The last thing Lydia remembered was clinging to the rooftop of her house for the second time in one night. As soon as she had left Barbara and climbed out the window, she had immediately lost sight of where she had last seen her parents cowering up on the rooftop. The green glow that had previously flashed through the storm clouds swirling over the house was absorbed in the peeling wreckage that had splintered up from the roof and Lydia froze where she clung in her ascent up the outer wall. Unable to think clearly past her wavering fear of the impossible sight taking place just in front of her, Lydia didn't have time to decide whether to continue her climb up or to retreat back down into the depleting house. Within seconds everything around her vanished, and she was stuck with her eyes squeezed shut against the unsettling rush that shimmered over her.
"Hey…excuse me…?"
Lydia kept her eyes shut for another moment, confused at the calm and wondering voice just over her shoulder. She didn't move, fearing that she would lose her balance if she did.
"…I don't know, just give her a minute." Another voice softly murmured to a hushed whisper a few feet away from her. Lydia flinched as something poked her gently in between her shoulder blades and she wobbled forward, realizing that the wall she had previously been clinging to had disappeared. Her eyes flew open and she caught herself before she could faceplant into the newly solid floor beneath her. Her gaze lingered on the ground that clearly was the top of the attic windowsill only a moment ago and then she whipped her body around to face the handful of people that were standing just behind her.
A young woman with long blonde hair and glasses stood beside a middle-aged man with a dented briefcase held by his side. He glanced up at her from where he had been staring perplexedly at his wristwatch and offered her a sideways grin and a shrug. Lydia stared past them to a small cluster of three teenaged kids which consisted of two boys trying to console the only girl in their group as she appeared to be shaking with emotional sobs. The three of them looked up to meet the younger girl's wondering gaze hopefully and Lydia was slightly unnerved by the appearance of bloodstains and torn clothing that they wore.
"Car accident," One of the boys mouthed at her in explanation, thinking she was mentally asking a very different question. Lydia's worried frown deepened in horrified realization and she glanced over her shoulder to find a long hallway extending ahead of the group where she was blocking them. When she turned back around, Lydia noticed that the teacher woman had exchanged her equally worried expression for a soft, consoling smile.
"Are you alright, honey?" She asked Lydia gently. Clearly she had been the one that the first voice she had heard belonged to. Lydia blinked at the woman and her gaze flickered to the man with the briefcase who once more was looking at his watch and this time she caught sight of the cracked glass face of it before he returned his arm to his side again. He shifted nervously on his feet under her stare.
"It's not like we're really in a hurry here, but…" He gave her his side smirk again and nodded past her at the continuing hallway. The blonde haired woman nudged him roughly and he looked her up and down defensively before shaking his suited shoulders and edging away from her a few inches. The woman then took a step closer to Lydia, careful to move slowly so she wouldn't startle the confused girl.
"You're going to be alright now, sweetie. What's your name?" She asked in a very teacherly tone. Lydia shook herself and tried to look past the very sudden shift in her surroundings. She tried not to let her gaze linger too long on the heavily injured kids behind the adults, finally realizing with a shaky feeling where she was.
"Lydia…" She answered quietly, glancing everywhere but directly at the group of dead people in front of her. "But…I really think there's been a mix-up. I don't remember exactly…uh…"
"Dying? That's normal, I think." The man answered with a hint of sarcasm despite his knowing look. Lydia looked up at him with a slight grimace and then once more did a quick scan of the group gathered patiently in front of her. The teacher woman straightened herself, fidgeting compulsively with her glasses as she averted her gaze from Lydia's concerned stare. The man leaned past her and held his crushed briefcase up for her to see. "I was on my lunch break, running to meet my wife and one of New York's brightest cab drivers came outta nowhere and ran me down. All I remember is stepping off the curb with a whole crowd of other speed-walking pedestrians and apparently out of the dozens of people all around me, I was the one to get hit. I don't really know for sure, because I literally just found myself walking in here about ten minutes ago."
