, stabilizing the forty pound machine.

Reaching over her right shoulder, she grabbed the handgrip of the particle thrower, and pulled it forward, releasing the ion rifle. Moving as fast as she could, she took up a firing position, thumbing the activation stud on the power box on the thrower, its lights going white and then red as the weapon powered up with a sharp perchewwwwww and she felt the reassuring vibration of the power surging through the backpack like proton pack.

"Eat this dog breath!" she snarled, tighing her grip on the handgrip and the stock of the rifle, thumbing down the trigger stud.

The rifle bucked in her hands as it loosed its deadly proton stream, the beam itself a brilliant yelllow surrounded by a blue ionic discharge; it undulated wildly, like an energy serpent, sizzling and crackling, streaking toward the hellhound like a bullet, sparks flying from the emitter barrell.

Sensing the danger, the hellhound leaped, and Slimer flew under it, missing it entirely, and straight into the proton stream.

The little green ghost was caught instantly, the wild energy beam snaring him in a web of glaring energy, lighting crawling across him, incasing him in a sphere of sheer power.
Fighting to no avail, Slimer struggled against the beam, shrieking, wailing.

"NO!!" Janine shut off the beam instantly releasing Slimer from its grip. Slimer rocketed it off from the power of the blast, collapsing in a corner, his tail end burned a blackish green, steaming like a steak off the grill.

Janine looked up, the hell hound was hovering in the air like a great bat. Taking aim, she fired again, full force at the beast, bracing her legs against the recoil. Snarling the best reared its head back and snapped it forward, an intense swatch of blue fire and lighting flaring out of its maw, projecting like a jet of water from a firehose, slamming into the proton beam.

For a moment, the proton beam and fire wave fought for dominance, sizzling, popping, lighting flying and sparks shooting out like the fourth of July. Shadows moved wildly as the beams danced and struggled against each other.

Frowning, Janine twisted the dial on the stock of the thrower, opening up to full stream. The proton beam began to undulate wilder than ever, its brightness increasing ten fold.
The beast increased its flow, the fire growing hotter, making Janine sweat and around her, the air became electric, making the hairs on her arm stand up.

Finally, the laws of physics came into action, without fail and an unstoppable force, met an immoveable object and the beams exploded, sending Janine backwards, throwing her the ground.

The wave of kinetic force ripped throught the garage, upending Janine's desk, throwing the computer against the far wall in a cascade of sparks and splintering her desk in half, cracking the cement and shaking the entire building to its foundations, blowing out every window on the ground floor in a flash of light and a rain of glass.

Dazed, Janine felt something heavy land on top of her, and she felt with a sudden terror, she couldnt move her arms. Turning her head, she saw the particle thrower laying at the end of its hose, just out of arms reach.
Looking up she looked into the face of the demon dog as it lowered its snout, touching her nose with it, its putrid breath making her sick. She knew there wouldnt be any more chances. Her time was up.

"Enough...." it growled, its voice low, primal and unearthly.

Janine tried to throw her arms up to protect herself, and then it lunged on her, driving its face into her body, causing no harm but unbearable agony, burning like the fire of the sun and she lapsed into darkness, trying to scream as the beast lowered itself onto her body, sending her into convulsions, shimmering with a unholy blue light and then dog dissappeared and the light faded and for the first time, the firehouse was silent.
Silent as a tomb.

**************************************


The first thing he was acutely aware of was the searing sting on his bottom.
Groaning, he floated into a hovering position, shaking his fat green face, which ended up shaking his entire body, sending slime dropletts everywhere.

Letting his eyes focus, Slimer looked around the room. It was dark and far too quiet.

It looked like a tornado had hit it, with debris, pieces of the floor and cieling lying all about, scattered. Smoke steamed from the floor where the blast had erupted, and Janine's desk was thrown aside, splintered, like so much jackstraws, its heavy bulk tossed aside like a child would do in tantrum throwing around his Matchbox cars.

JANINE!

Instantly Slime snapped out of his confusion and streaked through the air, flying to Janine's side, blubbering and jabbering incoherently, wringing his hands, shaking Janine by the shoulders violently.

This was not good, not good at all.

Panic flooded him and Slimer got closer to Janine's face and pulled up her eyelids. Her eyes were unfocused, dialated, unseeing.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIAGGGH!!!" Slimer screamed, more out of frustration than fear. The guys were gone, Janine was out cold, there was a monster on the loose in the fire house--

Janine sat bolt up right, her eyes, flying open, face cold and emotionless. Slimer nearly crashed to the ground in fright as Janine stood easily to her feet, letting the proton pack slide and thump the ground in an unused heap, oblivious to the floating green miasmic ghoul hovering about jibbering.

Her blouse was ripped at the shoulder and hung loose, exposing her upper arm and chest, which had a nasty paw shaped burn on the flesh. Slimer shot up to eye level with her.

"Janine?" he squealed, waving his hand in front of her face, shaking it, trying to get her attention.
Janine paid him no mind and at that point, Slimer realized something was horribly wrong.

Without preamble or warning, Janine's left hand shot out and grabbed Slimer by the face, yanking him close to her face, leveling eye to to eye with the spud. Slimer normally could phase through her hands or any physical object but he found to his terror he couldnt.
Janine's hand began to glow with unholy blue fire, and Slimer felt his whole body go rigid.

He looked into Janine's face and then he did scream because what he was looking at was not Janine.

It looked like Janine, but it wasn't Janine.
Her face was grey, ashen and the veins stood out like blue traced lines. Her breath came out in icy clouds and her eyes were the worst.

