by Sheila Paulson

(Originally printed in Remote Control 7)

With a groan, Peter Venkman lifted his head from the pillow Ray had fetched for him earlier in the evening and glared at Winston. "I practically was," he complained. "Personal remarks are not appreciated. This has not been a good day."

"Better than you think, Peter," Egon said, closing his book and studying the sprawled psychologist. "A fall like that could have been far worse than it was. You're fortunate to be all in one piece. And we are fortunate not to be visiting you in the hospital instead of serving as your personal slaves all evening." The twinkle in his eyes suggested Peter had better enjoy the babying while he could because it probably had run its course.

"Yeah," agreed Ray with a wry grin. "We're glad you're in one piece, even if the piece is pretty spectacular right now. You should see yourself."

"I don't need to see myself, Ray. In fact I think I'd rather not see myself. I know how I feel." Peter hurt. Every bone, joint and muscle ached. Although he'd broken no bones and sustained no internal injuries, the fall through the floor in a run down building they'd de-haunted that afternoon had left him scraped and bruised from head to toe, every joint and muscle aching. X-rays had confirmed that he was all right, but the doctor at the emergency room had told him he'd be sore for a few days and probably feel worse in the morning than he did right now. A most unpleasant prospect.

Not only that, Peter had been nervous, uneasy, all evening, reliving his spectacular fall in his mind. Heights scared him, and he went out of his way to avoid them whenever possible. The job didn't always make it possible, but this had been an accident, pure and simple. He could still remember the frantic, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he crashed through the weakened floor and crash landed one story below.

A battered old sofa had broken his fall, saving him from a major injury - he hadn't even been rendered unconscious, although he'd been groggy for a moment or two - but he'd come away battered and bleeding from numerous small cuts. Stretched out on the couch in front of the television set all evening adorned with band aids, his muscles had been given a prime opportunity to stiffen up, and the thought of climbing the spiral stairs to the third floor and bed hovered over him like a mocking specter.

"Spectacular?" he echoed Ray. "This spectacular Ghostbuster feels like Winston was right," Peter concurred. The fact that his friends had been hovering and fussing all evening, willing to fetch and carry for him as long as he didn't push them too hard proved the fall had freaked them, too. Peter figured he was good for probably another half-day of it before he'd have to cut his losses and stop asking them to bring him sodas or extra pillows, or jumping whenever he asked for something. He wasn't sure he could get away with it much past breakfast. Janine, of course, might bring him coffee in the morning, but that would be her limit, too. She'd almost fussed over him before he went home, and for Janine, that was as good as it ever got.

He yawned. Even that hurt. "I think I'm about ready to crash. Who wants to follow me up the stairs and push?"

"Guess that's my job," volunteered Winston. "Come on, Ray, let's haul him up. 'Cause I don't think he's gonna like doing it on his own." Yep, the magic was wearing off. They all wore amused expressions. Well, he'd get 'em. Never let it said that Peter Venkman didn't know how to retaliate. It was probably time to short-sheet their beds. He'd think of something, anyway. But he didn't let it show. Instead, he gave a pitiful whimper - it wasn't too overdone, was it? - and held out his hands to be pulled up.

Winston was right; it was not fun. Peter let his two friends do most of the work while Egon hurried up the stairs ahead of them with a look on his face that spoke of a plan he'd forgotten. Peter knew he wasn't rushing up to open Peter's bed and lay out his pajamas. He'd have to have major fractures for that to happen. Egon's fussing never took that direction. It was more likely to lead him to produce a scientific device that, if Peter was lucky, wouldn't explode when he tried to use it. Egon was good for blowing up the lab once every few months; he hadn't done it lately, so maybe he was past due.

He let Ray pull and Winston push, their efforts accompanied by pathetic moans and groans that were only half put on. He had to be careful not to lose the sympathy vote too early. Ray, of course, would be sympathetic a little longer than the other two, but he was perfectly capable of retaliation if he thought Peter had conned him into unneeded sympathy. It was a game Peter enjoyed, one that helped him put the memory of that wild fall away into the far corners of his mind. The security of home always meant far more to him after such a near miss.

