Chapter 1: A Father's Wish

Charles Deetz had never been a "calm" sort of man. The whole reason why he had moved his small and quirky family to Winter River, Connecticut twenty years before was because of this very fact. His nerves simply could not handle the daily stress and hustle of the City any longer. He had thought he had made the right decision then, as he still did now. Yes, Delia had needed time to adjust, and yes, things were more chaotic than the City could be at its worst for a bit there when they had first moved into the old farmhouse, but after the initial settling in and the "getting to know their very close neighbors" phase, things had been good. He still didn't think his back was ever the same after that crazy ghost had dropped him off the second floor landing, but everything had turned out alright in the long run.

He had made two new friends who eventually become family to him as well, who were, alright, he could admit it, dead, but still "normal", good old apple pie American country folk. They were wonderful for his daughter Lydia, as well as the rest of the family. Sure, his view on the world had done a complete 180, but he liked to think of himself as more "enlightened" now.

Or, he used to feel that way. He used to, quite simply, feel.

He only felt a small range of emotions now. Loss. Anger. Fear. Remorse. Confusion. Despair.

After the whole almost-exorcism of Barbara and Adam, and the arrival and grand departure of the self-proclaimed "bio-exorcist", things had settled down and become as normal as possible for a household that consisted of a neurotic businessman, a slightly deranged modern "artiste", a morose teenager, and two dead people who were forced to stay in the house for the next century-and-a-quarter or be eaten by giant, striped worms.

You know, normal. Well, at least normal for them.

It had been good.

Lydia had brightened and blossomed under the friendship and co-parenting of the Maitlands, who had never been able to have children of their own in life. Charles felt no envy towards Barbara and Adam about their closeness with Lydia. He and Delia had been trying their hardest, but there had still been something Lydia needed, something that was missing from their little family. Charles had thought that it was the City's dark influence on her that had made Lydia so morbid, and yes, suicidal, and it very well might have, but he eventually realized it was Lydia's very love for the "strange and unusual" and her rare and innate ability to see the Dead and communicate with them that made her the unique gem of a girl she was.

Barbara and Adam were as far from the City in mentality you could get and still be on the same continent, and the whole lifestyle and fresh, country air had breathed new life into all of the Deetzs.

And they had had a good life for a good five years. Lydia finished growing up to be a bright, stunningly beautiful and talented young woman who was ready to take on the world when she and her best friends had gone on a tour of Europe after her High School graduation that Delia had convinced him into, saying that every girl should be able to go "on the tour". It was one of the wonderful experiences of growing up. He had let her go with a hug and prayers (and an American Express platinum card, of course), but he knew she had a good head on her shoulders and would be just fine. She had returned, with lots of stories and wonderful photographs of all she had seen and done. She had decided to go off university for the photography and writing she loved so dearly.

Through it all, she always came home, always was his little Pumpkin.

Charles reached over to the side table next to his rocking chair and grasped a picture frame with slightly trembling hands. A tear rolled down his prematurely aged and wrinkled cheek as he looked at the face he knew and remembered so well, the face he wished more than anything, anything, in the world just to see again, even if it was for one bright moment, in this world or the Neitherworld, in Heaven or even Hell, he would do anything just to see her again.

It had come as a shock, as tragedy does to any family. When tragedy happens, it tears your world to shreds. All that is normal is twisted and mutated, a dark shadow of your former life.

Lydia had been going to an old prestigious, small university in a close suburb of the City. She had had her choice in universities and colleges, but she had decided on Peaceful Pines because of the high scholastic rating of its liberal arts programs and its relative closeness to home in Connecticut.

They had gotten the phone call that every parent prays they never will receive one cold November early morning. There had been a break-in at the dormitory that Lydia and several other girls lived at. A fire had been set.

No one had made it out alive.

After the initial shock and denial, and then pure and utter panic, the family as a whole had hunkered down and awaited Lydia's arrival back home, albeit as a ghost. They all mourned the loss of Lydia's wonderful life and future, but they hadn't been mourning her. The Maitlands were "living" proof that life went on after the body's death, and the Handbook for the Recently Deceased had explained in overly-technical terminology that once Lydia realized what had happened, she would be home with her family as a ghost, and then they would be able to start to pull the pieces of Lydia's shattered life together.

Charles and the rest of the family readily agreed that Lydia considered the house in Winter River as "home". She would return there and begin her unfortunately mandatory one-hundred-and-twenty-five year "haunting". Although things would be drastically different, they knew she would still be with them.

She didn't return.

