Author's Note:
I wrote this Ghostbusters: Afterlife love story before Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire came out.
I have love/hate feelings about Afterlife. Finally an Egon-centric movie! I love all the characters so much. Especially Phoebe and Podcast. I even ❤️ Gary. Seeing Egon's life, his family, his fungus collection, his house, his lab, his death was all amazing...but also super sad. Egon Spengler deserved better.
Why did they have to do the poor man like that? Make him a bad dad who runs out on Ray, stealing (his own) equipment and going "crazy". Boo. Egon should have received the Nobel Prize, you know? And he definitely should have been with Ray forever. Not grow old and die alone, broke, unbelieved, in a ratty old farmhouse. And elder Ray's life seemed...livable but lonely. Afterlife simply wasn't the life after Ghostbusters that I'd wanted to envision for Ray or Egon.
So I asked myself, what if the story didn't stop there? What if I could fix parts of it and make it reconcile with who we know Egon to be? Could I answer some questions? Could there be a happy ending for Ray?
(Story begun 1/20/2024, completed 3/17/2024, first published on Ao3)
It begins with books.
One morning, Ray comes downstairs from his apartment above the shop and finds a perfectly balanced, 6 foot 2 inch tall, symmetrical stack of books in the dead center of Ray's Occult Books.
"You're right, no human being would stack books like this," he remembers Venkman saying sarcastically upon seeing such a book tower in 1984 at their first ever haunting, the NYC Public Library.
Ray immediately wants to organize all the books away. Put them back where they go. It bothers him fiercely to have things out of order. But he doesn't. He leaves them. Makes all two of his morning customers walk around them. The stack is right in the middle of everything. Where he has to look at them from the cash register counter. So he stares them down.
6'2" was exactly Egon's height.
One inch taller than Ray. The perfect height for kissing. For slow dancing.
All morning long, the books are there.
At lunchtime, he goes for matzo ball soup from Egon's favorite deli. The young guy behind the counter is the great grandson of the original soup maker, who used to be back there in the 80s and 90s when Egon came here every day. The recipe is unchanged, but the old men are gone now. Ray is depressing himself thinking about it. He brings the soup back to his shop and keeps the sign flipped to closed. Locks the door behind him. Looks around. Everything is as he left it.
At the counter, he pulls up his worn wooden stool and sits down for lunch as usual, but it's completely unusual this time, because he opens the soup container and smells a smell he has avoided for 29 years. Pure golden chicken essence fills the little shop and Ray smells 9,125 lunches with Egon.
Ray bursts into tears. Puts the lid back on and sobs into his hands. 8 feet away, the book tower trembles and falls down.
.
.
.
The next morning, nothing.
But the morning after that, there are three book towers.
Ray makes a note of it. He's been furious at science for almost three decades but how quickly old habits come back to haunt you. Egon has made him a paranormal investigator once again. He writes down the titles of each book. Counts and measures all three stacks. Takes pictures.
If Spengler hadn't made off with all the PKE meters, Ray would be taking readings right now. It's been almost three years and he has yet to broach the topic of getting any of the Ghostbusters equipment back from Callie. It's half his, and he sure could use it right about now.
He tries to script the phone call in his mind: "Callie, this is Dr. Raymond Stantz, remember me from the time you were possessed and almost died? Well, I think your Dad's haunting me and I need half the stuff he stole back. Phoebe and Trevor can keep the rest. Oh, and he was my husband, and you're my stepdaughter, and when I found out about you, I broke his heart and maybe his mind. I am so sorry. Now about those PKE meters..."
He will never be ready for that. Other people would lie, he knows, come up with something appropriate and half true that would charm Callie, get his foot in the door to the lab without any personal drama, but just trying to script the right lie makes Ray feel a bit meltdowny.
.
.
.
There's a pattern to the book stacks because of course there is.
They're from all over the store. They weren't simply floated over from one shelf and stacked alphabetically. That means they were deliberately chosen for a reason. It's up to Ray to figure out the reason.
They're not color coordinated. So, it's not that the entity was attracted to the color blue, or something. Therefore the message lies in something other than the books' appearance.
They're not all the same size. Each stack is a different height, contains a different number of books. It could be Morris code, with thick books representing dashes and thin books representing dots. Ray checks, and it doesn't compute.
Ray eats a yogurt and stares at the books.
He tries to read his most recent copy of The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, but instead stares at the books.
He helps a customer and stares at the books.
He brews tea and stares at the books.
He calls Venkman and stares at the books.
When she comes in for her afternoon shift, Ray packs online orders with his shop assistant Sabrina, and they both stare at the books.
.
.
.
Late that night, he's almost asleep, when Ray sits up, clicks on the bedside lamp and futzes with his c-pap machine.
