Chapter Sixteen

"Hey! the roof's lit up!" Peter shouted over the storm, the Ghostbusters looked up to see that the silver crown of the Chrysler Building was illuminated by it's spotlights.

The Ghostbusters climbed out of the Snow-Cat and proceeded towards the main entrance, by all rights it should have been buried but it wasn't. The Ghostbusters pushed open the doors and stepped into the lobby.

"How long will it take us to climb the stairs? this building had more than seventy stories!" Egon noticed a soft glow towards the back of the lobby.

"We might not need the stairs." Egon walked towards the bank of elevators. He pushed the call button and received the metallic "ping."

"How did he do that?" Peter joined the group.

"I didn't, Ian must have used the spiritual energy granted to him by the book to power up the elevator, that's why the spotlights on the spire are working when the rest of the city is blacked out, he wants to see what he's doing up there." The double doors slid shut and the elevator car rose slowly.

***

"Why are you doing this? Mankind doesn't deserve to suffer because you did!" Evil Ian turned to face his good counterpart.

"My God!" Good Ian exclaimed as he stared at his evil counterpart, he had taken on a possessed look, his eyes glowed a insane red and his mouth was a twisted sneer, he spoke with inearthly tone, as if someone was speaking with him.

"Of course it deserves to suffer! It must learn that foolish holidays are the thing of the past. Worshipping gods is the new craze, and if I have to kill people to make them understand then so be it." Lightning flashed out of the book and smashed into the MetLife Building, the sides of the building exploded in a avalanche of broken glass, steel and concrete. Two of the giant neon letters broke free from the roof and tumbled down to the ground. The hexagonal top of the building groaned as it gave way and collapsed backwards, falling onto the Helmsley Building below. Another flash shot towards the QueensBoro Bidge, it's supports already weakened could not withstand the uneartly energy and failed, the bridge collapsed onto Rooservelt Island, taking the tramline with it.

"You pittyful fools!" Evil Ian's voice was no longer his own.

"You would rather die than worship me, well now I shall have my vengence on the world that tortured me!" Good Ian walked back towards the door into the Cloud Club, only to be knocked down as the door was kicked open.

***

The Ghostbusters arrived on the 77th Floor and stepped out into the reception area of the Cloud Club.

"Where to?" Peter asked, a bang emitted through the Ballroom told them where to go, they ran off towards the doors leading out onto the balcony.

Chapter Seventeen

Winston kicked the door open and recognised the form in front of him.

"That's him."

"Wait stop!" the form cowered at the possible threat. Peter did a double take.

"Yo Guys! I think we've got a case of double jeopardy!" The group followed his gaze to the man standing on the eagle above.

"But, they're the same guy!" Janine shouted. Rgon pulled out his PKE meter.

"Who are you?" the double looked at them and stood up.

"Technically, I suppose I am Ian Stewarts, but I shouldn't be. I guess you could say that I'm the good part of him."

"Of course, this all makes sense! The reason why Mr. Stewarts in front of us doesn't register strongly enough on the meter is because he's completely charged with positive ions, I was only able to register the other verson of him because he's overcharged with negative ions!"

"In English Egon!" Peter shouted.

"Every human has an equal level of positive and negatively charged ions, however Mr. Stewarts had managed to split himself, creating a good copy and a bad copy."

"So how do we beat him?"

"We could reverse the polarity of the partcile throwers, but I'm not sure how they will fare in the atmaspheric distortions!"

"Is there anything I can do? I can't help but feel responsible for this."

"Ther is a way, if you were to make contact with your counterpart, you'd merge back together again."

"Then let's do it!"

"There's a danger!" The group became quiet.

"If the evil Ian is more charged then you, when you merge he'll be the dominant half, we wouldn't be able to stop him! We'd need to increase your charge to higher of that og his and hope it works."

"How do we do that?" Ray asked.

"We shoot him with the particle accelerators."

"Whoa Egon! I though you said that would be bad?!" Peter shouted.

"Not if we turn down the beam strengh, however to compensate for the beam strengh being cut we;d have to get closer so that the charging will take effect."

"We'll, we've dealt with this kind of situation before and not turned back."

"But I must also warn that if he's over charged it could result in a massive explosion that would reduce this building and the an area half a mile wide into a smoking crater. So anyone who doesn't want to go through with this leave now, those who do put your hand here." Egon heald out his hand.

"What the Hell, after all I wouldn't want you to die without me being there to annoy you!" Peter placed his hand on top of Egon's.

"Well, seeing as I wasn't able to stop him before now and that you'll need me then I'm in." Ian placed his hand on top of Peter's.

"I'll never want to miss an spiritual event like this." Ray Placed his hand on top of Ian's, he was followed by Slimer.

