Ghostbusters: Afterlife2021

Ray:
Ray's Occult, and we're closed.

Phoebe:
Wait! I only get one phone call. I'm... in prison.

Ray:
The slammer, huh? Heh, been there myself. I'm no lawyer, but I'm listening.

Phoebe:
Are you Ray Stanz, the Ghostbuster?

Ray:
And now, I'm hanging up.

Phoebe:
Hang on, please! I'm calling about Egon Spengler.

Ray:
[pauses] Egon Spengler can rot in Hell.

Phoebe:
He died last week.

Ray:
Oh, man... No kidding.

Phoebe:
Weren't you two friends?

Ray:
That was a long time ago.

Phoebe:
What happened to you guys?

Ray:
Well, when we started, busting ghosts was a gas. The economy was good. Reagan years. People believed in us, then things got slow. Hauntings got thin. Venkman thought we did our job too well. Oh, we could barely keep up our mortgage. Some actor bought up most of Tribeca, and we lost the firehouse. It's a Starbucks now.

Phoebe:
So, then you all just walked away?

Ray:
Peter went back to academia. He's in SUNY Cortland now, he's a Professor Emeritus, he teaches advertising and promotion. Winston went into finance, he worked hard, coined a fortune. And I'm... here.

Phoebe:
Well... what about Egon?

Ray:
Well, he wasn't helping. We went from ten calls a week, to one, if we were lucky. Then Egon started to tell people their little ghost problems didn't matter because the world was coming to an end. He got spooky, freaked me out! One morning, I go to work, and Ecto-1, our old cadillac, is gone. His neutronophone and collider pack, all the traps! Sixteen ounces of fuel isotope! All gone! He cleaned us out! Now we were the dead ones.

Phoebe:
Don't you think he might have had a reason?

Ray:
He phoned me, about ten years later. Some small town in Oklahoma. Kept rambling on about the rising storm. A huge psychic tornado that was going to consume humanity in darkness forever. And, kid, I wanted to believe him-

Phoebe:
You don't understand, there was this mountain, and it had these ancient carvings, and-

Ray:
Kid, kid, kid, there are a lot of mountains out there with ancient carvings. Take a little advice: don't go chasing ghosts.

Phoebe:
Egon Spengler was my grandfather.

Sheriff Domingo:
[hangs up the phone] Time's up.

Ray:
Hello?