July, 1908: Arkham, Massachusetts

Ray waved to Peaslee, smiling, and waited a full thirty seconds after the man was out of sight to close his office door and sink down to the floor with his back against it. Oh, Primus, that was nerve-wracking. Yes, the Yithian had confessed, yes, the conversation had gone all right, but-

"Excuse me? I don't know what you mean, Mr. Stantz."
"Bull puckey. What's the weather like in the late Jurassic? I understand Australia's a lot drier and sandier than you must be used to these days."
"You're mad, I think. Or thinking of someone else-"
"I know two of the Lords of Time personally, thank you very much. I've met one of the Hounds of Tindalos and I'm still alive to talk about it. Don't think that just because I'm not one of your chronally-filched knowledge grubbing cultists I don't know what I'm talking to. Now, are we going to go back to my office and talk this over like civilized beings, or were you planning on making things difficult for yourself and your host?"

That was too close. That was much too close. At least the Yithian had been polite, once they got past the initial difficulties, but that was one more being of incalculable power and unknown motives that knew his name. The Deep Ones, the core Deep Ones, not the ones of his own world- knew that someone here was wise to them, even if they didn't necessarily know who Suzi was. (At least she was gone, and beyond any kind of reach!) And there had been the dream back in May.

"I do not understand your optimism. I will have plenty of time to figure you out."

The gateway back to Milliways had been based on philotic physics, which relied innately on connections at a level humanity couldn't ordinarily perceive. Once together, always together- the old arcane saying had been proven viable by the physics of Valentine Wiggin's world, and Ray had worked out how to make it work to his advantage. Nyarlathotep had destroyed the work in the blink of an eye to keep him here, but Ray knew more than enough by now to understand that that had been a mere warning shot. The next attempt would be a disaster beyond imagining, not necessarily for him but possibly for the people of Arkham. Maybe even of all of this world, because once a connection like that existed between two entities- oh, God, the Mythos was cosmic enough. The last thing human existence needed was for him to essentially build them a doorway to the fundamentally interconnected point of all things and kick it open for them. The last thing any of existence needed.

So there would be no philotic gateway built here, not ever again; but if that was the case how was he supposed to get home? It had been literally years since his arrival, since the Milliways door opened on the wrong universe and the wrong time, and in all that time Suzi was the first sign of anything like hope of getting back. Was he going to have to stick it out until 1986 and hitch a ride to New York with Alice Derleth? Assuming he lasted that long, of course. Assuming he didn't completely lose his marbles in the meantime, although from what the dream had said (You will not fall, only fear. I have no interest in seeing you broken.) that might not be a possibility for him. Assuming the Deep Ones didn't figure out who Suzi had been staying with and come after him with their knives. Assuming any number of a myriad of things, and around here assuming only ever made matters worse.

He covered his face in both hands, (I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death which brings total obliteration) took a long breath, (Concentrate on your spark. Hear the hum. Feel the calm from it) and leaned his head back against the door.

All right. He would manage. He'd- yeah. He'd manage somehow. He just had to stay out of sight until then. Maybe there'd be an opening first, a door leading back somehow that he could take. It wouldn't be a shortcut, just-

There is only forward, Ray Stantz. There are no shortcuts here.

-if there was a door, and it-

plenty of time to figure you out

If it opened, he'd take it, and if he didn't, he'd find a way to find one. If nothing else, at least one universe existed in which Miskatonic University and the Ghostbusters coincided. He'd just have to hide at the University and stay as inobtrusive as possible, working at the library and not getting noticed, and manage to live until then. One way or another. Heck, if he was lucky he'd get thrown out of the continuum when his local self got born.

Ha. If. What a laugh.

Ray dropped his hands, got up, and went over to his desk. The rum flask, as usual since Suzi's departure, was left untouched, but he'd never get through the rest of the day to the night to the next dawn without his Mr. Stay-Puft.

First Day of Classes - Miskatonic University - Aug. 31st, 1908

I have to be crazy to even be contemplating this, Ray thought as he slouched down in his seat at the back of one of Miskatonic's engineering classrooms. At least it's a good kind of crazy.

He couldn't remember the last time the first day of the school year meant anything to him from this side of the desk. Not that he had done any teaching at Melcene, since Senji was one of those professors who mostly did research rather than taught and Ray had been his assistant, but still. University life was the same for faculty the multiverse over. For students? Not so much. Ray was the oldest of the students in Ephi Nokes's Dynamics and Vibrations course, though having tested out of the introductory classes in Mechanical Engineering he was at least among students within striking distance of his own apparent age. It didn't spare him the odd looks, but at least the selection of sophomores and juinors were mostly mature enough to refrain from snickering at the figure they only knew as one of the Orne Library's staff.

As the last of the students filed in just shy of the official starting-time, Professor Nokes looked up. "Thank you all for coming," he said in his dry New Hampshire accent. "I do appreciate your promptness. Perhaps that might be improved upon in future. Now, let us begin..."

