Disclaimer: Beetlejuice and all related characters belong to Warner Bros. I wouldn't take responsibility for BJ if you paid me. No way, baby.

Chapter 6: Outmaneuvered

The librarian was able to provide star charts over Lydia's study hall, another strange country thing that baffled her city upbringing. Go study anywhere you like, and then be back for class. She smiled. This was kind of cool. And she noticed that her reputation was immensely enhanced by the circulating stories of buried treasure, so she didn't immediately countermand them.

But the star charts proved immensely hard to read. Lydia didn't want to bother the sullen Mr. Burke again, so with her limited time she attempted to puzzle them out on her own, but with no luck. She thought that what she was looking for must be a star or a galaxy, or some sort of thing, but other than that, she couldn't make heads nor tails of the huge white foldouts covered with little black dots.

Frustrated after an hour of study and late for English, she folded the maps back up and determined that she would ask her ghost for another clue. Hopefully he would figure out she wasn't a science major and cut her some slack. She wondered why he couldn't just tell her his name. Obviously if he could deface her mirror, he was capable of writing his name. Strange.

She snorted delicately. She was studying star charts in an attempt to decipher a code which a ghost had scrawled on her bathroom mirror, so that she could learn his name and set him free, which was something she was very unsure about the rightness of. Strange didn't even begin to cover it.

That night, after a cold dinner of gazpacho and shrimp cocktail, and a few glasses of wine to celebrate Charles' finishing of his study and the acquisition of a few new clients, Lydia excused herself and climbed up the stairs, slightly woozy from the drink. She decided that a shower would help clear her head, and it did, a little. After toweling off her hair and pinning back, she dressed in a loose t-shirt and flannel pants and shuffled over to the bed. The little scrap of paper and the Polaroid were both on her desk, and she studied them for a little while, and then sighed expressively.

"Sorry, ghost, but I'm not any closer than I was. I know that this is a set of coordinates for something out in space, but beyond that, I'm an artist, not a science buff." She reached for her little voice recorder and put in a new tape, and snapped the record button. It immediately snapped off. She tried again, and it shut off again. Huh. "So you don't feel like talking, ghost?" She felt a chill sweep down her arm, as if someone was stroking her skin, and she shivered. "So, I don't understand. You can write this…" She waved the little piece of paper. "But you can't write your own name? Is that some sort of rule?"

A penny spun in front of her face, and she flinched back. But it held its position, spinning in midair. She reached for it, and it jumped back. "Neat trick, ghost." But then the penny split into three, and they whirred rapidly in a familiar pattern, a row pennies curved up toward the ceiling.

Recognition bloomed in her mind. "Orion's belt! Is your name Orion?" Her heart was thudding in her chest. Should she say it a third time? What would happen if she let him out? She remembered the chilling tale of the previous occupants. What if Mr. Portland had figured out the ghost's name and that was why he had been screaming? "Do you promise that you won't hurt me or my family or anything at all if I say your name?" But something was happening with the pennies. The pennies on each end of the belt split into three, and two floated up, and two floated down. It was clearly the constellation of Orion.

But as she watched, the left top penny began to glow. She pursed her lips. The stars of Orion had names, didn't they? She had been looking at that very constellation today on the charts, because it was so bright in the sky, and had always been one of her favorites. Orion rose only in the winter, which suited her much better than the hot constellations of summer. What were the names of the stars? "Lets see… there's the nebula… and oh! Rigel!"

She heard an unmistakable sigh of frustration in her ear. The top right penny flickered briefly, and then with a snap, embedded itself in the wall above her bookshelf. "Not Rigel?" She stared at the embedded penny for a moment. This spirit was certainly capable of violence. "You're scaring me, ghost. You haven't promised me that we will be safe." But the top left penny just glowed brighter, and she felt a hand squeeze her right shoulder. Confused for a moment, she soon realized that if Orion was facing her, it would be his right shoulder that was now glowing so brightly she had to squint. "I don't know the name of that star. Oh! Wait!" She ran out of the room.

The penny drooped. This was taking frickin' forever. But she was soon back, and clutched in her hands was a huge Time/Life book on space. She flipped to the index and looked up Orion, and then leafed through to the page. "Here it is. Rigel, or Beta Orionis is the brighter star on the left shoulder of Orion, and the misnamed dimmer Alpha Orionis, also called Betelgeuse--" She stumbled over the word, and then found a parenthetical in the margin. "Pronounced 'beetle juice', hmm, interesting… is on the right. Betelgeuse? Is that the star you're named after?" The penny spun in a triumphant, dizzying spiral.

Lydia sat silently for a moment. She was on the brink of something terrifying. She was about to let a ghost openly possess her home. The movies were all about putting ghosts back. She chewed pensively at her bottom lip. "I don't know. You haven't given me any sort of assurance that you aren't going to do any damage. You seem to have a bit of a temper. What if you're a serial killer or something? I'm too young to die."

Beetlejuice was about to tear out his hair in frustration. He would already be free if she didn't have such bad pronunciation. Dammit, dammit, dammit. She wanted his promise that he wouldn't hurt anyone, but his only objective was to get the house to himself. That had to involve scaring people. Scaring her. He scowled, feeling that same damnable tightness in his throat. He wasn't getting fond of her. Simply impossible. Little chit was barely seventeen. Hell, he had been almost twenty years older when he died, and that was 600 years ago.

Fine. He would promise anything. Because he never kept any promises, it would be easy to disregard. He brandished the sharpie at her, tugged the little photograph out of her hand, and wrote, in careful letters… Promise.

"There. Happy? Now let me out!"

Lydia studied the word. He promised. Was he lying? There was no way to tell. But she realized with a hot burst in her belly that she was going to go through with it. She couldn't possibly back down now. She wanted to know. Deep breath.

"Betelgeuse."

The penny dropped to the floor with a coppery tink. The room dropped into total and complete darkness. And the temperature dropped fifteen degrees, at least.

"Yes," whispered a dark voice by her ear. She inhaled sharply and turned, and her heart stopped for the space of an eternal second. There was someone else in the room, shrouded in darkness. "Took you long enough, babe." His voice was rough and guttural. "I figured you would die of old age before you figured it out." And then he smiled, and his sharp teeth glowed in the moonlight, and it was too much for Lydia to take in. She folded to the floor in a faint.

"Huh." Beetlejuice scratched his head. "Why do women always do that?" He sniffed under his arm, and then grimaced. "Ah. Oh well. Squeeze ya later, cutie." And he was gone in a clatter of overjoyed cackles, leaving Lydia on the floor, abandoned.