"Egon?" Peter repeated as he reached out his hand and tried to touch the figure's shoulder as he held his thrower in the other hand.
"No, Pete wait!" Ray said as he held the meter up and it showed a scan that alarmed him, but as he spoke the room suddenly became freezing cold and the figure that stood before Peter turned and bright red eyes looked right into Peter's eyes. "Get out of the way, Venkman!"
Peter felt the hairs on his arms rise up as he stared into the eyes of something otherworldly and at Ray's command he ducked and jumped out of the line of fire. Whatever dark figure stood in the room with them began to growl as Ray and Winston fired and a blast of proton stream and pink slime tore the office apart. Peter waved and gestured them to stop as the red-eyed figure had disappeared into thin air, the office had trails of fire and slime covering its walls and various objects. "That was fun," Peter grunted as he kicked off some slime from his left boot.
"It had a massive reading, almost as strong as Gozer even. That wasn't just some ghost, that was demonic," Ray said as he checked the readings on the meter and expressed his concern as they left the room and entered the hallway again.
"I'll take that creepy clown over whatever that was, anytime. I'm not playin' hide and seek with some demon," Peter said as he firmly held his thrower with both hands while they stood in the center of the hallway.
"I hear you, I hate demons," Winston added.
"Whatever's pulling the strings here is located on the floors above us, that demon we saw is up there," Ray said as he pointed the meter toward the ceiling and saw that the activity was way bigger on the upper floors.
Suddenly a strange giggle-ish moan came from the other end of the hallway near the staircase and as all three of them turned their heads they saw what appeared to be the same clown they fought earlier. It looked enraged and fairly muddy as its clothes were stained with pink slime from the first encounter it had with the Ghostbusters. It had also sprouted horns on its forehead and growled like an animal. Winston handed Ray the trap from his belt before he and Peter stepped forward as they aimed their throwers at the clown.
"Smiley's back for more, I say we trap the little creep this time," Peter said as he and Winston began to approach it with Ray behind them.
"On three?" Winston asked while he kept his eyes on the clown.
"On three," Peter replied and narrowed his gaze.
"Three!" they said simultaneously and fired as two proton beams blazed across the hall. The clown growled even louder as it dodged the beams and began to crawl over the ceiling again like some overgrown spider. Peter jumped to the far left whilst Winston stood on the far right as they tried to corner the ghost and kept firing as the streams marked the hallway with scars of scorched lines. The clown tried to dodge the beams but it failed to dodge Peter's attack as he fired directly at the spot on the ceiling that the clown would crawl over next and managed to capture it.
It struggled against the streams as Winston joined in and now the clown had no possible escape as the streams tightened around its body. The clown roared furiously much to Peter's amusement as he smiled and kept a tight grip on his thrower. "How you likin' the party so far, Patch?" Peter taunted while Ray rolled the trap out underneath the clown.
"Trap out!" Ray said as he stepped on the pedal and a cone of energy shot up and immediately contained the ghost within. And as the trap closed it sucked the clown inside and both Peter and Winston looked away as it closed. The red light indicated that it was caught and it sizzled smoke as Ray picked up the trap by its cord and looked at it.
"And now we're down to one trap."
"Very tight observation, Ray."
"You're the one with the empty trap now, Pete. Don't lose it!"
"Yes mom."
"Shut up idiots," Winston said annoyed as he hung his thrower on his belt and took the loaded trap from Ray's hands which he clipped to his belt as well.
"Well that's one down, now to find the big cheese himself and get in some demon target practice," Peter said as he pointed his thrower to the ceiling and they all nodded as they knew where to go next.
They headed toward the staircase and Peter took point as he held on to his thrower and slowly all three Ghostbusters headed up to the fourth floor. Egon had faced the demonic presence on the 11th floor but it seemed like it wasn't located to one floor in particular, and Egon had yet to be found.