Nokes leapt straight into the sort of problem that Ray remembered all too well from his days at Columbia, starting with the case of a mis-tuned turbine engine's rotor vibrations. It took Ray a while to dig the specifics of the cases they'd worked on at Columbia out of his head; he hadn't been a mech. e. major, unfortunately. He'd have gone for the electrical engineering course of study if he hadn't been worried about what he might do to the time stream by trying to integrate the concepts he had from home into the class material. Pabodie had sworn up and down that the mechanical engineering courses here were the best to be found anywhere. Ray was pretty sure that was an exaggeration, but at least it meant he'd be in a less dangerous position if he let something advanced slip. He started covering his notebook's pages with notes on Nokes' lecture and did his best not to get looked at.

Somewhere around the introduction of a single cracked blade as an experimental variable, the words, "Excuse me, Professor, but you're wrong" jerked Ray out of his academic reverie. He knew that voice. He knew that voice-

No. No he didn't. The dark hair, yes, the nose, yes, but the jawline was all wrong and the young man was far too short even sitting down to be the man Ray remembered. And his accent was just a bit off, the sound of somewhere in eastern Europe intruding into his otherwise carefully cultivated American speech patterns. But oh, God, if it hadn't been for those little elements then the student arguing with Nokes about the possibility of applying an alternating frequency/time-domain method to the calculations instead of performing a traditional time integration computation could have passed for Egon Spengler in a heartbeat.

Ray scarcely got any notes taken for the rest of the class. When it was over he ran for the halls; the list of students registered for the course had been tacked to the wall outside, but Ray hadn't bothered to look at it. Now was another story. He ran his finger down the list swiftly, and stopped, and stared.

And had to bite his knuckle not to laugh, because directly above Stantz, R. was the name Spengler, L.

This was going to be an interesting semester. He could tell already.

Summer, 1919

When the influenza of 1919 rolled over the county of Essex in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, it left unnumbered dead in its wake. That was no surprise; death traveled in the Spanish Lady's train as surely as night followed day. Indeed, it was a leveller the likes of which no-one had ever seen before, outdoing even the Great War in its equity of destruction. For a thing had come to pass during the time of the War, a thing which no-one gave much thought to before, and could not be bothered to pursue after. Of all the counties in the Commonwealth, Essex was the least touched by the Gold Star- and that was because, if one made the effort to search, of the fact that of all the counties in the Commonwealth, Essex sent forth the fewest sons to the War.

Not that the young men of that part of the state were lacking in patriotism. Far from it! No, many a lad went off to volunteer, some of them in the armies of other countries in the days before America would give them the chance. Their young men were as willing to go of their own accord as any other. But that was the thing, you see. They went of their own choosing. The hand of the draft board fell lightly indeed upon the county, young men's numbers scarcely ever being called; and in some towns that hand was not felt at all. Kingsport was one such. Dunwich, another. Innsmouth's queer clannish folk never so much as heard a recruiter's voice, and that was just the way they liked it. And as for Arkham town, well, they'd given volunteers, hadn't they? If the government didn't call on them to send more than they wished to give, they weren't about to object. Keep the lads at the university or by their parents' sides, that was just the way it ought to be.

No one noticed, or rather, if they did, they kept their own counsel. A young scientist of Polish extraction who nonetheless hung his shingle as an engineer in the city of Providence calculated the statistical likelihood of such a thing happening, and found the chances of its being accidental so far beyond the pale as to be effectively impossible; but he only told an old friend and fellow graduate of Miskatonic, and if Ray Stantz of the Orme Library thought there was anything to Laszlo Spengler's calculations, he never did say.

(no subject)

November 2, 2007
14 North Moore Street
Manhattan

The jumpsuit was in the wash, and the last of the pinkish yuk had come out of Ray's hair under the onslaught of the strongest concentration of Dr. Bronner's available. Slimer had been fed on copious quantities of big-box store brand chocolate cereal and spiced sugared watermelon seeds. Veggie Heaven was delivering the evening's order of Egon-approved Chinese food sometime in the next twenty minutes. Life, overall, was good.

Then came the rap at the door. "I'll get it," called Venkman from downstairs. Ray just sighed; once, just once, it would be nice to have an evening undisturbed by-

"Guys?" called Venkman up one of the poles. "We've got lawyer sign!"

Oh, crap. They'd been promised that the legal end of the matters in Poughkeepsie would be settled by the federal government. This couldn't be good.

The lawyer, when Ray and Egon and Winston arrived, was one of those people who looks as if they were constructed from a single too-flawless piece. From his slick black hair to his impeccably tailored suit to shoes that could not possibly have walked on the streets of Manhattan and escaped that unscathed, he was exactly the kind of person that Ray knew instinctively must not be allowed to speak to Venkman. Egon must have noticed the quality too, because as Ray stepped forward on Venkman's right, Egon did the same on Venkman's left. "Is there a problem, sir?" Egon asked.

