A.N.: Same warnings abound for language, sci-fi violence, and intense situations. And I still don't own the characters (see chapter 1 for full disclaimers and credits).
2
"Coma Guys & Mr. Snickers' Secrets"
The strange woman didn't look like a particle physicist nor an engineer. In her battered black leather jacket, yellow-lens goggles, vest, torn jeans, and black t-shirt that read "Heavily Medicated" in blurry white letters, the tiny blonde gave the impression of a biker chick who had made a wrong turn in the hallway before ending up at Abby Yates' door. The duffel bag slung over her shoulder was nearly as big as the woman.
Maybe she was some liberal arts student who got lost looking for the Drama department?
"I'm sorry, sweetie, this is the Paranormal Studies laboratory. Liberal Arts is one flight up, the bathrooms are down the hall, Auto shop is on the other side of the campus." Abby didn't bother moving from behind her workbench, where she was puzzling over a pile of circuit boards and wires she hoped would somehow morph into a mass spectrometer. "If you're looking for Dr. Rivera's Botany class, it's been moved upstairs. And no, he didn't leave any of the hemp plants here."
The blonde tilted her head just a bit. "Hmm. Well, that's good information, and I will make a note of that last bit for future reference, but I'm looking for Abby Yates?" She pointed to the name plate that read 'Abby Yates' on the laboratory door.
"You're Dr. Holtzmann?" Abby stared despite herself.
"Not what you were expecting." It wasn't a question.
Belatedly, Abby realized she was being rude. "I'm sorry. Yes, I'm Dr. Yates. Come in," she waved Holtzmann into the room, meeting her halfway with a handshake. "Have a seat. Can I get you some water or…" Abby sighed at the battered kitchenette and broken refrigerator. "…um, I pretty much only have water."
Holtzmann searched for a chair or some indication where she should sit. All she found was a stool, so she scooted it over to Abby's workbench. She set the duffel bag at her feet. "No, thanks."
Abby searched the pile of papers stacked on the t.v. tray that served as her desk until she found the print out of the application Holtzmann had emailed. "Thank you for applying, Ms. Holtzmann. I should say up front that I have many qualified applicants for the research assistant position…"
"Really?" The blonde raised an eyebrow, clearly in doubt.
"Yes." Something about the woman's unblinking stare had the effect of truth serum. Abby tried not to squirm. "No," she admitted, hiding her blush by studying the paper in front of her. "You didn't list an address on your application."
"Eight-Nine East Forty-Second Street."
Abby actually started to write it down, until she realized: "Wait…that's Grand Central Terminal?"
Holtzmann shrugged in answer.
Abby felt another twinge of apprehension. "That's where you work currently?"
"No, I have a little grate on the sidewalk there. Do you need a platform number? The mail service is kind of a bummer, but George at the Swatch Store can always get me a message."
Yates couldn't tell if the woman was being sarcastic, messing with her, or completely serious. Was this some kind of prank arranged by one of the other university professors, all of whom considered their fields of study much more 'respectable' than Abby's and had no qualms about telling her as much.
Holtzmann seemed serious enough, and that just made Abby feel guilty. She decided it was best to change the subject. "So, your latest employment was…particle physicist at the CERN Hadron Collider?" That shocked Abby. What the hell would Holtzmann want with a research job if that were true? This surely had to be a joke. "That's…Impressive. But, you were only there three months. May I ask why you left?"
"There was…there was an accident. I almost generated a black hole in the middle of Switzerland." There was not a whit of humor in her tone to indicate a joke. In fact, Holtzmann had tensed a bit before answering. Abby now knew for sure…she wasn't joking at all, not about sleeping on the street or the black hole.
"That could have been awkward," was all Abby could think to say.
"They thought so, too."
One part of Abby's mind urged her to end the interview now. She had enough trouble without having a partner who was prone to lab accidents.
On the other hand…the woman had almost created a freaking black hole. In a weird way, Abby kind of found that rather awesome. Terrifying, but awesome. Another part of her mind wanted to press on with the interview just to hear what other surprises the eccentric physicist was hiding up her sleeve.
Abby didn't have to wait long. Holtzmann reached into her duffel bag and drew out a copy of Abby's book: "Ghosts From Our Past" So, she was the one who had bought the other copy, Yates mused.
"This is you, right?" Holtzmann asked. "Is this what you're studying here?"
"Yes and yes. Can we just get back to the interview?" Abby hurriedly redirected the conversation before Holtzmann asked her more questions about the book or its co-author. The subject was still too painful. "After CERN, there seems to be a little gap in your employment history. May I ask what you've been doing for the last year?" Abby could have supplied the answer on her own. She couldn't imagine there were too many research facilities anxious to hire a scientist who had almost generated a planet-killing vortex in the middle of Switzerland. No wonder the poor kid was sleeping on the streets and applying for research assistant jobs for which she was clearly overqualified.