When they finally made it to the top of the stairs they encountered Egon wheeling his alpha wave generator out of the lab and across the hall to the bedroom, the big, bulky device sliding this way and that as he tried to steer it straight. They followed him there just in time for Egon to position the device in the middle of the room between the four beds and offer one of the sleep-helmets to Peter. He stared at it and at the gizmo he always referred to as 'Egon's good dream machine' in surprise. It had mini-TV screens on it and four helmets attached to it by connecting cable, intended to be worn by the sleepers to assist them in programming their dreams and ending up with relaxing sleep. Peter didn't entirely trust the device, not since the time three ghosts had popped into it and trapped the guys in the sleep state.

"I'm setting up the alpha wave generator for a reason," Egon explained. "I want you to wear the helmet tonight, Peter. Because I don't think you'll sleep well without it."

Peter agreed with that. The machine enabled a person to program his alpha brain waves while in REM sleep, so he could control his dreams, make them relaxing or exciting, depending on what he wanted at the time. Peter had enjoyed the device more than once before and had always awakened afterwards in a much better state of mind than before he'd gone to bed. Well, except for the time those ghosts had interfered. But Egon had assured him the device was all better now.

"Hey, good idea, Egon," Ray agreed, bouncing over to help Egon make adjustments on the control panel. "Just think, Peter, you'll wake up twice as refreshed as you normally would."

"You mean twice as refreshed for someone who is black and blue over ninety per cent of his body," Peter countered, eyeing the device with disfavor. "You guys aren't gonna tape this and sell the movie rights to my dreams, are you?" he asked as he saw Egon insert a video tape into the appropriate slot. The guys had been known to tease him about the dreams he'd controlled when he used the dream machine. Suspiciously he reached for his pajamas. Maybe it was already payback time for expecting them to fuss over him all evening.

Ray glanced up from the control panel with a wicked grin. "What's the matter, Peter, you planning to make it into a big production?"

"Peter always makes it into a big production," Winston pointed out with a chuckle. "The rest of us have to go in there, too, Egon? I'm not sure I can contend with one of Peter's overblown erotic dreams right now. Not when he makes himself into the stud of the century so no beautiful woman can resist him." He grimaced.

"No, the rest of us must avoid that at all costs." Egon said it deadpan but he was amused, too. Peter could always tell when he was hiding a smile. "I think Peter will sleep better with it. I've configured it for only one sleeper tonight. The recorder is simply a precaution."

"Yeah, and that sleeper's gonna wake up with a stiff neck and a bad hair day," Peter groused, but it was mild complaining. Climbing the spiral stairs to the third floor had not been fun. The thought of a good night's sleep appealed mightily, especially since it would allow him to program his own dreams and head off any nasty dreams about the fall before they could find a good toehold. He suspected that was why Egon was setting up the recording mechanism, not because he wanted to spy on erotic dreams but in case of any lingering nightmares; he'd be able to tell if Peter had headed any off, or Peter could watch the tape himself and gauge the progress of his recovery. Not a bad idea after all; he'd just have to censor himself a little. It wouldn't do to give the guys any ammunition against him. "Anyway, thanks, Egon. I'll give it a shot. But if I hear you guys have been making snide remarks about my dreams, I know how to get my revenge." He let the threat hang over them, because he did know, and all three of them were aware of it. He could be fiendishly inventive when he needed to be. Buttoning up his pajama top, he pulled open his bed and reached for the helmet. "Remember, I'm gonna check that tape in the morning and I may have to confiscate it. On the other hand, if we're talking major motion pictures here, Peter gets the film rights."

Settling the helmet into place, he climbed into bed, stretching out as comfortably as possible with a metal gizmo perched on his head and muscles that protested even the pressure of the mattress against his spine, prepared to let the device work its magic. He could hear the other three preparing for bed, more quietly than usual. Ray talked to Slimer for a few minutes, but the little ghost seemed sleepy, too. Gradually silence fell on the bedroom. As Peter drifted into repose he was grateful for the thought of restful sleep until the scarred stranger appeared and wrested control of his dream away from him.