Lydia stared silently up at the middle-aged man with a sympathetic wince and she flinched when the lady moved to rest a hand on her shoulder. The woman noticed her reaction and Lydia felt a twinge of guilt at the brief look of sadness that flashed over the dead woman's expression before turning consoling again.
"I was exposed to a gas leak in my classroom during my planning period this morning. I'm just so thankful that my kids hadn't come in yet." She said, her eyes shining behind her glasses. Lydia's chest tightened and she opened her mouth to say something reassuring back to the teacher.
"I'm…I'm so…" Lydia and the handful of newly deceased people gathered in the hallway jumped as someone cleared their throat in annoyance just ahead of them all. The young teacher stood back up straight, letting her hand fall from Lydia's shoulder as the girl turned around with the rest of the group to find a green-skinned woman in a bright red dress and cape staring them down with a clipboard in her hand.
"Lydia Deetz? You're to report to Juno urgently." The receptionist said loudly, her sharp voice echoing through the silent hallway to reach the small crowd of people gathered around the summoned girl. For a moment Lydia didn't move or respond and she could feel the teacher and the briefcase man staring wonderingly at her where she waited. The trio of older teens whispered quietly among themselves a little further behind her and Lydia quickly composed herself and began to walk towards the oddly dressed woman a few yards ahead of her. When the curt woman turned to lead her back the way she had come, Lydia glanced worriedly back at the group of new ghosts who stared after her mournfully. The teacher kept her sad smile on her young face and the briefcase man nodded after her just as the group of teenagers gave slow and silent waves after the girl. When the red dressed woman led her around a corner and out of sight of the other ghosts, Lydia cleared her throat quietly.
"Um…" she said nervously, staring at the back of the woman's perfectly styled hair-do over her high-collared cape. "Who exactly is Juno? Are they going to help me set things straight?"
The woman made no indication that she'd heard Lydia for a few more seconds, continuing to lead the poor girl around another curve in the dizzying hallway and past a few closed doors where they could hear hushed voices conferring in serious tones. After another moment spent in uncomfortable silence, the woman paused by another door and turned to face her.
"Look, I'm not one to be reassuring, or to even really be in anyone else's business, but I really wouldn't want to be in your shoes right now." She said in a heavily accented voice, kept low in the already silent hallway where any noise at all sounded amplified. Lydia's face instantly morphed into a confused frown and she hugged her arms around her torso in an attempt to calm her nerves.
"What do you mean? What did I do?" Lydia asked quietly, feeling defensive when the woman rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"Firstly, you and your family were exposed to two house ghosts that weren't even supposed to show themselves to you, let alone side with you. And secondly, after they went against Juno's cautionary warning about calling…" The former Miss Argentina paused and froze, blinking down at Lydia in knowing unease. When Lydia made no move to accentuate that she knew she was referring to Beetlejuice, the receptionist woman sighed in exasperation and put her hand on her hip. "…That just made things infinitely worse for us to try and clean up. But things were quiet for a bit, though I was forced to stare at him while he waited for the beginning of eternity in the waiting room. And then he was called out again."
At this pause, the woman looked down at the teenaged girl with an almost accusatory glare. Lydia instantly straightened herself and fixed her with her own challenging stare.
"You think I called him? He possessed my mother to do it!"
"That's not possible. He was in the waiting room the whole time." The receptionist said with a click of her tongue, turning her face up toward the ceiling so that she didn't have to look at the angered expression forming on Lydia's face. She drummed her perfectly manicured nails on the clipboard in her hands, avoiding the girls in front of her dismissively.
"Not possible? You tell that to my parents…and the Ghostbusters, for that matter! We all know what we…"
Lydia trailed off as the woman flinched at the mention of the Ghostbusters and then the door that she stood beside flew open. An older woman in a pantsuit and string of pearls poked her head out into the hallway angrily, looking past the receptionist and to Lydia where she stood in mid-shout. The woman's face instantly turned grim and she grabbed the clipboard from the receptionist who offered it wordlessly to her. Lydia watched in quiet observation as the former beauty queen contestant stepped back and gestured for Lydia to follow the other woman through the door.