Holtzmann didn't answer right away this time. She pursed her lips, apparently having some inner monologue with herself about how to answer the question. She knew the dark-haired woman would probably kick her back to the curb as soon as she heard the reply. Better to give Yates a straight answer than bullshit her just to drag out the interview to delay the inevitable rejection. "I was in a lovely facility upstate taking happy pills and building particle accelerators out of Popsicle sticks in the day room. The rest is fairly self-explanatory."
Abby took a very deep breath. "O-kay, let's zoom past that for a minute. You worked at Hudson Aerospace Innovations before CERN. You were a protégé of Dr. Gorin? Wow." To say it was an exclusive club of scientists who were chosen as her personal protégé was like saying Tesla cars were slightly pricey.
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't call her for a reference right now. She's kind of ticked off about the black hole thing."
Abby nodded. "Noted. May I-"
"Ask why I was fired? I chained my supervisor to a cooling pipe."
Oh, holy crap… Abby knew she wasn't hiding her surprise this time, but she was seriously wondering if she should be afraid for her safety at this point. "That kind of informs the eventual therapy stint, doesn't it? Any particular reason?"
Holtzmann frowned. "He messed with my babies."
"Oh. So, you have children?"
"No."
Abby had heard enough. She set the application aside, scratching her head as to how to phrase what she wanted to say. "Dr. Holtzmann, it doesn't seem like Paranormal Physics has been your area of interest. Can I just ask: Do you believe in spooks, specters, wraiths, geists, ghosts, UFOs, astral projection, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, full-trance mediums, psychokinetic or telekinetic movement, cartomancy, phrenology, black and/or white magic, divination, scrying, necromancy, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis?"
Holtzmann had leaned forward, absorbing every word of Abby's lengthy list with all seriousness before finally waving a hand. "Let me stop you right there, Doc..."
Abby braced herself for whatever mockery or scorn or derision was about to follow. Nothing like having a recent mental patient laugh off your work as 'insane' to make you take stock of your life…
"If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe whatever the hell you want."
It definitely wasn't the answer Abby was expecting. This strange person was making a habit of rendering Abby speechless. Darned if she didn't actually like her, too, despite her eccentricities. She'd be lucky to have help from a scientist with Holtzmann's skill set. But, the warning signs were there, clear as blinking neon lights reading: Do not hire this person if you ever want your work taken seriously.
Abby heard herself say, "It doesn't seem like a good fit. I'm sorry…"
She wanted to take them back almost as soon as she'd said them.
For her part, Holtzmann merely shrugged. She'd had rejections from every single laboratory she'd applied for since CERN and the hospital stay. It wasn't exactly as shock that Dr. Yates turned her down, too. Hell, there was probably a flashing red memo line about Holtzmann posted on every job search website warning: Do not hire this nutter-butter. Yates must not have got the memo. Once again, this had been a waste of time. Jillian needed to get back to the train station before her warm grate was taken for the night.
As she slung her bag over her shoulder, Holtzmann imparted one observation. "Your mass spectrometer has issues."
Abby paused. "You can tell that from over here?" She was impressed that Holtzmann could deduce what she was building just by looking at the collecting of parts and wires.
Now, Holtzmann smiled. "You also took a stab at building a psychokinetic energy meter on your own." She gestured to another contraption Abby had shoved into a cubby hole after becoming frustrated with trying to get the device working. "It's very cute. But, if you don't adjust your energy flow and put some shielding in place, you're going to scatter your own atoms if you fire up that bad boy. Unless that's what you were going for? Here…"
Holtzmann reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like a fully functional PKE meter, if one looked beyond the tin foil and rubber bands and general impression that it was built out of dumpster scraps. "…I took the liberty of whipping this up after I read your book. It's a little rough."
Abby accepted the device, awestruck. "Does this actually work?"
"Dunno…got a ghost we can test it on?"
She considered the device. Holtzmann could build a gadget out of dumpster scraps that Abby hadn't been able to complete in three months of trying with a laboratory at her disposal. Abby couldn't afford to let this much skill walk out of her lab, and she knew it. Torn, Abby wondered what she'd be signing up for letting this strange woman into her lab.
"It's…I'm genuinely terrified of you. Just a little bit, but still," Abby admitted.
Holtzmann understood. "I get that a lot."
What the hell. "Okay, then...but you have to promise not to chain me to anything, and definitely don't generate black holes in the lab."
"Fine."
The bang of the ambulance doors startled Abby from her thoughts. She hadn't noticed that they'd arrived at the hospital until a phalanx of medics converged on the ambulance. They whisked Jillian out of Abby's grip and into the emergency entrance, exchanged information with the paramedics, and rapid-fired questions at Yates as she followed the group down the hallway. A doctor whose name tag read "Menken" stopped Abby at the door to the E.R.
