The Bug Princess
A Beetlejuice fan fiction by Lady Norbert
Author's Notes: And now to introduce the third and final original character in this story. Hugo and Erebos seem to have been pretty well received; I'm hoping that continues.
Chapter Eleven: I Have To Do Everything Around Here
Lady Delphine, as she was known to those who crossed her threshold in search of aid, was at the grocery store when she felt it. The wind was changing, and something foul was blowing across the currents of the Mississippi. She decided she'd better worry about buying milk later; this was rather more urgent.
Out on the sidewalk, she sniffed the air. Something malevolent had entered the city, that much was certain, though she couldn't guess its specific intent as yet. "It's gonna be one of those days, is it?" She sighed.
As she got clear of the more populous parts of the city, she could begin to identify further complexities in the change of the air. Someone innocent - well, relatively speaking - had gotten mixed up in all of this. Arguably worse, she recognized an undercurrent of well-intentioned meddling. "Oh, Hugo," she groaned, "what did you do this time?"
Her white hair whipped about in the rising wind as she hurried home. Unsurprisingly, it pushed against her as she walked, trying to divert her steps. "You know as well as I do that won't work," she muttered. "Why do you bother?" They always did, though. The unfriendly ones knew her at least as well as she knew them, and without fail they took steps - however pathetic - to slow her efforts to thwart them.
As she had more or less expected, she reached her home in time to find Hugo - dear, sweet, ever so slightly clueless Hugo - being held by his throat against her door. She quickly realized, however, that his antagonist was not hers. "You said this lady could help," the stranger growled. "Where is she?"
"I'm right here," she said calmly, approaching the pair. "Do be a good lad and put him down, please. He's more trouble than he's worth sometimes, but I'm fond of him all the same."
With visible reluctance, the stranger lowered Hugo to his feet, and he massaged his throat and gasped for air. "Lady Delphine, I'm so relieved -"
"You're a chucklehead is what you are. What did you do?"
In spite of his obvious distress, the stranger actually almost smiled. "Okay, you I like."
"Well, come in, both of you." She unlocked the door and ushered them inside. "Let me get some candles going before whatever's out there thinks it might try to come in here."
"...and that's what happened," Hugo concluded lamely.
Delphine closed her eyes and shook her head. "Why in the world did you attempt this ritual of yours without even getting someone to look at it? If not me, someone? I keep telling you, boy, spiritualism is not like training a puppy - and frankly, I wouldn't trust you with a houseplant."
"I'm sorry -"
"Sorry doesn't fix this!" She opened her eyes again, and looked at the young man who had been introduced as BJ. "So what are you exactly?"
"Well, that's a bit of a long story," he replied, almost amiably.
"Give me the summary, then."
"I shuffled off the mortal coil back in the Middle Ages. Skulked around the Neitherworld - or the spirit world, whatever you want to call it - for about six hundred years, driving everybody crazy. Met a human girl. I'm a poltergeist, she became my fixed target. She grew up. There was a big complicated plot involving shoes and television, and we ended up in a contract that basically married us."
"That's a summary all right." Delphine sipped her tea. "And Hugo here spotted you two wandering around the cemetery, and pulled you into his plot."
"Really, I'm surprised we were in New Orleans this long without getting tackled by plot. Whoever's writing the script of my afterlife ought to have their head examined. Look, I don't know this guy from a can of paint, and I don't know this Erebos character who seems to know me. The one thing I do know is that Lydia is missing. Your friend here thought you could help me."
"Certainly I'll help you if I can," she replied. "But in the interest of fairness, I'll be explicit; you have to understand that for me, New Orleans needs to take priority. Getting this Erebos out of the city, and preferably back where he belongs, is by necessity my primary goal. If I can bring Lydia back to this side of the Veil in the process, I will. But I can't promise anything."
"Okay, well, then I should point out to you that I like New Orleans just fine. It's a great town." He glowered. "But all the same, I would burn it to the ground if that's what I had to do to get her back."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," she replied calmly. "Besides, you don't have any of your powers just now, so city burning is a little out of your reach."
"Well, yeah."
"I take your meaning, though. Let me see. I'll need a few things. Hugo, you go back to your place and get me that ridiculous incantation that caused all this mess, and any of the candles that are left. You, BJ, I'll need you to bring me a photograph of Lydia, and something belonging to her would also help. It'll give me a sense of who she is, and then I'll see if I can use that to pin down her location."
He nodded. "Right. I'll be back soon."
Once he was gone, Hugo hesitated to follow. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen, Lady Delphine."
"Child, I know that. You have a good heart; you want what's best for this city. I know. But pulling two complete strangers into a ritual without knowing what you were doing? I can't even fathom what you were thinking. Or why they went along with it - although if he's really what he says he is, maybe it didn't seem all that strange to them." She shook her head again. "If he is a poltergeist, he's the most benign one I've ever heard tell of. Well, apart from that business about burning New Orleans to the ground, but even that's not normal poltergeist behavior. The human girl must have had quite an effect on him."
"Honestly, just from the short time I saw the two of them together, I would never have guessed that's what he was, even if I'd realized that he wasn't completely human," he remarked. "He just seemed like a normal guy who loves his wife."
"A contract that married a human to a ghost... who comes up with this nonsense?" She massaged the bridge of her nose, then paused. "Oh. Oh, of course."
"Lady?"
"It's nothing, Hugo. Go get those things I requested, please."
When BJ returned an hour later, Hugo was still not back. Delphine was glad of it; she wanted to form her own opinions of this curious individual without any further input from her errant student. "You brought the photograph?"
"She lives and breathes her camera, so it's sometimes kind of tricky to find one with her in it," he explained. "I have some, but I didn't bring any on this trip. But here - I found this one from when we went to her high school prom. That was four years ago, but she doesn't look much different."
Delphine put on a pair of spectacles and scrutinized the small image. It was a charming arrangement; they were side by side, looking at each other with a mixture of affection, apprehension, and cautious hope. Clearly the photograph predated their contract, but it wasn't hard to tell that they'd both entered that contract willingly enough. "She's a beautiful girl."
"Yeah." His tone was fond.
Turning her head, she peered at him over the rim of her glasses. "And you love her very much."
He wouldn't meet her eyes, looking instead at the floor. "Yeah," he said again, quieter this time.
"Are you sure you're a poltergeist?"
"I'm the Ghost With the Most," he said, somewhat stubbornly. "Or at least, I was. Now I'm just a has-been, thanks to your pet stooge."
"I meant no offense. I only ask because poltergeists aren't normally capable of that much depth of feeling. Or any, really. Your kind are more often just mindless spirits of chaos."
"Oh, I can be plenty mindless and chaotic," he replied, almost cheerful for a moment. "And the longer I'm away from Lyds, the more mindless and chaotic I get. She holds the leash, know what I mean? Not sure why, she just does; she always did."
"Interesting. What item did you bring for me to use to trace her spirit signature?"
"Here." It was clearly difficult for him to part with the jeweled spider in his hand. "She takes this everywhere - I gave it to her for the first anniversary of the day we met. It's not gonna get damaged by whatever voodoo you do, is it?"
"No, I promise you, nothing like that. Ah, and here's Hugo; now, give me those things, and let me see what needs doing."