"Come on now Lydia, we don't have forever." Juno called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the dimly lit room that apparently led to her office. The receptionist nodded, her face blank as Lydia finally moved to follow the older woman past her. As soon as she'd passed through the door, she heard it click shut loudly behind her. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the lamplight that illuminated the small office space and she watched as the woman dropped into a chair behind the medium-sized desk that lined the back wall of the room.
"You must be Juno," Lydia spoke up just for something to fill up the uncomfortable silence that hung in the atmosphere of the office. She heard the strike of a match and raised an eyebrow as the ghost woman lit a cigarette and waved the match out again. "I was…told that you needed to see me urgently."
"Something like that," Juno said boredly, her voice bitter as she replied to the girl's hesitant introduction. She appeared to be looking over the clipboard that the receptionist had handed her, and Lydia fell quiet in favor of standing just by the door waiting for her to be addressed by the woman.
Lydia felt suddenly small in the office she stood in, though the room itself couldn't have been much larger than her own bedroom at home. She lowered her gaze to the floor and tried to stifle the feelings of fear that threatened to well up in her chest. In the quick motion of blinking, Lydia could see the supernaturally conjured storm that Beetlejuice had summoned to overtake her home. When she blinked again, she saw Beetlejuice's smug face when he was confronted by the Ghostbusters in the living room of that house and she also saw the full power that the Ghostbusters possessed in their ongoing battle with malicious ghosts. No wonder ghosts like the receptionist she had just been speaking with were terrified merely by the Ghostbusters' reputations.
"Alright Lydia…so let me get this straight…" Juno said, startling the girl back into the present. Juno sat hunched over her very large and disorganized desk, with her palms pressed into her forehead and a cigarette dangling from her left hand hovering over her head. She let her empty hand fall to the desktop to scrounge through the assortment of papers pinned to the clipboard in front of her before she shot an annoyed glance at the teenaged girl still standing in front of the office door. "Beetlejuice summoned up a vortex to the Netherworld and he tried to transport you all here…but for what purpose?"
"He wanted to banish us here." Lydia elaborated curtly, her pale face remaining serious despite Juno's exaggerated puff on her dwindling cigarette to conceal her disbelieving eye roll. Lydia cleared her throat politely and shifted uncomfortably where she stood, wringing her hands nervously. "But it wasn't just us, he was after the Ghostbusters too."
Juno let out a hacking cough as smoke billowed out of both her mouth and the very large slit in her neck just below her collar. She shook her head and hurriedly stamped out the butt of her cigarette in the ashtray just on the corner of her desk.
"You…cannot…invoke their name over here." Juno said scoldingly, fixing the girl with a bitter stare over the paperwork littering the desk between them. Lydia held the ghost woman's gaze for a moment and nodded, her thinking of the ghosts' fear of the Ghostbusters confirmed.
"I'm sorry. But whatever he did, there was no reason for it. Yes, he may have felt like he had been wronged those months ago when the Maitlands considered using his services and then they cut him off. And yeah…maybe I did try to make a halfhearted bargain with him in an effort to have him save the Maitlands from that awful ritual..." Lydia's gaze narrowed and she stepped cautiously forward and close to the desk, raising a finger thoughtfully towards Juno who was forced to listen to the girl's haphazard argument. "Also…you do realize that you have a whole chapter dedicated to rituals and exorcisms in that book, right? I mean…you're basically telling people how to perform those things!"
"The living were never meant to get hold of the Handbook." Juno recited almost boredly. She sighed heavily and leaned back in her desk chair, tilting her head to the side analytically as Lydia scrunched up her face in confused thought. She gestured at the chair sitting opposite her across the desk. "You may as well come and sit down, sweetheart. You clearly have a lot you want to get off your chest."
Lydia blinked at the woman's irritated demeanor and she slowly rounded one of the worn chairs in front of Juno, pausing to take note of Juno's weary expression as she waited for Lydia to sit.
"Still…" The girl said dismissively after she had settled into her seat, waving her hand again to get back to her point. Her face switched back into a pleading frown. "What I'm saying is…what can we do to stop him? He won't just stop with us…don't you think that he'll keep going on to haunt or take advantage of other poor people and ghosts who don't know any better?"