"Sorry, family only past this point," he told her.
"We are her family!" Abby snapped at him.
Dr. Menken had received a call from the mayor's office before the ambulance bearing the Ghostbuster had reached the hospital doors. He'd been told in no uncertain terms to be fully cooperative with them. Menken intended to cooperate only if these paranormal yahoos did nothing to put his patients in danger. The mayor's authority would not override Menken's where their welfare was concerned.
"I need family authorization to treat Ms. Holtzmann."
Abby snatched the clipboard from his hand, scribbling her name across the bottom. "I told you, we're her family. I can sign, I have her P.O. A. in case of emergency." She shoved the papers back at him. "Is she going to be all right?"
Menken's expression softened into something akin to sympathy. "We'll do everything we can. Have a seat. And don't bring your gear in here if you want to see your friend. I'm not going to have any of your radioactive contraptions polluting this hospital."
With that, he disappeared behind the E.R. doors.
"Radioactive contraptions. Man, that guy is lucky Holtz didn't hear him insult her babies. She'd probably pull his bottom lip over his head and make him eat his own face." Patty's voice right behind nearly made Abby jump out of her skin. She hadn't heard Patty and Erin arrive or the procession of police cars that had escorted Ecto-1 right to the hospital doors.
Erin wrapped an arm around Abby's shoulders and urged her away from the E.R. doors to the cafeteria, which Rorke and Hawkins had cleared out to give them privacy. Rorke moved to station himself outside the cafeteria while Hawkins took up a protective position in front of E.R.
Abby made her way to one of the tables and slumped into the chair, her gaze riveted to the unmoving E.R. doors. Erin and Patty sat across from her.
"Seriously, though, Abby, does Holtzmann have family or someone we ought to be calling?" Patty wanted to know.
Abby shook her head. "She doesn't know her biological parents. The Holtzmanns were her adopted parents, and they died when she was five. From what Jillian told me, her foster families were a parade of freaks. There's no one. Just us."
Coming from an extended, close-knit family, hearing that just about tore out Patty's heart. She had another concern: "So, how are we going to protect our baby girl if we can't bring our weapons in here?"
Intellectually, she understood Menken's attitude. Hospitals were full of oxygen tanks and all kinds of things that could explode if something (like, say, a proton stream) hit them. It was also true that their gear gave off low level radiation. Holtzmann said it was safe in small doses, no worse than getting an x-ray, but who knew if it would affect the various monitors and machinery in the building.
On the other hand, there was still a ghost out there somewhere that was coming after Jillian. It was going to have to come through Patty to get her, and Menken had best keep out of the way.
Erin had wondered how she was going to bring this up without seeming insensitive. "I found a security camera in Holtz's apartment." She placed the camera on the table. It looked like a teddy bear, except for the nasty 3-D printed fangs that Holtzmann had glued to its mouth. The bear had a little i.d. tag that read: "Mr. Snickers".
"That is disturbing," Patty said.
Erin kind of liked the thing, but that wasn't important at the moment. "The card's still intact. The camera might have caught something. We need some kind of idea what we're dealing with here."
"You mean 'who', not 'what'," Patty added.
Abby shook her head vehemently. "I'm not…I can't watch that."
"It's okay, Abs. I'll take care of it." Erin wasn't thrilled with the idea, either, but at least it was something productive she could do to distract herself from worrying.
"Abby, do you think any of those freaks you mentioned might be the ghost we're dealing with?" Patty wanted to know.
It was on Abby's lips to say no. The only ghosts she knew from Jillian's past were her adopted parents, and it wasn't at all likely one of them had attacked her. But, then, there were others...
Abby and Holtzmann had been working in the laboratory one afternoon, not long after she had recruited Jillian as her research partner (it had quickly become apparent that "assistant" wasn't a fitting title). Holtzmann was hip deep in upgrading the PKE, blaring music and dancing like she frequently did while she worked. "It helps me think," she'd told Abby.
Then one particular song came on the radio: Cat Stevens singing "Wild World". Abby personally loved the song. Holtzmann must have felt differently: Without warning, she suddenly hurled her wrench and knocked the radio off the shelf, silencing the music. Then she went back to work like that was the most normal thing in the world for her to have done.
Abby hadn't looked up from her own project. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
Holtzmann cringed a bit at her own outburst. "Sorry."
"It's just…there's an off button. And a little clicker. That's all I'm going to say."
Abby might not have thought anything more of it. Most people had songs that brought up bad memories. She wondered, naturally, but she never intended to mention it again…until a few weeks later.
The university had renewed their grant, so Abby and Jillian went out to a moderately priced dinner just to celebrate their ability to go out and purchase a moderately price dinner instead of eating Ramen noodles cooked on a Bunsen burner. Since it was a formal celebration, Abby broke out her nicest Ann Taylor sweater and Holtzmann sported her "Screw U" pendant and favorite t-shirt (it was heather grey and jumbled white letters spelled out "Highly Unstable") under her nicest vest.
