Chapter Nine

No words can soothe him
No prayer remove him

And I will hear forever more…
Nevermore.

--The Alan Parsons Project

Frump stamped his way up the stairs to his apartment in an even fouler mood than usual. Granted, he wasn't often in a good mood, but today had been more frustrating than most. Bad enough that every lead he'd tracked down today had dead-ended, but it was Venkman's case that had stalled out. He'd never liked the guy, but this was a matter of pride. Figures Venkman would be just as irritating dead as he was alive.

As he reached the head of the stairs, Frump paused both to pull the keys from his pocket and to check the hallway. Old cop instincts. He knew the front door was a good place for an ambush if you weren't prepared, so Frump made sure he always was. Seeing nothing, he continued to the door and unlocked it.

The instant the deadbolt slid back, Frump felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Something was wrong. He glanced over the door. There were no obvious signs of tampering and, even straining his ears, he could hear nothing unusual. But you didn't live to reach retirement age by ignoring your instincts. Frump pulled his firearm from its holster and fished a small mag-light from his pocket. Leveling the gun at the entrance, flashlight held just above the barrel, he kicked the door open and scanned the darkened room. Nothing.

Frump slid into the room, and a voice in the darkness stopped him in his tracks.

"Jeez, Frump. If that's the way you come home every night, you're gonna lose your damage deposit."

Frump's eyes widened. He knew that voice. But it couldn't be…

A faint breeze came from the kitchen, so the policeman carefully made his way to that room. In the dim light, he could see that the window was open and a dark figure leaned against the counter near the stove. The figure didn't move, didn't flinch as Frump raised the flashlight up to his face.

"Venkman," Frump growled deep in his chest.

Haloed by the flashlight, the intruder smiled. "The one and only."

Anger began to replace Frump's apprehension as he nudged the kitchen light on with his shoulder. It was Venkman all right. Same carefully styled mop of brown hair, same glittering, green eyes -- same irritating smirk. New wardrobe, though. Instead of his jumpsuit or usual civvies, the Ghostbuster was dressed in dark gray and black, probably as camouflage. The fancy jacket didn't look too practical for crawling around on fire escapes or through apartment windows, but Frump chalked that up to either vanity or inexperience on Venkman's part. He was willing to lay money on it being the former rather than the latter.

"This time I've got you dead to rights, Venkman," Frump said as he took another step, still holding his old nemesis in his sights. "Breaking and entering as well as insurance fraud. I gotta admit. You did a good job faking your death. Fooled everyone."

Venkman's smirk only widened.

"Well, I'm sorry about the first, but I couldn't think of another way to meet with you discretely. As for the other..." The smirk melted away as he turned to glance out the window at something. "I only wish it had been fake. Dying hurts entirely too much. And coming back is no picnic either."

Frump snorted in derision as he reached back for his cuffs. "You really expect me to believe that? You look pretty damn healthy for a dead man."

"You know what they say. Appearances deceive."

"Pull the other one." Frump gestured with his gun. "Turn around. You're under arrest."

The infuriating smirk was back. "I'm sorry, Frumpy, but I really don't have time for this right now. So I hope you don't mind if I literally cut to the chase."

Venkman moved faster than Frump could see. Next thing he knew, Venkman had a butcher knife from the nearby block in his hand. Frump fell back a pace and leveled his pistol at the Ghostbuster's chest. "That was stupid, Venkman. Even for you. Just put it down nice and slow."

Venkman sighed and rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, Frump. I'm not gonna stick you. I just figure this would be easier than arguing with you all night."

The inspector gasped as the blade plunged down--into Venkman's chest at the perfect angle to hit the heart. He lunged forward only to be brought up short by a iron hard grip on his shoulder.

"Damn, that smarts!"

Frump tore his eyes from the knife imbedded in the psychologist's chest to the arm holding him. Venkman's arm was rock steady. He didn't seem to be having much difficulty holding him or talking with eight inches of stainless steel in his ribcage. Reluctantly, Frump looked up at Venkman's face. All color had drained from his skin, leaving it ashen white save for blackened lips and two sooty streaks that ran vertically across each eye. He...it... whatever he was, gave Frump a death's head grin.

"You wanna pull it out and check, Doubting Thomas?"

The taunt pulled Frump out of his shock. No two ways about it. Venkman was more irritating dead than he was alive. The inspector reached up with his free hand and yanked the blade out with a savage jerk.

Venkman held open the slash in his shirt to expose the wound as it closed in on itself, leaving a thin coating of ashy material behind. Frump looked down at the knife, which was also coated in the black ash, the same ash they had found all over Venkman's coffin. Part of Frump wanted to go into hysterics, but it was quickly overridden by the part that didn't want to give Venkman the satisfaction of knowing how creeped out he was.

