Chapter Eight: The Search for the Black Cauldron
Clearwater, Florida – Two Weeks Later
For every rollerblader, surfer, jogger, and tourist that passed on the sidewalk between the road and Clearwater Beach daily, it was certainly a change of pace to see the Ecto-2K stream down the road, its white and shiny exterior glistening beneath the radiant sun. When it passed, the rollerbladers, surfers, joggers, and tourists stopped and stared upon it, amused and confused from the fact that the vehicle of the Ghostbusters was in that section of the Tampa Bay Area. Some even wondered if they were on a rare vacation. However, the truth of the matter was that the team was there for more business than pleasure.
Of course, that didn't stop Kimberly Venkman or her colleagues from wearing the appropriate attire to suit the high temperatures of the deep southern area. Wearing a tight, light blue tank top and cutoff jean shorts, Venkman sat in the front seat of the Ecto-2K with her legs hanging out of the passenger side window. At the wheel of the vehicle was Diana Zeddemore, wearing a black tank top and beige shorts and letting an open window be her source for cooling. As a matter of fact, all of the windows in the Ecto-2K were open, including the ones at the rear where Sean Spengler, Meagan Tully, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Max, and P.J. were sitting. Each of them was fighting off the intense heat in various ways, from fanning themselves to sticking their upper bodies out the window.
"Damn! Can it get any hotter in this death trap of a town?" Kim complained.
Spengler, who had a cooling unit built into his P.K.E. Meter that blew air right into his face, turned to Kim and informed, "Actually, if it were to get any hotter, we could possibly…"
"Not that interested, Spengs!" Venkman hastily interrupted.
Diana would glance occasionally at the way Kimberly was dangling her legs out the window and get slightly distracted from it. "You know, Kim, it is illegal to have your bare feet out the window like that."
"Well, I doubt any patrol officer would dare himself to try and pull us over in this heat, Dye." Kimberly remarked, right before she pulled her legs back into the hot moving vehicle. "But if you're gonna make a big thing out of it…"
Sensing a dispute on the approach, Mickey immediately played peacemaker and inserted himself into the conversation. "Hey, c'mon, girls. We've gotta keep a cool head – literally and figuratively."
Kimberly sighed in despair. "You're right, Mick. It's that reason why we couldn't bring Jay with us. Poor guy is going through enough as it is right now, and he doesn't need this stress or heat bearing down on him."
Meagan ignored the heat long enough to focus on the conversation in process. "Has it really been two whole weeks since Alexis died?" Silence had fallen over the Ecto-2K, which left Meagan feeling very guilty. "Oh…I'm sorry, everybody…I…I should've…"
"No, sweetie. You're okay." Diana said, glancing at Meagan through the rearview mirror. "It's just…still a harsh reality to take in, ya know?"
Tully nodded in understanding. "I only knew her for a year, ever since I started in the Junior Ghostbusters program. To be honest, I feel ashamed that I became Senior Ghostbuster before she did, and she'd been with you guys longer than I have."
Hearing that statement from Meagan, Kimberly immediately turned around and strictly told her, "Now, listen here, kiddo…if I ever hear you say anything about being ashamed of being a Senior G.B. again, I will kick your butt from here to Cancun!" Everyone in the Ecto-2K was surprised from Venkman's sudden outburst, which they weren't certain was a result from the heat or not. "Alexis knew more than the rest of us that someone just as brave and bold as her would become Senior G.B. before her. In fact, it was her that recommended you for the position!"
This news took Meagan by total surprise. She looked to Spengler and Zeddemore and asked, "Is that true?" Neither of the two Ghostbusters said a word, which left Meagan to figure on their silence being a "yes." "How come?"
"Meagan, being a Ghostbuster for nearly six years, there's one thing I've learned from working for this company and that's never to question why I'm doing what I am today."
"As long as the paycheck's good – eh, Dye?" Kim jested.
Diana grinned at her remark. "Seriously, Meagan…if you want to honor Alexis's memory, carry your new position with great pride. She saw something in you that the rest of us probably didn't."
"I definitely didn't." Venkman uttered, before she was met with a dirty look from Zeddemore. "Well, I didn't!"
Meagan pondered a little deeper into this sudden revelation. "Does Dr. Stantz know this, too?"
"Who do you think Alexis talked into it?" Sean inquired, which only made Meagan twice as overwhelmed with her "new position," as Diana referred it as. Switching gears, Spengler refocused the group's attention on why they were in Florida in the first place. "Lisa told us to meet her at the old shack on the beach. We should be seeing it at any moment now."
Kimberly checked her hearing to make certain that she heard her colleague right. "An old shack? Why would we meet there of all places? Wouldn't it be nicer if we met at a five-star hotel?"
"Would you take two hundred-pound black cauldron into a five-star hotel, Venkman?" Spengler asked.
Venkman sunk into her seat sheepishly and muttered, "No."
Diana's hazel eyes squinted as she gazed through the windshield and noticed a rusted, decades-old shack in the middle of Clearwater Beach. She smiled upon seeing it and alerted the others. "There it is."
They looked ahead and spotted the shack as well, some of them surprised that it was still standing from the poor condition it looked to be in. The group continued staring at the pathetic shack while Diana parked the Ecto-2K to the right side of the road, across from the beach. Exiting out of the car, they did not bother taking their Proton Packs or other equipment with them, seeing no point in doing so since it was merely an investigation and not elimination. However, Spengler did take his P.K.E. Meter along with him for safe keeping.
As the team headed to the shack, they started to notice a sudden change in the weather. Whereas it was hot and sunny upon their arrival in Clearwater, it suddenly shifted to windy and cloudy, looking as if there would be a lightning storm on the approach. Meagan appeared to be the most befuddled one of the group, asking Spengler, "Is that normal?"
