Ghostbusters (23 page)

Erin balked. “Why? Who are you guys?”

“The mayor would like a word,” said the first man.

The Ghostbusters were packed into one of the black SUVs and driven at high speed through the streets of Manhattan. When pressed, the black agent finally identified himself as Frank Hawkins, and his red-headed partner as Rorke but that was all he would reveal. If Martin Heiss hadn't just been thrown out of their window, Erin might have been more assertive about her rights as an American citizen and demanded to know what was going on. Even Abby seemed cowed by the way they had been scooped up, and she kept glancing warily at the other black SUVs, one leading and one following their vehicle. Holtzmann said something self-deprecating about her streak of putting men in comas, and Patty asked the back of Hawkins's head if he'd seen her on TV.

“We're famous, you know,” she added.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, and that was all he said. He didn't look up in the rearview mirror. Patty rolled her eyes and crossed her arms and went on at length about how
some men
felt threatened by strong women. After that, everyone fell silent as it sank in how weird it was to be driven to an elected official's office after almost being arrested for attempted murder on the same day that you captured and lost a ghost. Erin wondered if these guys were two of the mythical “men in black” who went around threatening people who had seen UFOs not to say anything about it. Which would make them factual. “Mythical” thereby being inaccurate …

The dreamlike sense of reality accompanied her as they were let out of the SUV and shepherded to a reception area outside the mayor's office. Before they stepped through the double doors, Hawkins told them the mayor's assistant, Jennifer Lynch, would be also present.

Lynch was a very striking young woman. She stood beside the mayor, who was seated, as Erin and the others entered and lined up like good soldiers to discover what they were here for. The mayor seemed almost merry as he regarded them, which eased Erin's mind greatly. Maybe he wasn't going to throw them all in jail.

“There they are,” he said in a friendly tone. He had a very thick New Yawk accent. “Sorry for all this drama. Please, have a seat.”

They sat uncomfortably in the comfortable chairs.

Erin felt compelled to speak, to justify the Ghostbusters before the meeting started. She leaned forward in her chair and said, “Listen, something big is happening. We're not frauds. We are scientists—”

“We know you're not frauds,” the mayor said. “Because we've been monitoring the situation as well.”

It was difficult to imagine something topping what had already happened that day, but there it was, right in their laps. It turned out they were not alone. Bombshell! At first blush, it was wonderful, exciting news, and then a barrage of questions started popping into Erin's head. From their expressions, the others were clearly puzzled, too.

“Agents Hawkins and Rorke are with Homeland Security,” Ms. Lynch said. “We've been investigating this extremely quietly.”

Erin was pleased to learn she had guessed correctly.

“So what do you know?” the mayor asked her.

Erin looked at Abby, then Holtzmann, and then Patty. Evidently they were cool with her acting as spokesperson. “Um, just that we believe someone is creating devices to attract and amplify paranormal activity.”

“And this activity could be escalating toward a large-scale event,” Abby added.

Well put, well put,
Erin thought. It was just supposition at this point, but it was a scary supposition. The mayor concurred.

“Well, that sounds terrible,” he said earnestly. “I certainly don't like the sound of that.”

Ms. Lynch nodded in agreement. Erin sagged with relief. If he believed them, if he really bought into the whole nightmare scenario, then that meant he would—

“Okay. Well, listen. Thank you. Great work. Really.” The mayor beamed at them warmly. “But it's time to knock it off.”

Abby said, “Excuse me?”

After the build-up, Erin was flummoxed and flabbergasted.

The mayor gestured to the two unsmiling agents. “These gentlemen are on it. Let the government do its work.”

“The mayor's concern is that you're drawing way too much attention to yourselves,” Ms. Lynch elaborated.

Erin couldn't believe what she was hearing. “I think we keep a pretty low profile,” she argued.

Agent Hawkins spoke up. “You drive a hearse with a ghost on it. You use an unauthorized siren. Do you know how many federal regulations you are breaking on a daily basis?”

