Chapter 5

The next instant Egon and Winston were running down the corridor their equipment jangling on their backs as they followed the massive corridors of crates deeper into this maze. But they had to come to a stop when the corridor suddenly ended in a dead end with no other way through.

Winston was about to turn back when Egon grabbed his arm to prevent him. The thin faced scientists' eyes were staring straight ahead at another strange contraption set up near the crate the corridor abruptly ended in.

"What is it Egon?" Winston asked as they approached it. It looked like another box of wires on a tripod, only this one had some kind of emitter dish attached to the front of it, pointing at the crate wall. It was also humming very loudly and had a long cable snaking out the back of it, the same cable that was attached to the Doctors odd contraption, presumably at the other end.

"I don't know" Egon replied as he held up his P.K.E. at the contraption and the arms suddenly rose quiet high before lowering down rapidly. "But whatever it is, I think its interfering with the P.K.E."

"Who is that Doctor guy anyway?"Winston asked, "Friend of yours?"

"I don't know" Egon said again.

"Who does he work for?" Winston asked

"I don't know" Egon answered

"Why is he even here?" Winston asked but got the same answer. "I don't know"

"That's enough 'I don't know's to win an election" Winston jested dryly.

"I don't understand what's going on here" Egon said "The P.K.E. readings just don't make sense"

"It's not like you to not know stuff." Winston stated.

"Not knowing things is the first step on the route to discovery" said the Doctor from behind them. Winston hadn't heard him approach as he walked between them holding up his hat from his head in greeting as he did and... walked straight through the solid wall? What?

Winston turned to Egon for an explanation, but only received an equally mystified look from his college. A hand, the Doctor's hand, suddenly appeared through the wall and raised its index finger and beckoned them to follow him through the wall.

Egon and Winston looked at each other quizzically again wondering if they should do as this Doctor said. Egon, often the first to take a scientific leap of faith, cautiously stepped over to the wall, the wall that appeared very solid, placed his hand on it and appeared to be touching it. But as he put pressure on it his hand just disappeared through the wall as if it wasn't really there. Egon pulled his hand out again probably in case something snapped it off and looked to Winston.

"I think it's safe." Egon said before stepping through the wall in one go.

Winston was about to follow when his foot landed on something much more solid. He looked down at his foot and saw he was standing on a monkey wrench and a screwdriver that had just been left there on the floor in a position as if they had just been dropped in a panic like whoever was here had just ran, or was taken.

Winston intended to bend down to inspect the tools but then remembered that Egon and the Doctor would be waiting on the other side, that was assuming this wasn't any kind of ambush.

With his proton wand still in his hand, ready for any trouble, Winston gingerly walked through the wall. It was a peculiar sensation, walking into a wall and expecting to hit it only to pass straight through it, it felt cold as if he was passing through a wall of ice but the atmosphere soon warmed up as he stepped out through the other side.

Egon and the Doctor were standing there waiting for him as he emerged. He momentarily looked back and saw the wall that he had just walked through, only it was slightly transparent and Winston could see the corridor continue on with that odd contraption just a little further away from the fake wall.

"What is it, a hologram?" Winston asked.

"Oh, nothing too fanciful" the Doctor commented holding the left lapel of his tweed jacket in his hand, he pointed his umbrella at it. Wait, where did he get that umbrella from? "On a higher level it's more like an infusion of highly sensitive exotic particles that interfere with the Higgs field allowing it to exist in multiple states on the multi-versal plane"

And Winston thought Egon spoke in techno babble. He turned to Egon who just kept looking on at the Doctor with an almost shocked expression in his eyes. "That's even more fanciful then Winston's own theory." The Ghostbuster said

"Maybe from your point of view." The Doctor said "Try walking back through it" he nodded at the ghostly image of the wall, and Winston did as instructed, he tried to walk back through it and flattened his nose as he tried walked right into a solid wall of wood. He stepped back and felt his nose to make sure it wasn't broken.

"What the heck? We just walked through that" Winston said. Egon stepped up to the wall and gently knocked on it. It was indeed solid.