"Okay," he finally said, shrugging off Venkman's hand. "So you really are dead."

Venkman gave a brittle laugh as he stepped back and slid up on the counter to sit on it. "As they would say in The Wizard of Oz, I am not merely dead. I'm really quite sincerely dead."

Frump scowled and tossed the knife into the sink with as much nonchalance as he could muster. "So, corpse boy, if you're dead, what the hell are you doing in my apartment?"

With a cold gleam in his eyes, the Ghostbuster leaned back against the overhead cabinet. "I'm also really quite sincerely pissed. Do you blame me?"

"Oh, I get it," Frump said sarcastically. He gave the gun in his hand a glance, then holstered it. "You went and rose from the grave for revenge. Nothin' doin', pal. That's not how we do things in my city. You can just trot back off to the Great Beyond. I'll catch the bastards who did this to you, and we'll let the courts deal with them."

Venkman sighed and gave the detective a look of unbridled disgust. "Come on, Frump. Do you think I would have come back if you could deal with the creeps on those terms?"

A raucous caw came from the window, seemingly in agreement with the Ghostbuster. Frump glanced over to see an enormous crow land on the sill. "Those are the terms the living deal with," he said stubbornly. "And you'd better not interfere with my investigation or--"

"Or you'll what?" Venkman interrupted. "You'll kill me? Lock me up? Quite frankly, Frumpy, if I want to interfere there's not a damn thing you can do to me."

Venkman's skin had returned to a more normal color, but Frump kept seeing the grave mask in his mind. He had an uneasy feeling Venkman was right. Silence stretched out as he tried to figure out a good come-back for that.

"As much as I enjoy your company," Venkman said, laying on the sarcasm with a verbal trowel. "I didn't come back from the grave just so I could drop by for a friendly chat. I want some information."

"I don't give a fuck what you want, Venkman, dead or alive."

"Nice. You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Venkman smiled thinly and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "We can always do this the hard way, if you insist. But the easy way is much less messy to clean up after."

Frump swallowed hard. Without even trying, he could see the replay of that knife plunging into Venkman's chest. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine it stabbing into his own heart, with Venkman's dead smile behind it. "I always knew you were a cold-blooded son of a bitch, Venkman. Thanks for proving me right."

"Frump, I'm not sure if what I've got in my veins even qualifies as blood. But 'cold,' I'll give you." He shrugged. "Now, about that information--"

"Go to hell."

"Maybe later." Venkman rose to a crouch, black shoes balancing easily on the battered Formica countertop. "For now, I want to know what you've got on the creeps who attacked us."

"Get used to disappointment." Despite himself, Frump edged back, only stopping when his hip hit the table behind him. He'd be damned if he was giving Venkman anything, even the fact that none of his leads had panned out. "You expect me to give you names and watch the punks turn up as freshly minted corpses? It doesn't work that way."

The Ghostbuster shook his head. "As much as I'd like to string the bastards up by their balls and feed them to terror dogs, that's not my priority."

Frump forced a sneer. "And just what is your priority, Dr.Venkman?"

Venkman looked back at him with eyes gone as hard as diamonds. "The guys. Whoever offed me is going after them. Their safety is my only priority--and it had damn well better become yours."

"I'm a cop, not a bodyguard."

"Something happens to my buddies, you're dead meat. That's a promise."

"You threatening me, Venkman?" Frump growled, instinctively reaching for his gun. He didn't know what good it'd do against whatever Venkman had become, but he wasn't going down without a fight .

The gesture seemed to amuse Venkman, who shook his head. "Warning you."

Frump forced his hand away from his holster. "How magnanimous of you."

"Isn't it? Enjoy it while it lasts." Venkman bared his teeth. Frump would've had to be suicidal to mistake it for a smile. "Co-operation could have its benefits. Think it over, Frump. Next time we meet, I may not be in such a generous mood."

Frump made himself turn his back on the Ghostbuster as he shrugged out of his sportscoat and slung it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

"Yeah, I'm quakin' in my booties, Venkman. The day I can't handle a snot-nosed punk like you, dead or alive, is the day I hand in my --" He turned back, only to find he was talking to an empty kitchen. "--badge."

Frump refused to acknowledge the trembling of the hand he used to slam down the window and twist the lock. He yanked the curtains closed, then went through the apartment and turned on all the lights. He made sure the door was secure. Then he sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. His gun on the table before him, he took out his notebook and stared blindly at his scrawled handwriting.

Here were all the notes he'd made on every futile interview, every possible lead since this damned case had fallen in his lap. All of which had come to nothing. There had to be something he wasn't seeing, something he'd missed. He was going to find it…and damn Venkman to hell where he belonged. He began to read.

It was a long time until morning.