Juno crossed her arms over her chest, leaning further back in her large desk chair as if she were trying to sink through it and away from Lydia's interrogation. She seemed to grit her teeth in her thoughtfulness and she shifted the chair forward with a grimace at the sharp sound it made against the floor. Lydia stared at the woman hopefully, both hands now gripping the desk's edge so tightly that her fingertips were turning white with her nervous pressure.
"Please." Lydia begged, prompting her into an answer. Juno squeezed her eyes shut and lifted one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose agitatedly. Lydia blinked patiently, a worried frown etched into her young pale face as she stared at the older ghost woman. Finally, in an outburst of her building annoyance, Juno released her nose and threw her hand into the air wildly.
"Well, what do you propose we do? We've dealt with this nuisance for millennia! There's nothing to restrain him!"
Lydia fell back slightly in her seat at Juno's revelation at how long Beetlejuice had been around tormenting people and ghosts alike. She was quick to come up with her answer though as Juno's own look of desperation broke through her annoyance.
"What if you assign someone to watch him?" She suggested lightly, staring at her fingertips still pressed onto the edge of Juno's desk. When she lifted her gaze to Juno, she saw that the ghost woman had once more covered her face with her hands. Lydia bit her lip and quickly continued. "Someone to keep tabs on him, restrict where he goes and what he does. He'd have to go through them for everything."
Juno peeked out at the girl from between her fingers after moment and Lydia offered her a hopeful shrug.
"And who would be willing to even consider that?" She asked bitterly, letting her face fall into her hand while her tired eyes regarded Lydia coldly. When Lydia didn't reply right away, Juno raised her eyebrows and lowered her gaze to the crowded desk in front of her. "Not everyone has the guts to throw themselves into a whirling vortex of death like you did."
Lydia's shoulders slumped as she sat in silent consideration across from the ghostly case worker. She still had trouble believing she had indeed done that herself not long before appearing just outside the Waiting Room of the Dead where Juno immediately had sent for her. She once more felt the unnervingly sad realization of where she had ended up when she had encountered the trickling group of ghostly newcomers in the hall outside the waiting room.
"What…what happened when I did that, exactly?" Lydia asked quietly. Juno pursed her lips, seeming to hesitate to answer her question. Lydia screwed up her face in remembrance and then looked down at her knuckles clenched against the desktop. "…What happened to my parents?"
"Your parents were fine. Beetlejuice seemed to have had another plan in mind than what he led you all to originally believe." Juno finally said, her voice somewhat gentler. Lydia raised her frown to Juno's face to the older woman. "He was trying to get you and your parents out of the house before it was destroyed. He had placed your parents down to their car before he'd been captured by the…Ghostbusters."
"I thought you wouldn't say their name…" Lydia said with a smirk tugging at her serious face. Juno rolled her eyes again and waved her hand to dismiss the girl's snide remark.
"It did appear that his motives were hostile at first toward you all. But something snapped in him in the midst of bio-exorcising your step-mother and father. A little of his human self surfaced while he was waiting for the Ghostbusters to stop him. When they were unable to find their way out of his shrunken model town, he knew he would undoubtedly get his way and destroy you all."
"But…I don't understand. If he knew that he was going to win, and since the Ghostbusters and the Maitlands were powerless to stop him…why did he give up?" Lydia asked, her frown deepening, making her teenaged face look years older. Juno held her gaze seriously for a long moment and shook her head.
"We're not sure for certain." She admitted with a heavy shrug. "Maybe he grew fond of having your family and the Maitlands to torment whenever he wanted freely. His business had been rather lacking lately…we've been double checking the Handbooks delivered to new ghosts and removing his flyers to prevent him from obtaining any hold on their gullibility. He was probably stuck on you all since you were his most recent clients."
"Yeah…he mentioned that." Lydia murmured thoughtfully. Juno noticed the girl's distant look of confusion and weariness and she reached slowly across the table to grasp her hand.