"Try to see it as variable state matter" the Doctor said smiling as he pulled out something from his coat pocket. It looked like a small, silver box with a radio aerial sticking out of the top of it. The short Scottishman looked down at the box and began walking in a particular direction away from the wall and themselves. Egon and Winston made to follow this strange little man because he seemed to have some idea of what was going on here.

"Why do I feel like a dog being lead into a Korean restaurant?" Winston asked holding his proton weapon tightly in his grasp.

"I guess probably because we are" Egon said gazing back at his P.K.E. again "Metaphorically speaking of course."

Winston took one last look over his shoulder at the translucent wall he'd walked through and could swear he saw someone on the other side disappearing back into the shadows when he looked.

Ray's excitement was almost reaching breaking point. He never got tired of moments like these. They were still excitingly leaping into the unknown to see what they can find. What was the old saying? 'The thrill is in the chase, never in the capture' it was certainly true, but there was satisfaction in the capture or to Ray there was. It was a pity the others didn't share his sense of adventure. Egon only saw things mechanically, Winston did it because it was in the job description but did get a kick out of capturing ghosts, and Peter only seemed to endure this for the money and publicity. Sometimes he wished they could employ someone with his sense of adventure, but sadly they could not afford extra help.

Something squelched under Ray's foot. Something Ray could feel was cold to the touch despite him wearing thick boots. Ray looked down and saw what at first he thought was spilt glue that hadn't set, but Ray got what felt like a sixth sense about it. It was either that or the strange way it began to glow a pale pink colour for a brief moment that made him sense something was odd about it.

Ray tried to raise his foot and he felt resistance pulling it back down like it really was glue and the soul of his boots slowly peeled off the floor.

Peter gently tried his best to step over the puddle but because of the size of it, it was hard to avoid. Peter took one step in it and slipped the moment his foot made contact with the floor. He fell onto his back the impact of which kicked up a large amount of the slime that rained back down on top of him.

"Slime" Peter spat some away from his lip as he got up "Why does it always have to be slime?"

"That's incredible!" Ray exclaimed "This substance must be Polymorphic!"

"Old Poly's let herself go hasn't she?" Peter half joked, half spat as he sat in the puddle.

"No Peter, 'Polymorphic'" Peter said glancing at Peter before kneeling down to focus his attention on the slime covering him. "It can shift it's physical properties. When I stepped in it, it was like an adhesive, when you stepped in it, it acted like a lubricant."

"Terrific" Peter moaned lowly as he slowly and carefully got to his feet. "Slime with a million and one uses."

"We should get a sample" Ray said reaching into the pocket of his boiler suit and taking a small sample vial from it. "Egon will want to analyse it."

"Yeah, if there's one thing we don't have enough of down at HQ its slime." Peter hissed trying to remove a stubborn blob that had landed on his face.

Ray scooped up a small amount of substance in the vial, capped it and put it back in his pocket.

The space around them suddenly became very, very cold. An 'event' was imminent, Ray could feel it and experience had obviously eventually taught Peter the same lessons because they both tightly gripped their proton wands and readied themselves to blast anything that moved, or floated. Listening intently they heard nothing for a long while as they walked except the crunch of their boots and the whine of their equipment. Then suddenly they heard it, a loud, ear piercing scream from ahead.

Leaping into action Peter and Ray raced down the rest of the corridor until the passageway made of large packing crates opened up into a much larger space about the size of an average garage that reached right up to the tall ceiling. In the middle of the floor was a large blob of this white slime that began to glow a dull pink. It wasn't just the floor that the slime covered, it was also covering the walls and was even dripping from the ceiling, from which was flying about a dozen spectres and ghouls in a circle.

"Is it just me or do the ghosts actually look... frightened?" Ray asked. He'd never tried to read a ghosts' features or body language before but it did look like the ghosts were scared of something.