They had rolled back in her head, showing only the whites, which began to gleam an evil white.
A deep growling began to issue from her throat, like a tiger or a big cat, throaty and predatory.

Then she smiled, a terrifying perversion of a smile, her face cracking as she did so, turning into a horrid caricture of a human being. Unable to move, Slimer could only watch the terrible transformation and then he found himself flying through the air as Janine flung him across the room, slamming him into the far wall. The lightning had done something to him and he felt for the first time what it felt like to slam into a solid object, splintering the tile into spiderweb patterns, shattering him into a billion pieces, where he crashed the floor and knew nothing more.

Across the garage, Janine's smile faded and she moved, her movements somehow jerky, and slinky, almost cat like and she descended the basement stairs, moving towards the containment facility.
Behind her, footprints burned into the wood with her every step.
The Fifth Guardian was awakened, a guardian of fire and death, swift cold cunning and a the predatory sense of a 1000 years walked the earth in corporeal form for the first time over a millenia.

****************************






............and that is where I am at so far. What do you guys think? Ideas? Suggestions? Critques?

[SeekerAfterTruth]

How big are you intending on making this?

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

well I will write till its done. I've been working on it more since my last post as well. what did you think so far?

[SeekerAfterTruth]

That's what I'm asking. Because if you intend on making this somewhat (just shoot a rough estimate), like a novel length fic, then I think you're succeeding. My overall impression is you're hitting on the somewhat standard "epic" side of fanfiction, and issues like these best get resolved in a novel-length fic.

It does tend to make things hover in the twilight zone between the movie and RGB, especially with regards to the...adversaries you have flashed us glimpses of so far. But of course, if you aren't intending for the "epic" novel, then I suppose you're hitting a bit off But again, that's easily fixed.

Since you've said you intend to use realism, it's ok, but I think so far, I'm getting subliminal impressions (I shall clarify what aspect of your writing causes this after a second re-read) of odd bits here and there that do affect the way you've attempted to establish your fic. These clash with the realistic...slightly "horror" thing you've attempted to set up.

(Sorry. Pretty tired. Will find specific examples to explain when I'm more awake.)

Looks promising, like what I've seen so far. *prods for update*

This is supposed to occupy me until the game comes out, so c'mon, update!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

awesome! Cant wait to hear your thoughts!

[SeekerAfterTruth]

Ok. On a second re-read, although I think you cut it a little close, you did manage to convey the realism, and the "an hour to Armageddon, just that the main characters don't really know about it yet" kind of air to the whole thing. I'm very interested, especially with the way the title sounds.

Hints at some kind of conflict between the RGB frame the story is couched in and the darker realism you intend to go for. You're ok so far, doing great- hell, if you can do it, kudos to you!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

thanks for you feedback. it makes the writing process so much more fun and fulfilling. I look forward to and appreciate your insight! thanks!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

[imy first update to this story in a long time...told ya I was working on it!!!! what do you think of it so far? ][/i]


****************************
After nearly six hours on the road, the Ecto-1A finally trundled into the outskirts of Newcomb, the big old car hugging the curves, her engine purring deeply.

The sky overhead was an inky velvet blue black, with the last fringes of sunlight on the far horizon sinking, fading from brilliant yellow, to orange and finally red before slipping into the night. Miles above, the first stars were visible.

Back towards the old township of Tahawus, storm clouds gathered, building up, thick and threatening. The wind was blowing in short random gusts, its touch warm and soft; it kicked up leaves as it blew, making the faintest of moans.

The air itself felt electric as the coming storm ionized the atmosphere and thunder could be heard fast approaching.

Peter was still asleep in the passenger seat and in the back, Egon and Ray had both nearly nodded off, with Ray snoring faintly, his head drooping and his head resting against his arm on the rear window.

Egon sat opposite him, watching the trees got by as the main highway turned into suburban streets and finally, smaller two lane country roads. Hemmed in by trees on either side, the road was dark and silent.

They passed no other cars since leaving the highway, and for some reason, that bothered Egon.
It was like they had passed through some kind of barrier; it was complete non sense of course.

There was no barrier or the PKE meters hanging off their belts would have gone off. It was probably last minute nerves now that they were actually in Newcomb. Off in the distance, high above the trees and just below the storm clouds was Goodnow Mountain. Egon focused his mind to keep himself awake, trying to go over the facts he knew about the case.

John Cable, age 34, vanished, June 6th, 1985. His car was found parked next to the road with the hazard lights on and with a flat tire. He had been taken whilst trying to fix the flat.

Laura Vaughan, age 22, missing, September 18th, 1985; she had been walking home from a friend’s house just down the road. Her backpack and jacket were found ripped apart and burned through with several paw-prints, covered in black hair.

Danny Southmont, age 19, attacked by a large black canine like beast, witnessed by two of his friends on May 5th, 1986. He was dragged off right in plain sight.

The boys with him, Mark Staple and Brent Rodgers, both 17, had reported the attack to a neighbor who had called the police. The police investigated, but only found Danny’s clothes, also burned and covered with long black hairs; Danny was eventually added the ranks of the missing in Newcomb and his friends were checked into Woodridge Mental Hospital in lower Manhattan later than May for mental breakdowns.

Finally, August 22nd, 1986, Charles Porter, a repo man for Sherman’s Discount Auto. He had gone out to Eugene Simmons house to repossess an old Buick Regal and never returned. The police found his truck, sitting with the doors wide open, the glass blown out, and covered in the black ectoplasm and weird dragging paw prints burned into the earth.