Then that same Cat Stevens song came on the restaurant's jukebox. Holtzmann pulled a little remote from her vest pocket, pointed it (hiding it under the table) at the music machine. The remote burped out a small EM pulse that blacked out every building within a five block radius for the next fifteen minutes, effectively ending their evening.
"You don't have to talk about it," Abby reiterated as they walked back to the lab, dodging looters and muggers in the darkened streets. "Just-again-the jukebox has an 'off' button, too…"
"Sorry."
"It's all I'm going to say."
It ended up being another night of Ramen noodles after all. While they ate, Holtzmann pulled out Abby's book, which she was reading a third time trying to get a better handle on her new friend. She pointed to the picture of the co-author, Erin Gilbert. "So, you never told me about pixie-legs here. What happened to her? Why isn't she working with you?" Holtzmann had been wondering since her first day working with Abby. She'd already figured out there was never going to be a good time to ask, so she just went for it now.
Abby scowled. "She's no one."
Holtzmann could see she'd hit a nerve. "Really?"
"No…" Abby dropped her fork, wiping her hands furiously with a rag as if that would wipe the bad memory away. "Erin was my best friend in the world. Like, the best friend you call at three in the morning because you're stranded three hundred miles away and you know she'll come get you. We wrote that book together. The day we were supposed to present it to the science community-on live television-she didn't show up."
Holtzmann's eyes widened.
"It was the most humiliating day of my life. And I haven't heard from her since," Abby finished. "End of story."
Jillian pondered all this for a minute or two. Then, she pulled out her cell phone and thumbed the browser icon. "Erin Gilbert? Let's Google her. I bet we can find her address."
"No, I don't want to talk to her-" Abby tried to snatch the phone out of Holtzmann's hand, but Jillian swiveled on her stool, swinging the phone out of her reach.
"Who said anything about talking to her? I'm thinking we find an open window in her house and a garden hose and make her a nice indoor swimming pool…or is that too much? 'Cause I could just hold her down while you shave her head…"
"Holtz!"
Jillian winked at her. She was kidding. Abby settled back onto her own stool, relaxing a bit. It was going to take her awhile to learn to read this strange woman.
"Okay, okay…no hoses or shaving." Holtz tossed the phone aside. "Tell you what: If pixie legs ever walks into the lab, you say the word, and I'll remove her eyebrows with my blow torch."
"That's touching in a demented sort of way. A felony. But touching." God, Abby hoped Holtz was still joking. "So, now you know the most humiliating day of my life. What about you? Ever have one of those days?"
"You mean other than the Black Hole of Switzerland?"
Abby nodded. "That's a good example…"
Holtzmann picked at the bowl of noodles. "You want to know why I was in therapy?"
"You don't have to tell me-" Abby withdrew the question.
Jillian squeezed her eyes shut and made a noise akin to a fork stuck in a garbage disposal. She was obviously uncomfortable.
"Forget it, I'm sorry. Too much reality, I completely understand-" Abby tried.
"I was part of the team hired to upgrade the Hadron collider. My team leader was a douchebag named Arthur Klein. He owed Dr. Gorin a favor, that's how I got the job." Holtzmann opened her eyes, but she didn't look up at Abby. "It went pretty good mostly…but Artie was real competitive. Anything I could do, he could do better kind of thing. Drove me freaking crazy. After six weeks, I thought he was over it. We were…getting along.
"The morning of the accident, when the power spiked, we both went into the access tunnels to shut down the overload. I went north, he went south. My tunnel stayed intact. His collapsed. I survived because of dumb luck. He was-he's been in a coma since then. The doctors say it's irreversible. Too much brain damage. And the thing is…I did the upgrade on the Super Proton Synchrotron and a bunch of back-up systems. Artie was the project leader, but I built the equipment. There was a catastrophic failure, for some reason the back-up systems didn't kick in, and that caused the surge that almost generated the black hole. The shrink called it survivor's guilt. After that, I couldn't pay any labs to let me work for them."
"It was an accident," Abby said.
Holtzmann shoved her mostly-untouched dinner aside, not hungry anymore. "Yeah, well…he's not the first guy I put into a coma."
There was a sentence Abby didn't hear every day. She couldn't help asking: "How many were there exactly?"
"He'd be number four," Holtzmann admitted.
"That's a little more than average."
It took some encouragement, but gradually, over the remainder of the evening, Jillian proceeded to tell her new friend things she hadn't told anyone. Ever. She told Abby about being adopted by the Holtzmanns as a baby and their deaths in a car crash when she was five. Mr. Holtzmann had given her piggy back rides and called her his princess. Mrs. Holtzmann read to her every night before bed. Jillian had adored them.
