DISCLAIMER:
The Ghostbusters are the property of Columbia Pictures, Inc. The Phantom Stranger is property of DC Comics, Inc. No money is being made from this and no breach of copyright is in any way intended.
It'd been months since Ray's last really good night's sleep. The battle with Gozer had been six months ago. He remembered that. He remembered that with perfect clarity. Six months. You didn't forget a time span like that.
You just got confused about it.
He'd been all right for a few days right after. Oh, sure, there'd been interviews and arguments and City Council meetings, and that investigation team from FEMA had come storming through. Lord, Spengs almost bit one of the FEMA guys before Venkman had wrestled him away and convinced him to breathe into a paper bag for a bit! The thought made him smile, even now, but it never lasted long.
That's when the confusion had started to set in. The FEMA investigators... well, there'd been an air about them that he didn't understand. There'd been a tension, a hostility, that just didn't sit right for some reason. They'd acted as if the titanic struggle on Central Park West had been some kind of- something, he didn't know what. As if there were a culprit. There wasn't, of course, except maybe the building's architect, but Evo Shandor had died before Ray was even born. He'd tried to explain, but it hadn't helped, and then there'd . . .
He screwed up his face, concentrating, trying with all his might to remember. The other federal agents came in after that. The FBI was understandable, sort of. Ray wasn't sure if there'd been a crime, exactly, but that was their job, wasn't it? To see if a crime had been committed somewhere? He could about deal with that. FEMA made more sense, but if he tried, he could understand the FBI coming in. It was the last group that bothered him more than anything.
Try as hard as he could, rummage through his conspiracy memory banks as long as he could, Ray Stantz simply could not remember the existence of a government agency called the Department of Homeland Security.
He'd tried to raise the point with Winston. Winston had just looked at him and asked him if he were crazy. Venkman and Spengler had been much too busy actually speaking to these 'Homeland Security' people to answer anyone else's questions, and by the time the investigation was done with, Ray was afraid to raise the topic again. Everyone accepted their presence, though. They'd simply walked out of nowhere, they'd flashed their badges, and that had been that. Police, firefighters, EVERYONE seemed to think they were legitimate. Everyone.
Except Ray.
That had been the first problem. He'd noticed others since, some small, some big. He hadn't said anything, though. There was something deeply and horribly wrong with the world as Ray knew it, and for the first time in his life he didn't dare question it. Not aloud, anyway. His fellow Ghostbusters were his closest friends and allies, but one of them routinely carried homebrewed Thorazine in his sport coat in case his can of Mace didn't work and another had attempted self-trepanation in the basement. And Winston- well- he wasn't about to repeat that mistake. The last thing in the world that he wanted was for Winston to look at him that way again.
So for what must've been the hundredth night in a row, Ray gave up on sleeping and made his way up to the roof to stare at the light-polluted skies over Manhattan.
Eventually he heard footsteps behind him. He sighed. Venkman had come across him last night, and he'd been forced to improvise a story about science and goals and feeling like an exterminator. It hadn't been his best work, but Pete had bought it. He'd had about four hours' sleep in the last fifty-two hours, though, and his improvisational muscles were just about worn out. Maybe if he stayed quiet, he'd be left alone.
"Raymond Stantz."
His initial instinct- damn!- was quickly overrun by the realization that the voice belonged to a stranger. Who the heck knew his name and had access to the firehouse roof lock at this hour of the night? He scrambled to his feet, turning towards the access door.
The man standing there was. . . no one he knew. Not so far as he could see, anyway. Given that the stranger wore a black fedora and equally black trench coat, Ray was lucky to spot anything about him beyond the glimmer of a white turtleneck, and perhaps a faint gleam of eyes under the brim of the hat. "Who are you?" he asked warily. "What are you doing here?"
Something like a smile touched the visible lower half of the man's face. "A friend of sorts, perhaps," he said. "At least, a fellow wanderer between the worlds."
Ray found himself wishing like anything for his PKE meter. Or, better, his pack and a whole lot of backup. "Excuse me?"
The man inclined his head. "My apologies," he said. "It seems you do not know- a thing I had feared might have happened. . . Dr. Stantz, I would like to ask you a question."