"If I'm doomed to be with you guys the rest of my life then I'm not going to let Dr. Venkman have the last laugh." Janine pl;aced he hand on top of Slimer's.

"I never run out on my friends." Winston placed his hand on top of Janine's.

"Then we're agreed, if this doesn't work then It's been nice knowing all of you." The group returned the feeling.

"Alright Mr. Stewart, you will probably feel a tingling sensation. This won't harm you." Ian stood in front of them. All six Ghostbusters lined up and readied their guns.

"Reduce you're beam buy 50%!" Egon shouted, the group twisted the silver knob on the side of the gun housing.

"On Three!"

"THREE!" Six people shouted out in unison as six beams of protons surged towards Ian.

"Keep it up for the next ten seconds!" THe guns bucked in their hands as the protons tried to leave the barrel.

"NOW!" The beams shut off, Ian stumbled back as the restraning power of the beams faded and he then collapsed to the floor.

"Ian!" Peter and Janine rushed forward.

"He's fine." They helped Ian up, he glowed a little from the charge. Peter looked up at the madman on the eagle.

"We need a distraction, any ideas?" They looked at him.

"Great."

Chapter Eighteen

He stood there, overseeing it all. The destruction of the human world was happeneing right in front of him and he was enjoying every bit of it. He had not expected what was to come next.

"Hey you!" Ian whirled around to face...

"Dr. Peter Venkman, would you like me to give you a examination, on the house of course."

"Ah, one of the infamous Ghostbusters! I've heard of you."

"You know that's good, that's perfect. Did you know I am a student of parapsychology so technically you fall into my field of expertise." Ian's blood red eyes narrowed at the human.

"You seem to be extremely bitter at Christmas like I used to be, did this start in your childhood?" Ian hissed and a ball of flame shot from his upraised hand, Peter ducked. The ball of flame smashed into the wall behind him.

"Good, we know where it started. I'm guessing that it's emotionally involved, the lack of a loved one perhapse?" Ian hissed again.

"What would you know?" Ian hissed and tossed another fireball at Peter, this one missed and shattered the triangular window behind him. Peter continued to edge his way along the eagle. He glanced down to see how Ray and Egon were doing, they were about to hoist Ian up onto the eagle.

"I know that the lack of a loved one can be very damaging, emotion wise. I'm guessing that...your father is the problem!" This made Ian angrier

"You can't talk to me about my father, he was stolen from me!"

"By what?"

"Christmas."

"Uh-huh, and you based this soley on?"

"The fact that getting home to celebrate it killed him." A third fireball zoomed towards Peter, he was almost too late to duck it.

"I don't believe that you blame Christmas, I believe you blame yourself. That if your father hadn't been rushing home to be able to spend time with his kid on Christmas Eve then he would be alive."

"No!" Ian's sneer faultered.

"NO! You're lying, trying to stop me."

"He's right Ian!" Evil Ian looked up, his good counterpart stood in front of him. Peter jumped down to the balcony below.

"You! I should have killed you when I had the chance!" A mischevous smile crept across good Ian's face.

"Too late, you're gonna pay for the pain you've caused them." he gestured at the city and the Ghostbusters. They both started to glow. Good Ian yellow, Evil Ian red.

"No! stop, you musn't!" Good Ian grabbed Evil Ian's shoulders and started to phase, the spellbook passed through Good Ian's back as the procees neared completion, a bright flash erupted which caused those on the balcony to sheild their eyes.

"Ow!" Peter shouted. When they opened their eyes again they saw only one Ian.

"Is he?" Winston moved forward to the balcony rail

"Gone." Ian closed the book. The wind calmed down a little.

"For the first time in who know how many years, I'm no longer part of him."

"It's good to have you back Ian."

"As long as I'm in control he'll never harm anybody again." A groan from above caught their attention.

"What was that?"

Chapter Nineteen

8:00PM

The Chrysler Building

A classic example of 1920's architecure, it's spire a feat of engineering. Until three minutes ago it was the alter which Ian Stewart had been ravaging the world, now that his insane plan had been stopped the world started to calm down. But a bolt of lightning from the dying storm had stabbed down the instant both Ians had merged and struck the spire, causing an explosion that was masked by the bright light brought on by the merging. The spire wobbled as the torn framework and skin gave way, and came crashing down onto the silver eagle, the brickwork gave way and the support struts began to buckle. The movement caused Ian to stumble forward, causing the book to fly from his hands and luckily land on the balcony, the eagle swung round and finally began the decent to the street below. Ian grabbed wildly and was rewarded when he grabbed Peter's outstretched hand.

"Hold on Ian." The railing groaned, it too had been damaged. Before they could raise Ian up the metal was pulled from the brick wall and collapsed, Peter fell forward and was only stopped from hitting East 42nd Street by Winston and Egon's quick thinking. Ian held on tightly to Peter's glove.

