Chapter Six

Do you remember nothing? Are you alive or not?

T. S. Elliot

He huddled in the blanket that the man had wrapped around him. The wool slowly soaked up the water from his clothing and muffled the awful feeling of the air on his icy skin. He sat where the man had told him to, in the backseat of the big white car.

Vaguely, he was aware of the two men in the front seat, of their voices - speaking to each other, to him. But he couldn't concentrate enough to make out the meaning of the words - not when every whisper of sound, every flicker of light and shadow, every whiff of wet wool and mud threatened his overloaded senses.

Though he wasn't cold, he shivered.

He had been sliding back into the darkness when the man had grabbed him and pulled him out. He thought he might be grateful for that, but the jury was still out. He wasn't sure of anything - not where he was, who he was, what he was. All that he was certain of was the gradually lessening pain that still throbbed through every inch of his body and the faint sense of cold purpose lurking in his heart.

Although he couldn't articulate what that purpose was, he knew it was the reason he was here. He couldn't say how he knew, but he knew it as surely as he knew the crow - and that the black bird was even now keeping pace with the moving vehicle. For a second, his vision seemed to shift and he thought he could see the world through the crow's eyes as it looked down on a busy street clogged with traffic.

Then he blinked and the vision was gone.

Absently, he scrubbed muddy fingers against his wrist. When the second man had touched him there, warm brown fingers brushing against bare skin, he had seen... things.

Terrible things.

...blood and brains and worse... a broken body splayed on the pavement, blood soaking into the asphalt... a wrenching sob behind him ...racing inside, only to find more horror, the very air thick with the stench of it, blood everywhere, painting the floor and the desk and the bodies and blooddarknessgriefpain...

He broke away from the vision with enough force to physically sling his body sideways into the door panel. His entire body shook with revulsion... and anger. The dark thing in his heart responded, uncoiling seductive tendrils that stroked his fury, fed it. It called to him with the voice of the crow, urging him to give in, to-

A hand touched his arm and he jerked violently away, shaken from his disjointed thoughts. Distantly, he was aware of the dark thing's reluctant retreat. He looked up to find the red-haired man half-leaning over the back of the seat.

"Peter?"

Was that his name? He couldn't remember, couldn't remember anything but the darkness and the pain... and the crow. He cocked his head, forcing his eyes to focus properly so he could study the other man, trying to find something on which he could anchor a name or a memory, but nothing came.

The man reached toward him again and Peter instinctively flinched back against the car door, the blanket held before him like a shield. Touch was... not good. It meant more of those ...visions? Memories? Whatever the awful images were, he didn't want any more of them in his head.

He stared at the man's hand, feeling the darkness reaching out for him again as his agitation grew. He hoped the guy would back off. Peter didn't want the thing in his heart to lash out at someone whose only crime was trying too hard to help.

Concern, and something that might have been hurt, flickered in the man's eyes as he pulled his hand back. "I'm sorry, Peter. I didn't mean to scare you. I won't touch you if you don't want me to. Honest."

Peter stared at him. He wasn't scared, though maybe he should be. He was a man without memory, without identity. He only had a name because this man had given him one. But fear was the farthest thing from his mind. Instead, he was angry. Hell, he was furious. Pissed at the world around him and the pain it kept inflicting on him.

But, his heart whispered, this man hasn't hurt you. Not yet.

Could Peter trust what the man said? Did he dare? Or was it simply a matter of time before he, too, caused Peter pain?

"I won't hurt you, Peter," the man said softly. His eyes were moist and he blinked rapidly, as if warding off tears. "I'm your friend. Don't you remember? It's me - Ray."

Peter shook his head slowly. Friends? The word resonated oddly with the darkness coiled around his heart. He shook his head again, more firm in his denial. No. He couldn't have friends. It wasn't... safe. For him - for them.

He started to share this epiphany with Ray- but something wrenched his attention away and the other's soft words faded into nothing as Peter tilted his head, his eyes sliding shut as he focused inward.

The sensation intensified, sending gooseflesh prickling all over his body and leaving him feeling as if something had ghosted a feather through his brain. Suddenly, the interior of the car seemed like a cage and he gasped, his eyes flying open.

