Joining Ray up on the first floor of the old firehouse, walking into the small but opened office space that was adorned with a single large desk, an old worn couch and several tall filing cabinets both Peter and Egon stepped over the dropped papers and opened books that were strewn about the singular area. Gathering around the desk where Ray was sitting the three men eyed over the document that had garnered Ray's full attention.

"What is it Ray?" Egon asked curiously as he pressed his slipping glasses back up the bridge of his nose as he looked downward toward the desk.

Presenting an age worn leather bound book to his colleagues Ray pressed his finger to an article of faded ink and print. "I found the connection between our architects." The book was just one of many that Ray collected over the years. A collection that has prove invaluable time and time again to the brave Ghostbusters.

Egon quickly read over the details captured in the print and seemingly found the same connection as Ray. "The original architect and founder of the Gozer Cult, Ivo Shador had a lieutenant to aid in his work. A loyal right hand man to keep his work secret and funded."

"Let me guess," Peter easily caught onto Ray's hunch. "Victor Weldon was a man with deep pockets and tight lips."

"Exactly." Ray confirmed both men's suspicions. "According to the few remaining chronicles that survived the sinking of Shandor Island, Ivo had taken on an apprentice to ensure that his work and that the power of Gozer remained active in the city long after Shandor's death. Victor was a man of wealth and keen intellect, and by all accounts an uncommitted psychopath. He had no siblings, no children, his mother died during childbirth, his father drank himself to death before Victor was even eighteen years old, and Victor was twice a widower of 'suspicious circumstances'."

"Widower?" Peter asked with a heavy level of disturbance in his voice. "Murder?"

Ray nodded his head affirmatively. "But there was never enough evidence to convict him. It was theorized that he poisoned his first wife and drowned the second. He had a great lawyer that kept him out of jail."

Peter rubbed at his chin in an irritated manner. "Shandor."

Egon stood up straight and glanced over his colleagues facial expressions with a studying eye. "Sounds like the ideal circumstances for Shandor to convert a naive and lonely soul into one of his twisted Gozer worshipers. Victor was just a pawn."

"Get this," Ray continued to flip through the pages of the book. "Victor was a student of medicine, botany, art, law and architecture. A jack of all trades but master of none. Being an only child of a successful and wealthy business man and widower ensure that he had plenty of funds to fuel his hobbies and support whatever twisted activities that the rest of Shador's cult had conducted in secret."

Peter had enough of the day's history lesson and was losing patience. "And what does that have to do with the hotel, Ray?"

"I was getting there." Ray blushed a little as he realized that he had been rambling on for a little too long. "Victor assisted Shador when it came to getting his buildings designed, built and funded properly during the peak of Shandor's reign. The last building that had Shandor's name on the blueprints was for the Castle of Shandor on the now sunken Shandor Island. Victor continued Shador's work and attempted to take over the cult, but the other cultists weren't swayed by Victor as easily as Shandor."

"So the cult was abandoned?" Peter was still waiting for Ray to get back to the details on the hotel.

"No. He was sacrificed in the name of Gozer." Ray closed the book with a firm slam. "You see, without the island to conduct their activities the cultists moved on, they bound and gagged Victor, dragging him into the basement of the old 'Ingress Hotel' while it was still under construction. In the basement they chose to offer a blood sacrifice to Gozer. Victor had his throat cut, his heart removed and his body burned all in the name of Gozer. And all of this was done while Victor was still alive!"

"Ouch." Peter grimaced at the thought. "That's a little extreme."

"That's not all." Ray had a twisted little smile on his face that only showed itself when he found something to be of extreme interest even when it was under a dark passage from history. "While Victor's blood and personal possessions were found in the basement, his body never was."

"And the cultists?" Egon asked curiously with an arched eyebrow.

"Disappeared."

"Just... gone?" Peter asked somewhat bewildered.

"Gone."

"All of them?"

"All of them. The night of the final sacrifice all of the remaining Gozer cult members vanished from the city and Victor's body was never found. His murder is one of New York City's most bizarre cold cases."

"And it's only going to get colder." Peter tagged on.

"Rumor has it that the cultists hid Victor's body somewhere in the basement and as a result his spirit is trapped within the walls of the Ingress Hotel."

Egon was just an intrigued as Ray. "If that's true then it's possible that the high concentration of psychokinetic energy from the murder would only fuel the macabre conduction of the building itself, and with nearly fifty years of energy to build Shandor's gateway to the other side might actually be opened."

"And soon." Ray concluded.

"Seventeen days..." Peter had an idea of his own. "Ray, do we know when Victor was murdered?"

"Uh, according to the police records from that time it was believed that Victor was murdered on the night of June 18th in 1930."

"And today is the seventeenth of June. Isn't it?"

"Uh..." Ray's face paled a little as he realized that Peter was right. "Yeah. We're one day shy of Victor's seventieth murder anniversary."

Egon couldn't understand Peter's sudden interest in numbers after he had been asking about the hotel. "Peter, what are you thinking?"

Peter flashed Egon a cheesy grin. "Just bear with me. I'm going on a hunch here." Turning his attention to Ray he continued to ask about the numbers in question. "And aren't you guys the ones who insisted that we all read up on numerology and the significance behind each number? Well, this storm wants us to prepare for something. Are we prepared?"

Egon's eyes flashed with concern briefly as his controlled emotional state and logic calmed his nerves. "In Chinese culture the number eighteen represents success and prosperity, in Hebrew eighteen means long life and in Tarot eighteen is represented by a weeping moon which in itself is seen an a symbol of spiritual destruction."

Ray's shoulders slumped as he went into depth about the next number associated with Victor. "The number seventy is connected to the totality of evolution and is tied with the fall of the house of God, collapse of faith and catastrophe."

Egon remembered the voice in the storm before he had been injured. "Numbers in general represent fortune and chance. 'Kismet' means the same, as well as 'apocalypse'."

"Our little storm has been brewing for seventeen days now," Peter responded in a calm yet alert tone. "what happens tomorrow on the eighteenth night of the seventieth anniversary? I forget, diamonds or tinfoil?"

Ray warily kept his silence.

Egon answered very coldly with a distinct confidence that filled the room with dread. "The end of the world."

...to be continued...