"Listen sweetie…I'd like to say that this all wasn't your fault…the main blame belongs to your friends, the Maitlands." Juno said with an ironic smile when Lydia finally looked up at the woman with a roll of her eyes. "But yes, it's partially due to the fact that he considered you wronged him too. In fact…your family and the events that partook in that house those months ago are still fresh in our minds. We've had to rewrite some things to cover the possibilities of things like it happening again to newcoming dead. But…all of that aside, I'm sorry too."
"You? What do you have to be sorry for?" Lydia asked, regarding the woman with a quizzical look. Juno sighed once more and patted the girl's hand apologetically.
"Like I told the Maitlands before…he was my assistant. The way he acted toward me in the beginning…like he was learning off of me and trying to find loopholes in the business…I should've seen the potential danger he would become long before he even diverted from his designated duties here. But he tricked us all and abandoned his job to hide out and plot on how to retaliate against us." Juno rubbed at her forehead warily as she explained the events to Lydia who listened intently. A chill ran through her as the woman continued. "For a long time, we heard nothing from or about him. And then sparks started showing up with the recently deceased department – that's just below my department – and they were all turning up with similar stories. Beetlejuice had lured them into believing that he could rid them of the living people moving into their haunting places and he ended up seriously injuring or even in the worst cases, killing people."
"And that goes against your code. The dead can't interfere with the living." Lydia said softly as she tried to understand. Juno released her hand from where it lay on top of Lydia's and instead began to sift through the unorderly papers in front of her.
"Well…that's not necessarily true." Juno said slowly, grimacing as she tried to think of a way to elaborate what she was explaining to the girl without disclosing too much information about the Other Side. "True enough, it is morally wrong to violently attack a living person, but to say that they can't interfere in living ordeals would be pretty cruel. Ghosts, like your Maitlands, do have a right to their designated haunting space, you'll understand."
"But…they can't kill anyone…right? I'm not…" Lydia stopped short and looked down at herself, clutching at her chest in disbelief. Juno watched her serenely for a moment, one hand still cupping the side of her face as she leaned over her desk. Lydia's face paled.
"You were the one who climbed up to that destructive portal." Juno said almost chidingly. Lydia stared at the woman's other hand where her fingers absently curled the corner of the nearest sheet of paper in front of her. Juno leaned back in her desk chair once more with another weary groan. "I'm sorry sweetheart, I hate to throw that news at you. This job took my compassion long ago, so I'm sorry I can't be more slow and easygoing about helping you realize it."
"No…" Lydia whispered softly, shaking her head in denial. "Then that means everyone who went up when that house imploded on itself is dead too. Where's Barbara and Adam? Where's my dad? Or Delia? Where's the Ghostbusters?"
Juno opened her mouth to respond to the girl's demanding tone but Lydia shook her head again. The girl squeezed her hand into a fist, still clutching at the black shawl that hung crisscrossed over her black lacy blouse.
"You can't let him do this to us! You say you've been dealing with him for centuries…are you going to keep letting him do stuff like this?" Lydia's gaze was frantic as she looked around the small, dimly lit office space. Juno casually leaned back and flipped the blinds behind her where Lydia had spotted a handful of deceased workers and clientele that had stopped to stare at the girl's raised voice. "Someone has to stop him, if not now then one day. Otherwise, you're just going to keep facing these consequences!"
"What consequence is that, Lydia?" Juno asked her calmly. She gestured into the air with a shrug and then let her hand fall back to cross across her chest where the other one rested. "He's just providing us with more work that we don't need…in fact, that's a blessing. He's just keeping us busy."
"Busy enough to keep ignoring him?" Lydia shot back at the woman. The teenaged girl pulled her shawl tightly around her shoulders and stood up hurriedly from her seat across from Juno. "If you'd just have him tied to something, maybe he wouldn't be able to walk around freely anymore."
"Like a dog? That doesn't really work around here, you realize that don't you? Ghosts are known to be able to disappear and manifest different places at will. In a given space of course."
"Okay…" Lydia said after a moment of staring thoughtfully at the arrangement of dusty pictures and degrees hanging throughout Juno's office. The girl casually paced the room as she tried to form a plan for the case worker to consider. "Take the Maitlands, for example. They're tied to their house, right? They can't go anywhere outside of it, without being transported to another dimension or back here to the Netherworld."
