Ghostbusters: Resurrection

1. Act I: The Haunting of Ray's Occult Books

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.