Sleeping Beetle

A Beetlejuice fan fiction by Lady Norbert


A/N: So this chapter insisted on being something completely different. For the first time in this series, you get to see things from the villain's perspective - because I could find no better way to illustrate his backstory. He's a complex fellow, but feel free to hate him all you want.

A lot of the information I provide here is accurate to vampiric legends concerning the strigoi mort, although I did tweak bits of it to make it fit better with the Neitherworld. As is so often the case, many thanks to Bookworm Gal for assisting with the research.

The witches and warlock are characters from the episode "Bewitched, Bothered, and Beetlejuiced." I watched it again to make sure (research!) but none of them had names mentioned, apart from "Mr. Warlock," so I had to make them up myself.


Chapter Nine: A Hundred Years to a Steadfast Heart


If Vasile were to have a proper discussion with someone about the time when he had been alive, and what had happened once he no longer was, the other person would very quickly come to the conclusion that a lot of the details didn't entirely make sense. In fairness, he himself would have to admit that the facts were really falsehoods - except that he knew they were true.

He had lived centuries earlier, though how long precisely even he did not know; and, as he had told the Princess, he was related to a cadet branch of the family of Moldavia's original ruling prince. The crowning achievement of his life was reclaiming an old family castle, fully intending to use this victory as a stepping stone to asserting his legacy in full. But his plan fell through when a rival - a distant cousin whose name he had long since cursed into oblivion - murdered him on the very steps of his newly-gained home.

His anger was unspeakable. Fevered by the outrage, half mad with the desire for vengeance, he had returned as a ghost, and torn his cousin's throat open - spilling the blood they shared. His slaughter thus avenged, Vasile turned his undead energies to beginning what seemed an impossible task. Oblivious to the passage of time, he worked for decades to bring his castle, piece by piece, into the afterlife with him. Single-mindedly he slaved over the details and removing evidence of the structure from the mortal realm and rebuilding it to his wishes in the Neitherworld, and all the while he grew increasingly obsessed with carnage. Not content with the death of his murderer, he longed for more.

It manifested, ultimately, as bloodlust. No mere ghost was he - Vasile, lord of his domain, was the dreaded strigoi mort. He was neither vampire nor poltergeist, but both at once, and all who crossed his path cowered in terrified respect. That, he thought, was his due. Let the quaking villagers try to destroy him; he was safe from them so long as Castel Bufniţă stood, and it stood where they could never hope to find him.

The strigoi have their limits, however, as he learned. He could not venture beyond the villages of the commune in search of prey, and while he wore the owl's form he was vulnerable to attack. But the old legends served him well, and he read all that he could find which would teach him about himself. Seven years had to pass, seven years in which he would grow strong on the blood of the young, and only then would he be free to travel beyond the limits of the commune. This puzzled him, for he of course had been dead for much longer than that already.

He needed answers. Though Vasile was unable to go far in the living realm, he was as permitted as any other ghost to traverse the Neitherworld; and so he therefore set out in search of someone who could better instruct him as to how to gain this freedom which dangled out of reach. It was while on this quest that he came to what he regarded as a very mortifying discovery.

The Neitherworld was colorful, cheerful, warped, and silly.


Under the rulership of a young-looking ghost who took refuge in poetry and drama, how could the dead ever hope to claim their rightful dignity? Vasile was almost offended by the whole thing. His fellow ghosts had little fear of anything, including him - all his powers, frightening as they were to mortals, rendered him an ineffectual threat to his spectral brethren. They cavorted about, enjoying death, troubled by little.

Further displeasure followed as he discovered that ghosts seemed to fear only one thing, really - a prank-playing miscreant called Beetlejuice. His powers were considerable, his potential enormous, but he could scarcely be bothered to do anything worthwhile with them. Apparently he was content to spend his days irritating everyone within reach, and the only real anxiety which appeared to plague the rest of the population was a concern that he might, one day, elect to overthrow the realm. He had the ability, they said, but so long as he lacked the initiative, all would be well.

Insulting to his sensibilities as the exploration proved to be, Vasile did manage to form a few useful acquaintances during the course of the venture. He encountered a small coven of witches (and one warlock) who were appropriately impressed to meet a genuine strigoi mort, rather than the pathetic excuses for vampires which the Neitherworld normally afforded. In their eagerness to show him proper respect, they offered to use their powers to study and clarify his situation.

