The New York Soul Exchange

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Ray has tried to make a habit of using the same door to go to Milliways every time, except when there's an emergency. The door in the alley was inaccessible for obvious reasons- the Miliways side might change size freely, but the Firehouse side? Ha. It's the door from the garage into the street, or it's nothing.

Which means, essentially, that the hearse backs out of the Bar and onto a street scene that looks like this, or possibly this. It pauses a moment.

"You okay back there, Dominic?"

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There is blinking, and there is raising of eyebrows.

And then Peter has to go and spoil the effect by saying, "So, you saw the movie,huh?"

"Not to my knowledge, Peter," says the car.

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"I'm a seer, Dr. Venkman. I had a vision of your battle with von Stabbington a few days ago, and I believe I can help."

He turns toward the man with the girl's voice. "Ecto?"

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That gets an interested look from Egon. "Really?" he asks, and starts to step forward; the car stops him with one metal arm.

"Let the man do his thing first, Spengs."

"That's me," says Ecto, raising one of Ray's hands. "Do you really think you can help us, Mr. Deegan?"

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"I do. But it won't be easy." He takes a deep breath and continues. "I have the ability to project myself into other people's minds. If I push far enough, I can enter the deep structures of their subconscious and communicate directly with their souls. I believe that if I do that with the two of you, I can use my own mind as a passageway for your souls to return to their proper bodies. It's going to be dangerous for all three of us, but it's the only way."

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"Whoa," says Winston, raising a hand. "You can actually get hold of somebody's soul? That's serious mojo."

Peter starts to mutter something, but then glances at Ray's body and stops himself. Egon merely lifts a brow at him and says, "What kind of monitoring protocols are you going to need from us for the procedure?"

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"We'll need spell wards around us. The strongest ones you can manage."

If this doesn't work, it could potentially damage Ray and Ecto's souls. And Dominic knows exactly what happens when a soul is damaged.

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Egon glances at the car; one of the instruments on the roof slews around to face him, the closest Ray can currently manage to glancing back. "The Babylonian geomatic containment circle?" Egon says.

"And the Sumerian spirit confinement wards that we used in 2342 for Danny," the car answers. "In fact, I think we need to go full-on Black Oil confinement level."

"I'll go get those magnets of yours," says Peter suddenly. "This whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. Winston, you wanna come with?"

"Sure thing, Pete."

Egon and Ray are now involved in a full-on discussion of some of the more esoteric aspects of how to confine horrible malign alien things and which elements of their wards are applicable to human soul energies. Janine's just sighing and going back over to her desk; this kind of thing gives her headaches. Ecto takes the opportunity to sidle over to Dominic. "Don't mind Uncle Peter," she says. "He doesn't think I have a soul."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"I don't see how that's possible, given your situation," replies Dominic. "The spell that von Stabbington used was necromantic magic designed to move a soul from one vessel to another. If you didn't have a soul it wouldn't have worked at all."

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"Really?" says Ecto, blinking. "Cool! I mean, the soul part. I didn't know for sure. I thought I did, but I didn't know."

"-and the Lesser Voorish Sigil," says Egon. "All right. Dominic? Is this going to be done indoors, or do you need open air to work? We can accommodate either."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"If there's an open space nearby where we won't be disturbed, that would be best."

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"The alley's probably best, then," says Egon. "Since we can't get Ray here up to the roof. It'll be easier to lay down the warding lines on concrete anyway. I'll go get started."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

* * *

An hour or so later, two humans and one '59 Cadillac hearse are standing in the back alley, ringed with wards both magical and technological. The Ghostbusters have done all they can; now it's up to Dominic.

"I think we're ready."

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Ecto nods and looks around for a safe place to stand. "What do I have to do?" she asks, and while Ray doesn't say anything himself, he's got the same question.

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"Just make yourself comfortable and try to relax. From your point of view, this should only take a few seconds. I'll be the one doing all the work."

He turns toward Egon, who's the only one still watching from ground level. "If you see a really bright white light coming off of any of us, you run, okay? Don't even think about trying to get into the circle."

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Egon nods. "Understood," he says. "It won't be the first explosion I've had to outrun."

"Try to have a little confidence, Egon," says the car. In an undertone it adds, "Ecto's already nervous enough."

The physicist starts to speak, then glances at Ecto's awkwardly seated form and just nods instead.

"All right, then," says the car. "Ready, kiddo?"

"Ready, Daddy."

"So'm I. We're in your hands, Dominic."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

Dominic nods. "I'm going to move your soul first, Dr. Stantz. A machine body will function without a soul for a few seconds. A human body won't."

He reaches out to touch the hood of the car with one hand and the side of the man's head with the other. Dominic takes a deep breath... and steps in.