From the police report, Egon hadn’t seen anything to implicate that Eugene Simmons had anything to do with the disappearances. In fact, no one in the town can remember seeing him for several weeks before Charles Porter was taken. Outside, night had fallen completely by now.

The Ecto-1 jerked suddenly, making Egon hit his head on the roof as the car thumped over what felt like a speed bump the size of the Britannic.

“Ow!” Egon cried in surprised, rubbing his head, now fully awake and jarred out of his musings. Ray was unmoved and Peter snorted loudly in the front seat. Bright quartz light flooded into the cabin of the car through the windows and windscreen, making Egon squint his eyes.

The bump was the curb as Winston made a right hand turn into the parking lot of a gas station that had a bright yellow and red neon sign reading:

Gas ‘N’ Go.
Omni-cron Oil
Unleaded 87 $1.05 per Gallon

The weeds were overgrown on the sign and there were only two other cars on the lot. One was a beat up Chevy with enough rust that Egon thought it was going to completely oxidize at any moment and an old Ford, rusting next to what used to be used as a garage.

The store itself was the standard white cinderblock affair with a rusting tin roof. Its front windows were all plate glass and filled with the usual advertisements for discount cigarettes and lottery tickets. Outside, a large covered area made up the fueling station portion with four outdated pumps with analog dials.

“Wake up sports fans, we’re here.” Winston said, sliding the big car into park next to the pumps, smoothly killing the headlights and engine. For the first time in six hours, the car was silent.

Egon was suddenly acutely aware of how stiff his legs were. Reaching over, he shook Ray awake.

“Wha—stop it…Slimer knock it off…” Ray grumbled, his eyes half closed, his auburn hair sticking up on one side. Egon grinned. “Ray, the containment unit has a leaky mass ecto-plasmic shielding valve.”

Instantly Ray shot awake, looking around, nearly falling out of his seat.
“Not funny, Egon.” He mumbled, shaking his head to clear the sleep.
“Where are we?” Ray murmured.

“Newcomb. Let’s get some gas and some snacks and head on into town...Stretch our legs a bit…that’s a heckuva drive,” Winston said, opening his door, the dome light coming on over their heads. Egon and Ray followed him, their doors shutting with a thunk as the three men exited the car, standing up for the first time in six hours, their leg muscles stiff and sore.

Egon put his hands behind his back and popped his lower spine, sighing with relief. Ray pulled his arms over his head, clearing a cramp in his shoulders.

Peter still slept snoring in the front seat. “We need a fill up. We using petty cash or the checking account?” Winston asked, turning towards the store.

Ray shrugged. “Use petty cash. I’ll dock it in the morning. You guys head on in; I’ll pump it.” Moving around to the back of the car, Ray opened the fuel door and unscrewed the metal cap, setting it on top of the roof. Absently, he took the fuel nozzle and slid it into the tank opening, flipping on the Premium lever.

He set the pump and let it run, delivering its load of high grade gasoline.

Winston and Egon moved off into the store, leaving Peter asleep in the car and Ray leaning against the cool metal and glass of the Ecto-1, watching the analog numbers turn in their dials lit with a dim amber light.

Across from the gas station was an open field, bordered on the east and west by trees. The grass was about waist height and was blowing gently in the breeze, stirred by the oncoming storm.

Overhead, the once clear sky had swiftly grown overcast and the first strands of lightning began to flash in the distance and thunder began to roll, like giant drums, distant but closer than is comfortable.

The breeze was warm and balmy, and it felt electric across his skin, and Ray took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, savoring the smell of approaching rain and a faint trace of ozone.

This case, Ray thought, was one of the weirdest they had ever taken. It reminded him of the case they had last year. A resort had called them to investigate missing employees and strange lights and noises on the grounds. They had found out that the resort was built in a zone of psychokinetic turbulence, a vortex of sorts, where time and space sometimes twisted in on each other.

The team of course, had rescued those that vanished and managed to seal up the rift so that no one else would vanish, but not before a few nasty entities escaped. Luckily, they were localized and easily contained and now shared a nice home safely locked in the bowels of the ecto-containment unit at home.

Ray enjoyed the silence of the outdoors and for a moment, just let the city fall away, feeling the electric air brush his skin, the breeze tussle his short auburn hair and the soft weight of his uniform hugging his body.

After this case was finished, it might be a good idea to go back out to Sam’s farm for a while with the guys and Slimer. The last time had been great, even if it was interrupted by a whole family of undead zombies. Sam did welcome them back and she also—

Something darted in the shadows at the edge of the field.

“Huh?” Ray jumped in spite of himself, and did a double take, standing straight up, straining his eyes to see beyond the bright halogen lights of the gas station roof.

There it was…something jet black was prowling along the bottom of the field grasses, its form large and almost invisible in the dark. Ray left the pump to run on automatic and moved away from the car and out to the edge of the road, crossing the pavement, standing inches away from the roadside, where only the road’s broken weathered asphalt separated him from the field, leaving the bright safety of the station and the car behind.

Overhead, the storm had churned the sky a nasty blue black, like a fresh bruise. A bolt of lightning flared not 500 away, slamming into earth, shaking the ground, sending up sparks and smoke. “Jeeesh, “ Ray said, ducking, covering his eyes with the intensity of the flash.

Rain drops began to fall, at first, slow and then harder, fat and heavy, the cold liquid missiles slapped into the pavement, stinging his exposed skin as it quickly turned into downpour, completely drenching Ray and soaking through his uniform.