At first, Peter's dreams were pleasant, unremarkable, soothing. No repeats of the moment of utter panic when the floor failed beneath him, no death-defying plunge through the collapsing structure in a rattle and crash of falling wood and plaster. Just tranquility, peace. He encouraged it, steering the dream into restful images, nature scenes, his favorite music, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Even asleep, he could feel his muscles relaxing. Maybe he could nominate Egon for the Nobel Prize for the dream machine. He wandered into a dream in which Egon received the prestigious award - and the accompanying money gift - and rewarded Peter for nominating him by buying him a silver Porsche.

When the change came, he didn't at first realize it until the light faded to reveal a man sitting at a round table, everything else in the vision fading into shadows, allowing the newcomer to sit outlined in the glow that pinned him like a dim spotlight.

"Hey, que pasa?" Peter's sleeping self demanded. He hadn't programmed any mysterious strangers into his dream and he wasn't sure he liked the change. Something about the eerie figure made him increasingly uneasy. He tried to nudge the dream away from the shadowy outline, knowing without understanding how he knew that he would hate it when the man turned and noticed him, but the dream wouldn't be nudged. It was as if someone had taken over the dream's programming so effortlessly that Peter had missed the transition - and Egon had claimed that was impossible.

At first the cryptic stranger didn't respond to Peter's presence. He was turned partly away from Venkman so all the sleeping man could see was a vast expanse of reddened, puckered skin that ran down the right cheek from forehead to chin, continued down the side of his neck into his shirt, and twisted the ear with the stark evidence of an old burn. Salt and pepper hair grew thickly beyond the scar line and had been induced to lie over the temple to hide some of it, not out of vanity; there was not one line of vanity in the man's body. The slump of the shoulders and the way the hands curled into clawlike fists spoke of a despair so deep Peter hesitated to go closer to investigate. But the hairstyle was not a product of vanity. If it were, he would have presented an unscarred side to Peter. Unless, of course, the other side of his face was worse. Something about the unexpected man made Peter shiver as if a deep frost had settled over the land, as if it were the start of an endless winter. He wanted to run like mad, but his feet wouldn't let him. Unexpectedly they seemed bolted to the floor.

The burned man sat at a table on which lay an occult chart filled with esoteric diagrams and drawings, vaguely Cabalistic, something Ray would probably have recognized instantly. Peter knew he would not remember them vividly enough to translate or even describe them thoroughly when he awakened.

The man's hands, one scarred and twisted though evidently functional, the other marked irregularly across the back although straight, held a small, lined notebook in which he wrote frantically, jotting down figures and information from the charts and from a stack of old books that sprawled across the table and stacked at his feet. The notes were too far away for Peter to read. Scientific charts, texts, and diagrams were shuffled in among the mysticism, things that wouldn't have been out of place in Egon's workbooks and, endless pages of meticulous records, although the rough notes in the margins lacked their neat precision. The odd juxtaposition of science and superstition intrigued Peter, but the unexpected panic he felt dulled the interest.

Just as Peter decided to head out of the dream before he lost control of the situation entirely, the stranger stiffened as if he had sensed Peter's presence. He didn't turn to face him; perhaps he didn't have to. Instead he bowed his head over his hands and breathed a fervent, "Thank god!" The urgency of that whispered prayer made Peter shiver. He had been deliberately sought, deliberately invaded, and that scared him.

"Who are you?" he demanded suspiciously. "What are you doing in my dream?"

"Your dream. My nightmare," the enigmatic man responded, his voice hoarse, raspy, as if the smoke from the fire that had twisted his face had scarred his throat and larynx too badly for it to heal properly. The very sound of it made Peter want to clear his own throat. "I've tried and tried. I can't keep count of how often I tried. I thought I'd never get here."