The crow's vision came to him again, showing him the street, the teeming sidewalk, the towering buildings crowding out the sky. He panted as he felt it all closing in on him. In his heart, the darkness quivered with unholy anticipation. He had to get out, get away, before it broke free and-

Peter flung open the door and lunged out of the car, just as the light changed and traffic started moving again.

"Peter! No!" Reacting on instinct, Ray yanked open his own door and followed at a run. Behind him, he heard Winston grate out a heart-felt "shit!", then Ray was on the street and searching frantically for Peter.

Ignoring the blare of horns around him, Ray dodged between cars. He narrowly avoided a painful meeting with a taxi's grill, and made it to the sidewalk just in time to see the crow launch itself from atop a street sign. Breathing hard, Ray watched it vanish into the looming shadows of the skyscrapers. His hands clenched. He was really starting to hate that bird. He was sure it was doing something to Peter, maybe even controlling him somehow.

Next time, he vowed, he'd have his thrower. Then he'd see just what that bird was made of.

He started forward... and something tangled around his foot, sending him staggering as he fought to keep his balance. Looking down, he spotted the blanket Peter had been wrapped in and bent to pick it up. Clutching the discarded blanket to his chest, Ray turned in a slow circle, hoping against hope, searching the crowd. He shouted Peter's name, but there was no answer. Other than the blanket, there was no sign Peter had ever been there.

Swallowing past the tightness in his throat and ignoring the ache in his chest, Ray hurried back to Ecto-1, slamming the door shut behind him as he practically threw himself into the front seat. "He's gone!"

Winston glanced at him, then reached down to flip on the lights and siren as he slammed Ecto into an illegal turn that scattered pedestrians like startled pigeons and miraculously didn't cause a multiple car pile-up. "Then we'll just have to find him."

The rain had tapered off to a drizzle, but Peter barely felt it.

Like so much else in his mind, the city was an impressionistic blur of colors and smells and sounds, overwhelming and meaningless. His surroundings were a confusing jumble of towering buildings, exhaust fumes and car horns, and the ever-present, colorful eddy of people crowding the sidewalks. He was barely aware of the people around him, only noticing them when he collided with someone in his headlong rush. In the press of hurrying bodies, such contact was inevitable as he bounced off a hip here, a shoulder there. He flinched at the unwanted images thrown up onto the screen of his mind when he inadvertently brushed someone's hand and skin met unguarded skin. Fortunately, most people were only too willing to avoid the wild-eyed, mud-covered man lurching down the street.

Most of his focus was turned inward on the thing he could feel twisting inside him, still trying to get out. It was taking most of his concentration to keep it under control. The thing - almost another presence in his head - was the reason he had bolted from the car. He wasn't sure what it would do if - when - it escaped.

Despite his distraction, he was still aware of the crow flying above and slightly behind him. Somehow, he felt its pull, as if they were connected by an invisible thread. He could have followed it with his eyes closed. Now, however, he fought that pull. Ran from it, as he had run from the men in the car.

The bird followed him through the city, scolding him, its harsh cry calling him to heel.

It followed him down crowded streets and dank, deserted alleyways, past ritzy shops and overflowing Dumpsters. It followed him past soaring towers of glass and steel, and squatter buildings of brick and stone.

Lost in thought, Peter didn't notice the businessman in front of him until they collided. The man's umbrella went flying into the street and he turned on Peter with angry words already spilling from his mouth.

Lips pulling back in a silent snarl, Peter glared, eyes glittering from beneath a dripping fringe of mud-plastered hair. The businessman froze, then backed away, hands up in surrender. Shaking, Peter sidestepped the other man, confrontation already forgotten, then glanced up at the sky.

The crow circled lazily overhead, waiting.

It called to him…and to the thing nestled within his soul. It called to him, harsh and honest and bleak and black and cold.

Undeniable, it called to him.

He followed.

Peter had settled into an almost meditative state, his body on auto-pilot as he trailed his airborne guide across the city. He had lost all track of time and place, focused solely on putting one foot in front of the other to the point that it came as something of a shock when he realized the crow had alighted. It had settled atop a neon sign attached to the brick façade of a nearby building. When it became apparent the crow wasn't going to take off again, he found himself squinting at its chosen perch.