Still he stood there, unable to turn away. He knew he had seen something. He strained, wiping the water from his face and he was about to turn around and go back to the car when the PKE meter on his belt went live, its lights and alarm shrieking to life with a loud piercing WEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

His heart leaped into this throat and Ray visibly jumped. Looking down, he reached for the meter and unclasped it from his belt. Bringing it up to eye level, the screens orange glow casting a pale ghostly light on his boyish features, he realized two things in quick and terrible succession.

One, the reading was off the chart, well above a high class six, with the same weird high band ecto-plasmic frequency pattern as the ectoplasm Frump had brought back to the fire house. He pulled out the antennae, and instantly the two sensor arms swung up and out to their fullest extension, the twin yellow LED lights on the end of the arms blinking at a furious rate.

The second thing Ray realized with almost a detached curiosity was that the meter itself…was turned off. It shouldn’t be able to turn on by itself. Stunned, Ray turned the meter over, looking for broken wires, dented panels. Maybe the water was causing it short out.

He reached up to adjust the sensitivity dial to see if it was perhaps stuck in the open position and his hands froze mid way up to the dial.

A deep growling began to issue from dead ahead in the deep grass.

On the meter, the sine wave that indicated a psychokinetic surge spiked to an all new peak. Ray lowered the meter and looked beyond it into the field and felt his heart catch in his chest and his breath stop, his skin and blood running cold.

Before him, crouching low in the grass, its huge powerful shoulders and long sloping neck lowered and stretched out like a serpent was a monstrous canine like beast, with terrible glowing eyes that looked nothing more or less like embers from the fires of Hell. Ray’s scientific mind kicked in behind his fear and he found him making objective observations even in absolute terror.

It was roughly the size of a very large Irish wolfhound, and was build more like a powerful big cat, with large paws that sank into the ground, burning the earth, causing steam to rise up, torching the grass where it stood into cinders.

The hellhounds head was worst of all…all snout and long razor sharp fangs, and a terrible thick black forked tongue that flicked in and out like a snake. Shimmering blue-black ectoplasm dripped from its jowls and sizzled on the earth.
Ray felt his right arm move up and reach behind his right shoulder and grasped…empty air.
The proton pack that was so much a part of his daily life was back in the Ecto-1.

He was absolutely defenseless and he knew, doing the math in his head faster than a calculator, that he would never make it back to the station before this beast had him down and ripped apart like a dog with a chew toy. Swallowing, he began to inch backward, slowly, his eyes never leaving the hellhounds blazing orbs even as it took the first steps out of the grass and into the road.


Inside the Ecto-1, Peter jumped awake as the lightning struck the ground. He thumped his head on the roof, sending stars flashing before his eyes.

“Damn it!!!”

Rubbing his throbbing skull, he winced and opened his sleep ridden eyes.
Looking around he saw they had stopped at some little dinky service station that made Ma and Pa’s look like a Las Vegas casino.

He saw Egon and Winston in the store, shopping around in what probably passed for the food aisle, gathering tons of sugar laden Twinkies, chips, sodas, the usual fare of a road trip. Egon was a horrible sugar junkie.

Outside, the first rain drops began to fall and quickly turned into a torrent. Turning his head to the driver’s side where he knew Ray had to be standing pumping the gas, he saw nothing.

“Ray…where are we?” he grumbled, and he moved to open the door when a sudden thunk-click caught his attention.
It took him a split second to realize it was the gas pump switching off because the tank was full. Hmm. Ray must have put it on automatic.

He was about to get out and go inside for a bathroom break, when he saw something that made him do a double take in the rear view mirror.

Ray was standing rigid next to the road, stiff as a board, in the drenching rain.

How Ray’s mind worked was always as unfathomable to Peter as was Egon’s, but still, the guy had more common sense than to stand out in the open in a major thunderstorm and, he thought, looking into the rearview mirror, why---

“Oh shit.”

Peter saw it , low and crouched to the ground in front of Ray; a demonic apparition, like a giant canine, a hellish beast of unholy proportions, its visage twisted in the half sideways mirror.

Diving for the door handle, Peter leaped out into the rain, and ran to the back of the ambulance, flinging open the door, the rain pelting his skin as he grabbed the proton pack rack, drawing it out to its fullest limits, its metal frame squealing with the effort, the whole car jumping with the force of its bumpers slamming into the brake bar.
Moving as fast as he could, Peter grabbed a proton pack, slung it onto his shoulders and clasped the stomach belt buckle, tightening the straps.

Leaving the ambulance door wide open, he dove into the storm, reaching behind his right shoulder, un-holstering the particle thrower, his thumb finding the activation stud by reflex and the familiar whining growl of a proton pack power cycling on brought an adrenaline rush to his ears and the comforting light vibration that ran through the ALICE frame as the cyclotron cycled to full activation mode.

Depressing the safety switch on the top of the ion rifle, the status light on the gun body flared a brilliant red and Peter moved as close as his could and dropped to a firing position and took aim, praying the rain didn’t diffuse the beam and turn Ray into a charred ruin.

The creature lowered its shoulders and leaped for the kill.

Peter felt his mouth open and words leave his lips, his voice rasping.

“RAY! GET DOWN!”

And with that, he pulled the trigger.



Peter’s voice cut through the thunder and Ray instinctively ducked, rolling to the right as the beast lunged for his throat, tucking the PKE meter to his belly to shield it from the fall. He hit the asphalt, the blow jarring his teeth in his skull,

A brilliant yellow-orange proton stream shot out at the speed of light, undulating wildly, sizzling in the rain, blue lighting arcs coursing around the beam as it slammed into the creature’s chest full on, driving it backwards into the air, sending it crashing to the ground in a violent heap.

