A place for those who "Trust the Fungus"

Just a little something I'm putting together for various forums. It's half-done as of tonight, but I can't do very much with it until I get a new digital camera.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Janosz Poha hadn’t had a good year. Oh, certainly, there were one or two highlights—successfully obtaining a few grants at the Manhattan Museum of Art, accompanied by a nice, big raise and subsequent move to a new apartment (one of those unusual, pre-furnished Victorian-revival jobs)—but the poor curator still wasn’t happy. It was probably just the oncoming New York winter, and its near-constant snow, slush, ice, and cold, cold, cold, that made him feel grouchy—and he was never really a fan of the Holiday Season anyway--but this year it made Janosz’s mind turn toward his ignominious defeat the year previously.

Curse those Ghostbusters, he thought. First they had to shatter my dreams of love to pieces, and wreck Lord Vigo’s plans, but then they had to add insult to injury by leaving me dripping with goo!


The effects of the positively-charged mood slime had long since worn off, and all his good feelings were now replaced with those dreaded winter blues, coupled with the fact that his water now took a while to get hot; indeed, that was the one and only flaw in his new apartment. There he stood, waiting for some hot water so that he could start the dishes, but the water was only lukewarm—and then it stopped.

“I wonder if my neighbors are having problems like this,” he sighed. “Better go and call the superin…hmm?” He paused, noticing the odd gurgling noises coming from within the pipes. He opened the cupboard underneath, expecting to find some leak under the sink, but there was no water under there.

He heard a sudden gushing noise above him, and he found something unusual in the basin. It was a thick, pink sludge. He put his hand in, picked some of it up, and confirmed his suspicions.
“The slime has returned,” he said. “At long last, I will be vindicated!” The slime took on its full power, and brought out all of Janosz’s darkest thoughts, which he articulated in a good, soul-cleansing, Evil Laugh.


“Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”



The next day, the Ghostbusters returned to HQ, bedraggled from a particularly exhausting bust. Ecto-1A rolled through the doors, its mighty engine coming to a full stop.



The boys emerged and groaned, Ray and Peter carrying a bundle of smoking ghost-traps in their hands.

“Oh, boy, that was a knockabout of pure fun,” Peter moaned sarcastically. “I can’t wait until that new guy can start.”
His attention turned to their receptionist. “Janine, were there any calls for us while we were gone?”



“No, Dr. Venkman,” she said, barely registering his presence. “As a matter of fact, I was about to do some early Christmas shopping…and then, I’m going to put up some mistletoe!” She did a pretend fall into Egon’s arms, batting her eyelashes at him. Egon caught her, and coughed awkwardly. “Yes…” he said absently, “I’ve been meaning to run a few tests on the mistletoe plant in case we ran into any werewolves…” “That’s not what I meant!” Janine sighed.

That’s when she remembered. “Oh, that reminds me, I have a present for all of you here.” “How thoughtful,” Peter said. “You shouldn’t have!” “It’s not mine, Dr. Venkman,” she shot back. She brought out the gift from a drawer. “It was sitting out in front of the firehouse in an unwrapped cardboard box. There was only a sticker reading ‘Urgent—For The Ghostbusters’ on it.”



Ray examined it. “It’s…a toy school bus?” he said, curious. Winston looked at it. “I always wanted one of these when I was a kid,” he said. “Great, now you can enjoy a second childhood,” Peter replied. Everyone glared at him. “I wonder what it does…” Winston mused, rolling the toy along the desk. Suddenly, there was a loud click, and the unusual hiss of a tape being started. A quiet, suspenseful tune, not unlike the Mission Impossible theme faded in until it practically filled the room.

“Good afternoon, Ghostbusters,” a deep, serious-sounding voice said. “This is Mr. Zero. It is my solemn duty to announce that you have been chosen as the guardians of the Christmas Season, so listen carefully. Voltar, a Ghost Wizard from beyond time itself, has his eyes set on present-day New York City as the perfect place for him to resurrect himself and launch his plans for galactic domination. You must stop him before he can carry out his dastardly plans. Good luck, Ghostbusters. You are going to need it. This message will… “elf-destruct”… in five seconds.”



“SELF-DESTRUCT?!” the Ghostbusters cried out in unison. Winston looked around for a moment, hit upon a nearby garbage can, threw the bus away, and ran for cover, along with the others.





“A ghost wizard, huh?” Ray said, getting a fire extinguisher and putting out the charred, still-smoking remains of Zero’s secret message. “Well, boys, it looks like we’ll have our work cut out for us. C’mon, let’s go put our ghosts into the containment unit.”

Inspired by the possibilities the slime held, Janosz made a point of going to the New York Public Library to see if he could find anything in the Arcane Knowledge section., which he found deep in the Library’s lower level. He noticed an old woman standing next to a bookshelf and reading a thick, heavy tome. The dear old lady was oddly transparent and glowing, almost as if she was…a ghost! Undaunted, Janosz moved in to speak.
“I am begging your pardon, madam,” he began, “but my name is Janosz Poha, and I was wondering if you could not help me?”



The ghostly woman turned to look at him.
“Hmm?” it said. “Oh, I’m sorry; I’m halfway through Helen Hooven Santmyer’s And Ladies of the Club, here. I died before I could finish it, you know. Anyway, didn’t you notice the ‘QUIET PLEASE’ sign?”


She suddenly turned into a gigantic, terrifying beast, roaring loudly. Janosz, however, was unfazed by her sudden transformation.
“Your abilities are not scaring me,” he said firmly. “I’ll have you know I resurrected Vigo the Carpathian last year. You are like the buzzing of flies compared to him!” She transformed into a sweet old lady again.