"Yes…" Juno said with a sigh, rolling back and forth boredly in her desk chair as she watched Lydia carefully. Lydia turned to her and shrugged.
"Do you know what Beetlejuice is tied to? There has to be something…"
Juno uttered another irritated groan and raised her eyes to the ceiling over her head to refrain from having to look at the teenaged girl's hopeful stare. Lydia lurched forward and slammed a hand down on the woman's desktop, startling her into another irritated glare. Lydia didn't miss a beat.
"Look, I know you prefer not to deal with this man. That's why I'm trying to help you! There was a chapter in that Handbook for the Recently Deceased that I read a few months ago…it talked about spiritual confines? Sort of like what you just reminded me of about ghosts and their boundaries. Isn't there a way you can create one? You do it all the time for new ghosts, don't you?" Lydia was all authority as she pleaded with Juno to brainstorm with her.
"Personally, I don't…" Juno admitted with an exasperated sigh. She peered up at Lydia wearily and then frowned in consideration. "And how would I know what he's connected to? He's the 'Ghost with the Most', or so he calls himself, I think he's just tied to himself. That's the only thing he cares about."
Lydia bit her lip thoughtfully, and lowered her gaze to her file on the clipboard by Juno's hand. Juno followed her gaze and slowly slid the paperwork back to herself and away from Lydia's curious eyes. A buzzer sounded from somewhere outside the door and Juno looked over the girl's shoulder to peer out the blinds just by the closed office door. She glanced down at her pager in even further agitation and signaled to whoever was outside her office to give her a minute. Lydia glanced questioningly over her shoulder and briefly caught a glimpse of the red haired receptionist with the green complexion and the appearance of a familiarly flowered dress. She turned back to Juno and stared after the retreating figures.
"Was that…Barbara?!" She asked hopefully. Juno rolled her eyes and leaned forward over her desk with a heavy sigh.
"Look Lydia…this whole thing is blowing out of proportion again. In a matter of moments, your house with everything and everyone in it will be nothing but a memory on that towering hillside. The people in Winter River Connecticut will always wonder what on earth happened up there, but no one will ever go to investigate. Delia and Charles Deetz will of course decide to move back to the city and will most likely be hounded by the Ghostbusters' numerous living fans there." Juno recited all of this steadily as if she were reading it from the paper in front of her. When she looked up at Lydia's hopeful gaze staring back at her own, Juno yanked open a drawer underneath her desk to pull out an old and dusty copy of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased. "Now, if we're going to really try this thing out you really need to start thinking…"
"What about the model?" Lydia blurted out as Juno began flipping through chapters in the worn yellow pages of the book. Juno didn't look up at her over her scanning but she shook her head at her suggestion.
"The house is diminishing. There's no time to retrieve anything and even if you tried, why would you think he would have a tie to the model that he was trapped in?" Juno said dismissively.
"Was he trapped in there, though? Or did he just use it as one of his hideaways?" Lydia asked ponderingly. Juno briefly met her gaze with a look that shut down Lydia's theory.
"That man has only ever cared about himself, I'm telling you." Juno said, turning back down to the book on her desk. Lydia's frown deepened as she watched Juno's hasty movements searching through the Handbook and then she sighed as she realized what the best decision would be. She lowered herself back to her seat, the worn chair squeaking as she sat back down.
"He's tied to me."
Juno raised both of her eyebrows far into her forehead as she regarded the soft-spoken girl who was once more staring down at her hands where they were clasped together tightly in her lap. Juno looked down at the chapter she had found and then slowly looked back up to regard the girl with questioning dread. Lydia finally nodded and shrugged at the woman worriedly.
"Think about it. He tried to get me to marry him so that he could come and go as he pleased in the living world. We should've let him." Lydia said slowly and thoughtfully. Juno held up a hand to stop the girl, rapidly shaking her head.
"What are you going on about? I don't think you're in your right mind, sweetheart…" Juno moved to close the book but Lydia quickly moved her own hand to the page before the book swung shut. Lydia flipped it back open again and pointed to the chapter entitled 'Attachment Spells and Restrictions.'