Peter let up on the trigger and Ray got to his feet and ran back to the relative safety of the station.
“What is that thing?!” Peter yelled, tracking the beast as it got to its feet, lining up another shot. Breathlessly, Ray explained.

“Class Six, solid corporeal entity, Canine Class…highly carnivorous.”

“It’s going back to the dog pound!” Peter twisted the intensity setting on the stock of the rifle, going full stream and waited until the dog turned again and charged the two men.

Squinting, Peter opened fire again, the proton stream as bright as the sun slammed its business end into the lower jaw of the beast, knocking it head over heels back into the field. “Gotcha Fido!” Peter jeered, shutting off his stream as the beast hit the ground and this time did not get back up.

Peter stood up straight and Ray crouched behind him, trying to stay out of the line of fire. Ray switched the PKE meter back on and pointed it at the demon. Its readings were marginally weaker but were still unbelievably strong.

“Uh oh” Ray choked out, water dripping into his face.

“What’s uh oh?” Peter asked, tightening his grip on the barrel of the ion rifle.

“It’s still up and going. The blast barely phased it. It’s going to ---“

Ray never finished his sentence as the beast got to all four feet and stood there, in the field, the grass burned all around it, leaving a large clearing where it had fallen, not in flames but smoldering and quickly dying, doused by the rain.

For a moment, it stared at the two men, pure hatred in its eyes and then it threw its head back and screamed an ungodly howl. It then opened its mouth and a sound came out and it took Ray a few moments to realize it was speaking in a gravelly dead voice, rasping like a snakes breath, its forked tongue flicking.

“Garrrra dulllllaaaaa….Shio naman Nimbron…”

Then a titanic lighting bolt cascaded down and struck the beast and instantly it was gone in a brilliant actinic flash, and the only thing that was left was a smoking crater.

Peter slowly let his guard down and re-holstered his thrower back onto the pack, the yellow connector cable-hose swaying in the wind. For a moment, he and Ray stood dumbfounded and then—

“What the hell is going on here?!!!”

Peter leaped a foot in the air in shock and whirled around, expecting to see another demon, but instead saw Winston and Egon running over to them, their arms laden with bags of snacks and chips, shocked expressions on their face.

“Are you alright? Ray, Peter, what was that?” Egon said, his glasses slipping down his nose from the rain.

“Yeah, but I don’t think my heart is going to be the same ever again,” Ray said quietly.

Peter cautiously turned his back on the road as the four Ghostbusters quickly moved out of the rain and back into the relative safety of the station and finally, after Peter went inside and paid for the fuel, into the Ecto-1, where Ray finally felt some measure of safety.

With Egon driving, he flicked on the headlights of the old car, revved the engine and turned on the wipers, pulling carefully out into the road, and looking uneasily back at the charred crater in the field.

“Ray…what was that?” he asked, sliding on the defroster to keep the windows and glass clear. Ray, sitting beside Egon, with Winston and Peter in the back, listening carefully, was drying himself off with a towel Peter had found in the supply box.

“It was some type of corporeal canine…a hell hound, I think. A powerful one, too. A class six…I thought I saw something in the shadows while I was pumping the gas and I got curious,” Ray said, wiping his face dry and tossing the towel in the floorboard.

Peter rolled his eyes. “Ray, you need to take this curiosity thing back a bit…you ever heard the saying ‘curiosity killed the cat?’”

Winston sighed. “Yeah, but this time the dog nearly killed a curious Ghostbuster.”

“How did you know it was a Class Six?” Egon asked, taking a broad turn in the road. Ray shrugged. “My PKE meter came on…on its own. It wasn’t powered on or anything. It must have been the rain.”

“No, it wasn’t the rain. Remember, we installed those water grounding circuits to withstand up to twelve hours in continuous immersion in water. A little bit of rain shouldn’t have messed it up. I don’t like it.” Egon said flatly.

“Egon, you don’t like when you miss out on Fungus on Parade either.” Winston jibbed, trying to lighten the moment.

Ignoring the jab, Egon continued. “No, I’m serious. The level of psychokinetic energy required to activate a powered off PKE meter is staggering. It would rival Gozer in sheer power levels. Did you notice anything else about the entity?”

Ray thought back. It had been a crazy moment, dangerous and he tried to remember what he could. “Well, besides the fact that it was ugly and had a nasty temper, not much.”

“Hold it. Ray, didn’t it say something?” Peter said, leaning over the bench front seat. Ray suddenly brightened. “Oh yeah it did!”

“It could speak?” Egon asked, worry crossing his features.

“Yeah. It said something like,” Ray struggled to make the sound, in the end, not quiet getting it, but it was still fairly close, “Gara dula shio naman Nimbron…sounds like Indian to me.” Ray said. “It could also have been just noises. Peter did hit it pretty hard with the stream.”

“Something about that word…Nimbron….it sounds familiar but I can’t place it…” Egon said, thinking deeply, taking another curve almost absently.

Peter leaned back in his seat, his proton pack on the floorboards next to him. “Well, all I can say is Frump had better have been right about double our fee. We didn’t drive six hours to become doggie snacks.”

Ray shot him a dirty look.

All Egon did was drive and all the while, his face was deeply contorted in thought and all he said in reply, was a low “hmmm.”

[SeekerAfterTruth]

I like!