"You tried to come to my dream?" Peter asked. "What did I ever do to you?"

"You took away everything that gave me reason to live," rasped the stranger. He didn't lift his head or look at Peter, but suddenly his shoulders shook. He lifted the scarred hands and hid his face in them weeping with an old grief that time had failed to ease, that time would never ease. "Gone, all gone..." He didn't sound entirely sane, but the devastation he indicated could well have caused him to surrender his sanity. The madman, one of his professors had been fond of quoting, was not the man who had lost his reason. He was the man who had lost everything except his reason. Now that was a terrifying thought.

"I never saw you before," Peter defended himself, holding back a sudden urge to pat the man on the shoulder in the way of comfort. "Are you a ghost?"

"I'd rather be a ghost, I think," the stranger husked. "Easier... wouldn't have to go on living like this." Although he couldn't explain it, Peter didn't think he was referring to the scars but to something worse than the ruin of his body. Something devastating that hovered in the shadows waiting to pounce on Peter, too.

"Why are you here anyway?" he persisted. This was too strange, yet at the same time frightening all out of proportion to what seemed to be happening. He didn't know why he was so terrified but inside, he was as cold as ice and his stomach had twisted into frantic knots. His scalp crawled.

"Listen," the stranger said. "You have to listen. You have to listen."

"I'm listening. Who are you? This is my dream."

"Yes. That's why I'm here. I have to be here. You have to listen." It was as if he'd struggled so hard to convey the message that when it came right down to it he had to struggle to refocus his goal.

"What do you want me to know?" Peter asked in a soothing voice, taking a step closer, trying to see over the hunched shoulder, trying to make sense of the esoteric design, the scrawled notes.

The scarred face lifted from the near-crippled hands but didn't turn. "No. Don't. Not yet. You have to listen first."

"I'm listening."

"Not enough. Oh, god, not enough. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I have to..." To Peter's horror, he hid his face in his hands again and sobbed with a grief so deep Peter couldn't imagine anything ever filling the empty places. Then he controlled himself as if desperation alone drove him, and started to turn toward Peter.

Whether it was anticipation of worse burns to come or a fear of a shocking knowledge that hovered, waiting to pounce, at the edges of his awareness, Peter jerked awake with a yell, startling his three friends into wakefulness. He wasn't sure how long he sat there amid his twisted blankets, dazed and shaken with an emotion he didn't understand, cold terror pulsing through his veins, weighted down by the night invader's sorrow. When Egon, whose bed was next to his, gripped his shoulders and shook him to try to awaken him and Ray arrived in a frantic scramble to pull the helmet off, Peter cried out and grabbed for it, knowing he had to go back. He didn't understand why but it was vital that he return. The dream was unfinished; it was essential he hear what the stranger had invaded his sleep to tell him. He had to know even though the thought of entering the dream scared him so much it was all he could do to keep from grabbing a crowbar and smashing the alpha wave generator down to a heap of twisted metal. "Egon, Egon, somebody came into my dream. It's urgent. I've gotta go back."

"Your dream was invaded by an outside force?" Egon asked in shocked realization as if until then he had merely suspected a fall-induced nightmare. He spun away and returned with a P.K.E. meter which he activated and waved at Peter in an urgent sweep. It didn't even flicker. Egon blinked at it, redid the settings, and passed it over Peter and then the machine. "How odd. Clearly something happened, something beyond your control, but the meter doesn't register anything except a slightly elevated biorhythm reading which is commensurate with your distraught state. When the ghosts invaded our dreams before, the P.K.E. readings were very strong afterward. Slimer knew they were in there." He gazed up at the hovering ghost, who stared at Peter with wide, scared eyes.

"Slimer didn't wake up until Peter yelled," Ray said. "I saw him jump when I woke up."

"I realize that, Ray. Did you sense anything, Slimer?" Egon prodded gently.

Slimer stared at him, then shook his head vehemently. "Heard Petaw yell," he burbled. "No bad ghosts. Petaw have ba' dream?"