"Hey, we're like the ghost cops of the spirit world. They see us coming, they start running" Peter said as he raised his proton blaster into the air. A long lance of dancing light flashed out from the mussel of the proton gun, catching one of the ghosts, a blobby looking creature like Slimer but bright purple. The proton stream however didn't snag it as it was supposed to instead the force of the impact sent the ghost slamming into the slime covering the wall. Then came another ear piercing scream, it was coming from the ghost, screams of utter terror, the sort of scream you make when you feel your life was in danger. The ghost reached out for its fellows to help it but the purple blob received no help from its fellow spirits, its yellow eyes rolled down to the two Ghostbusters with an almost pleading look as the white slime began to smother it, like it was trying to suffocate or drowned the roaming vapour. It sank deeper into it until only its arms were hanging out but soon they fell limp like the ghost was dead, even though it was already dead. It's arms slowly sank into the slime and vanished.

"Okay" Peter sceptically as if denying what his eyes have just shown him. "What was that?"

"I don't know." Ray admitted "But it looks like theses ghosts are scared of this slime stuff."

"Ghosts afraid of slime?" Peter said with scepticism, "That's like a zombie being scared to eat brains."

"Zombies don't eat brain's Peter" Ray explained "They rip you apart, tear out your organs and eat them indiscriminately."

"I'll remember to turn down an invite to dinner by one" Peter said coolly and dryly.

With his thick gloves on Ray scooped up a handful of the white slime and cocked his arm back ready to throw it up at the ghosts as an experiment. "If they scatter when they see this coming then they must be afraid of the slime!" His arm was about to chuck it when he felt something coiling around his throwing arm preventing him from throwing it very far, it just plopped back into the slime puddle.

Ray turned in panic to see what had him by the arm. It was an umbrella head? An umbrella head in the shape of a large question mark, holding onto it was a short man with long, wavy hair a tweed jacket and a red waist coat with a hat of a design Ray had never seen before, the closest Ray could describe it was a kind of sun hat he guessed, but it wasn't that kind of design.

"One thing you never want to do with corrosive protoplasma." The man said in an English accent that had a slight Scottish tinge to it. "and that's throw it around like it's play dough." He released Rays arm.

"Sir!" Ray said once he got over the initial surprise of finding someone in here with them "This place is dangerous, you should leave."

"Yeah, before it gets messy" Peter said as he wiped more slime he'd found left in his hair.

"That is very kind of you" the elderly looking man said "But I can guarantee out of the five here, you're the most in danger."

The man hung the hook of the umbrella on his arm as he produced a strange looking device from his coat pocket, a silver box with a little antenna on it. If Ray didn't know better he'd say it was a sort of P.K.E. meter, what Ray meant by 'if he didn't know better' was that he knew full well that the only organisation with the plans to build a P.K.E. meter was Ghostbusters.

He slotted a small, extendable, telescopic probe from the top of his machine, extended it out to its full length and dipped it into the mass of slime and his instrument clearly produced some kind of readout that Ray couldn't see from his angle.

"Who are you?" Ray asked curiously.

"Hmm?" the man said looking at Ray as if the elderly man recognised him. Duh! What was he thinking, he was Ray Stanz, Ghostbuster nearly every kid in town knew who he was. "Just see me as an external specialist, let's say your advanced scientific advisor for now." He said putting the emphasis on 'advanced'.

"Advanced Scientific Advisor?" Egon asked almost insulted as he emerged from among a tall collection of packing crates, Winston just behind him.

"Clearly you gentlemen have no idea what you're dealing with." The Englishman said his tone growing slightly more serious.

"What are we dealing with" Ray asked quietly of the Doctor waiting for either a mysterious or ominous reply.

"I don't know" the man shrugged causally. Ray thought it was odd that they had several moaning spectres floating around overhead and this man didn't even bat an eyelid at them.

"Doctor" Egon called him and opened his mouth to say more, but the man, the Doctor cut him off.

"Ah!" he cried suddenly as he glanced down at his machine "Protoplasm with high positron and electron lattice content all spinning in perfect harmony, each signal cancelling each other out thereby giving no identifiable mass or atomic structure."

All eyes turned to Egon for a translation, but their boy genius looked as clueless as they did. The Doctor lifted up his probe from the slime, the end was bending and dissolving as they spoke. "Also has a high corrosive index." The Doctor decided.