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There are people with inner landscapes of blazing white fire, the air fairly singing with power. There are others whose vistas are scarred and scorched and barren, littered with the evidence of their past transgressions.

And there are those whose interior landscapes resemble the single biggest and most complicated lab- scientific or otherwise- in the world. Instruments and books and shelves line every possible surface, and a few of the impossible ones, stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see. One could walk very close to forever and not find a place where the different means of learning more came to an end. The oldest parchment scrolls and stone tablets lie cheek-by-jowl with things that glimmer and flash and go beep, and those are stacked under telescopes and over complex mazes of tubes and fluids and wires of every kind.

But there's open space as well, light shafting in long slanting rays from openings some vast distance above and away- and one of the shafts is falling quite conveniently on the book in the lap of a dark-haired boy of perhaps ten or eleven years of age. He's got a plushie Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man tucked under one arm as he reads, and a silver cylinder that Dominic might recognize from his original vision is lying on the floor next to him. He's wearing black-and-green pajamas.

Oh, and a ten-foot-wide stripe of the floor that he's sitting on stretches out on either side of him, burnt and smoke-stained and marked with odd crackly-looking patterns that bear an odd resemblance to alligator skin. It's the sort of pattern you get when an accelerant's been used to fuel a house fire.

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

Everything is metaphor, here. The burnt part of the floor is a part of Dr. Stantz's mind that's been damaged through some terrible accident; whatever capacity he might have had for magic is now gone. Dominic feels a pang of sympathy. For the seer, losing his magic would be like a master craftsman losing the use of his hands.

Dominic stops just short of the blackened streak--touching it would be unwise--and addresses the little boy. "Raymond?"

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The boy looks up, snapping the book shut (as he's currently trying to remain as calm and collected as possible, it's a book on meditation). "I'm here," he says. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. What's up?"

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

"I'm here to take you home. Are you ready?"

No point in beating around the bush. Time is of the essence.

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"One second."

The boy hops to his feet, hooks the switched-off lightsaber onto the all-but-invisible waistband of the pajama pants, and scrambles over to the nearest shelves. Once the book is back in place three shelves up, he hops back down and fairly bounces over to Dominic's side. "Yeah, I'm good," he says with a grin. "I can't wait to see this."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

Dominic smiles down at the boy, then closes his eyes and stretches his arm out in front of him. When he opens his eyes again--all three of them--they're matte white and glowing softly. And, slowly, like an enormous eye opening in midair, the passage reveals itself. It manifests as a swirling tunnel stretching off into the distance, with a pathway just wide enough for man and boy to walk abreast.

"Take my hand, and we'll go. Whatever happens, do not step off the path and do not let go of my hand."

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"Ooooooh," says the boy involuntarily, and reaches up for Dominic's hand without taking his eyes away from the tunnel. "Okay, that's just cool."

[grumpyseer.livejournal.com]

Dominic gives the boy's hand a reassuring squeeze, and together they step into the tunnel.

Time is subjective in psychoplanes. The trip could take an hour, or a day, or a fraction of a second. Or a lifetime.

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Or pieces of a lifetime, anyway. Pieces that roll and stir around them both...

There's a grey street, lined on both sides by two-story houses with wire or wooden fencing around their yards. "I don't get it," says a tall man with reddish-brown hair, crouching down to pick up a complicated assemblage of metal and chain and wheels. "You learned to do this last spring. How does anyone forget how to ride a bicycle?" The dark-haired boy- the one holding onto Dominic's hand, minus a few years- looks sheepish and mutters something; the man sighs. "We should get your inner ear checked or something. Come on, kiddo. Let's try it again."

And a room, a stark one that has the smells and bright light and white paint of a painfully clean infirmary, with a man in a black suit holding a big black-and-chrome weapon pointed directly at the space between an adult Dr. Stantz's eyes. Dr. Stantz looks as if he wants nothing more to retreat, but he's in one of the infirmary beds and can't exactly pass through solid matter no matter how hard he tries. "Okay," says the man in the black suit. "Who are you and what've you done with Agent Rho?"

And a stream in a wintry wilderness somewhere, no snow on the ground but the weather painfully cold; this is mountain country somewhere, with scraggly trees and a feeling of remoteness. Some places are unspoilt largely because people don't consider them worth bothering with. Dr. Stantz, however, seems to disagree, if only because he's here- but anyone looking at him can see he's exhausted, run down, unshaven, and dirty in that way that people who wear the same clothes five days running because they have no other choice tend to get. There's a creature that might be a very large shrimp or crayfish or something of that nature on a rock in the stream, and it's waving its claws and giggling in a high chk-chk-chk voice. "Either go away or- or stop laughing like that, dammit!" says Dr. Stantz, looking supremely frustrated. It doesn't help much; the thing only says, "This is what the dead ones are afraid of?", then vanishes into the stream as the memory flows away.