Holtzmann had gone into the foster system for a long while after that. Her first foster family sent her back to the children's home when she accidentally set her bedroom on fire building a hoverboard like on 'Back to the Future'. Jillian had been eight.
Being a little girl with a near genius I.Q. wasn't making it easy to fit into a family or make friends. She was years ahead of the other kids in school, so they found her too weird to befriend. Her foster parents hadn't known what to make of Jillian even before the hoverboard accident.
Her second foster family was far worse: Jillian had been twelve. She had a foster brother named Derek Englebright who'd tried to molest her. She'd burned his left testicle with a hot light bulb and run away from the house. He'd fallen and hit his head on her bedpost, putting him in a coma for three days. Coma guy number one.
Abby had could actually taste bile in her mouth just thinking about it.
Holtzmann had given up on the foster system, flatly refusing to cooperate any time a social worker tried to place her with another family. She tried to hack the DSS computers to see if she could find her biological parents. When the social workers insisted that she had to go stay with another family, Holtzmann had escaped from the children's home.
She was age twelve and had been about to enter high school two years ahead of her peers before she started living on the streets with a group of homeless people.
A homeless veteran named Gary taught her self-defense after hearing about Derek. He'd even presented her with a Swiss Army knife he'd fished from a dumpster and cleaned up. A retired homeless teacher named Marion gave her advice on how to get through the high school system quickly and how to get financial help for a college scholarship after figuring out how smart the girl was. When they learned that Holtzmann had a natural talent for engineering, they had helped her dig pipes, wires, and other goodies out of the dumpsters to help build whatever robots or gadgets came to young Jillian's mind.
Then, they'd completely betrayed her by turning Holtzmann over to the police. Marion had insisted that it was the best thing for the girl to go back to the safety of the foster system, but Jillian remained uncooperative, demanding to stay in the children's home and concentrate on her schoolwork.
She'd found out later that year Gary the kind-hearted veteran had caught pneumonia during the harsh winter, briefly lapsed into a coma, then passed away. Coma guy number two.
Abby had tried to keep her expression calm and neutral, not wanting to interrupt the story with comments or questions.
School went about as well as it could for an underage student with a genius IQ and few social skills. For her senior thesis, Jillian had partnered with a gorgeous seventeen-year-old boy named Chuck. He had been her first real crush. She'd wanted to build a prototype of a spacecraft that could be powered to leave the solar system by using a series of controlled nuclear detonations to exit the solar system (Jillian had seen a science documentary that hypothesized such a ship could work). Chuck had just wanted to graduate.
Not able to use actual nuclear material (to her dismay), Holtzmann had come up with her own combustible fuel pods in order to simulate the effect she had in mind by propelling her rocket past the current eight point five mile record. It had almost worked, until the rocket exploded a couple thousand feet up.
Chuck had been so thrilled by the test detonation that he'd actually kissed Jillian. She didn't get a chance to figure out that he'd been playing her along, planning to return to his Drama Major girlfriend, Charlene, after completing the thesis because the fuel had detonated prematurely when they were demonstrating it for their teacher. Falling back to earth, the nose cone had knocked him into a five hour coma. Coma guy number three.
After graduation, he'd ditched Jillian and gone back to Charlene. Holtzmann's fuel pods had earned her a scholarship and a guaranteed internship at Hudson Aerospace.
Abby had listened to every single story until nearly dawn, when Holtzmann finally lapsed into silence.
"I'll tell you what, Jillian: If any of them ever walks into the lab, you give the word and I'll remove their eyebrows with my blow torch," Abby promised.
"We can probably check Gary off our list. I don't think he'd go through all that trouble helping Holtz and then come back from the grave and attack her," Patty suggested.
"We should check on those two men-Derek Englebright and Arthur Klein, see if either of them recently passed away. One of them could be our ghost," Erin jotted down the names.
"If pervert Derek ain't a ghost yet, I might just help him get there," Patty growled.
"Family of Jillian Holtzmann?"
A nurse stood in the cafeteria doorway, reading the name off a clipboard. The Ghostbusters scrambled to their feet. "Yes," Erin answered, "that's us."
"Follow me, please."
The nurse led them to a small private room. The mayor had added it to the list of demands when he'd called Menken, and the doctor had agreed mainly out of a desire to keep the Ghostbusters as isolated from the other patients as possible for safety reasons. Rorke and Hawkins took up positions outside.
The trio hesitated at the door, taking a second to collect themselves before stepping quietly into the room.
They still weren't prepared.
Holtzmann was unconscious, pale, and completely fragile-looking. With the baggy clothing she favored and her ever-present goggles, it struck them how much smaller and more vulnerable their petite comrade looked, especially lying in the hospital bed. Bandages covered the gash and most (but not all) of the massive bruise on her head. Through the thin hospital gown, they could see the outline of more bandages and tape around her ribcage.