"Yeah, well, I've got a couple of questions myself," Ray snapped back with more bravado than bravery. Something about the stranger prickled the hairs across the back of his neck in a way unlike anything else in his memory. "How'd you get up here? What did you do to the others?"
"I came through the door," said the man, seemingly unperturbed. "As for the others, I have done nothing to them. They remain asleep, completely unaware of my presence. I am here to speak with you, and you only. . . Dr. Stantz, what year is it?"
Ray all but choked.
The man waited.
"You . . . how did you know?" Ray managed, his hand reaching out for a support railing that wasn't there. "I haven't said anything! Not to anyone!"
"As I said, Dr. Stantz," said the man in an almost-gentle tone, "I am a wanderer. Am I correct in saying that, so far as you are concerned, it is 1984? Whereas to your companions- to the rest of the world- it is 2004?"
Mutely, Ray nodded. His knees were shaking. He didn't dare speak. He knew. The man knew.
"I suspected as much," said the stranger. "Dr. Stantz, since I doubt you can bear much in the way of truth right now, I will make this as simple as I can. Are you familiar with the concept of parallel worlds?"
"Of- of course. Astral projection and spirit existence are all predicated on the assumption that there are multiple planes of reality within striking distance of our own." Surreptitiously, he wiped his palm on the leg of his pyjamas. "And of course there's the scenario in All the Myriad Ways-"
The stranger nodded. "Good," he said. "Then I will not have to explain much when I say this: this is not the world of your birth. This is not even the dimension of your birth. For the past six months' subjective time, since the entity called Gozer struck you down, you have been living in a different world-line altogether- one very similar to your own, but separated from it by a span of twenty years."
"Wait- so I-" Ray struggled to assimilate what the stranger said, to make it make sense. "You're saying I got thrown into- but-" He took a deep breath. "Why didn't I notice?"
"But you have, have you not? The dissonance between reality as you knew it, and reality as it now stands, has taken up the better part of your thoughts for the past half-year."
"I meant at the time."
There was another smile from the shadowy figure. "You were in the midst of a rapidly expanding dimensional cross-rip of a magnitude unprecedented in your reality, Dr. Stantz," the stranger said. "I very much doubt you would have noticed anything short of your companions being replaced by sapient reptiles."
Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES. His entire nervous system had been on fire, but he'd heard that familiar voice and pulled himself back to the here-and-now. . . "I think I understand," he said, the words feeling strange in his mouth. "I'm not. . . I'd like something in the way of proof, or evidence, but. . ."
"Naturally. You are, after all, a scientist." The stranger gestured towards the access door. "We will speak of this later, when you are better prepared. In the meantime, go back to your bed and sleep. I think you will find upon awakening that this is no mere dream."
"How will I get in contact with you?" Ray asked. "You're not going to just walk into the firehouse tomorrow, are you?"
The man shook his head. "Be here at this time, two days from now," he said. "I will come as I did this evening. We will talk again, Raymond Stantz."
There was a peculiar quality about the man, Ray suddenly realized, as if he were dissolving into the New York shadows. Maybe he was. Hastily, he put up a hand. "Wait!" he cried. "What do I call you?"
The fading stopped; the man came forward just enough to be properly seen. "I have no name that you could use," he said soberly. "But there have been those who have called me the Phantom Stranger. That, I think, will be enough."
In the moment between one breath and the next, he was gone.
Ray shook his head, blinking a few times, and waved a hand through the air where the figure had stood. Nothing. And no trace of ectoplasm on the rooftop, either.
He'd come back in the morning with a PKE meter. Right now he doubted he could keep his eyes open long enough to get as far as the bunkroom.
Author's Note: This story was prompted by a request from a friend. Recently, issue #1 of a Ghostbusters comic book miniseries came out. The comic was set some six months after the defeat of Gozer, but several panels of the comic clearly showed magazines and newspapers proclaiming it to be 2004. When I asked for a writing challenge, my friend asked for "a reasonable explanation of how the Ghostbusters could have defeated Gozer in 1984 and still have it happen six months ago in 2004". This was my response. It draws heavily from a Batman story of the early 1980's, so it's a crossover in more ways than one.
There may or may not be other chapters ahead. I haven't decided whether or not to leave this a one-shot.