"If I had somehow unwillingly given him that ability to come and go as he pleased like he tried to tell me…wouldn't I have had some power over him then?" Lydia speculated wonderingly. Juno stared at Lydia in confused silence for a moment before glancing down at the open book in front of her again. The ghost case worker shook her head in consideration but her frown grew even tighter on her face as the girl's thought process.
"I suppose that's how it might've worked out…but…we wouldn't have allowed that to happen…" Juno trailed off as she scanned through the next few pages of the chapter. Lydia scoffed, slightly taken aback by that explanation.
"So…you'd prevent him from trying to marry me, a living girl, but you didn't prevent him from killing me?" Lydia glanced over her shoulder to where she had seen Barbara a few moments before. "He killed us. The Ghostbusters will be here any minute now…and then you'll have a whole other problem in your midst."
Juno grimaced as if the very thought made her sick. She squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose once again before resting her palm down on the open book.
"Having the Ghostbusters die and transferred to the Land of Dead would not be a 'problem' in your sense. They'd be just like any other deceased person." Juno grumbled agitatedly. The pager on her wrist beeped shrilly and as she glanced down at it, her frown eased away into hesitant confusion. "Actually…it's looking like they didn't go down with the house…"
"What?" Lydia asked, straightening in her chair. "How can you…"
Juno jerked her wrist away from Lydia's prodding gaze and swiveled in her chair to peer through the blinds behind her desk to the array of people and rooms spread out around her office. In the next instant she leapt to her feet, flicking the blinds back closed again. She rounded her desk abruptly and when she twisted her door open to reveal an empty hallway right outside her office, Juno turned back to meet Lydia's quizzical expression. When the girl flicked her gaze to the hallway where she thought she had seen Barbara a moment before, Juno put a hand on her hip impatiently.
"Well, he's about to walk in…do you want to try this or not?"
Lydia instantly shot up to her feet and flew through the door and into the hallway outside, staying close by the frazzled woman leading the way through the surprised-looking crowd of ghostly personnel. Lydia tried not to meet any of their questioning gazes as they stared after her and she tried to read Juno's hard expression when she held a door open for the girl to pass through further down the crowded hallway.
"If…If I do this…everything has to be okay." Lydia stammered out nervously, pausing at the doorway. Juno frowned in confusion at the statement but motioned for Lydia to keep moving. As she walked through the doorway, Lydia sidestepped to avoid a man passing slowly by with his neck hanging at an unnatural angle and a noose attached to a track in the ceiling above her. She gaped after the man for several seconds and then quickly averted her stare as Juno closed the door behind them and proceeded to lead them onward to whatever meeting point they were headed.
"What do you mean, 'everything has to be okay?' Have you seen where you are lately?" Juno replied sourly. Lydia grimaced as she took a wide look at everything around her. Skeletons typed away at computers, very clearly dead people conversed with tired looking staff and mountains of paperwork towered through nearly every cubicle or office they passed by. Lydia stopped walking once they had left the busy calamity of work being done in the large section of the place and they were in the quietness of yet another winding hallway with mismatched doors lining up and down each wall.
"Back home," The girl clarified sadly. She blinked as if trying to hold back a hoard of emotions so that she would look professional in front of the case worker. Juno paused and turned back to her warily, studying the young girl's posture where she stood trying to hold herself taller even though she still hunched forward with her arms hugging herself worriedly. Lydia stared ahead at the quiet hallway splayed out past Juno and finally finished her demands. "If I tie myself to him and take responsibility for everything he does from this point on…everything and everyone back home needs to be back to the way it was before this…mess."
Juno stared worriedly down at Lydia, considering just what the girl was putting at stake to take Beetlejuice and his reputation on her young shoulders. She seemed about to say something and then stopped herself as she thought harder and then she shook her head with a weary smile.