As the first day went on and Charles and Delia started to panic, Barbara and Adam had searched their memories of when they were freshly dead. They reiterated to the distraught Deetzs that time in the Realworld ran much, much quicker than time in the Neitherworld. They couldn't remember how long it took them to arrive back home after their last "swim" in the Winter River, but they remembered it had been early morning when they had died and it had been dark by the time they had arrived back home, and not on the same day. They did their best to calm Charles and Delia by rehashing their memories and facts from the book, and tried to calm themselves as well.

More information came in from the authorities. The alarm at the dorm had never gone off. It had either malfunctioned, which was very odd, or whomever had broken in had known the code. Knowing the codes to the individual dorm houses wasn't a rarity as the students always seemed to ignore the warnings of security and let their friends and significant others in on the codes for easier access. Campus security was apparently pretty certain of the latter situation, as were the State Police, who had been called in after the local police department had arrived at the scene initially and immediately knew they needed help.

The police were inquiring with the girl's families to see if any of them had called or written home about a particularly abusive relationship or a breakup gone very bad. School counselors were on hand to try to offer any clues and to help with grief management and the post-traumatic hysteria that was reigning across the once peaceful university.

The dormitory had been turned into a charnel house for the once lively and active girls.

The intruder or intruders had come in, had apparently methodically gone from room to room and brutally slashed all of the girl's throats, cleanly severing their jugular veins while they still were lying in their beds. The preliminary forensics analysis coming in was they had all, to a one, bled to death before they were burned, some horribly so, and many of the girls had been "interfered with".

The Deetzs and Maitlands were horrified at the thought of Lydia laying in her bed, her life slowly draining from her body after being brutally violated, but were slightly relieved knowing that although she had suffered through all of it she hadn't had to deal with the additional torture of burning to death. Barbara and Adam were quiet about the man they had seen in the Waiting Room who had burned in his bed... They were somewhat mollified knowing that poor Lydia wouldn't have to return like him. She had already been through enough.

Night fell, and still no Lydia.

By the next morning, after a brutal night, Barbara and Adam drew the chalk door in the attic to the Waiting Room and warned the Deetzs they might be gone for awhile and they were going to go see Juno again after over half a decade. They didn't want to add to Charles' and Delia's worries, but they were growing concerned themselves. What if Lydia had returned, confused, and was still at the dormitory? They needed to bring her home.

Charles and Delia waited another forty-eight hours.

Lydia still had not returned.

On the third night, the doorbell rang, and they rushed to the door. When they opened it, they couldn't hide their looks of disappointment when they saw the two plain clothes officers on the porch.

They came inside at their bidding, and everyone sat down in the living room. The officers explained to a yet again shocked Charles and Delia that they could not identify any of the remains as that of Lydia's, and would they please come with them to view a live-video of the found remains to see if they could possibly help in identifying any of the deceased. They gently explained that they needed the name of Lydia's dentist to retrieve any x-rays on file that he might have to help in the identification as well. They again expressed their sympathies and expressed their understanding of how difficult this was.

Even though the Deetzs knew that the human soul continues on after death, with the Maitlands not being currently present as a 'solid" reminder that this was so, and faced with the horrific fact of what is left behind by a human life in the aftermath of a violent tragedy, Charles and Delia both started weeping again, mourning anew the loss of Lydia's beautiful and special life.

As Charles held his sobbing wife, he was wondering exactly what had happened and why his baby girl hadn't returned to them yet.

Delia was simply unable to handle the thought of viewing the spent shells of so many bright young lives left shattered. Charles wound up going with the officers without her. Otho, who had arrived from the City while the officers were still speaking with the Deetzs after receiving a call from Delia and seeing the news on television and newspapers, found it in himself to volunteer to go with Charles in support.

The media was having a field day with the case - they were calling it "The Vampire Murders", due to it having been leaked to the press, as always happens, that the bodies of the girls had been drained of blood before the fire was set.

Charles had left Winter River's Police Station more scarred emotionally then even before. He would never, ever be able to forget the grainy images of the charred, pitiful corpses of the girls on the television screen they set up in a private room for he and Otho to view. Otho was continuously wiping his ever perspiring face with a monogrammed handkerchief after having left the viewing room to be violently ill in a restroom in the hall outside.

Charles had calmly asked the police if anyone had found a… body… with a heavy, ornate gold ring on their left ring finger. The officers had looked at each other for a moment before one officer who randomly reminded Charles of that actor 'What was his name, oh yes, Tommy Lee Jones' he thought to himself, picked up a phone and called the county morgue where they were still continuously working on the remains. After a few different transfers and speaking with a few different people on the line, the officer hung up, then turned to Charles and told him that they had not found any jewelry as he had described on any of the remains. The officer had watched Charles closely to gauge his reactions.