There was something almost… familiar about that sign.

He stared at the cartoon ghost trapped in the red, international "no" symbol. Where had he...?

Of its own volition, his hand moved to finger the embroidered patch on his sleeve. He twisted to look down at it, brushing his fingertips over the design. Even covered with mud, it was clearly the same emblem as the one on the sign. He covered the patch with his palm, his mind struggling to make sense of things. The emblems were the same, but what did it mean?

Did he... belong here?

He looked up at the bird, but if it had the answers to his questions, it wasn't telling. He took a step toward it - and froze as a white-hot shock flashed up into his body through the sole of his foot. Thrown off-balance, he crashed to his knees, out-flung hands the only thing saving him from a faceful of sidewalk. The instant his hands made contact with the concrete, images surged into his mind. He had no choice but to relive the memory as it flooded his brain.

...falling to the razor tune of breaking glass, a thousand knives scything through his flesh, the choking, bitter taste of bile and blood filling his mouth, silencing his scream of fearangersorrow and he couldn't save them couldn't get to them... drowning …in blood and guilt… falling falling into darkness so deep it had no color, death wrapping black wings around him as he fell and finally, finally he could scream, but it was too late and everything was ashes and pain and falling and guiltsorrowRAGE...

He came back to himself with a choked cry. Newly regained memory burned behind his eyes. Shakily, he got to his feet. He knew who he was. And he knew something else, something so terrible, his mind didn't want to process it.

He was dead.

He knew it, in the same way he knew the crow. In his bones and blood and unbreathing flesh. Hands clenching at his sides, he glared up at the bird. "Happy now, you sadistic, black-feathered sonuvabi?"

The bird dove from its perch and flew straight at him. For a wild second, he thought it was attacking him. He threw up his arm to ward it off, but the damned thing snatched at his sleeve with its talons and he had no choice but to let it settle on his forearm. The bird favored him with a look that was entirely too self-satisfied, then looked toward the firehouse.

With a sigh, Peter made his way over and tried the door. "Locked. Guess we're not going in after all, bunky."

Seemingly unfazed, his avian companion leaned out and rapped its black beak against the wood. Peter glared at the bird. "Cut it out, Edgar Allan. I may be dead, but I refuse to be clichéd-"

A surge of darkness shut him up mid-complaint. He had a fleeting sense emptiness, desolation, icy shadows cutting through him like an arctic wind-

And then he was inside the firehouse and the crow was nowhere to be seen. Peter looked around wildly, then patted his arms and chest. He felt solid enough. So what the hell had just happened? What had that damn bird done to him?

He had gone no more than a dozen steps when he felt something prickle his senses. Moved by an impulse he didn't understand but couldn't resist, he knelt and pressed his palm to the floor...

...fearshockpain as bullets slammed into unprotected flesh, blood on his hands, in his mouth... reaching… needterrorgriefpain…Peter! ...darkness...

Peter snatched his hand back, but not before he'd felt the moment of his father's death. He snarled, fingers curving into claws as the thing inside him surged up, its tendrils reaching out into every part of him and filling him with an almost orgasmic fury.

Something cold and wet ran down his face and spattered against the front of his jumpsuit. Momentarily distracted, he touched the stain, then felt his cheek. His hand came away smeared with black tears that turned to ash on his fingertips. As he watched, all color bled from his skin, leaving him as white as the ghost on the sign out front.

What the hell was happening to him?

Almost desperately, he looked around for a reflective surface and spotted the lockers against the wall near the stairs. He remembered… There was a small mirror hanging on the inside of the door marked 'Venkman'. He wrenched open the door- and stared at a reflection he barely recognized as his own.

His face was as pale as the rest of him, a stark, bloodless white that provided a startling contrast to the black shadowing his eyes so they resembled the hollow sockets of a skull. Black streaks trailed like tears down onto his cheeks, arched above his brows, and outlined his mouth in a grotesque parody of a smile. He looked like a demented clown, a mime from hell. He bared his teeth, stretching his new, black smile even wider. The darkness in his heart was free - and it knew what it had to do.

Someone had attacked the Ghostbusters, hurt them. Tried to murder them - had murdered Peter's dad. Someone had racked up a huge cosmic debt.

And he was going to collect.