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No one is crazy enough to answer a sketchy newspaper ad for a job at a ghost extermination company.
No one but Mike Wheeler.
So here I am, on the serene streets of the Tribeca neighborhood, staring at an abandoned firehouse. I winced at the dodgy 1959 Cadillac (was that an old ambulance?) that had been painted up, a huge logo of a scared ghost with a bright red slash through it on the side.
Here I go. Clutching the newspaper clipping in my sweaty palm, I pushed open the heavy oak door. The open floor that greeted me was breezy, with filing cabinets from floor to ceiling, bursting with papers. I stifled a cough, trying to ignore the dust that was thick in the air. A pretty, middle aged woman with thick round glasses and a questionable red hair-doo looks up from her work.
“What’da want?” Her voice echoed in the drafty room.
“I’m uh, here for a job interview?” I said.
“Oh, okay!” She pushed the chair across from her deck out with her foot, tapping on it with a pen. “Sit down hunny, I have some questions for you. My name is Janine.”
The next twenty five minutes or so were filled with your average, run of the mill job interview questions, Where are you from, What can you bring to the table, How well do you work in a team? Stuff like that. She spoke in a monotone voice, as if she was very tired, making me quite bored and questioning if I should have even shown up, but the last question woke me up.
“Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?” She looked up at me expectedly.
“Uhhh,” I fumbled for words. “I mean, I guess so?” After what I had seen on the news about these guys I was skeptical, but who knows?
“Okay great!” She stood up quickly, shuffling her papers together. “You seem like a great find! Let me introduce you to Dustin and he can show you the way around.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I stumbled out of my chair. “I’m hired? Just like that?!”
She whipped around, her short hair bobbing with the movement. “Of course dear! Here at Ghostbusters we hire for type and not necessarily for experience. And I think you're the perfect type.”
I followed her up a winding staircase. “So are you-“ I tripped over a stack of books. “Are you the founder of this place?”
“Oh no!” Her cheerful laugh echoed. “No, I’m just the receptionist, the found was Dr. Venkman, though you won’t see much of him.”
“I won’t?”
“No, no. You're new, so most of your time will be spent here, doing research and filling and learning.”
“Soo, I’m a receptionist.” I deadpanned. Though I knew that couldn’t be true, what receptionist gets paid twenty dollars an hour?
“Nooo, I’m the receptionist. And no one is ever taking this job from me. You're an intern of sorts.” Janine teased. Or at least I think she was teasing.
At the top of the stairs was a small hallway with three doors. One at the end and two at the sides.
“The door on the right, my dear,” Janine pointed with a manicured finger. “are the Doctors offices, you are never to enter that room unless you are told to, okay?”
I nodded quickly.
“The door on the left is yours and the other two interns ‘offices’”
My eyes shifted to the door at the end. “And what about that room?”
“Oh that’s nothing, just filled with faulty equipment and suspicious objects. I don’t recommend you go in there unless you have to.”
She knocked lightly on the left door, and a muffled voice answered. She smiled at me and gestured for me to go first.
The first thing I noticed was all the string, it looked like a police investigation. The next thing was a man with an unruly, curly mullet, stashed under a ball cap. He sat on the floor with papers all around him, and seemed to be deep in thought.
Janine cleared her throat. The man’s head shot up and a huge smile spread across his face. “Oh hey there!”
“Dustin! I’d like you show our newest hire here, Michael-“
“Mike is fine, just Mike.” I interrupted. Only my dad calls me Micheal.
Janine smiled. “Mike, the ropes, just give him a good old Ghostbusters welcome.”
“Sure thing!” Dustin stood up and wiped his hands on torn and beaten jeans as Janine walked out. The two of them shook hands. I could tell already I was going to like this guy.
“So I hope you're not too worried about all this mess. Ghost hunting is a messy business after all.” Dustin gestured to the map covered in pins and string.
I laughed. “So you're telling me, you all actually hunt ghosts.”
Dustin’s smile grew even wider. “Ohhhhh yeah.”
_____________________________________
Dustin had taken me to the basement, an eerie green glow was cast all over the room.
“You might want to brace yourself, this is often shocking for the first time.”
“What is-“ My words were cut off as we entered the room fully. Tall glass testing tubes that reached floor to ceiling, were filled with green globs with eyes and mouth. Disgusting, and slimy creatures that made my skin crawl. They made faces and yelled at us as we walked past. At the end of the room was a table with notebooks with labels like: Ghost behavior 1, Ghost language 3, and so on.
I stared at one of the gross, green, glops as it yelled and banded on the glass. “What the hell are these things?”
“Oh, haven’t you guessed?” Dustin came up beside me. “Their ghosts.”
“Oh.” I hoped I didn’t sound too disappointed.
Dustin flashed a knowing smile at me. “Well what did you expect?”
“Well, uh…” I rubbed my neck in embarrassment. “I guess I always thought ghosts were more… human looking.”
“That’s the cool thing!” Dustin ran to the table and held up a notebook labeled: Ghost Types 1. “There could be! There are a ton of different Ghost species, or kinds!”
He flipped excitingly through the book, practically forcing me to sit down. “You see? The green, gloopy kinds are called slimers, they are Class 5 Full Roaming Vapor composed of pure ectoplasm, and have gluttonous appetites. They can never be satisfied.” Dustin slammed the book shut and took a seat across from me.
“I think it’s gonna take a while for me me to remember all this stuff,” I admitted, trying ignore the rocks in my stomach.
“That’s to be expected, honestly it took Lucas and I ages to even begin to understand it all.” Dustin took a snickers from his pocket and began chowing down, as if to taunt the Slimers.
“Lucas?”
“Oh yeah,” Dustin said, his mouth full of candy. “Lucas is the other intern, he’s great. He’s sort of the ‘brawn’ so to speak. He’s the guy who goes out and gathers information from witnesses and such.”
“So if he gathers the information, you put the information together, then who fights and captures the ghosts?” This company was a mess.
“The doctors of course! But that’s what we are interning for, so when the doctors get old and don’t want to fight anymore, we can take over.”
“Like a switch off,” I concluded.
“Exactly,” Dustin tipped his candy bar at me. “Like a switch off.”
“So what do you think I'm going to do?” All the bases seemed to be covered, at least they appeared to be.
“I figure you're gonna go out with Lucas and help gather information, we have been getting a lot of calls in and just can’t keep up.”
The two men walked up the stairs to the main floor. “Wor starts at 8:00 on the dot, Janine doesn’t tolerate lateness.”
I fished my pen out of my pocket and scribbled 8:00 on my palm. “Okay, sounds good.”
“You know what Mike, I have a good feeling about you.” Dustin playfully punched his shoulder.
Later, on the train ride home, Mike played the day through his head but every thought led him back to that room at the end of the hall. Something was in there that wanted me to find it.
How stupid did that sound?