I suppose your work with the details is good, and I like the way you balance details and things happening, so people don't tend to have their eyes glazing over and skipping lengthy chapters of prose (:

Now, the fact that there are two dogs is plain freaky. Seriously. >.<

All we'd need is a crack at little Zuuly and then everything would just hit the funny honeypot But it's cool, and I can tell we're still building up plot, and in a non-laborious way. Nice one!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

thank you!


*resists tempation to drop a spolier*.....cant...must...not...drop...

I will probably work on it more tomorrow and if i get any significant work on it done, ill post. thanks for being a deligent reader!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

Slimer hovered quietly behind the corner of the basement door jamb, trying to keep his natural green glow as low-key as possible. He was spying on Janine, or rather, the demon that had taken over her body.

His orange eyes were wide with fear and a weird curiosity as he slunk through the door and phased into invisibility, carefully holding his concentration, trying not to touch anything or make the stairs creak as he moved his legless spud like body down the stair well.

It had taken him more than an hour to pull himself back together after the demon attacked him, slinging him into the garage wall, breaking him up into a thousand pieces. Normally, Slimer just splattered with a sickening wet splotch against anything solid, or phased through it, but the demon did something to him, making him feel funny and unable to phrase through matter.

Slimer had never felt any pain when he passed through an object or an object passed through him; often, it tickled slightly, and was entirely pleasant.

On the off occasion he slammed into something by mistake and didn’t phrase through it, he shook it off and on the rare occurrence that something slammed into him and passed through him, it was like he was moving very slowly, and he felt heavy, and sluggish and often came out feeling as if he has been wrung out to dry, but never any serious harm.

Whatever the demon had done to him, it prevented him from being able to phase and it felt like he was hit under his chins, and then a burning electric current shot through him, and he felt as if his ectoplasm was sizzling then he lost the ability to remain airborne, and then he was slammed into the wall, his body going in every direction.

For just over an hour he lay in pieces, each piece awake and aware of the other and in terrible pain because they couldn’t rejoin, lying paralyzed in puddles of goop on the garage floor. Finally, the effects of the attack wore off and he was able to reform, albeit with a bad headache. .

The last thing he knew before he got shattered was that the demon had taken over Janine’s body and that it was headed towards the containment unit downstairs and that was NOT a place a free demon should be.

Slimer knew in reality he was going to be about as good in a fight against a powerful demon like that as a fly swatter against a tank, but he had to at least find out what was going on…so he could warn the guys. Yeah! Warning the guys seemed a lot safer than getting torn arm from arm by a nasty demon.

Moving imperceptibly, he zipped under the stairs, now at the bottom, and watched in silence as the demon simply stood in the center of the basement, not far from Egon’s desk, facing the ecto-containment grid.

Janine stood, her body limp, her skin ashen and crossed with blue veins, her shoes cast aside, her bare feet pressing into the metal grate of the floor, the ceiling above her full of twisting snaking shadows.

Her body swayed, like a snake, then the air around basement grew icy cold and a wind began to blow, but there was no source.

Above her, the ceiling grew darker and black and purple tinged clouds formed, swelling out suddenly into a massive thunderhead, and lighting split the cloud’s sides, screaming out in brilliant green bolts, snapping and hissing, slamming into the brick walls, taking out chunks of mortar, crawling along any metal surface it could find; tiny arcs of deadly energy coursed and encircled the stair well and Slimer felt the static from the powerful charges.

He gasped, but the sound was lost in the crack of thunder that shook the building. Terrified, Slimer watched as blue energy began to seep through the door cracks of the containment unit, the trap door on the front bulging and creaking as it strained to open.

Janine’s body went rigid as if she had had a metal rod slammed through her spine, and she stood ramrod straight, her head tilted back, her hair blowing and lighting crackling from her finger tips, inching along her skin, hugging her like a new coat.

Her eyes opened and once again, they are blazing white, like a white hot flame. She opened her mouth and a terrible growling voice came from her throat, horrid and dark, deeper than the oceans and gravelly, animal like in its ferocity.

“I am ready, my Lord, come to this vessel I have prepared for you, oh Lord of Shadows, lord of pain and death, lord Nimbron, take this vessel as your own!”
The lighting blasted from her body and shot over to the containment unit gate, throwing it wide open, the safety system utterly failing.

Alarms began to wail and red strobe alert lights began to flash, turning the already dangerous basement into a place of red, blue and green light, a place of complete chaos and evil.

She leveled her face with the containment units gaping maw and a jet of blue light erupted from the core of the containment unit, flooding the room with a light as nearly bright as the sun, the tight beam hitting Janine’s body, hot as the sun, and she absorbed it, letting it flood her, until every opening on her body shone with blue-white light, lighting crackling off in large bolts from her arms, now spread wide like a demon’s wings, and she then lifted, off the floor, hovering about six feet off the floor, spread eagled, the terrible energies cascading all around her, as the wind howled and thunder split the room.

The building began to shake and the metal plating on the floor groaned in stress and at last the clouds cleared and the air above Janine began to shimmer and ripple, with golden red light, as if you had thrown a stone into a pond.

The wind went still and the sound in the basement went out, and it was if the whole world had gone deaf. For the briefest of moments, it was utterly silent as around him, Slimer saw the chaos and lighting fly and then without preamble or warning, a jet of powerful red energy plunged down out of the rippling air, slapping into Janine with enough force to knock her floating form to the ground in a heap where the light continued to pour into her.

Slimer thought it would never stop as he watched, his heart pounding, terror flooding every inch of him, but eventually it did stop and then, slowly, the lighting faded and the air finally lost the electric charged feeling and then, sound returned and the containment unit shut itself, sealing on automatic protection mode, the trap light flashing red for a moment, then turning a brilliant green.