What was most unsettling was that Holtzmann was quiet and motionless. They were used to her moving, dancing, tinkering…even when she fell asleep at her workbench, she would still twitch and snore or mumble in her sleep as if she couldn't quite get her brain to shut down long enough to rest.
In the hospital bed, attached to the various wires and tubes that fed life into her veins, Holtzmann didn't even look like Holtzmann.
Abby found a chair and took up a spot at the head of Holtz's bed, fully intending to be there until her friend woke up, however long that might take. She threaded her fingers through Holtz's, hoping on some level she would know that they were all there with her. Patty found a second chair and took up a spot on the opposite side of the bed, propping her feet on the end of the mattress. When she saw Erin arch an eyebrow, Patty shrugged, figuring Holtz would have done exactly the same thing in Patty's place.
Erin leaned against the small closet door just behind Abby's chair, wishing she could do more than watch Dr. Menken work at keeping Holtz alive, wanting to do something to comfort Abby and Patty, who were both looking shattered by all that had happened that night.
Menken acknowledged the trio's arrival with a half-nod. Without preamble, he gave them the rundown: Jillian was breathing on her own, and for the moment it looked like she'd escaped the blow to the head with only a concussion. They'd be monitoring her for hematoma or other complications, of course.
Holtzmann had two cracked ribs from the CPR. They had taped her ribs. Under the circumstances, this injury was the least of Menken's concerns.
It was the near-drowning, and the subsequent CPR and continued comatose state that had the doctor worried. He gave them a laundry-list of possible complications from the trauma: Brain damage, pulmonary injury, infection. Obviously, the sooner Holtzmann regained consciousness, the better her chances. He refused to give an estimation of her odds.
"That man could use a visit from the Bedside Manner Fairy," Patty remarked after Menken left them. He was seriously underestimating their girl. Holtz was a survivor. If Menken tried to write her off, he'd have Tolan to deal with.
As soon as he was gone, Erin retrieved the PKE meter she had asked Rorke to smuggle into the building and scanned the room. "The PKE's not showing anything here…but I'm not sure I trust that, since it barely registered anything at Holtz's apartment. Abby, what were those names again? Arthur Klein…?"
Abby glared. "…and Derek Englebright. Erin, I don't want to do that here."
"It's okay, Abs, I'll take care of it." Pacing, Erin began punching names into her browser.
Abby's arm shot out and snatched the phone out of Erin's hand. "I mean it-not here. Jillian might be able to hear us, and if she can, I don't want to sit here talking about who might have attacked her in front of her."
That hadn't occurred to Erin. Abby was right, naturally. "That's…a good point. I think I'll…the reception's better in the cafeteria. I'll be back."
Erin ducked from the room, ears red, before she could stick her foot in her mouth again.
Patty figured she's better go after her. She pushed herself out of her chair. "You know she's worried, too, Abby. It's just how Erin deals-she works the problem."
Abby supposed that was true. "You going to talk to her?"
"Yeah, I'm on it."
Erin sat alone in the empty cafeteria, staring at the gruesome teddy bear camera for almost an hour as she mustered her will to remove the chip and witness whatever had been recorded.
Patty quietly slipped into the chair beside hers. "Hey, you okay?"
"No, I don't think I'd say I'm okay." Erin fingered the micro SD chip nervously. "I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being…insensitive. I just…don't do well with these situations. Equations and science and experiments and problems, I can control those things. I can't do anything for Jillian. I can sit there and be helpless or I can figure out what happened and stop it from happening again. That's what I can do, that's what I can control. It probably sounds stupid."
"No, no. You sure that's the only thing bugging you? You're a little more freaked out than usual…and that includes the time you were running through the city screaming about the Apocalypse."
Reluctantly, Erin reached into her coat pocket and pulled out Holtzmann's fried cell phone.
"Okay, you're carrying that around? You're officially scaring me now," Patty told her.
"Look at the number-that's my number. Holtzmann tried to call me while that thing was attacking her," Erin said.
Patty laid a hand on Erin's shoulder, trying to calm her down. "You're her friend-"
"Exactly! She was calling me, she needed my help, and I wasn't there!" It sounded irrational to Erin as she said it. How could she explain it to Patty when she didn't entirely understand it herself? She put her head in her hands, taking a few breaths until she felt more composed. "Holtz isn't close with me like she is with you and Abby. I don't know, maybe she still doesn't completely trust me. I understand why she called the firehouse, I would have done the same. I guess I don't understand why she was calling me after that and not Abby."
"You're her friend," Patty repeated.
Erin couldn't shake the feeling it was something else, and until Holtz woke up, Erin wasn't going to get an answer. She took the micro SD chip and plugged it into her cell phone.
"Sure you're ready for this?" Patty asked.
"No." Erin hit 'play' anyway.
It was worse than Erin could have imagined.
