In anticipation of my posting the finale, here once again is a clean copy of the whole story so far, edited and fixed up for any new readers. A lot of changes have been made, hopefully for the better.
The Ghostbreakers: A Darkness at Gossedale Manor
Dr. Johan Spence moved through the gloom, slowly approaching the massive, winding staircase deep inside Gossedale Manor. The air was thick with disturbed dust and hanging cobwebs, but his ecto-goggles allowed Spence a clear view of the hideous thing at the top of the stairs.
The ghost resembled a bloated gray worm or leech, seven feet of oozing, wriggling ectoplasm. Its ugly head held two wicked mandibles, which clacked and clawed the air continuously. It knew it was being hunted now.
As Johan drew his ion rifle and gave it the slight twist that activated the particle accelerator at the heart of his proton pack, he heard Elyk Wyseman’s footsteps just behind him. Dr. Wyseman was the comedian of the group, always willing to lighten up a dour situation with a joke or flip comment. Now he came alongside Johan and aimed his slime blower at the worm creature.
“Ugly mother, ain’t it?” he said with a grin.
Before Johan could respond, the third member of the Ghostbreakers joined them, PKE meter in hand. Dr. Frank Zeigler, a top-rate engineer and technician, had built most of their equipment. Once the head of a nuclear research facility, Frank had been let go when his interest in the paranormal grew from a hobby into a full-fledged obsession.
“Wyseman, your grammar is as atrocious as ever.”
Above them, on the landing, the worm creature raised its head, opened its carnivorous maw - packed with needle-like teeth - and roared. The bloodcurdling sound echoed through Chicago’s most famous haunted house, reminding Johan that this was no ordinary case. They were being paid over a quarter of a million dollars to rid Gossedale Manor of its supernatural squatters, but only if they completed the job in one night. With four ghost traps full already (half their supply), and with the clock approaching 3:00 AM, things were beginning to look grim.
“This one’s a class six repeater,” Frank continued. “And the giga-meter readings I took a few minutes ago show–”
Abruptly, with blinding speed, the worm-ghost spat thick ropes of ectoplasm at the Ghostbreakers. Johan and Frank managed to avoid the snares, but Elyk was hit and pinned to the floor by the sticky material. The monster roared again and charged down the stairs.
“Look out!” Johan boomed, aiming and firing in one fluid motion. High energy protons generated by the accelerator on his back screamed from the tip of his ion rifle, a multicolored orange and blue maelstrom that singed through the air and struck the ghost near its tail end. The proton stream reacted with the thing’s ectoplasmic body, stopping its forward momentum and beginning to encircle it in a prison of nuclear particles.
Before it could be completely contained, however, the worm twisted, and the last two feet of its repulsive tail detached and lay, quivering, on the staircase. Free once more, it lunged toward Johan, perhaps meaning to neatly snip his head from his body with its razor-sharp, insectoid mouthparts.
He dove to the side, desperately trying to get beyond the thing’s bite range. Elyk, firing from his back, hit the creature full-on with a barrage of positively-charged mood slime from his slime blower, giving his friend the time he needed to get clear. The ghost shrank back from the touch of the slime stream, which would weaken it and make it more susceptible to attack.
Frank put away his PKE meter and drew his ion rifle. A quick glance at Johan, and together they threw furious gold fire in unison. Elyk saw the creature completely engulfed this time, snaking and twisting in a futile effort to escape the beams. Together Frank and Johan slowly dragged the ghost off the stairs and into the air. It hovered, trapped, three feet below the ceiling.
Freeing himself from the entangling slime using his ecto-prod, Elyk unslung an empty trap from his belt. In a practiced movement, he swung the device using its cord and slid it across the floor under the suspended worm.
“I’m opening the trap…now!” he yelled. As he stepped on the footpad, Johan took his finger off the fire-button of his particle thrower. Frank also cut his stream, both men averting their eyes from the trap. It opened, and brilliant white light blossomed from within. A complex matrix of particles resembling a moving magnetic bottle surrounded the class 6 entity, bonding to its ectoplasm in an unshakeable embrace. After three seconds had passed, the particles from the trap returned to their original places in the matrix, dragging the screaming worm along with them. As it was compacted and sucked into the trap, the ghost gave one last howl of agony and fear, then disappeared as the trap closed. Tendrils of smoke drifted upward from it, and a single LED flashed red, indicating occupancy.