"I think he did, Spud," Winston replied. "It's okay. You can't see anything funny about the dream machine, can you?"

Slimer sniffed it warily, then shook his head. "Nope. Not funny. Like always."

"How very peculiar. As I said, your biorhythms are slightly elevated, Peter, but that could be explained by the emotional overload you seem to be suffering. Did you dream about the fall?" It was the easiest explanation he could see for Peter's reaction; he would naturally examine that possibility before he would consider anything else.

Peter shook his head. "It wasn't that. I was being careful to stay away from anything that might trigger bad dreams. It was this guy who showed up and wouldn't go away, and he had something to tell me."

"Can we play it back, Egon?" Ray asked, gesturing at the recording section. "That way we can tell if it was an entity invading Peter's dream."

"Of course."

Peter was glad now that Egon had insisted on the recording. "Play it back," he cried. "Then you'll see what happened."

The tape didn't work right. Something had affected it, something beyond Egon's explanation. The man was visible on the recording, but he was blurry, only a dim outline emerging from deep shadows, his words running together in a meaningless jumble. Peter's reactions were clearer, but even they didn't explain the sense of utter panic the dream had caused. He sat curled up on the foot of his bed watching the small screen, shaking his head, cold and anxious as if something malevolent hung over him waiting to strike. He wasn't afraid of the man in the dream; he was afraid of the feelings the man in the dream had produced.

"Was it clearer when you saw it?" Egon asked, raising an expectant eyebrow in Peter's direction. He knew Peter well enough to understand that he wouldn't freak at normal spookiness, not after a career of busting ghosts. He might fear a ghost or demon, but such fear was normal, reasonable, nothing like the panic he felt right now.

"Yeah. I don't know who he is but he has these burns, all over," Peter gestured vaguely at the right side of his face and at his hands. "He... " His voice trailed off as he considered it. "He was the saddest, bitterest person I ever saw. And he needed me to help him."

"It was only a dream, Peter," Egon reassured him in a deep, comforting rumble. "There's nothing to suggest anything else yet."

"Was it? You said we control what happens in there, Egon, remember? You had us practice and practice after that time our dreams were invaded and you did all sorts of adjustments on your crazy invention to prevent nasty characters party crashing. You said nobody could take over again."

"I did say that, and the evidence of the meters indicates that was not a spirit force that you encountered."

"So what was it, Egon?" Peter persisted, desperate for an answer that would remove the sense of frantic urgency and cold fear that pervaded him. "Indigestion? Bad chili from dinner?"

"Hey, maybe it was somebody's OBE," Ray theorized excitedly, grabbing onto the footboard of Peter's bed and smiling in delight at the idea. "You know, astral projection or something. An out-of-body experience. Somebody alive wouldn't set off a P.K.E. meter, would he, Egon? Even if he was in the astral state?"

"Hmm. Possible," Egon replied, studying the P.K.E. meter again in fascination as if he had overlooked a conceivable answer. "Certainly an interesting theory, Raymond. Some dreams are said to be impressions of astral flights, in which an urgent mission is powerful enough to detach the astral body from the physical. It would explain the vagueness of the projection in the image. It's possible someone else is working on a device similar to mine, and used it at the same time."

"Yeah," agreed Ray. "You might have been sharing the same dreamscape with him, Peter. This is great."

"Great for you, maybe," Peter said dryly. "It wasn't a fun time, Ray. I know you and Egon would do anything in the name of science, but I'm not quite ready to be somebody's guinea pig."

"Perhaps you were in sync with him somehow, Peter, or simply that the Alpha wave generator made you receptive," Egon theorized. "There's no proof you were invaded by an astral traveler. Perhaps we should all don the helmets for the rest of the night. It could be possible such a person has accidentally severed his ties with his own body. If we could learn his identity we might be able to help him find his way home."

"Go in there again?" Away from the intense emotions he'd experienced inside the dream, Peter was hesitant to experience it again. Yet he knew he would have to do it. He wasn't sure why, but it was vital.