Charles closed his eyes and silently, to himself, began to have a flicker of an idea, a prayer… What if?

The officer had continued to watch Charles before he let drop another piece of hope into his mind and heart.

There had been thirteen girls living in the dorm. There had been only eleven bodies found.

The twelfth girl had been at her boyfriend's apartment near the campus. She had called campus security in hysterics when she saw the carnage on the morning news the morning after the killings.

They had still not been able to account for one girl. They had contacted every family, and none had yet to have their child come home to them.

They had identified all of the other girls, except for Lydia.

The officer looked at Charles and with feigned casualness, asked him if perhaps his daughter had an ex-fiance or boyfriend, since Charles had mentioned a ring on her left ring finger, who maybe held a very large grudge against her, and if so, where he might be found?

Again, Charles closed his eyes. Could it possibly be? Could the deranged ghost who had tried to marry his fifteen-year-old daughter five years before be possibly that much of a vengeful monster?

He thought hard, searching his memories and feelings, deeply. Beetlejuice was a maniac, and he had been violent, but he had never actually killed anyone in the short while that he had known him. Granted, he might have been killed being dropped of the second floor balcony, and Otho could have broken his neck falling down the stairs, and the Deans might have been killed going through the roof... As a matter of fact, they should have been killed going through the roof. They only had really bad headaches and had developed a supreme denial complex after the incident, not even a scratch on their physical bodies.

No, the ghost he had met wasn't capable of the sadistic, twisted violence, the utter destruction, of the lives of these innocent girls.

Charles looked up. "No, officer, Lydia never mentioned anyone like that in her life. She had that ring for over five years, it's a... Family heirloom." The officer nodded slowly in response.

Otho shot Charles a glance but didn't say anything until they had left and were in the car by themselves, after promising to let the officers know if they heard anything from Lydia or if he remembered something else that might help.

"Charles...could it possibly be that awful Beetle..."

"No, Otho! Don't say his name. And no, I don't believe he would do anything like that. I know what he did to us, and I'm sure he wasn't happy about the Sandworm thing, but we don't even know if he still is alive… I mean, exists, we haven't heard a thing in all these years. Barbara and Adam would have let us know." At the mention of the Maitlands, Otho inadvertently flinched, still feeling guilty after all the time passed since his botched "exorcism".

"Otho, the ghost we met was crazier than a shit-house bat, and I could see him wreaking havoc as revenge, tearing up the house with his carnival tricks, throwing us all around a bit again. But what happened to those girls was on a whole other level… It was evil."

"Where is she then, Charles? If she died, she'd be back at the house, correct? If she's still alive, then where..."

"Otho, ENOUGH! We'll find Lydia, as a ghost or… Alive. We'll... We'll find her."

Otho sat silently, hoping that his friend was right, and that he wasn't having false hopes.

When they arrived back at the farmhouse, they found the Maitlands had arrived back and were consoling a crying Delia. Charles smelled cigarette smoke and turned around.

"Charles, you better sit down. I think you all are going to have to hear this a few times before any of this can be understood. Hell, I don't even understand exactly what has happened." Juno's raspy voice cut through the fog of smoke and the fog in Charles' head.

"Mr. and Mrs. Deetz, like I told the Maitlands, Lydia didn't die in the massacre at her college. We have records and have accounted for the other eleven souls of the girls who were killed, but there is no record of Lydia among them."

Juno said, taking a long drag on her cigarette holder.

"Oh, my god...she's still alive?" Charles sank into the nearest chair, his rocking chair. "My baby's still alive! Where is she then? Why hasn't she..." He stopped, a sob coming from his throat as his mind started to work around what Juno was saying.

"Oh, god, oh my god… Is she being held captive? Does that monster have her? The man who killed those girls, DOES HE HAVE HER?!" He had stood up and in his desperation, had grasped Juno by her bony little shoulders and had actually shaken her a bit in his panic.

"Mr. Deetz, please, this is not going to do any of you any good. I don't know who, or what, has your daughter, or if, indeed she is being held captive. I can only expostulate on the facts."

"Juno, tell me...is it Beetle...?"

"NO, Charles, don't say his name. We still have him in the Neitherworld under house arrest, but the binding on his name still stands. If you call him three times, he will come."