"We'll do what we can," She assured her gently. Lydia smiled gratefully and nodded, moving to continue their walk down the hallway. Juno stuck out a hand to stop her and looked both ways to either end of the hallway before she lowered her voice. "But if we do this…and you realize how awful he is to deal with, I'm afraid you'll have to remain here in the Netherworld. There will be no haunting your place of death, no returning to the realm of the living. "
Lydia stared at Juno, sharing the same serious and morose stare with her for a long moment showing that she understood what Juno was putting at stake as well. Juno seemed satisfied after another few seconds and then she nodded abruptly and turned to continue another few yards down the hallway before she pushed open a door on their right that put them in the middle of the crowded waiting room where an all manner of people sat in various representations of their unfortunate demises. Lydia tried not to look at too many of the poor people staring back at her, but she did recognize the woman that had first met her in the hallway upon her emergence into the Netherworld.
"Lydia?" She whispered in a concerned tone among the other bored and mildly interested people waiting in the room for whatever counseling or instructions they would be given after their deaths. Lydia glanced shyly at the woman and offered her a knowing smile before turning back to Juno who crossed the room to go through the lazily revolving doorway. She gestured for Lydia to follow after her and when she did, they both emerged into yet another hallway, this one slightly cloudy around the edges of Lydia's vision.
"Where are we going…?" Lydia asked, wincing as she disturbed the thick silence of the cloudy hallway. As they rounded a corner, Juno stopped. Lydia found that they now stood in a large, empty room, this one lit with a sickly green color. At the reminder of the supernatural storm Beetlejuice had conjured over her own house, Lydia grew suddenly filled with anticipated dread at what she was really about to do. When Juno reached behind her for Lydia's hand to clasp it into her own, Lydia was overwhelmed with an even larger sense of fear as she realized that the woman who seemed so in charge a moment before was just as afraid as she was herself.
"They'll be here any second now. Lydia, we must be ready as soon as he steps through that door." Juno nodded ahead to the wall that they faced and Lydia stared hard at the solid appearance of it, but didn't dare to contradict the woman that there was no door present there. She instead nodded in agreement, steeling herself in preparation. "As soon as he is in your sights, I want you to call out his name three times and voice that you are creating the tether between the both of you. As soon as he hears that happening, he will try to stop you but he can't physically hurt you here."
"…Because I'm dead." Lydia finished with a serious monotone. Juno hesitated and then looked away from the wall to regard the girl with a look of concern.
"As soon as you finish the bonding ritual, you both will be transported back to your home. Everything will be as it was before the accident, nothing will be out of place. Once you're there, you are free to do with him as you please. Just know that you will have full responsibility of him from that moment forward. He will have no power to act without your approval." Juno finished quickly. Lydia looked away from the wall as well, meeting Juno's stern gaze.
"I'll go back home?" She repeated softly. She glanced at the glowing room around her. "But I thought…"
"You wanted everything back the way it was before he called down that storm." Juno smiled warmly down at the girl. "Besides…you didn't think we'd just let him viciously murder you that way, did you? The dead can't interfere with the living like that."
Lydia smirked as the woman used her own argument in her explanation. She put her hand on her hip and relaxed for the first time since she had appeared there with the knowledge that she hadn't perished on her rooftop, but had apparently been summoned to the Netherworld for a private audience with Juno herself. Juno's comforting smile instantly vanished as the light in the room brightened and the wall began to shimmer in front of them with the appearance of a doorway manifesting in the very center of it.
"I am serious about the whole trying-it-out thing. If you fail at controlling him, and you give up…"
"I'm not going to give up." Lydia said defiantly, turning to face the door that had completely formed itself into the wall. Juno finally released her grip on the girl's hand and Lydia noticed that she now held something in it. When she glanced down briefly, she noticed a small, hand-held version of the 'Handbook for the Recently Deceased' resting in her palm. She looked up quizzically at Juno who winked at her lightly.
"Figured that'll be a reminder of the consequences in case you change your mind." Juno said simply. As the door slowly squeaked open, Lydia tightened her grip on the tiny Handbook and took a breath to ready herself to call out Beetlejuice's name. When the first person through the door was a very disheveled looking Peter Venkman, Lydia and Juno were both left in silent, gaping dread.