The basement went from being a whirlwind of chaos and destruction to being as silent and still as a tomb in a matter of seconds.

Slimer waited and then hovered out to the edge of the stairwell, looking at the crumpled form of Janine, her clothes burned to a crisp, her hair fried, and her skin red with the energy burns. Slimer feared she was dead, because she wasn’t even breathing.

He was just about to fly over to her, and had even become visible again when she took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling slowly.

Then slowly, she began to move, carefully getting to her feet as if she had merely fallen to the floor, or tripped. At last, she stood to her full height and cracked her neck, once to the right and once to the left, the sound ungodly loud and sickeningly wet and crunchy.

She extended her arms, cracking her knuckles and extending her fingers, and then she cracked her spine. Somehow the movements seemed wrong, almost like a predator that has just made a kill and is immensely satisfied with itself.

Then she began to laugh.

It wasn’t loud or even animal like.

It was terribly, terribly clear and it was not Janine’s voice that came out, but rather a deep and masculine sound with just the slightest echo, as if its own sound was sonorous enough to reverberate itself.
The laughing wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t even a cackle.

But rather the laughter of a supremely satisfied someone who had just completed something they have been working on for years and now was enjoying their magnum opus, at the height of their power. The laugh of someone contented.

Slimer instantly went invisible and hid even deeper in the shadows of the stairwell, only his orange eyes visible.
The Demon did not seem to notice him as it turned its back to the stair well and hung its head, as if in prayer, and then brilliant blue flame exploded from its body and in a blast of smoke and a sickening smell of brimstone and sulphur, it vanished and left the basement eerily silent.

After he was sure the demon was gone, Slimer re-materialized and bolted up through the stairs and into the garage. Back upstairs, he flitted frantically from one end of the room to the other, searching through the papers and files that got slung around the room into a paper snow when Janine’s desk was destroyed..and unfortunately so were most of the papers.

The guys usually wrote down where they were going so that Janine could mail out the invoice after the work was done but he had no idea where it was. He had seen Peter give Janine the docket and had even heard Winston and Ray talking about it.

But it had to be destroyed...wait a minute, Slimer though. It as written on that weird yellow paper that Janine insisted on laying under the regular invoice…something about it was different from regular paper, he remembered…car…car paper? No that wasn’t it…

Carbon paper.

That was it!

Slimer dove for the nearest pile of papers and there, at the bottom, he saw a crumpled yellow edge. Tossing the other papers side, he found it, the worksheet. Ray had been teaching him how to read and he was making progress, but Slimer felt he still didn’t get why you would want to read.

Lifting the paper up to his face, he looked all over for the one thing he knew how to recognize by his time with the Ghostbusters.

An address.

Line after line of writing in Janine’s fast but neat printing and the typed text next to some very large numbers that left Slimer wondering exactly how much they meant and ----

There! Found it!

In the upper right hand corner under the familiar No-Ghost logo and beneath the company’s address and phone number was the CLIENT ADDRESS, whatever that meant but below it was the address of the job.

Newcombe City
Police Headquarters
5206 Clearwater Road
Newcomb, NY 12852

Slimer felt hope well up inside him for the first time all day and he flew over to the map on the far right wall and stuck his nose practically into it, looking for the word NEWCOMB.

After leaving enough slime for a snail to be jealous, Slimer located it and without another sound, he flew up and out, through the roof at top speed, streaking through the sky like a green bullet, his only desire was to get to the guys before things got worse, and to save Janine.

[enchanted unicorn]

Sorry man, but everytime I read this topic name, I keep seeing" Long Dong"

[Dan AKA]

Sorry man, but everytime I read this topic name, I keep seeing" Long Dong"

THANK YOU!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

The title may change. LOL. thanks for the critique guys.


LMAO


*kidding*

But seriously I do have an alternate title in place for it but I'm holding it back until the project is finished. what are you thoughts on it so far? ...besides the humerous title. LOL

[SeekerAfterTruth]

Newest update seems to be a little odd, but I'll roll with it so far. I like the estimation of slimer's intelligence, but I suppose I find it kind of...interesting, the way well, whatever it was possessed Janine.

Seems a *bit* a like Movie I and RGB cross, but not in an outstandingly good way, but a little more like a copying way. I'm not exactly sure why, but it's something like the way you wrote the bit on possession that was kind of weird?

I'm still reading this, nonwithstanding. It's cool, update soon!

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

You are correct about the familiarity of the way the Harbringer possesses It's victim...it does bear many similarities to the Terror Dogs possession of Louis and Dana, which actually was intentional (not to copy it but to have similarities to) because we never actually got to see the posession itself, just the attack in the films. and I always wondered what did it look like...how do the terror dogs possess people ....did i mention that the Harbringer and the other Guardians (oops hint dropped there...there may be more than two) are related to Terror Dogs in their class and type but much much more dangerous, both in intelligence and abilities but I can't say more than that right now because it would be a huge spoiler..

If you could only see the writing i have done on these creatures and their history and back story...the backstory, information and history of the big baddie (who has yet to fully show himself) is about six pages long hand written. I may put it up to go with the story to, as a bonus. I would love to see some of the awesome artists on the boards try and capture this creatures and their master in images. I've tried but its no where near the quality of some of the work on here.

Hope that helps clear it up a bit.

Can't wait to hear what you suggest! And again, thanks alot for being my one constant reader. ..its great to have a voice of reason to reign me in!