"What you described is impossible!" Egon suddenly said. "Electrons and positrons are opposites of each other, they destroy each other producing energy. There's no such thing as an electron/positron lattice."

"Really Dr. Spengler" he said the word doctor as if the title was laughable, "Have you ever seen an electron/positron lattice? Or seen evidence for it?"

"You can't find evidence for them because they don't exist!" Egon argued. The Doctor smiled and pointed his umbrella up at the several terrified looking ghosts "And yet your laws of science say these should not even exist either." The Doctor said smugly.

"Okay guys!" Peter said trying to stop this before it fell into an argument "Can we please wrap this up and go home?"

"I'll second that!" Winston said unhooking his proton gun from his pack.

"I'll third it!" Ray said holding his proton wand ready.

Egon just unhooked his own proton gun as a sign he agreed as well.

"Ah, I really wouldn't try that if I were you" the Doctor said calmly stepping back a little, he didn't appear very concerned but that look in his eyes made Ray think he knew something they didn't.

"Why shouldn't we?" Ray asked raising his proton gun.

"Ray, he's obviously some amateur ghost hunter trying to muscle in on our job" Peter said aiming his proton gun at the panicking ghosts, the look in the Doctors eyes was one of 'don't say I didn't warn you.'

"Don't fire until you see the glow of their eyes." Peter said "On three. One, two, THREE!" All four ghostbusters pressed on their triggering mechanisms and long lances of dancing light beams fired from the tips of their weapons. The ghosts however didn't behave as Ray expected, rather than dance around and avoid their proton blasts they stood still and almost looked like they were welcoming it. Their proton blasts wrapped around all of the ghosts trapping them like a tightening lasso.

Ray shut off his proton blaster, reached behind his back and pulled out a ghost trap that was attached to the opposite side of the pack from where the proton gun was usually held. He knelt down and slid it along the floor. He pulled on the cord to stop it rolling into the slime puddle, after seeing what it did to the Doctor's device he feared it'd start eating the ghost trap. There was also a looped tangle in the cord he noticed, he'll untangle that later. He placed the activation peddle on the floor and stood back up.

Ray stepped on the peddle the small pair of doors on the trap swung open, a long, inverted cone of bright light extended up into the air. Ray reactivated his proton blaster and fired at the ghosts again and together the four ghostbusters dragged the ghosts back towards the trap. This was weird! The ghosts weren't putting up the least bit of a fight, in fact they were almost trying to swim towards the trap willingly!

One of the slimy spectres suddenly broke free from the entangled pack and Winston tried to re-aim his proton stream to stop it, but there was no need, the ghost, a goblin like creature with pointy ears landed on the floor, looked back at the slime puddle and in a blind panic sprinted towards the trap screaming its head off and dived headlong into it!

Ray refocused his mind on keeping the rest of the ghosts tangled up until they were all in the cone of light, when they were he stamped on the peddle again and all four ghostbusters shut off their proton blasters. The rest of the ghosts were dragged down into the small box far too easily and the doors slammed shut on them, the trap sparking and hissing a little.

"Did anyone think that was too easy?" Egon asked lowering his proton blaster.

"I'll say" Winston said "I've never seen a ghost willingly get captured like that before."

"No, we have" Ray interjected "Remember Peters 'Ghost Attractor'?" Ray said referring to a previous job.

"Yeah, I remember" Winston said "Mee-Krah" A few years ago Peter built what he thought was a 'Ghost Attractor' designed to bring the ghosts to them, it was just a jumbled mass of machines that in reality made a P.K.E. capacitor. But at the time it had appeared to work, ghosts were flocking towards HQ in their thousands to be sent into their containment unit. But what they didn't know was the ghosts were actually running away in fear of the giant creature Mee-Krah, an entity that actually ate ghosts and burnt the ground where it walked, and it was approaching New York but using the 'Ghost Attractor' they defeated Mee-Krah and saved New York and the rest of the ghosts that haunted it. You'd think they'd all be grateful after that. Were these ghosts running in fear of this corrosive slime stuff for a similar reason?

