Phantombusters: Afterlife

Chapter 11: "Take a little advice, don't go chasing ghosts."

When getting let out of the cell to make her one call, Domingo sighed.

"Make it quick." Domingo comments before walking off after handing Phoebe a phone

She pulls out a note in her pocket, the note she wrote the Ghostbusters note on. She began dialing the number and held the phone under her ear, waiting for someone, anyone to answer her call.

Instead of going to the Ghostbusters firehouse in New York, however, it went to Ray's occult bookstore which is where Ray was, trying to touch up a piece of decorative quartz. After some reluctance from the phone ringing, he picked it up to answer.

"Ray's Occult, and we're closed right now." Ray responds

In the police station, Phoebe was a bit relived that someone finally answered.

"Wait!! Don't hang up yet. I only get one phone call..." Phoebe says. "I'm.....in prison basically."

"The slammer, huh?" Ray comments. "Well, i'm not a lawyer, but i'm listening."

"Are you Ray Stantz, the Ghostbuster?" Phoebe asks. "I'm calling about your old partner, Egon Spengler."

At that mention, Ray went silent before saying, "Egon Spengler can rot in hell."

With that comment from Ray, Phoebe rose an eyebrow.

"He...died recently...." Phoebe comments

Ray actually teared up a little when hearing that Ren died recently. He didn't get to apologize for whatever caused him to initially say what he said seconds earlier.

"Oh man...." Ray comments, rubbing his head a little

Phoebe took a deep breath.

"Weren't you two friends?" Phoebe asks

"That was a long time ago, kiddo." Ray responds

"What happened to you guys?" Phoebe asks

"Well, when we started busting ghosts, it was a gas, the economy was good, things were fluent when we made our first bust, people believed in us." Ray responds. "But in the 2010s, when things got slow, hauntings got  extremely thin, Venkman thought that we did our job too well. We could barely keep up our mortgage. Soon, a lot of Tribeca got bought up and we lost the firehouse. Pretty sure it's an abandoned tourist attraction museum now."

"So then....you all just...walked away?" Phoebe asks

"Peter went back to academia, he's at Suney Courtman University, he's a professor that teaches advertising and promotion." Ray explained. "Winston went into finance, he worked hard, coined a fortune, last I heard from our temporary recruit Danny he was in the Ghost Zone for something, and i'm here at my bookshop."

Phoebe thought before sighing.

"What about Egon?" Phoebe asks

"Well, he wasn't helping. We went from 10 calls a week to 1 if we were lucky. Then Egon started telling people that their little ghost problems weren't gonna matter cause the world was gonna end." Ray responds. "He got spooky, freaked me out! One morning, I go to work and Ecto-1, our old Cadillac is gone, his neutrona wand, proton pack, ALL THE TRAPS, 16 ounces of fuel isotope, all gone! He cleaned us out! Now we were the dead ones."

"Well, don't you think he might've had a reason?" Phoebe questions

"He phoned me about 10 years later, some small town in Oklahoma. Kept rambling on about the rising storm, some huge psychic tornado that was gonna consume humanity in darkness forever." Ray responds. "And kid, I wanted to believe him-"