“Is that so, huh?” she said. “Well, what did you need help with? Let me guess…the Arcane Knowledge section.”
“Yes,” Janosz said.
“Now isn’t that just grand,” she cackled, adding, “Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” with just a hint of ironic delight. “You’ve come to the right place.”



She looked through the shelves and found an interesting volume called The Book of Nasty Magic, Vol. 1, edited by “Mr. Creepy”. “Well, it’s not the Necronomicon, but it’ll do just fine,” the ghost said, randomly flicking through the book. Janosz pulled out a bag and stuffed three books inside it.

The Ghostbusters were crowded around Egon’s computer, which was, at the moment, logged onto the Internet version of Tobin’s Spirit Guide.
“Okay,” he said, “we’re on. Searching for all entries pertaining to Ghosts and Wizards, with Voltar as the name…let’s see what comes up.”







“I see,” Ray said, a mug of hot chocolate in his hand. “Nice ugly history there.”



“That’s why we have to stay on the lookout, and make sure he doesn’t try anything funny,” Winston said. “Imagine what kind of trouble he’ll cause in New York.”
“Eh, no big deal,” Peter yawned. “We handle stuff like this all the time. Sometimes we get worse.”
The alarm sounded, ending all further discussion, and the Ghostbusters jumped down the firepole and piled into ECTO-1A.



The ECTO-1A screamed out of the firehouse, its unusual siren wailing. Janine called them on their radio, directing them to a movie theater where the Film Forum was screening the Vincent Price movie House on Haunted Hill.



“Hey! Wait for me, you guys!” Louis Tully, their nerdy accountant-cum-fifth-Ghostbuster whined as the ECTO-1A sped off into the distance. Wearing his thick, black, horn-rimmed eyeglasses and an ill-fitting yellow G.B. uniform, Louis desperately wanted to be part of the team. Unfortunately, he proved to be far too clumsy—even for the Ghostbusters’ standards—to don and use a Proton Pack with any proficiency; Slimer, their pet ghost, still had the scars from last time.

The front door of the apartment flew open, and Janosz burst in. Just before going home, he’d stopped at the hardware shop to buy a large Rubbermaid basin, with which he would collect enough pink slime to fuel his plans. He turned the basin upside down and sat upon it, cracking open The Book of Nasty Magic, Vol. 1. He flicked through it until he found an interesting chapter, entitled “Fun with Slime”. The chapter contained numerous spells and incantations, including one to create a whole gallon of slime from just a cupful, one to create copies of people from a quantity of slime, and one to turn a quantity of slime into a communicator to the Spirit World. All of these spells looked good to Janosz, and the last one especially intrigued him.
Excited, he skimmed ahead to the chapter, “Ghosts and Spirits”. He went down a long list of ghouls and goblins, muttering each one’s name as he went along. “Gozer the Destructor--seems too dangerous…Vigo the Carpathian—I’ve met him already…Sutekh the Destroyer—too chaotic…the ghost of McCarthy—I’d rather not…the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future—ooh, I like that one…ah, who’s this? Voltar, the Ghost Wizard? Sounds interesting…this thing reads like the White Pages!” He put his finger on Voltar’s entry, and suddenly the words on the page started to change, until the index was replaced by mystical shapes and incantations in dead languages.



Janosz transferred the mystical diagrams onto a piece of paper and placed it dead center in the basin. He picked up the jar of slime he’d collected, intending to pour it into the basin…and he paused for a moment. Realizing that this could get very messy very quickly, he decided to take his fiendish work outside.



Taking up the basin, the jar of slime, the book, and the diagram, Janosz headed out of his apartment, to the outside of the building.



Once outdoors, where the slime couldn’t leave a great big mess, Janosz set his basin down, transferred the slime from the jar into it, and read the Slime Expander incantation.
“Offob…si…ockos…ocohc,” he declared. The slime bubbled up and soon the basin was full of pulsing, glowing pink slime. Then he read the Summoning Spell for Voltar, the Ghost Wizard.
“Meka leka hi meka hiney ho…meka leka hi meka channy ho…mola meka channa maka mola mala hey!”



Suddenly the slime turned cloudy, going from a translucent pink to a more solid pink, with deep purple streaks shot through it. Lightning filled came from nowhere as the slime started to glow with an energy all of its own, and then…it rose up out of the basin and took on a humanoid form! It became a tall, powerfully-built man, dressed in pink and purple robes.



“Ahhh,” he said. “Finally, I have escaped my spectral prison…” He surveyed his new surroundings, taking note of the man in the room, sitting nervously, fearful of this new visitor. “…and you have freed me from it,” the tall ghost said, a note of kindness entering his voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Voltar, the Ghost Wizard. Since you have been so considerate, I will grant you one wish. What is it you desire most?”



“The Ghostbusters,” Janosz said, angrily.
“Ghostbusters?” Voltar asked, intrigued. “There are such men in this world? Men who can defeat ghosts?” “Yes. I allied myself with Vigo the Carpathian last year, and they defeated both of us.”
“Ah, yes, Vigo the Carpathian. He had such a wonderful sense of humor.”
“But you are not fearing the Ghostbusters?”
“Why should I? I am, after all, an extremely powerful Ghost Wizard. I can crush them as easily as I would a child’s dreams. But first, you will help me get acquainted with this world…any prospective ruler should get to know his surroundings.”