"No…we are walking right into a trap…the shack must be the center of some sort of ghostly energy that works as an alarm to alert all of the spirits of our presence." Spengler dryly jested, but Meagan appeared to have believed every word he said – mainly due to the dry delivery of his joke. Seeing how shocked she was, he told her, "Yes, it's normal. The tropical weather of Florida shifts at every few hours or so."
Somewhat relieved, Meagan continued with the group, as they walked through the sandy shore, kicking up sand while heading to the shack. Once they were at its front door, Diana knocked upon it, doing it ever so gently after seeing how fragile it looked. "Lisa, are you there?" There was no answer, which surprised all of them.
"Maybe we're supposed to use some kind of 'knock code'." Kimberly bantered. "Try 'Shave and a Haircut'."
"A-hyuck! I use that one every day." Goofy said.
Ignoring Venkman and Goofy, Diana simply grabbed for the doorknob, but before she could've turned it, the whole thing collapsed into the shack and landed on the floor with a loud thud. Taken by surprise of what just happened, Diana stared down at the collapsed door and uttered, "Maybe 'Shave and a Haircut' wasn't such a bad idea after all."
The team stepped inside to see how ransacked the shack appeared with tables and chairs turned sideways and upside down, papers shredded and scattered all around, and dents in the walls, ceiling, and floor. Of course, the most noticeable thing of all in this unwelcoming scene was the fact that both Lisa Abney and the black cauldron were missing. Spengler immediately began scanning certain areas of the room, which was the only thing he could've done to keep himself from worrying over Lisa's disappearance. The others practically felt as if they were walking right into a crime scene, being careful not to touch anything that might've been evidence.
"What happened here?" Max exclaimed.
"Someone showing how desperate they are to get a hold of Mrs. Abney and that cauldron, that's what happened." P.J. remarked.
"But who would want to steal a cauldron?" Donald inquired.
Just as Donald made that inquiry, Meagan passed by a section of the wall that had a huge, sharp, and heavy dagger pierced into it. She grabbed at its hilt and tried to remove it, but found great difficulty doing so. Soon Kimberly took notice of what she was doing. "Whatcha got there, kiddo?"
"Looks like a knife, but I can't get it out of the wall." Meagan indicated, while fighting with the object itself.
Kimberly analyzed the dagger, noting its ancient style. After Meagan tugged at it a few more times, Kim eventually brushed the young Ghostbuster aside and grabbed at the hilt herself. With one mighty tug, she yanked the dagger right out of the steel wall, much to Meagan's surprise. Not wanting to take all of the credit for getting it out, she told Tully, "You loosened it up some." Of course, she was lying – but she couldn't let Meagan know that. "Hey, Spengs. Get a scan of this knife Meagan found."
Sean walked over with the P.K.E. and scanned the item. The device beeped rapidly, indicating a large find. "High levels of psycho-kinetic energy…" He then added with a hint of scorn in his voice, "…similar to the levels we found in Shan Yu's sword."
The name became something of a curse to the group – every time it was uttered, it put a bad taste in the mouth of whomever it came from. Shan Yu was Alexis's murderer and still roamed the streets somewhere for reasons that were still unknown to the Ghostbusters. Of course, with the discovery of the dagger, some clues to the long-dead warrior's objective were starting to emerge. Meanwhile, Sean Spengler focused mostly on the possibility of Shan Yu having kidnapped Lisa.
"So Shan Yu is after the black cauldron?" Kimberly inquired.
Diana got a closer examination of the dagger and noticed one important detail about it. "Maybe not," she uttered. "I'm not just showing off my historiography doctorate here, but this knife looks more European than it does Chinese – possibly high or late Middle Ages."
Mickey snapped his fingers in realization. "Of course!"
"What is it?" Meagan asked the mouse.
"The cauldron belongs to the Horned King – he must've been the one who came here to get it!" Mickey revealed.
"But the dude was destroyed through being disintegrated by the thing." Venkman indicated. "Even if he still physically existed as a spirit, it'd be impossible for him to come back now and take back what's his."
Max pondered for a second and then made an educated guess. "Maybe it was another half-dead Viking guy 'born' from the cauldron who did all of this. It happened before when we found the thing."
"Where did you guys find it anyway?" Diana asked.
"Just off the Atlantic Coast, south of the state." Mickey answered.
"I'm willing to take a bet that's where our little pot is being carried off to." Kimberly presumed. "Spengs, see if you can get Creel on the phone and get us access to their Ecto-8."
Spengler immediately went to doing as Venkman suggested, pulling out his Droid phone and speed-dialing the number to Patrick Creel of the Ghostbusters unit in Tampa, Florida. While doing so, Donald looked all throughout the messy floor, seeing if there were any other clues to be found there in the ransacked shack. It was then that he came across something that stood out more than the rest of the papers and other materials on the floor – a brochure for a cruise line known as the "S.S. Tipton" (as in "The Tipton Hotel"). Donald scratched his head, puzzled of the reason why Lisa would carry around a brochure for a cruise line.
After listening to a few rings and Patrick Creel's voice off of an answering machine recording, Sean hung up his phone in a defeatist attitude and told the others, "I can't reach him. They must be on a bust."
"Well, we can't wait for them." Diana stated. "Every second we spend contemplating our plan, that cauldron gets further from us and Lisa is more in danger."
Donald gazed at the brochure in his feathery grip and smiled. He showed it to the others and joyously exclaimed, "How 'bout this?"
Goofy took the brochure from the duck. "Tha S.S. Tipton? But dey're not gonna just let us use tha boat just ta find a pot, Donald."
Kimberly glanced at the brochure in Goofy's white-gloved hands, both memories and an idea popping through her head. She smiled and winked as she stated, "They will…once they see us in uniform."