"Damn cigarettes" he thinks every time. Remembers when he was young and immortal and could breathe and sleep at the same time.
He gets the thing off his face and goes for his notebook. Looks at the list of titles. There it is. Circles the first letter of each book title, which come together to spell out a word. It's an Acrostic poem. Each stack makes a string of sentences. Sometimes the pattern is the simplest thing.
The first one says: "RAY I AM SO SORRY TOO I FORGIVE YOU REMEMBER I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU."
Ray feels wobbly and it has nothing to do with being 71. He's swooning like he hasn't swooned since 1984. Egon still loves him. That is certainly good news as he has never stopped loving Egon. Ray has to sit on his bedroom floor to ground himself while decoding the second one.
It says: "TRAPS WILL FAIL AND GOZER WILL BREAK FREE SOON PREPARE TO FIGHT"
The third one says: "PROTECT CALLIE PHOEBE TREVOR PETER WINSTON JANINE YOU"
"I will" Ray says aloud softly. Does yelling help with ghosts? A ghost that would be almost 80 if they were still alive. Maybe if you're louder, they can hear you better on the other side. So he yells, "I will, Egon!!"
All the lights in the apartment flicker.
Ray goes downstairs. Stacks some books himself. Puts the rest away. Goes back upstairs, eats a gummy and falls asleep watching a comfort show under his weighted blanket.
Ray's titles read: "I LOVE YOU I MISS YOU I BELIEVE YOU I WILL"
.
.
.
Ray researches.
- How to strengthen a ghost's ability to appear on the human sensory spectrum.
- How to help a ghost resist the call of the afterlife and stay with you on the earthy plane.
- How to strengthen a poltergeist.
- How to help a ghost resist containment.
- How to allow a spirit to possess you with minimal damage to your psyche.
It's the opposite of everything he'd ever wanted to know about ghosts before.
Ray wonders, where else did Shandor build his vile temples to Gozer? There must be others. He continued to mine and ship selenium long after Dana's apartment was built. If Gozer and Their pets escape, that's where Gozer will go to lick Their wounds. Some energy nest Shandor made for Them. It would take Them some time to remanifest enough power to re-embody Itself. How much time?
He needs to go out to Summerville and read all of Egon's paperwork. Egon will have already written down, condensed and sorted so much of what Ray needs to know. For the 6,456th time since 1995, he wishes he could talk to Egon directly. Maybe he can make his connection with Egon's spirit strong enough to communicate? Too bad communication was never their strong suit.
He's going to have to come clean with Callie. He needs Winston and Peter and Janine to talk it out with. He's not great at talking to people he doesn't know well. They'll help him find the words.
In the meantime, he needs to understand how Egon's ghost form works. What his abilities and limits are.
.
.
.
Naturally, Dr. Peter Venkman, ever the stray cat, comes pawing at the bookshop door the next day.
"Feels spooky in here, Witchy Poo," he tells Ray, coming in and ditching his spring jacket and rather dapper hat, "I had a feeling I should come see you."
"Egon's here." Ray says immediately, unable to waste a second on small talk, as always. "He used a symetrical book stack to send me a message."
"Ooooh, a love note" says Pete, guessing right immediately, as usual. Then singing out into the shop, "Hellooooo, Spengs!"
"Not here now, I don't think," says Ray. "He can only manifest for short bursts. Sometimes he's somewhere else."
"Oh yes, he is," Pete jumps up. Starts circling the shop. "Very faint but unmistakable. I can feel him, Ray."
"Coffee? Tea?" Raymond the gentleman offers.
"Is the tea a love potion this time?" Peter wants to know. Some of Ray's herbal concoctions have had a potent affect on Peter in the past. Ray's love potion teas are his shop's best seller for a reason. He sells a ton online these days.
"No Horny Goat Weed in this one," Ray swears. "It's a blend for clarity and communication."
"Too bad we didn't have it when Spengler was alive, coulda used a lot more clarity and communication," Peter crumples with grief for .2 seconds and then jumps up, determined to be furious again, yelling at the ceiling, "I am! Still pissed! At you! Egon!"
Clunk. The lights go out.
No, the power is out. The whole block is black. No sound of the heating and air conditioning unit or the fridge upstairs.
"Woah, that was a big surge in Egon's power," Ray thinks. Peter's ability to annoy Egon and amplify Ray's own psychic energy has acted as a catalyst once again, as it often did when they worked and lived together. Ray mentally notes that his and Peter's connection may be strengthening Egon. Or maybe it's Pete's psychic abilities forming some kind of channel. Or some other factor.
They need Winston and Janine to come over STAT. Adding them to the space might give Egon the strength to give them more information.
The power blinks back on after one minute. Ray's loose tea leaves have been spilled across the counter, and written by a ghostly finger in the tea reads: "P you are still a dick."