"Help!" Ian shouted. The glove began to slid off Peter's hand.

"No! Ian grab my other hand!" Peter held out his other hand. But was too late.

"Noooooooooooooooo!" Ian began plummeting down, down, down. He soon disapeared into the darkness below. Peter stood up and looked with the others into the night sky. The spellbook's pages flipped in the wind. Winston looked down at the book. He found a page that could help, but if it did then possibly everything they'd done would be lost.

"It's the only way." The group formed a circle around him as he began reading out the lines.

"Friends and relations have been lost through greed, bring back the life force which they need. To reverse a conjurer's spell, that threatened to bring forth the forces of Hell..." The storm had stopped, or more accurately slowed down. Not noticeable at first, but getting quicker and quicker, the snow began moving upwards. They noticed ghostly versions of themselves doing what they had just done, in reverse. Soon the aparitions were moving quicker until the were moving more quickly then human, or ghost vision could pick up. The roof of the MetLife building rose from where it had crashed down, the sky started to brighten. The city lit up as the power flowed back into the buildings. In the distance the spire of the Empire State Building rose from it's rest on Fifth Avenue. Soon the smaller actions had become blurred and invisable as the days ran backwards. Winston glanced at his watch.

"December 20th, 19th, 18th." The actions slowed down as the view shifted.

Chapter Twenty

December 18th

4:15PM

"...Zeddemore, it's right over..." the store owner started shuffling books that were stray across the glass counter. He glanced over to a man who was standing near the end of the counter. Winston glanced around to find himself in Wagner's Occult Store.

"Excuse me sir, that book's already been reserved. Could you please pass it over here?"

"Sure" The familliar figure slid the book across the counter and started to gather his parcels.

"Thankyou sir." The store owner wrapped up the book in wrapping paper. Winston stared at the man.

(*"Does he remember?"*) The store owner handed Winston his purchases.

"Thanks." Winston said as he started moving towards the door, he stopped.

"Ian?"

"Yes."

"You remember?"

"Most of it."

"Will you be okay?"

"Apart from being alone this Christmas, I'll be fine." He smiled.

"Why don't you come over for Christmas?"

"I'd like that, it's been a while since I had a family or friends to spend Christmas with." They both left the store as they talked about the events that technically didn't happen in the past few days that technically hadn't passed.

Chapter Twenty-One
December 24th
10:25AM

"Well Egon, The Ecto-Cat works perfectly and with that spell Winstin cast, the terrible events that had plagued New York over the past days haven't happened." They stood outside the firehouse in the gently falling snow.

"What I don't really get is why we remember when noone else does." Ray asked as Peter started making a snowball

"You see, Ian remembers because he had contact with the book and that particular spell, so he would have been included in the time spell. We remember because we were in the vacinity when the spell was cast and so we were in theory trapped in a time bubble, even though we shifted back to the buildings we were in at the time we will always remember what happened. The book simply decided when the first proper encounter between it and Ian was and took us back to that moment." He took a sip of coffee from his furmace flask.

"We need to get him a standard dictionary for Christmas." Peter slapped more snow onto the snowball.

"It's a good thing too that we didn't have the packs going for much longer." Egon whispered to Ray.

"Why?" Ray whispered back.

"Because had the packs been on for another minute at that setting they would have overloaded." Somehow they had managed to hear him even though he was whispering.

"Oh dear." Snow was splattered onto his glasses as a snowball thrown by Peter landed on his chest.

"Get him!" Peter started making more snowballs as Winston, Slimer and Janine started to pelt Spengler with their own snowballs. Ray just stood there watching Egon duck behind a snow mound and start tossing snowballs back. Ian walked over to him.

"Are they always this mad?"

"Not always, they get a little crazy around the holiday period. Do you want to go help Egon? I'm sure he could use some assistance."

"Why not, afterall if it weren't for him we'd all be frozen." They ducked behind Egon's cover and started returning fire.

"Prepare to die Spengler!" Peter shouted.

"Janine, watch out! Egon's just..." a wet "thump" was heard form Janine's general direction.

"Who threw that?!"

"Haha!"

"Okay Dr. Venkman you asked for it!" Peter's laughing was ended when Janine smash a snowball into his hair.

"Hey you get away from me! I'm warning you." Peter started turning on his own side as Ian, Ray and Egon charged the opposit camp and entered the fray. Laughter erupted as everyone soon became covered in snow.

"You having a good time so far?" A snowy-haired Peter asked Ian.

"So far it's one of the best Christmasses I've had in a long time." They looked up at the banner which simply read: "Merry Christmas from the Ghostbusters".

"Thanks for giving me a Happy Christmas guys." Ian said.