The fourth floor looked like the third one, empty rooms and various medical equipment spread throughout the hallway. Although this one was different for the fact that every room had already been opened as every door stood wide open and a familiar cold filled the air as the three brave men entered the fourth floor. Ray took the lead as he used his pke meter to scan for any hint of that same demonic presence they faced in the room one floor below. Peter and Winston aimed their throwers into every open room they came across but so far nothing out of the ordinary was seen, nothing except the ever constant reading of growing spiritual activity that the pke meter detected.
"This hospital is givin' me the creeps, next time whenever someone calls us to investigate an abandoned hospital we send Janine. She'll scare any demon with that mood of hers," Peter quietly joked as he tried to cut the tension.
"You can feel the presence, the thick air that hangs around just swallows you whole. This isn't your typical haunted hospital, it's a hot spot. This place is like a magnet for spiritual activity, Egon and I discussed what could possibly have happened to the people that worked here and he had a theory. He thought that they had opened an interdimensional gateway that served as a food elevator for something bigger. Something that fed on people's souls," Ray explained as he twisted a few knobs on the meter which made it shift through various frequencies of psykokinetic energy. "About a month ago, Egon and I went and took outside readings of this place and from those readings he formed the theory I just explained."
"Ray? This is information that I like to know before I step inside Gordon Ramsay's Haunted Kitchen!" Peter snarled as he shook his head and wished that he'd brought more traps. "I knew I should've stayed home."
"Man, I hate jobs like these. We always end up fighting some big scary thing that either forces us to do something incredibly stupid or that causes us to blow up half the city," Wiston said after he coughed a few times.
All of a sudden the floor they walked on started to tremble much like the 11th floor where Egon previously sat and tried to communicate with the demon. It quickly stopped but a simple tremble was childsplay compared to the sight that captured the attention of each Ghostbuster as they watched a dark mass rise up from the floor and within the darkness of it there were little balls of light moving around.
"What the hell is that?" Peter asked as his eyes grew bigger and he aimed his thrower forward, ready to fire at whatever manifestation the hospital threw at them this time.
"If those little balls of light are becomin' a bunch of nutjob clowns again I'm goin' the other way," said Wiston as he took a step backwards though firmly held on to his thrower.
"So let's not give them a chance to do so!" Ray said as he pulled the lever on his slime blower and a thick pink stream of slime flew toward the black mass and it seemed to absorb the slime instantly. "C'mon guys help me out!"
"You heard the man, Winston," Peter said as he and Winston fired their beams and a swirl of proton energy blasted the black manifestation. The beams wouldn't rope themselves around whatever it was they fired at but instead made it light up as the dark mass became a bright blinding source of light.
"Alright, everybody cool down," Peter said as his pack hummed after he stopped firing and both Ray and Winston joined in. The blinding light had faded and whatever black mass they shot at was gone as well, the ground had been covered in a layer of pink slime but other than that there was nothing to be seen.
"Did we kill it?" Winston said as he kept his finger on the trigger.
"Yeah, I think it was already dead to begin with," Peter said.
"I think the combined forces of the proton streams and the slime must have neutralized it," Ray remarked as he took a step closer.
"We thought we melted that clown earlier, but it came back with horns," Peter added.
"If this thing comes back I'm blasting this whole floor," Winston grunted as he hated the idea of yet another attack by something they thought they'd already defeated.
"Look we're gettin' nowhere fast, how about we pin down where the highest build-up of psychokinetic energy is and go there?" Peter asked as he stopped and crossed his arms while his thrower hung from his belt.
"With all this activity going on I doubt we'll be able to pin down anything. The readings make no sense whatsoever, the activity seems to be equally strong everywhere now. We could...and this is just a theory, we could try and provoke it. Make it mad and make it come to us, how's that?" Ray suggested.
For a moment all three men looked at one another and Peter was the first to shrug his shoulders and nod in agreement. "I like it, sounds exactly like the kind of thing Egon would never let me do," Peter joked as they all shook hands and nodded.
"Ray, Winson, you guys stand ready and I'll go do my thing. Just make sure nothing creeps up behind me will ya?" Peter said as he looked over his shoulder at both Winston and Ray before he walked on to the center of the hallway and unstrapped his proton pack. He gently lowered his pack to the floor along with the trap and now just like Egon, he stood unarmed.