“Got the slippery ■■■■■■■!” Elyk yelled in triumph. “Teach him to slime me!”
Johan sighed in relief, despite the cardinal rule of Ghostbreaking - never show fear. He slipped his ecto-goggles to the top of his head and powered down his ion rifle. Frank cleared his throat as Elyk picked up the smoking trap.
“As I was saying, Wyseman, the giga-meter readings I took earlier have confirmed my suspicions. It appears there is a reservoir of slime beneath this house.”
Elyk sneered. “Hey, we break ghosts. We don 't do septic tanks.”
“This is serious. The reservoir is the reason this house has so many entities inhabiting it. We have to go down there.”
Johan clapped Elyk on the back. “Just think of the money, Wyseman. That much green will definitely cover your dry-cleaning bill.”
The other man looked down at the slime stains on his gray jumpsuit with distaste. “Fine. But if you two need someone to take a swim in that stuff, count me out.”
Frank ignored him and took out his giga-meter. The swinging arms moved upwards and the indicator lights blinked rapidly.
“Let’s head for the basement.”
Johan Spence followed his colleagues, tensed and ready for anything.
The basement of Gossedale Manor was damp, chilly, and filled with a pitch-black darkness. For some reason (possibly related to the damage they had caused upstairs) the electricity didn’t work, and a cold fog had begun to infiltrate the entire house from the moor outside.
The Ghostbreakers switched on the powerful floodlights attached to the top of their proton packs, and the murk was dispelled, at least to some extent. They saw cobwebs, mouse-droppings, linen-covered furniture, and moldy walls, crumbling in places. The basement also stank of mildew and staleness.
Johan drew his ion rifle and sniffed the air. “This smells like that time-share I bought in Boca. Remember that place?”
“How could I forget,” Elyk snapped. “You convinced me to go in on that deal. How much money did I lose again?”
“Hey, that’s on you, pal. You should have known better than to listen to me.”
“Quiet, you two,” Frank ordered, peering into his giga-meter. “Let’s focus. According to these readings, there is a reservoir of slime nearby.”
Johan stepped over a rotten coffee-table and peeked behind a huge covered sofa. “So you keep saying. But I don’t–”
Just then they all heard a loud, echoing sound - like the dripping of a thick liquid. Frank’s giga-meter began to chirp. “That’s it!” he yelled, pointing. “It’s through there.”
Together they ran to a crooked door-frame and shone the floodlights in. What they saw inside the room caused Johan to simultaneously gag in revulsion and raise his slime-blower’s nozzle. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
The room had obviously once been a parlor or den. The ruins of a pool table lay collapsed to one side, and the skeletal remains of several dart-boards still clung stubbornly to the peeling walls. The center of the floor was marred by a huge hole, floorboards cracked and splintered in a nine-foot radius. One entire side of the house seemed to be tilted here, side and end tables had slid toward the gaping maw of the hole and lay in a jumbled heap, half in and half out. Covering just about everything in the room was a generous layer of glistening psychomagnetheric slime.
And it was moving.
“What’s our play here, Zeigler?” Johan asked. “We don’t have near enough slime to neutralize this mess.”
Frank checked his meters, then shot a glance through the gloom toward Elyk. “It’s headed west,” he said, pointing.
Elyk nodded, and the Ghostbreakers moved to the north, south, and east sides of the slime pool. Johan kicked aside a ruined coffee table, grimacing as his boot came down in a thick puddle of slime. The material felt almost alive, shuddering under his foot and moving to the side like some gelatinous alien life form.
“Look!” Frank boomed, pointing to the decrepit west wall of the mansion’s basement.
Johan noticed a break in the floorboards, maybe a square foot in size. The slime was seeping through this gap, slowly pushing its thick, bubbling substance through the wall.
“That’s the noise we heard,” Elyk shouted. “The level in the pool is decreasing rapidly. Looks like it’ll be empty in a few minutes.”