“We're going to have to make the public believe you're frauds,” the mayor added.

“
What?
” Erin cried, her voice cracking shrilly.

Ms. Lynch took over again.

“The human mind can handle only so much. If people knew what was happening right now, there would be a panic. We'll have to put out information that the concert was a hoax. Otherwise, there would be mass hysteria.”

To Erin's shock, her three friends nodded in agreement.

“Listen,” Abby said. “All we care about is being able to continue doing our work.”

“Now, that's true,” Erin said, trying to recover a reasoned, convincing tone. “But it just seems like all those people already saw what happened anyway and what we did. It must be all over the Internet by now.”

The others seemed to accept her premise, but Agent Rorke shrugged.

“You mean a bunch of whacked-out metalheads who saw a high-tech prop that went out of control? And then their cell phone photos were all erased by a magnetic wave blast? We've got it covered.”

“Jesus,” Abby blurted.

Men in black. Not mythical.
Erin filed that away.

She was not finished. “It's just … if we could back up one second … can't there be both things? And I'm just spitballing here, but like, what if we told people what we did but then said it's all under control now?”

“I think Miss Lynch here made it very clear we don't want mass hysteria,” Abby reminded her.

“Okay, okay. Fair enough.” Erin thought a moment. “But what is ‘mass hysteria'? I mean, is it really that bad?”

“Let me show you a clip of it,” Ms. Lynch offered. She hit play on a video on her laptop labeled
MASS HYSTERIA
and showed it to the group.

It was a montage of selected incidents from around the world. Not pretty. People running around in circles, waving their arms in the air, tipping over vegetable carts, and yelling at the top of their lungs.

Erk. Erin felt queasy.

Patty said in horrified fascination, “Why would you even have that on your laptop?”

“Right, right,” Erin said, trying to find her way back to solid ground. But why
would
someone have that on their laptop? “It's just, I feel like the cat's already sort of out of the bag.”

“Are you finished?” Abby sniped.

“The cat's been out of the bag before,” Agent Rorke said, “and yet people always get bored and put it back in. A police officer in New Mexico reports a UFO encounter. The crew of the SS
Ourang Medan
mysteriously dies. The entire town of Langville, Montana, goes missing.”

“What?” Erin raised her brows. “I never heard of that.”

Agents Hawkins and Rorke stared at her, waiting for her to draw the obvious conclusion.

“Time to get back to work,” Hawkins said.

“Well, on that horrifying note,” the mayor said, “thank you all so much for what you've done. We will always be grateful for your service. Please think of me as a friend.” He smiled reassuringly, then added, “A friend who will ignore you on the street, but a friend nonetheless.”

“A long-distance friend,” Ms. Lynch emphasized.

“Exactly,” the mayor said. “A pen pal. But without letters. Or any kind of contact. Never send me anything in writing.”

She remembered the cheers from the audience when they had sprung into action to catch the hideous, demonic theater ghost. The way the media had converged on them outside, asking about their fashion choices. But most of all, she remembered how good it felt to prove to the entire world that ghosts were real. And now that had all been taken away as if it had never happened.

It wasn't that she was advocating mass hysteria. Far from it. If they could educate the world about the reality of ghosts and do something about the dangerous ones—She caught herself. Were there any that weren't dangerous? Granted, their experience was limited, but so far they hadn't run across any nice, happy ones. Which made her wonder if the good ghosts went to heaven and had no urge to return here. She and Abby had made a point of avoiding the philosophical and religious in their research. They were too emotional subjects for most people, and emotion tainted data. Plus they were both faith-based, which was all well and good, but that didn't meld well with the scientific process and controlled experimentation. If she and Abby had included that sort of material in their book, it would have raised even more red flags among their peers.