PS

I suppose I could drop a little spoiler about the bad guy here...the title of the story is Canis Mors, which is rough latin for Dog of Death....as the association here is with jackals and wolves and dogs scavenging and eating the flesh of corpses...there is another reason for the title besides the obvious one..but if i tell it..it will ruin the plot....

[Extreme_gb4evr]

great work man i love it, but... when are you goint to finish exodus?

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

I never could get a reaction out of exodus but i do intend to finish it. Not sure when but I work on it from time to time. Not many people like the extreme ghostbusters but i do lol...another reason is Canis Mors may have an impact on Exodus as the events in Canis Mors happen years before Exodus and we (drops another hint) might get to see a certain really bad guy come back...

what did you think of exodus? I liked the story, but the thing is, really good commentary, ideas and critiqueing are hard to get because I dont follow the traditional fan established canon. Actually now that I think about it, I have my own canon and it sometimes runs against the grain of the "canon" already established and some people have a hard time with it.

See, i see the canon as progresing somewhat like this, with more authority given to the real ghostbusters and credit given to the XGB as well, not that mine is any better, just different.


Ghostbusters
Real Ghostbusters (five year span)
Ghostbusters 2
Real Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters The Video Game
Extreme Ghostbusters

I haven't forgotten the NOW comics (remember early in Canis Mors, Peter's poster of Lucious Linda that Frump broke?) or anything like that, i just consider them to be part of RGB lore and as for Ghostbusters The Return (excellent book!) it would have to be retconned a bit to happen just before GB the game and find a way to explain why winston is no longer the mayor...but believe me, ive got ideas just all filed away ready when i need em

Since alot of people dislike XGB and dont consider RGB to be canon for the most part, my stories tend to be a new way of looking at things but i like it that way better because I truely love this franchise and its characters and its stories and how it brings people together and I want to do something to contribute. If Canis Mors goes well, then I will compelete Exodus and if those two do well enough, I have another project I would like to work on that I started a long time ago...which is novelizing the real ghostbusters episodes into "book" form...this would carry over into the XGB too...cant forget about them I think my favorite episodes to novelize would be Rage, Home Is Where the Horror Is, Deadliners, Darkness at Noon, back in the saddle, and one where egon's former colleague fakes his own death to enslave spirits..(forgot the title forgive me! its been a LONG day at work and prepping for a road trip tomorrow to an investigation in west tennessee)

Some of the changes I would make to my canon, would be to discount the Slimer-based episodes and the campier characters that were introduced and of course, i will ALWAYS keep Janine as she was in season 1, that fire brand, sarcastic, brave sexy secretary and of course, i would keep the love relationship between she and egon and might even consider throwing in Dana (i already have a plots in mind as to why she wasn't in RGB), keeping peter's personality as Lorenzo Music portrayed it and having less of Louis and keep Slimer as he was best as...as a slobbering green gluttonous mass!

After the game comes out, and I get to know the character of the rookie better, I plan on adding him into the RGB canon as well as well as the other guy that Ray mentioned as having worked for them for a short time before something really nasty happened to him... I already have his uniform and look sketched out as well as RGB versions of the game equipment upgrades but I wont do more with him until I know more about him...such as his name. For now, I think we are all calling him Ryan French because we dont have anything better to call him and Bob is just NOT going to cut the mustard...

I experimented with The Grundel a while back and it went really well. I had it almost complete up until just before Egon figured out what the Grundel was. I'm not sure where I would start with that type of project or how much people would want to hang me but I think it would be fun to take the episodes, give them a new format, and then expand on them and remove the censoring that went into place for the kiddies but maintain the essential humor and equal parts terror that made the shows so lovable and memorable.

For now, I just watch and re-watch every episode i can get, research the series bibles that are available, read every now comic i can get my hands on, reading the original novels, scripts and cut scenes, pretty much everything.


Thank you so much for taking an interest in what I am trying to do. I really appreciate all you guys that read and comment, and I don't often say much but I just wanted to say thanks and hope you guys (and gals) continue.

Thanks!!!!!!!!!

[Fritz]

You know, if you like the cartoons, use them. I can't stress that enough. Ignoring them because "other people don't consider them canon"...well, that's their loss. Don't get hung up on what everyone else is doing--do what you want.

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

thank you, Fritz. I do sincerely love those shows and characters...even now, years and years later, I can still remember my favorite christmas, when i was probably five or six, and i got lots of odds and ends, but my favorite gifts were the proton packs and pke meters and traps we got. We spent years playing with them, my sister and I. I wish I still had them now because they were the source of so many happy memories, before the family fell apart and everyone got older and grew away from the things that make us human and give us joy.

I know it sounds like a load of tosh, but Ghostbusters for me is a passion and I will be taking your advice and wish me luck. It is not going to be easy lol. But, as long as I can make at least 1 person happy and relive a bit of their child hood, thats cool with me, even if its just for a little while.

Thats why I write. I don't write for praise or to be the best or anything; i just enjoy creating and letting others experience it. Pity I cant build worth a snot otherwise i could contribute more to the community. I enjoy just browsing the boards and seeing the beautiful works of art people make, from props to artwork...truly inspiring.

[Charlie Richter]

George lucas said it best, I do these movies for me not for the fans.

Sounds terrible but its life.

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

agreed!

[Extreme_gb4evr]

how ever i think you are a much better person than Mr. Lucas

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

LOL thanks...

[TAPS_Family_Anthony]

fear not...i have not stopped working on Canis Mors. Just recovering. I was hospitalized a week with pneumonia and I have found some awesome inspiration which is going to make some great writing....ill update when i have updates!