“Great,” Johan yelled. “Once this stuff is out of the house, our job is done, right? We can seal the hole then head home!”
“I think that would be extraordinarily bad, Spence.” Frank shouted back. “We have to determine where it’s going.”
“One way to find out.”
“Wyseman, no!” Frank warned, but it was too late. The darkness of the manor cellar was instantly dispelled by the harsh yellow-white brilliance of a high-energy proton stream as Elyk opened up with his particle thrower. The other two Ghostbreakers shielded their eyes as the beam first hit the pool of moving slime, skittering across its surface without effect.
Then he adjusted his aim and his stream struck the wall where the gap was allowing the slime to escape the house.
The effect was immediate and spectacular. With a booming roar, the wall exploded in a shower of wooden and plaster fragments. A foul-smelling smoke cloud drifted through the basement, causing the three men to gag and stumble backwards. “Ecto-goggles, now!” Frank bellowed, struggling to don the eyewear while coughing.
“At least we finally had a successful test of that hybrid proton pack/slime blower you two designed. Good job, Wyseman.”
Once they had sight again, they saw a four-foot hole had been blasted through the basement wall. The slime was pouring through in a massive torrent now, flowing like warm molasses out of the house. Johan hurried to follow Frank as he ran to the gap and peered out, shining his floodlights into the darkened tunnel which they had exposed.
He saw a level passage, apparently dug out of the dirt and bedrock, that soon plunged into a black abyss. The psychomagnetheric flow was cascading down into those depths like some disgusting, nightmarish waterfall.
“Great,” Johan said.
“Uh, guys?” came Elyk’s voice from behind them. “I think you might want to see this.”
They turned back, as the last of the slime stream ran around their boots and slipped through the ruined wall and down into the darkness.
“What is it, Wyseman?” Frank asked.
Elyk pointed with his flashlight. The huge depression in the basement floor that had once housed the pool of mood slime was now empty. At the deepest point at its center lay a human skeleton.
“Hello,” Johan said.
The Ghostbreakers scrambled down the treacherous slope of the crater, cement fragments and pebbles raining down on them from above as they descended. Finally, the three men reached the human remains at the center of the depression.
“It appears to be an adult,” Frank said, kneeling to examine the skeleton.
Elyk joined him. “I don’t see any obvious broken bones…” he offered.
“One side, gentlemen,” Johan ordered, squeezing himself between the other two. “Give me some room to do my thing.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Elyk said wryly. “You had those two semesters at U of C.”
“Pritzker Hall, baby,” Johan affirmed. “I was eighteenth in my class, and don’t you forget it.”
Frank rolled his eyes. “And why didn’t you finish the program, again?”
“Family troubles, Zeigler,” Johan said. “Family troubles. Now, you gonna let me work, or what?” He began to examine the body, turning the bones over carefully and adjusting their position. He looked at the skull, then turned his attention to the vertebrae. Finally, he rubbed each long arm and leg bone, and checked the hands, feet, and ribs.
While Johan pored over the skeleton, Elyk and Frank kept a wary eye on the ruined wall where the slime had escaped. Not only were they watching for its return, they were also nervous that the weakened structure might give way completely, causing the whole wing of the Gossedale house to collapse on top of them.
“Done,” Johan declared, after a few more tense moments.
“Whadd’ya got, Spence?”
“Subject is male, over 65 judging by the condition of those hips.”
“Darren Gossedale, senior?” Elyk offered. Johan shrugged. “Maybe.”
“There’s no obvious cause of death, and no signs of trauma. The body’s positioning suggests he was curled into a fetal position at the time of his death.”
“So?”
“I’d say it looks like he drowned.”
“Drowned?” Frank asked, eyes widening. “In the pool of slime?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Oh God,” Elyk choked. “Can you imagine dying that way? Talk about a bad way to go!”
“How long has he been here?” Frank demanded.
“It’s hard to say without some equipment…but judging by the residue build-up on the furniture and wall…”
Johan and Frank glanced around the room quickly with appraising eyes.
“Six months,” they said in unison.