The video started quietly, showing the empty apartment like by the blinking lights of Holtzmann's various mechanical gadgets, gizmos, and the experiments she could leave running when she wasn't home. About ten minutes before Holtzmann came home, all the lights in the apartment winked out. Erin figured that was about the time the neighbor kid, Tamara, started playing with the circuit box outside.
When she came home, flipped the light switch and nothing happened, Holtzmann figured out what happened rapidly. Her experiments were all screwed up. She unleashed a torrent of swear words about that. After checking the circuit breakers inside the apartment, she determined it wasn't an overload. She vanished into the hallway, yelling at the neighbor kids off camera, who could be heard laughing. Seconds later, the lights came back on and Holtzmann was back. She turned on the satellite radio and started resetting all her equipment, checking the extent of damage due to the power loss, still grumbling oaths.
Another ten minutes in, there was a knock at her door. Brian, the nice neighbor guy, had brought Tamara over to make his daughter apologize for shutting off Holtz's power…again…hoping nothing got ruined.
Holtzmann looked like she was about ready to give him an earful…until Brian was saved by the satellite radio, which suddenly started changing its own channels. Holtzmann stared at it, instantly suspicious. Random fluctuations in radio signals were classic warning signs of paranormal activity. None of them had seen a ghost affect a satellite radio yet, but that didn't mean one couldn't do so. For that matter, all a ghost had to do was play with a remote.
Then a familiar song started blasting from the speaker. It was barely audible; Erin had to crank the volume on her phone to the maximum. "Is that…Cat Stevens?"
"Abby said something about that dude," Patty recalled.
It seemed to effectively freak Holtzmann out because she smashed the power button. That did nothing, so she unplugged the radio. That also did nothing…the radio kept playing seemingly of its own volition. At that point, Brian (still standing in Holtz's doorway) started looking nervous.
"Do you see any ghost?" Erin asked. "Any flashes of light?"
Patty shook her head. "Nothing."
That was when all hell broke loose: Books started flying from the shelves, barely missing Holtzmann and her visitors. Holtz grabbed Tamara and pushed the girl and her father towards the door, ordering them out.
Erin was watching the PKE meter, which was clearly visible on Holtzmann's counter. It barely blipped while all of this was happening. She saw Holtzmann glance at the device, so Jillian must have noticed the same thing.
"How come the PKE didn't warn her?" Patty spotted it, too.
"There's stuff flying everywhere, obviously some kind of psychokinetic energy. That thing should be lit up like a Christmas tree," Erin said. "And look-just like I said, there should be ectoplasmic residue, but there's nothing. No slime…and whatever it is doesn't visually manifest. I don't understand it. This is more indicative of a poltergeist."
Next, the various tool boxes overturned, spilling wrenches, screwdrivers, and other, heavier projectiles which flew rapid-fire at the humans. Her tiny dining table (covered with pieces of machinery and gadgets) and her living room sofa levitated and pitched themselves across the room, colliding mid-air. Holtzmann by then had shoved Brian and Tamara into the hall. Before she could follow, the invisible entity pulled off her feet and dragged her toward the kitchen. The front door slammed shut, trapping her in the apartment.
Holtzmann strained to catch hold of one of the stereo cabinet as she was dragged across the room. Fighting the pull of the entity, she pried open the small door and drew out the proton pistol. She couldn't see a ghost to shoot at, so she decided to fire blindly into the direction she was being dragged. Erin and Patty would have done the same.
That seemed to distract the ghost for a minute, and Holtzmann was able to scramble to her feet and run for the Fichus, where she has stashed some proton grenades. She pulled out her cell phone; Patty figured she was calling the firehouse. Holtz confirmed this: "Come on, pick up. Anyone, anyone, anyone…" She paused for a moment before reconsidering: "Anyone but Kevin, anyone but Kev…Kevin! It's Holtzmann! No, no…Kevin, I'm Holtzmann! No, don't hang up, Kevin! Damn it!"
Meanwhile, the kitchen drawers opened and her silverware started flying at her. Holtzmann dove behind the overturned couch and lobbed one of the grenades into the kitchen, still basically firing blind. She tried dialing again, but the cell phone was ripped from her hand and smashed into the wall. Erin guessed that was when Holtz had tried to call her.
She crawled toward the table with the landline just as that phone rang. She snatched up the handset, recognizing the number. "Patty! Help-!" Holtzmann yelled, tossing the second grenade. This one blasted the faucet right off the kitchen sink. Water erupted from the broken sink.
Then the phone cord tore itself from the wall. Holtzmann closed her eyes, throwing her head back against the couch with the expression of someone who was certain they are about to die. Patty had seen that expression on Holtz's face one time before-when Rowan had possessed Abby and Jillian was dangling out the firehouse window about to plummet to the pavement.
"Artie?" Holtzmann called to the empty air. "Artie…I'm sorry about what happened."
