CHAPTER ONE

Christine pushed open the door to the kitchen with a sigh. It had been a long night: her waitress uniform was filthy, her blonde hair was frazzled, and the restaurant was still packed even though it was almost closing time.

"Josh," she said, putting her tray down near the kitchen's grill. "Can you please do your job so I don't get yelled at? The guy asked for no mushrooms."

Christine's brother, Josh, looked up from the grill. He was looking chubbier than ever, with his curly hair stuck underneath a hairnet and a pair of chunky headphones wrapped around his head. He was 21, two years younger than Christine, but he still looked about seventeen.

"The guy yelled at you?" Josh said. "And that's my fault how?"

"You made the burger."

Josh stared at Christine's lip a moment. "You know, as you get older, you're getting this weird little mustache. You should really get that looked at."

Christine turned away with a grumble and headed back towards the dining room. Near the door, the owner of the small, Long Island restaurant, Walt, was plating yet another order of a cheeseburger and fries.

"I swear," Walt said, "I've never seen a brother and sister who fight as much as you two. Christine, why don't you help Josh take the trash out to the barn? That way we can close up before midnight."

Christine turned around. "What? Walt, I don't want to go in there. It's creepy."

"I don't care if it's creepy. The faster he gets back in here, the faster we can all go home. So go ahead and help him."

"But Walt, I—"

Christine was suddenly interrupted by Josh shoving a heaping bag of trash into her arms.

"Here ya go," Josh said with a smile. "The extra smelly and heavy one."

A few seconds later, Christine followed Josh out the back door and toward the creaky, red barn behind the restaurant. While Josh easily carried his small bag of trash over his shoulder, Christine was struggling with her bulging bag, dragging it behind her with both hands.

"C'mon, let's pick up the pace, huh?" Josh said, turning around. "We don't have all night, you know."

Finally, Josh reached the barn and pushed open its giant, rotted door. Josh took the trash out to the barn nearly every night he worked, and every time he did, he was sure the ancient, dusty barn's door would fall off its hinges.

"Okay," Christine said, dropping her bag of trash. "Let's get out of here. This place is disgusting."

Josh began poking around the barn. The dark building was crammed with tables of cobwebbed knick-knacks, shelves of rusted antiques, and boxes of old, faded books.

"Hold on," Josh said. "I love looking at this stuff. It's so weird."

The wind picked up behind Christine. It howled high above her in the ceiling's wooden beams.

"Yeah, that's great, Josh. Let's go, I'm freezing."

Josh walked toward one of the barn's long walls. In the darkness, he could see it was plastered with old circus posters and advertisements for bizarre potions and homemade remedies.

"Don't be such a baby," Josh said, pointing. "Look, it's Walt."

Christine walked toward Josh. On the wall, there was a small, framed photograph. It appeared to be from the 1970's, and it showed a young boy who looked like Walt, sitting on a couch and reading a book with a white-haired, bearded man.

"Oh yeah, it must be," Christine said. "Who's that guy with him, his grandfather? That guy looks like a hundred years old."

"Yeah, I know. Whoa, check it out—old magazines."

Josh crouched next to a bookshelf, inspecting a collection of hundreds of tattered magazines.

"I don't think you should touch those, Josh. They look like collector's items or something."

Josh pulled one of the magazines out. "What, you think someone's gonna care? Maybe there are some old nudie mags in here. Holy crap, this one is from 1909." Josh read from the cover. "Tobin's Chronicle of Magic and Otherworldly Creatures."

With a shrug, Josh tossed the magazine away and looked through another one.

Christine turned around. As the wind whipped, the giant barn door behind her creaked back and forth and then closed. She shivered.

"C'mon, Josh. This is creepy and it's getting cold. Let's go."

"No, wait, wait, hold on. Look at this."

A banging came from the roof, as if someone was stomping on it with their foot. Christine looked up.

"Josh, we need to go help close up the restaurant. Come on."

Josh turned to her, laughing. "What, are you really scared right now? Wow, that is really sad." He held the magazine in his fingertips and did a little dance on his tippy-toes. "Oh no, look at me, I'm a magical creature! Woooooooooo!"

Josh opened the magazine and read from it loudly, standing in the middle of the barn with one of his arms outstretched.

"Valsidrahide!" he said in a strange language. "Malandrihide! Keenasovo! Krandoo!" He laughed and turned the page. "What is that, Yiddish or something?"

Across the barn, Christine looked down. She stared at Josh's hands. Her eyes went wide.

"Josh...? Josh."

"What?"

"Josh," she said again.

He looked up from the magazine, annoyed. "What?"

Christine pointed at Josh's hands. He looked down.

Yellow, sticky slime was oozing out of Josh's hands and dripping onto the floor in slithering streams.

