Ghostbusters: Without
Chapter 1
Summer 2007
"Oh, have you?" Peter Venkman crooned sympathetically into his cell phone. "Aww, you poor thing. Do you want me to bring you anything when I come home? …Ok then, sweetheart… I love you too. Buh-bye."
Peter hung up, stuffed the phone inside his jumpsuit and demanded, "Are we there yet?"
"Almost," said Roland Jackson, who was driving.
"So how's she doing?" asked Kylie Griffin, from the front seat.
Egon Spengler, in the back with Peter, added, "I don't like it, Peter - it sounds like she's been unable to keep anything inside her for an uncommonly long time."
"It's just a stomach bug," said Peter. His daughter Jessica had just spent her third night in a row constantly rushing to the bathroom, and seemed to show no sign of improvement.
"And is she feeling better now?" asked Egon.
"Well… no."
"Poor kid," Roland sympathised.
"Listen," said Peter, "we're going to have to stop off at a store on the way back because she wants some magazines."
"You can't read when you're feeling that ill," said Kylie.
"No," Peter conceded. "I'll probably have to read them to her."
"Peter," said Egon. "I still think I should look her over. It just seems odd that she should be this unwell when there happens to be all this unexplained paranormal activity going on. And you and Dana haven't caught it from her, have you? Why do you think that is?"
"What, you think it's a ghost flu that's only interested in Jess?" Peter asked dubiously. "I doubt that, Egon - what possible reason could there be?"
"Her boyfriend's half incubus," volunteered Kylie. "Maybe they got a little overexcited."
"Oh, yeah, him," Peter said dully. "Well, actually her relationship with Cameron seemed to be fizzling out a bit before she got sick - hopefully it won't last for much longer. Oh."
Peter's cell phone had started up again, so he whipped it out of his pocket. "Oh, it's Oscar!" he beamed, and answered the phone with an enthusiastic, "Hi, Ozzie!"
"Hi, Dad," came the perpetually exhausted voice of his stepson, somewhat distorted by an imperfect signal (Oscar wasn't even in the country). "How are you?"
"Me?" said Peter. "I'm ok."
"I just called home to check up on Jess - Mom says she's no better. What?" and then Peter heard an indistinct young voice somewhere in the background. "No, no, it's just a stomach bug - she'll be fine, don't worry about it. Sorry about that, Dad."
"Who was that?"
"Hayden."
"Oh, you're with them, are you?" Peter asked dully. He made no secret of feeling jealous towards Oscar's biological father, Andre Wallance, in whose dubious hands their mutual son now appeared to have placed himself. "So how are they, then?"
"All perfectly healthy and happy, and glad I'm here."
"Including Andre?"
"Yes."
"Pity."
The car stopped, and Peter's three companions all filed out of it. He stayed where he was on the backseat.
"Dad, don't," said Oscar. "I'm having a pretty good time with them, actually, when I can get a minute to myself. Last night I had dinner with them and Hayden's new girlfriend."
Peter blinked. "Hayden's got a girlfriend?"
"Don't sound so surprised. He's a good kid, and he is thirteen now - it seems to me that most kids these days have gotten to third base by the time they're his age. Anyway, it was hilarious - she's from this really rough part of London. She calls him 'Ayden."
"Oh, I'll bet the Stiff loves that," Peter said, with some satisfaction.
"He hid his revulsion well," said Oscar. "I just wondered how they ever came to cross paths in the first place - so I asked them how they met and they told me this really romantic story about her getting lost on her way home from Oxford Street, and him helping her find her way back to Stepney. God knows how she ended up in Chelsea."
"Oh, yeah, that's pretty messed up," said Peter, who wasn't very familiar with London. "So how about you? Any girlfriend yet?"
"Dad, I don't have time for girlfriends."
"Don't be ridiculous, Oscar - you're an increasingly well known rock musician."
"No one serious," Oscar said blankly. "Look, Dad, I'd better go - I've got a million and one things to do before the concert tonight."
"Have you?" asked Peter. "You sound really tired - you should get some sleep."
"Bye, Dad."