"Artie," Erin nodded. "That's the guy from the Hadron Collider."
"The one in the irreversible coma. He must have finally passed away," Patty commented.
"Artie?" Jillian tried again.
On the tiny screen, there was a moment of complete stillness except for the water pouring from the kitchen faucet.
Then chaos. Anything not already overturned or knocked off the shelf went flying. Holtzmann moved for the door, but again the invisible entity-Arthur Klein-caught her again. This time, she was pitched across the apartment and hit the bathroom door with a bone-jarring thud. Stunned, Holtzmann stumbled behind the rather useless shelter of the broken door, moving out of sight of the camera. There was a flash and the sound of another explosion (probably another shot from her proton pistol), the crash of breakage, the noise of more running water, and then a flying book smashed into Mr. Snickers and that was the end of the recording.
Erin got up from the table, moved to the trash can in the corner and promptly threw up. Patty didn't blame her a bit. She was afraid she was going to do the same thing very soon.
"Our ghost is Arthur Klein," Patty distracted her.
Erin leaned her head against the wall, trying her best not to be sick again. "That bastard."
"Holtzmann hit that thing with the proton pistol and the grenades and it kept coming like she was tossing spitballs at it," Patty said. "What kind of ghost can do that? What the hell are we supposed to do if it shows up here? Tell it a story? Distract it with some karaoke?"
Erin sighed. "I don't know, Patty. I've never seen a ghost like this."
He had no real use for time, but still idly noted it was nearly dawn. He had no ability to perceive heat or cold of the air conditioners nor could he catch the stink of ammonia that permeated the air. Vending machines peddled food, but taste was a pleasure long since lost to him. All these sensations were no longer relevant to him.
He had no real use for the humans moving about the hallways or those tucked into the tiny rooms. He moved past those crowded into the waiting area of the emergency entrance—the walking wounded awaiting treatment, the anxious families and friends waiting for word on their loved ones, useless creatures all. Not the one that he needed. They could not see him. They could not help him.
The smallest voice in the darkest part of his soul cried for their blood.
He crushed that voice to silence, knowing it would be back. It always came back, growing stronger with each irrelevant day that passed.
He moves and they are all oblivious to his spectral presence.
She was here. He could sense her presence like a beacon, guiding him through the labyrinth hallways to one of the patients' rooms.
Two men in black suits stood outside the door. He could sense the weapons tucked beneath their jackets. What did they expect to do with those? Did they not realize what a simple matter it would be for him to pluck the guns from their hands and dispatch them with their own weapons?He could have done so with merely a thought. He'd had three years to discover all he could still accomplish with the energy of a single thought.
Still, he had no real desire for their deaths. He would spare them…as long as they stayed out of his way. He stepped into the private room with these fools unaware of his arrival.
She wasn't quite alone. He'd expected as much. A dark-haired woman in drab flannel pajamas sat at her bedside, keeping dutiful watch. He recognized this woman from the television. His eternity in limbo afforded plenty of opportunities for humans to inflict their television watching on him, the wretched devices hung in nearly every room of the hospital he had frequented. This woman called herself a "Ghostbuster".
This one was certain to interfere; she had done so once already that evening, her and her comrades. Again, his soul railed at him to kill her now. He did not quite silence the urge this time, for he might have to dispatch this one…if she became a hindrance to his plans.
Ignoring this woman for the moment, Arthur Klein circled past her to the other side of the bed.
There she was. He stared at the motionless figure in the bed.
Arthur felt a deep ache of regret for the bandages that wrapped around her head and the bruise that was still visible beneath the stark white fabric. The damned voice had got the better of him back in the apartment. He hadn't meant to frighten her, only to make her aware of his presence. He'd lost his tenuous control over the voices…and look what had happened. He should have known she'd come out swinging. That had always been her style. He would have to do better next time.
Hesitantly, his fingers skimmed a hair's breadth above the dressings, passing through a strand of blonde hair on her forehead. "Hello, Jillian."
Arthur had been rehearsing what to say. Now that the moment had come, he forgot his speeches altogether. Nothing to do but be honest, he supposed. "I've been looking for you for so long…and as soon as I find you, well, I made rather a mess of things, didn't I? It wasn't my intention. I promise. I'll try…harder next time…I need…"
The voices were bubbling to his consciousness again. Arthur squeezed his eyes closed, willing them away. They found for control. It would have been so easy to give in to the rage…so easy….
Instantly, he withdrew his shaking hand and stumbled away from the bed, afraid to lash out again, to do more damage than he'd already done. He clenched his fists, turning away, preparing to flee if that were the only way to quiet the madness before it seized him again.
Arthur vented the rage in a guttural, mournful scream until it finally abated.
Not a soul in the building could hear the sound. The guards were motionless outside the door; the dark-haired woman by the bed did not so much as blink.
When he trusted to face her again, he begged: "I need your help, Jillian."