"The strigoi mort does not spread his influence through biting his victims, as an ordinary vampire might" explained the chief witch, Ermengarde. "He must find a bride, a living bride, by whom he may sire his infernal children. And yes, I mean that exactly the way it sounds."

"Find her," added another witch, "and keep her at your side for those seven years. This will be the means by which to break your confinement. You will be free to torment those beyond the villages, and to bring a generation of your own kind into being."

"But where do I find this woman?" Vasile asked.

"Don't look at me," muttered Oscar, the lone warlock. "I can't even get a date with a dead girl."


Vasile returned to Castel Bufniţă, frustrated but determined. He had to be patient, that was all. Sooner or later, he would stumble across the perfect woman to sustain him, and then everything would proceed according to what the witches had said.

Of course, he wasn't expecting her to literally knock on his door, some years later. But there she was, standing in his entrance hall, and even as he approached her, even before she spoke her name, he knew.

Princess Lydia. How elegantly it flowed on the tongue. The Princess of Beetles, come to serve as mistress of his castle.

That his fair princess was mortal, he could recognize at once. Her disguise was thorough, to be sure, but there was no concealing the sound and the scent of warm, fresh blood pulsing through human veins. She was aristocracy, too; while it was true that her being adopted royalty suggested the likelihood of common birth, it was good enough for his purposes, and her nearness to the Neitherworld throne would only enhance the nobility of his own bloodline. Young, healthy, charming, and doubtless able to bear his dhampyr sons - yes, she was perfect.

Well. Almost. She did have one rather large fault that could hardly be ignored.

So Beetlejuice's powers extended beyond what Vasile could have imagined. The poltergeist, who should never have been able to attach anybody, had taken a bride of mortal flesh - a privilege the strigoi felt should have been reserved for himself. He had to learn more, and to that end, he watched them carefully throughout the meal.

The Princess, he noted, ate little and drank even less; his offers of wine were most steadily resisted. They had eaten recently, she claimed, and she wasn't very hungry. Beetlejuice was content to eat almost anything that wandered across his plate - rather literally, in fact, as demonstrated when a spider had the misfortune to drop onto the table. Lydia simply turned her head, but Vasile was disgusted. The only thing more appalling than the other ghost's dining preferences was the genuine attachment he could detect on both sides in their interactions. That her affection should be given to such an apparition was sickening.

Once the Princess and her repulsive husband were quartered for the night, Vasile transfigured into his owl aspect. He needed to feed, but more than that, he needed answers. The first was easily found; the second required a visit to the coven.


"My friends," he greeted the witches, regaining his proper form, "I need your help."

"Your Lordship! We weren't expecting the pleasure," said Ermengarde, looking up from her book of spells. "And so late at night too. What can we do for you?"

"It has taken me a long time, but at last I've found her - the human bride you advised me to seek. But there is a difficulty, for she is already married to another ghost."

He disliked the way they exchanged baffled glances before looking at him. "You don't mean - you can't mean - not Beetlejuice?" said one witch.

"He must," said another. "That's the only ghost-human marriage in existence, or at least as far as I know."

"That is who I mean, yes." Vasile's impatience was growing, and when the entire coven proceeded to laugh, he was even more displeased.

"Best forget that one, Your Lordship," remarked Ermengarde. "There's no parting those two. They're under contract to the Fairy Godfather himself!"

"The whom?"

"Possibly the most powerful being in the Neitherworld," said Oscar. "He's even determined that they represent Life and Death itself, and if he says so, then it's almost certainly true. No, sire, there's no breaking them apart against their will."

"But she's ideal!" the strigoi raged. "She's everything I've been trying to find! Surely there's something that can be done?"

The witches exchanged glances again, more thoughtful this time. "Well..." said Ermengarde, slowly, "there might be a way."

"You can't part them against their will," explained another witch, Ilsa. "But if you can persuade the Princess that her good-for-nothing husband has left her, it may give you the opening you need."

"And it so happens," added Oscar, darkly, "that we have a bit of a score of our own to settle with Beetlejuice. Or at least, I do."

"Are you still pining for Beatrice?" asked Ermengarde, exasperated. "It's been years!"

"She was my dream ghoul, okay? I don't expect you to understand!" He looked at Vasile again. "In any case, Your Lordship, go back to your castle. Give us - well, give me - a few days to find just the right spell. I'll be in touch, you can be sure of that."