The idea that ghosts could be divided into good and bad categories was comforting in a way because it reduced the number of likely homicidal intruders waiting on the other side for their chance to cross and cause havoc. But it didn't change the fact that there were a lot of them—half of the historical total of roughly a hundred billion dead people was still seven times more people than were alive today—and the fifty billion evil spirits were, well, lined up and waiting. Erin felt it would be better to let the world know what it was up against than to leave it to the mercy of spectral rage. Especially when the whole thing was being facilitated by some mad scientist. Hawkins and Rorke
said
they had the situation under control. But everything she had seen was out of control. They
claimed
to have made people forget all kinds of things, but had they? Where was the evidence? Then she had a chilling thought. Could “make them forget” be a department euphemism for “terminate?” It would be a low-tech, low-cost solution to a complex problem.

Talk about scary.

*   *   *

The unsmiling agents drove them back to their headquarters and silently rejected Patty's offer of an autograph. When Abby asked them if they wanted a copy of their book, Agent Rorke said, “That's been effected.”

Erin had no idea what he meant by that, but honestly? She was relieved when they left.

When they turned on the TV, Ms. Lynch was being interviewed on NY-Local 1 News. Below her, the crawl read “Jennifer Lynch—Mayor's Office” to leave no doubt on whose behalf she was speaking.

“It's fraudulent and unsafe,” she told the reporter. “These ‘Ghostbusters' are just creating an unnecessary panic in a sad grab for fame. We went to their lab. There's absolutely nothing there. People can rest assured that these women are just bored and sad.”

Erin, Abby, Holtzmann, and Patty stood transfixed by the character assassination and invective. Then Erin lost it; with a sweep of her arm she shoved a bunch of equipment off the worktable. It crashed to the ground. Glass shattered. Tendrils of white smoke rose from the linoleum. It didn't make her feel any better that she had been warned the cover-up was in process. She
knew
she was right, and had been all along. She had had unquestionable proof that she had never lied, that these brave women in their cockamamy uniforms had saved lives and could save many more.

She should have had tenure at MIT, never mind lowly Columbia! Speaking engagements, books, their own show on the History Channel—those should have been the rewards coming their way, not claims by their own government that they were pathetic, delusional liars. Every discovery they had made had been confiscated and then publicly savaged by people in authority who had no idea what they were talking about. It was like one of those recurring nightmares, except that Erin was not naked. Or flying. Or both.

She watched Kevin take in the mess on the floor, then the mess she was becoming. A kind of light came on behind his eyes. Like he was waking up from a daydream and fully aware of his surroundings for the first time.

He said, “Guys, what the hell was that thing before?”

“It was a ghost,” Abby said impatiently. “What do you think goes on here?”

Kevin seemed a more little lost than usual. “I didn't know. I answer phones in a Chinese restaurant where four women sit around in painters' outfits. When people ask me what I do, my response is, ‘I have no idea.' I guess I knew it had something to do with Chinese food and science. I couldn't put it together.”

Erin did not feel smug. Just kind of dazed at the revelation.

“I asked you in the interview if you believed in ghosts,” Abby reminded him.

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “I thought that was weird.”

Abby persisted. “Just yesterday I was telling you all about a Class Three with distinct human form!”

“I don't know what that means,” Kevin responded.

Holtzmann spoke up on his behalf. “That's fair.”

“Listen,” Kevin insisted, “we have to get ahead of this thing.”

The sudden change in his demeanor and tone of voice was remarkable, almost as if in this moment of crisis he had reached deep into some previously untapped reservoir of strength and intelligence.

“Form a group to study it,” he continued assertively. “Clear out all that kitchen equipment and build something to fight the ghosts.”

“Oh my god, this is what we're doing,” Abby said.

“Well, we need to do more,” Kevin said emphatically. “Okay, look, we sell the restaurant. We don't really get any customers anyway. It's time to face it. This restaurant isn't working.”

Erin gaped at him. So did Abby.

“Are you serious right now?” Abby asked.

“I just—I'm really confused,” he confessed.