To enhance your reading, try listening to the songs on Evanescence's album "Fallen" with the exception of "My Immortal".

Beetlejuice flew through the house, trying to find something to help him get back to the living world. The motel was full of crazy supernatural stuff like that, and odds were he'd find something.

Coming across a little-used room on one of the upper levels, he found a huge pile of cardboard boxes stuffed with dusty books and other trinkets. Attacking the mountain, he forgot to brake fast enough and collided into the boxes.

Amidst an avalanche of cardboard, he spotted something interesting; a full-length mirror framed in a kind of wood that he didn't really recognize. Inlaid in the wood were strange words and symbols that he discovered open closer inspection.

This is it.

He ran his fingers over the glass and was startled when all of a sudden, the image of a bedroom appeared in it. As he peered closer, he recognized the shape of a young woman lying on the bed, her face obscured by shadow, but her body obviously sick. Her skin was wan with exertion, pale and weak. Her legs were drawn up close to her body, trying to conserve heat. But still she shivered and – as he realized he could actually hear her – let out little moans of misery.

Then he knew.

"Lydia…"

His lips parted in a manic grin as his eyes narrowed. Oh, this was perfect. If he could just somehow get over there, he could bring her back to the Neitherworld without any kind of fight on her part. It'd be easy as a bought-and-paid-for hooker.

But no such luck. No matter how he tried, he couldn't get past the glass barrier that stood between him and vengeance.

Ok, so I can't be there physically. What about psychically

He focused his mind on the girl in the picture and suddenly he felt as if he'd slid through realities like gelatin through a tube. Instantly he was in her mind, seeing the wild images that haunted her like she did him.

"Whoa. This chick was sick before she got this virus," was all he thought before realizing that the sporadic lights and colors had evened out to reveal an actual scene: she was cowering in the darkened hallway below the huge form of a snake with his head. The beast was reared back, ready to strike, when suddenly his normal, life-sized figure took its place.

She was still curled up against the wall and hadn't noticed the change when he walked over, put his hands on his hips, and scowled.

"We had a deal, you minx," he snarled coldly.

She drew in a shallow breath and hugged herself tightly, so tightly that her fingernails cut into her flesh and drew blood. "No…no! It wasn't worth it! No!" she cried out.

"I don't care if it was or wasn't! You made a deal and you didn't follow through. That spells 'rat' in my book, babes."

She was crying. He saw the frightened tears, the clenched teeth, and felt nothing for her. She'd put him through the ringer. It was only fair she got hers.

"Please…just leave me alone! I want to wake up…this can't be real. Or if it is, I want to fall asleep…" she wept.

It was too perfect. Now he finally got to put his other skills to good use. Forever it had just been the flashy parlor tricks that got the job done fast and clean. But, if you really wanted to fuck with someone, you had to work the mind as well as the instinctive bodily fright.

"Ah, babes…" he soothed cruelly, kneeling down to lightly caress her cheek. "It's real. Your mind makes it real. And this is somewhere you just can't hide from me. I got a 24-hour invitation; I'm not gonna leave you alone."

"Please…please…" she whispered unendingly, trying to shy away from his touch.

"You know you're asleep, right? That you're warm and safe in your bed at home, with your mom and dad watching over you. They're so worried, babe. They're so worried…"

"But I'm fine," she cried. "I'm just so scared…"

"But you're not. You're not fine. You're locked up in here with only your nightmares to keep you company. And I've come to make it much, much worse."

Oh, how she receded into herself to despair. He could almost taste the hopelessness she was emitting. She believed every syllable he spoke. It was like molding warm putty.

"I've come to take what's mine."

She shook her head slightly to defy him, pushing closer to the wall. But he was enjoying himself far too much to give her any rest.

"It's so lonely where I am now. It's cold, and dark, and scary there. But I remember you once said you wanted to go."

"No…no. Not anymore."

Ignoring her, he continued his cruel speech with a sick grin. "So I decided; you put me through a lot of shit for the past few months. From wasting my life and money to getting me landed in a hellhole of a hovel, I figure I owe you a lot, don't I? Jeez, I just don't know where to begin paying you back for making my life a living Hell."

When she didn't respond, he reached around her and lifted her up into his arms. She tried to escape his touch, shutting her eyes tight, but he made his way haphazardly into her dream version of her room.

The ceiling was thirty feet high, the walls and decorations stark and cold. Her bed was a gothic four-poster whose posts rose up into infinity while the frame was an insanity-inducing polygon. Proportions in this room were the products of a very unstable mind.

He dropped her on the hard mattress and loomed over her, madness glinting in his yellowed eyes. While her fetal position loosened slightly, he suddenly dropped down, intent on intimidation, hands on either side of her head and his face inches from her own.

"This may just be a dream," he whispered into her ear, "and you may wake up soon. But just know: this nightmare will keep running over and over again in your head. 'Till you're too afraid to fall asleep anymore."

He noticed now her eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling in sheer terror. They focused on nothing, only on a point a million miles away. Somewhere far away from here.

Surprised and pleased to see some change in her, he buried his face in her hair and inhaled its scent. "God, you're beautiful."

Her words were fragile, full of the carnal essence of despair. "Please don't do this," she pleaded.

Now it was time for the clincher; the end-all, beat-all final words that would make her snap. "May as well give in now; I'm gonna come in your dreams until you call me.

"I'm gonna make you scream my name to the rafters, babes."

And he left her there, frozen and speechless and broken on her bed. In the real world, her heart skipped a beat and she forgot to breathe. And because at the same time her father, Charles Deetz, had been trying to find a healthy pulse in her wrist and felt the missed beat, he panicked and demanded Delia help him get the girl to the hospital. Maybe the doctors could explain why his daughter seemed to be slipping away.