Peter walked towards the trap and picked it up by the cord "Hey, it makes our jobs easier" he said turning around to face them. Only then did any of them notice the giant white blob growing in the white slime behind Peter.

"Umm, Peter" Ray said as he and the other Ghostbusters drew their proton guns, except for Peter who stood there oblivious to the danger behind him.

"What?" Peter asked turning around and saw the advancing white blob, he did a double take before he finally screamed and ran back towards the other Ghostbusters drawing his own weapon.

The slime blob started to form a tear in its lower section that looked like a mouth, two slits opened up near its 'head' that looked like eyes and long tentacles sprouted that turned into arms the size of tree trunks. It didn't look the least bit friendly, in fact its long arms reached out menacingly towards the four Ghostbusters.

"Got any other bright idea's Peter?" Winston said as the blob loomed over them.

"Yeah, I got one!" Peter said quaking with fear "BLAST IT!"

All four Ghostbusters fired their proton beams at it and the dancing lances of light all impacted the creature, but they didn't warp around it like it did the ghosts, instead they just hit the surface of the blob and seemed to just stop. The blob creature came closer and closer gaining more and more mass as it approached, getting larger and larger.

"It's not working!" Peter shouted

"Oh, you noticed!" Ray called over the loud hiss of their equipment.

"It wants the entities you've caught!" the Doctor called from behind it "Toss it here!" he called raising his arms.

Ray didn't know why he did it, fear or maybe he trusted this stranger that he had just met but he stopped firing, snatched the trap from Peter's belt and took a few steps back. He swung the trap by the cord above his head like a cowboy ready to cast a lasso and released the trap at just the right moment to let it sail through the air.

The trap sailed over the blob monster who reached up to grab it, but his arms were too short –they extended but wouldn't extend fast enough-, but the trap was going to land short of the Doctor actually in the slime puddle! That was until the Doctor caught it by the tangled loop of its cord on the hook of his umbrella and brought it back to him.

The Doctor whistled at the creature who's features vanished from its surface and reappeared on its other side facing the Doctor. It started advancing towards him, its long arms dripping goo and its surface began to smoulder.

"Set your Proton emitters at 1196 megahertz!" the Doctor called as he slowly backed away from the creature. Ray did as the Doctor suggested, turning a few dials on his proton wand though the others looked at Egon a little unsure if they should do as he said.

"But that'll overload the equipment in seconds!" Egon called.

Setting his equipment up Ray fired again and this time it was much more effective. Though the proton blast didn't lasso the creature it did cause electrical sparks to start flowing around it, trapping it just as effectively.

Peter and Winston now agreed this was a good idea and reset their equipment as the Doctor had instructed and fired, Egon was the last to do it. The blob was being held back as the Doctor turned tail and ran back down the corridor he had appeared through while the Ghostbusters tried to drag the creature back.

"Now what?" Peter cried

"You think that Doctor has a plan?" Winston called.

"He knew how to stop the blob" Ray called for some reason trusting the stranger. The blob began to move, it was slow progress for it but it was moving.

Ray was aware his pack was getting very, very hot at his back and an alarm began to sound, a high pitched whine to tell them their equipment was rapidly overheating. "Turn your beams off!" Egon shouted.

"If we turn them off Mr. Blobby gets free!" Peter called.

"If we don't it'll be just as bad as crossing the streams!" Egon called, at the sound of this they all switched their blasters off to avoid a nuclear incident.

"How long will it take for them to cool?" Peter asked.

"At a rough estimation" Egon mused "two, maybe three days."

"Three days... THREE DAYS?" Peter shouted "Egon why do you always wait until now to say stuff like that?"

The blob was moving down the corridor following the Doctor at a faster pace, it was still slow but it was moving. Instinctively though their equipment was overheated the four Ghostbusters began to run after it.

"What are we gonna do when he find it?" Peter asked "Our blasters won't work."

"I don't know" Egon said, and at that Peter came to a stop allowing the others to race past him.