“You two scare me sometimes,” Elyk said, shaking his head.
“So,” Frank continued. “We have evidence that the owner of the house – and patriarch of the whole Gossedale family – drowned in a pool of psychomagnetheric slime about six months ago. Despite this fact, his heirs didn’t report him missing until a few weeks ago. They then hire us to break the ghosts in this place, obviously having no clue we’d find the man’s body down here during our work.”
“What’s it all add up to, Zeigler?”
“It adds up to trouble. Gentlemen, I think our night is over. I want to talk to the Gossedale heirs, first thing in the morning. I’ve got a few very important questions to ask them.”
“What do we do about him?” Elyk asked, indicating the skeleton.
Frank Zeigler flipped open his antiquated cell phone. “I’m calling the police.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” came a voice from behind them, causing the Ghostbreakers to whirl in surprise.
They saw a man standing by the opposite wall, dressed in what appeared to be a black trench coat and hat. At his feet, something was shifting and moving, something the men couldn’t quite make out.
Spence pulled down his ecto-goggles just in time to see the shapes at the stranger’s feet coalesce into bubbling mounds of slime, complete with rapidly-forming tentacles and cavernous mouths.
“Look out!” he yelled, raising his neutrona wand.
“Destroy them,” The dark man said, and the slime-creatures surged forward, blazingly fast.
Johan knew that psychomagnetheric slime flows could form shapes that mimicked living things. Everyone knew about the tentacles of slime Ray Stantz had encountered while dangling under the pavement of New York city in the old Pneumatic tunnels. The thing in Dana Barrett’s bathtub had been even more fully formed, with a rudimentary mouth.
The black creatures charging toward him were different, however. Not only did they have appendages, but their limbs were fully articulated and the creatures ran like great, dark wolves. Fangs glinted in their mouths, and Johan had no doubt they were sharp.
He opened up with his proton pack while Frank dove desperately to the side. One of the black monsters flew by him, it’s jaws snapping inches from his face. It twisted in mid-air like a cat, and Johan knew it would be back in moments.
The other entity was struck by Frank and Elyk firing in unison, an explosion of yellow-blue fire that stopped the creature’s forward momentum and threw it back, squealing in pain or frustration.
“It’s no good, Wyseman,” Johan warned as the thing leapt back to its feet. “We’ll never get a containment field on these things.”
“The negative polarity variance is too high!” Elyk yelled, trying his best to keep a beam on the slippery slime-monster. “Any ideas?”
A bolt of inspiration suddenly seemed to strike Frank. “Hose the man in black!”
“I’ve waited my whole life to hear someone say that,” Elyk said, turning and triggering the slime-blower portion of his hybrid weapon in one smooth motion. “Cover me!”
The whine of the blower’s motor scaled up and Elyk threw a thick rope of positively-charged psychomagnetheric ectoplasm at the dark figure. Johan and Frank threw twin proton beams at the malevolent slime beasts, driving them back and making sure they couldn’t come to their master’s aid.
The shadowy form turned to run, but it was too late. Coated by a layer of mood slime, he collapsed, shouting and twisting in a futile effort to avoid the stream.
Suddenly, the two etheric monsters paused. Their head-like appendages turned, and their gaze shifted to their fallen commander. Without warning, they pounced simultaneously.
“No!” the man yelled, but it was too late. Each creature closed a toothy maw on one of his arms, and he was lifted between them as if he were as weightless as a child. In unison the beasts leapt, and he was borne off toward the pit in the bedrock they had watched the flow of slime drain into earlier.
The Ghostbreakers ran to the rim of the depression, arriving just in time to see the man in black dragged down into the dark hole in Gossedale Estate’s grounds. As his last horrible scream of terror dissolved, a rumble began to build. The three men exchanged a nervous glance as the sides of the tunnel started to shake and shift.
“Get back!” Frank yelled as the Ghostbreakers scrambled backward. For a few moments, the earthquake continued. Then a great plume of dust blew upwards, blotting out the star-filled sky. After that, silence.
The damage, however, had already been done.
Behind them came the sound of tortured timber finally cracking.
Gossedale manor was collapsing.