"No, Dr. Spengler, no problem at all," said the man with a smile too symmetrical to be human, in a voice oddly familiar but not quite identifiable. "I represent the legal firm of Wolfram and Hart-"

"Oh, no," said Ray suddenly. "Oh, hell no. I remember you guys-"

"And we remember you, Dr. Stantz," said the man, unperturbed. "Rest assured I am not empowered to practice law in your continuum. We have no branches anywhere on this Earth or its close affiliates. No, I've been contacted by certain... powers, shall we say... to ensure that the document they wish to bestow upon you is completely air-tight according to local law and tradition."

He reached into his briefcase (which was made of a leather so black it gave back only enough light to inform the eye that it was there in the first place) and withdrew a folder resembling a diploma case.

Venkman started to reach for it; Ray and Egon moved to cut him off. Ultimately Winston accepted the article instead and flipped it open. His brows drew together sharply, and he looked up. "Be it known, for value received, the undersigned entities, including but not limited to Haborym, Earl of Theft and Destruction; Geryon, Personification of Fraud; Shax, Great Marquis who- waaaait a minute-" Winston flipped through several of the pages. "This is all just names and titles!"

"Not entirely, Mr. Zeddemore. Please have a look at the last page."

"-permanently and without dispute, for the remainder of existence of the space-time continuum, all right, title, and interest in and to the following: one (1) soul-"

Venkman, who had been reading over Winston's shoulder, blurted out, "This is the contract for Walter Peck's soul??"

"Not a contract so much as a transfer of any claim thereon, Dr. Venkman. A contract would imply that something was being traded in exchange for said soul. So far as Pandemonium is concerned, the value received is more than fulfilled by the act of taking that burden off our hands."

"So what you're saying-" Ray glanced over his shoulder at the fishbowl on Janine's desk.

"That's correct, Dr. Stantz. Whatever might happen to him otherwise, Hell does not want Walter Peck."

Winston broke the silence with, "So what do we do with him?"

"Change his water every few days?"

"Besides that, Peter."

"I'm sure you gentlemen will think of something," said the attorney smoothly. "While I can't say anything for our counterparts on the other side of the ideological fence, I doubt they'll be claiming him any time soon, given his predilections and prior behavior. Just don't breed him, and we should be all right."

Four simultaneous expressions of 'ew' struck the Ghostbusters; the attorney smiled. "I do wish you gentlemen luck. It's been an interesting experience, in all honesty- and I can't say that I want to go through it again. I've had more than enough humiliation for one age of the world; the possibility of getting this transfer wrong-"

Humiliation? Ray thought- and then leaned forward to peer at the attorney. "Yes?" said the attorney, lifting one eyebrow. "Was there something?"

"Morgannon?" Ray asked, astonished. "Is that you?"

The attorney merely smiled, holding up one finger to his lips in a 'sh' gesture; then he looked to the others. "Do take care, gentlemen. There are far, far bigger things afoot in this world than you have ever dreamed, and they mean neither you nor us well."

And with that he was gone, leaving only a faintly lingering odor of brimstone behind.

January 26, 1931

There are moments when even those without so much as a single psychically active cell remaining in their bodies can know things, and this was one of them. As Ray shivered a little at the sight of poor Gedney's body, its neck frozen stiffly at an unnatural angle, it became abundantly clear: something, he didn't know what, had happened here that was enough to end his obligation to the Old Ones. He gestured to Danforth quickly to pull the tarpaulin back over the corpse. Danforth didn't look right at all- not that anybody could be expected to under the circumstances, but Danforth had the look of a frog about to be pithed. The less he had to deal with, the better; he was only along because he was the only pilot of the three of them, and refused (quite sensibly) to be left all alone with the plane. "Well," Ray said carefully, "unless I'm... really mistaken, it was an accident, at least? I mean, it doesn't look like anything was deliberately-"

"Shut up, Stantz," said Dyer. The old professor's nerves were wound as tight as guitar strings, a side-effect of long listening for the bizarre musical piping mentioned in Lake's report. "We need, I think, to- what was that?"

"What was what?" Ray asked, looking up swiftly; but then he heard it too. Not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response, but a thing too mockingly normal to belong in this subterranean, frozen hell. It was nothing more and nothing less than the perfect, ordinary, everyday raucous squawking of a penguin.

The muffled sound floated from subglacial recesses nearly opposite to the corridor through which they had arrived. Either it led in some way to the surface and the outer world, or some fate too dreadful to believe had led the birds to the subterranean depths in times past; and either way, it was mutually agreed that they had to track it to its source through that world of age-long, uniform lifelessness. The Old Ones seemed unlikely to be of any assistance now. To judge by the art in the caverns above they were too careful, too deliberate, to have abandoned the body without some sign unless there were a very great reason to have done so.

As they picked their way towards what the map and compass seemed to indicate was the basement of a large pyramidal structure, a bulky white shape loomed up ahead of them. Danforth swore and flicked on the second electrical torch. The white, waddling thing was fully six feet high, and for a moment its incalculable appearance clutched at all three men with an unreasoned, primitive dread. Then it turned and sidled off to the left, joining two others of its kind, and all became clear: penguins, the lot of them. Man-sized, and albino and eyeless as many an ancient cave species had come to be, but penguins nonetheless.

Ray lay one arm against the tunnel wall before banging his head on his sleeve. This place was getting to him.