Then silence. Peter hung up, and noticed that he and the Ecto-1 were parked outside some kind of warehouse. He climbed out of the car and ventured into the building, where the first thing he saw was a little red goblin-like creature disappearing into a ghost trap.
"Hey, guess what," he said, when the trap was closed and they were in semi-darkness.
Egon, Roland and Kylie all looked at him. "What?"
"Hayden's got a girlfriend."
"Hayden…?" Roland said blankly.
"Wallance. The Stiff's kid."
"Oh, him," said Roland.
"So what?" asked Kylie.
"Oh, I don't know. He just never struck me as the kind of guy who could just pick up a girl - especially at the tender age of thirteen."
"Honestly, Peter, there are more urgent matters to attend to," Egon said irritably, as they began taking their equipment and the loaded ghost trap back out to the car.
"Well," said Kylie, "I don't think you need to be so surprised. I only met this kid once at the New Year's Eve party, but he seemed like a really nice guy. He knows how to have fun, in an obvious kind of way, and I might even have thought he was cute when I was about eleven."
"Hmm… I guess you're right," said Peter. "I've never been able to stop thinking of him as anything other than a miniature version of his father, but he's really come out of himself over the last couple of years. He's more or less normal, really."
"Peter," said Egon. "Can you and I go and take a look at Jessica?"
Peter shrugged. "Sure, why not? If she's the same colour as she was this morning I could probably start charging people to come and look at her."
"Oh you're horrible," Kylie chided him.
"She can't hear me. Hey, Egon maybe that's it - Jess has, like, a psychic intuition or something about Hayden's girlfriend, and on some kind of subconscious level she's so appalled by the thought that any human female could possibly want to touch him that she can't keep anything down."
"Peter, you're being very childish," Egon said sternly. "Aren't you worried about her?"
"Of course I am," said Peter, sounding very hurt that anyone should have asked him this. "Life's not fair, is it? Oscar's working himself into an early grave, Jessica's sicker than she's ever been in her life and the Stiff's son is getting laid."
"Why is Hayden Wallance's love life such a big deal?" demanded Kylie. "He's a nice kid who's found himself a girlfriend, that's all."
"Apparently he helped her to get home when she was lost," said Peter. "That's really romantic, isn't it? I wonder who made the first move."
"Why does it matter?" asked Kylie, as Roland and Egon both pointedly climbed into the car. Kylie and Peter made no move to follow.
"It doesn't, really," said the latter. "I expect it was her. Hayden seems quite timid - I can't see him putting the moves on a girl. Sort of like Egon."
"Egon?" Kylie frowned. "He's married."
"Yes, finally, and he's almost fifty. Why do you think it took him so long to get it together with Janine? It certainly wasn't anything she did… or didn't do, I should say."
"I expect," said Kylie, "you used to put them off by making stupid childish jokes."
"Why should that put them off?" Peter said defensively.
"It just doesn't help, all right? Especially if you're already a little bit… unsure."
"Well," Peter said sulkily, sounding suddenly about fourteen, "maybe if they hadn't made it quite so obvious to everyone else…"
"You're saying they brought it on themselves?"
"I'm only human, Kylie. You would have done the same, if you'd been there."
"I certainly wouldn't," said Kylie. "Jokes like that aren't funny, Peter. And anyway, you can't blame them. If you're in love with somebody, it's just not that easy to hide it."
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January 2014
Oscar, hoisting up his holdall as it threatened to slip off his shoulder, pushed the front door shut behind him. Moments later Jessica appeared at the top of the stairs, looking faintly dishevelled, but Oscar didn't think anything of that. She never looked after her appearance very well.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, coming downstairs.
"Well that's a pretty stupid question. Y'know, I thought you might be happy to see me."
"I am." At last she smiled, and hugged him. "I just wasn't expecting you. Mom and Dad are in LA - I thought I'd have the place to myself all weekend."
"They're in LA?" asked Oscar, beginning to make his way to the living room, where he dumped his holdall on the floor. "Just when I decide to come back here after a tour instead of going straight home - how ironic."
"Oh, yeah, the tour - how was it?"