"Aaaaaaaaaaah!" Josh screamed. He tossed the magazine away and jumped back, in shock. As he held up his hands, the slime poured from his fingers like a faucet, falling to the floor and plopping into giant puddles.

"What is that?" Christine screamed. "What is that?"

"I don't know!" Josh yelled. "I don't know!" He spread apart his fingers. "Aaaaahhhhaaah! It burns!" He sniffed his hands. "And smells like shit!"

Panicking, Josh waved his hands around wildly, which resulted in him flinging slime all over the barn. A huge glob of it landed on Christine's cheek.

"Aaahhaaah!" she screamed. "Stop it, Josh! Stop!"

Turning away, Christine covered her face, and then looked toward the magazine on the floor.

"Oh my god," she said, her mouth dropped.

The magazine was lying on its back, wide open, with its pages quickly fluttering. As each page flew by, green smoke billowed from the spine of the magazine, filling the barn.

Christine heard a rattling to her right. She turned in its direction.

Five small wooden totems were sitting on a shelf nearby, each of them about eight inches tall. They all had agonized demon faces carved into them: one of them was a woman with purple hair; one of them was a creature with huge ears and green, bumpy skin; one of them was a woman with fangs and pointed ears; one of them was a yellow goblin dripping with slime; and one of them had a head that was a hollow-eyed skull. As the magazine fluttered and filled the barn with smoke, each totem shook violently on the shelf, as if they were ready to burst.

Josh noticed the totems, too. "Holy crap, what the hell's going on? We better get out of here, we better—"

BOOM! With an explosion of blinding light, five howling spirits suddenly erupted from the wooden totems, flying up toward the ceiling. Each ghost looked like the totem it had burst from, and as the white, green, yellow, purple, and black ghosts screamed in anger, with their huge mouths dropped open, they began to fly around the barn and smash the rusted antiques and wooden shelves, sending any object in their way flying.

Christine and Josh looked up in shock. As they stood there, frozen, two of the spirits—the woman with purple hair and the green creature with massive ears—looked down and spotted the brother and sister. The two ghosts then screeched and flew downward, dive-bombing toward the floor. As Christine and Josh cringed, the two ghosts flew right into their bodies, disappearing in a bright flash of light.

Suddenly, the barn's door was kicked in and it smashed against the inside wall. Christine spun there, startled, to see a man in a brown jumpsuit standing in the doorway. Even though it was dark, she could see that he was around sixty years old and slightly heavy, with a gut sticking out from his jumpsuit. He was also wearing bizarre goggles on his eyes and a heavy black backpack, and holding two strange, pistol-like guns in his hands. The pistols were connected to the backpack by wires.

Without a word, the man stepped into the barn and pulled the triggers on his guns. Immediately, streams of yellow, blue, and orange energy screamed from the pistols' barrels, zapping up towards the ghosts. The energy streams exploded and burnt anything they touched, and as the man whipped his pistols back and forth, the streams were destroying nearly every antique, book, or statue in the barn.

Finally, the man got control of his energy beams and harnessed them toward the ghosts, which were now wildly swooping around the beams of the ceiling and trying to flee. Within seconds, the yellow goblin was caught in the streams, howling in agony as the energy wrapped around him like a lasso. Panicking, the yellow demon flung itself around the barn, while the other two ghosts used the opportunity to escape, soaring through the wall and leaving two puddles of slime behind them.

Stepping into the middle of the barn, the man in the brown jumpsuit concentrated even harder now, grunting and gritting his teeth. High above him, the yellow ghost was still caught in his beams, but at any moment it seemed like it might free itself from the snapping energy.

Dropping one of his pistols to his waist, the man reached to his belt and grabbed a strange, rectangular box that was hanging there. Crouching on one knee, the man flung the box into the middle of the barn, where it slid across the floor, coming to a stop directly underneath the harnessed ghost.

As Christine and Josh watched, stunned, the man then lifted his boot and stomped down on a pedal, which was attached to the black box by a tube. Immediately, the top of the box opened and a cone of blinding white light shot out from it, searing up towards the ghost. The yellow goblin screamed again, seeming to know what was about to happen, but in a matter of seconds, it was sucked down the cone of light and right into the black box. When the ghost was completely gone, the box's yellow-and-black top closed.

All was now quiet. It was completely dark, save for the blinking red light on the black box. Still without a word, the man walked across the barn with heavy footsteps and leaned down, picking up the box by its tube and inspecting it. The box was now smoking.

Christine and Josh were still huddled together on the floor.

"Who—who are you?" Christine asked.

The man turned their way, then took two steps toward them and flipped up his goggles, revealing his face.

"My name is Dr. Raymond Stantz," he said. "And you, I'm afraid, are in very big trouble."