"Then why are we running after it?" he said standing in defiance, but Ray and Winston went back and grabbed him by the arms and dragged him along until he was running again.

As they raced back down the path they had taken Egon noticed several things. The first was the blob monster was collecting up all the white slime it rolled over as if it was collecting it all up into its form, second the solid wall they had passed through had vanished leaving it open for them to walk through, third the Doctor's odd machines were gone and fourth, the more slime this creature seemed to collect into itself the colder it became. They were now following the creature down the path Winston had followed when he found Egon and the Doctor.

Though there were four pair of running feat they could clearly hear the Doctor's spats clapping against the stone floor, but soon they stopped. Egon heard a squeak like door hinges opening and then rapidly closing with a bang.

They rounded a corner and the blob creature was now so big it practically filled corridor. It looked like it was reaching down towards something, gurgling a little as it did.

"Now what?" Peter asked, but he never got his answer. The blob creature yelled like an unearthly demon as it appeared to get an electric shock off whatever it had just touched. It backed off but only for a few seconds while it composed itself and began sliding towards whatever it tried to grab.

There came a loud thud that echoed around the corridor and the space filled with a low hum, a hum that began to slowly get louder. Egon felt a light gust of wind blow past the blob creature and ruffle his hair. There came a wheezing, groaning that started up, the same type he'd heard earlier before he found the Doctor. A blue light beyond the blob flashed brightly on and off with the groaning noise that sounded like an engine the way it rose and lowered in pitch, each cycle becoming louder and stronger before it slowly began to fade out as if whatever was making it was getting further and further away very, very quickly. When the noise stopped and the air fell still again.

"What the heck was that?" Peter asked.

"Sounded like a cow in labour" Winston shrugged.

The blob stopped and fell still, it stood there and lowered its arms which merged into its dome from. Then slowly it began to shrink and flatten itself again into the floor like it was melting. Whatever had happened on the other side had clearly worked, the creature had given up was just dissolving back into its slime components.

"What is it doing?" Winston asked.

"Escaping look!" Peter called when a drain grate became visible through the slime, it was escaping down into sewer system!

The four Ghostbusters circled around the drain and looked down at the inky blackness, all it had left was a thin residue from where it had been. Egon took out his P.K.E. meter from his belt and scanned the drain grate.

"I'm not getting any reading off it!" Egon said raising his glasses off his nose before lowering them again as if his glasses were preventing him from seeing something.

"Hey, it's gone!" Winston called.

"We know it's gone Winston we saw it slither down the drain" Peter said half jokingly, half patronisingly.

"No" Winston said "I mean the blue phone booth I found."

This peaked Egon's interest again. "Hmm. Where was it?" he asked Winston sounding more like his old professional self again. Winston walked out of the slimy residue the creature had left behind and pointed at a specific spot just beyond it. There had defiantly been something there, there was a small square patch where something had clearly been standing in the dusty floor, even though the dust had been blown around a little by the gust something had clearly stood here recently and whatever it was appeared to be the epicentre of the gust the way all the dust appeared to be blown away from this one spot.

Egon raised his P.K.E. all ghost signals were reduced to residual traces, that usually happened after a capture, except for two peaks, one was obviously Slimer back outside but it was the second peak that had Egon's interest. It was an exact match to the readings he'd picked up earlier when he first heard that strange groaning, engine noise, only now rather than becoming stronger the signal was becoming weaker as if every second whatever was making it was getting further and further away.

"What have you found Egon?" Ray asked peering over his shoulder at the meters screen.

"I don't know" Egon replied.

"Hey wait a minute, where's the Doctor?" Winston asked looking around.

"And where's our ghost trap?" Ray exclaimed.

"Where's our pay check?" Peter added unconcerned.

To be continued...

Athours notes: The previous job that described the entity Mee-Krah

is from the Real Ghostbusters episode 'Standing Room Only.'

Don't worry, this isn't the only encouter the guys will have with the Doctor ;)

All reviews are open and welcome, so if you enjoyed the chapter why not share your thoughts on it with me.

Cheers.