"We had some pretty great shows," he said, noticing now that she was fiddling with her clothes. "What's with you? Have you got a man up there or something?"
Jessica laughed, and said, "Only Hayden."
"Hayden?" Oscar made his way back out to the hall, just as a toilet flushed somewhere above their heads, and then Hayden emerged from the bathroom. "Oh, hey, you're back here already. How was your break?"
"Pretty good," said Hayden, as he too descended the stairs. "Nice to be home for a bit."
"Good. Look, Hayden, I'm sorry I couldn't be here to see you earlier - I just had so much on, I couldn't…" He tailed off.
Hayden smiled placatingly. "It's ok, Oscar - your family's been looking after me."
"Have they?" He looked dubiously back at his sister. "So how's the study going?"
"Well," said Hayden, "at about the beginning of December I realised I'd been having so much fun I'd hardly done any work, so I played catch-up for a few weeks, and I think I got away with it. At least, no one's threatened to deport me."
Oscar raised his eyebrows. "You're having that much fun, huh?"
Hayden smiled wistfully. "Yeah - I'll be sorry to leave in the summer."
"Well, it's great to see you - I really didn't expect you to be here."
"Yeah, well, Dana seems to like it when I pop round - I didn't know she wouldn't be here. Still, Jess was generous enough to let me use the bathroom."
"So listen," said Oscar, "how are you all? I called just before Christmas, and your mom told me you - "
Jessica stopped listening, and turned on the television. She channel-hopped while Oscar and Hayden stood out in the hallway talking rubbish, and finally settled on a movie she rather enjoyed.
"Ooh, The Hole!" she said, making herself comfortable on the sofa.
"I never actually got around to watching that," said Hayden, making his way into the living room. "I thought maybe it would irritate me."
"Oh, I don't know," said Jessica. "Some of these actors really are English."
"Well." Hayden went to join her on the sofa. "We shall see."
Oscar, with plenty of better things to do but feeling too tired to do any of them, went to join his brother and sister. Throughout the film, Hayden kept making remarks like, "Laurence Fox is English, but they give him such stupid lines it sounds like he's putting it on," and, "It's not Mart'n - it's Mar-tin." Oscar couldn't help smirking at his response to one of Laurence Fox's lines: "What am I meant to do with the old man?"
"The old man?" echoed Hayden, incredulously.
"That's what you English people call your penises," Jessica deadpanned.
"No it isn't," said Hayden.
"Sure it is."
"It really isn't."
"Hey," said Oscar, "do you guys mind if I go out for a bit? I should really go catch up with everyone else I've been neglecting."
"Why should I mind?" asked Jessica.
Oscar stood up. "There's no need to be waspish."
"I'm not being waspish."
"I'll see you later."
"Bye, Oscar," said Hayden.
"Bring us back a pizza or something for dinner," added Jessica.
"Hey," said Hayden, after he'd gone. "Good thing he didn't arrive thirty seconds earlier."
"You have an extraordinary talent for stating the obvious, Hayden."
"What would you have done? Told him you were waxing your legs?"
Jessica frowned at him. "I don't scream when I wax my legs. God, that felt weird - I hugged him with your stuff all over me."
Hayden cocked an eyebrow. "My 'stuff'? It's not like you to be euphemistic."
"I'm not being euphemistic, moron," Jessica said disparagingly. "I meant saliva and sweat, and semen - and I've probably got bits of your skin under my fingernails."
"Yeah," said Hayden, moving his hands to his back and hips. "You probably have."
"Oh, sorry, did I hurt you?" asked Jessica, not sounding sorry at all.
"No, but I'm awfully glad you bite your nails."
"So are you enjoying this movie?"
"Not really," said Hayden. "Just when I think it's not that bad, somebody says something stupid, like, 'Don't be a Muppet, mate.'"
"Right." Jessica switched the television off. "Let's get back upstairs, then."
"Oh yes?" Grinning, Hayden slipped his arms around her shoulders and started nuzzling her ear through strands of her hair. "You want more of the old man?"
Jessica shook with laughter as he pushed her down into the sofa cushions and started trailing kisses over her neck.
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