"But Juno, I'm asking if, did he...?" Charles trailed off for a second, still holding onto Juno, at this point, almost to hold himself upright.

"No, Mr. Deetz, Betel was at his residence in the Neitherworld at the time of the murders." She paused to take another long pull off of her cigarette. "Betel is many things, Charles, but he isn't a cold blooded killer. I've known him a long, long time. He isn't that. And yes, I checked myself, he was definitely in the Neitherworld at the time."

Charles let go of Juno and slumped back into his rocking chair. He would never really leave it again for very long for the next decade and a half or so of his life. You see, he had a straight view of the front door and the back door to the house from it, and the phone was right on the table next to him. This way, when his Pumpkin came home, his would be the first face she saw when she came through the door, or he would be the first to pick up her call when it came.

"Charles, you have to face the facts… If Lydia could come home, or if she was dead, she would have done so already. And yes, I checked the entire perimeter around the campus to make sure she wasn't lost, either alive or... Dead." Juno was trying to be diplomatic. "I've checked throughout the Neitherworld on the off chance she slipped through the records, sometimes that happens in a particularly, ah, violent death. I even..." She paused, wondering how the Deetzs and the Maitlands would handle the tidbit of information she was about to give them. "I even spoke with Betel, Charles. He was aware that something had happened to Lydia."

Delia looked up quickly from her prostrate position in Barbara's arms. Both of the women looked almost feral at the mention of the poltergeist's name.

"If that damn demon didn't have something to do with it, then how did he know what happened to Lydia?" Barbara spit the words out.

"Mrs. Maitland, he doesn't know what happened, he just knew something happened. He felt it through their bond, through the ring." Juno took another drag, seemingly trying to calm herself, as well as the others. "You know that although the marriage wasn't finalized, he did manage to get the ring on her finger. The ring she has been unable or unwilling to take off since the... Incident. The ring binds her in a small way to Betel, and always will. And by the way, Barbara, he's a poltergeist, not a demon, although he tries to trump himself up as one. He'll never be, though, he just doesn't have it in him, as much as he brags about how bad he is." Juno snorted in derision and a bit of almost affection.

Adam, speaking for the first time in what seemed like days, looked up at Juno, pushing his glasses back up on their rightful place on the bridge of his nose.

"Juno, was the… man ... or … thing, that did this to those girls, that took Lydia from us, was it a demon?"

"Mr. Maitland, there was no demonic activity registered at the dormitory. Demons are different than ghosts and poltergeists - they were never human. I can assure you, if it was … a fully dead human, it might bypass the Neitherworld altogether and the Lost Souls Room and go straight to hell. Its soul is so tainted by its actions, so dark..." She trailed off with a shiver. "Those types I luckily don't have to deal with. The Bundys and the Dahmers, they fall to another jurisdiction. So do other... Types."

Everyone in the room fell silent as they contemplated her words.

"So Pumpkin will come back to us eventually, right? I mean..." Charles broke off as large tears started rolling down his face, unheeded. "One way or another, our baby will come home, either alive… Or if that thing… Kills her." He dropped his face into his hands, as the whole family thought about Charles' words and what they imparted. To die a horrible death relatively quickly was bad enough, but if she was being kept, and tortured... Who or what would come home to them?

They had all seemed to agree to take the murderer's humanity away. "It" was a given.

"Yes, Charles, I believe one day we'll have her back." Juno had included herself in the loss. "I will be doing everything in my power, and more, to help this to happen. We just have to wait. I know how hard that is, the not knowing, but that's all we can do."

Charles looked up. "If Betel has a… connection to Lydia, then can he find her?" The hope was obvious in his voice.

"No, Charles, he can't. I believe he would if he could. Believe it or not, he was quite upset himself when I arrived and explained what happened."

"Why does that monster even care?" Delia mumbled derisively. Otho nodded as he stroked Delia's shoulder repeatedly, as he was comforting himself as well in the gesture. He was making a strong front for the family of his best friend and client.

"Believe it or not, Betel does have a heart. Obviously, he wasn't exactly pleased that Barbara got him eaten by a Sandworm, but he's not heartless. He was agitated because something about the bond had changed on the ring, he could feel it, and when I showed up and I explained the circumstances of what happened, I actually had to cast a stronger binding to his residence to keep him put. He wanted to try to find her."

"Let him." Charles said, visibly shocking everyone in the room.

"No, Charles, he'll only wreak more havoc on an already chaotic tragedy. He can't find her."

"Do you KNOW he can't find her, or you won't let him?" Charles asked, looking Juno in the eye.

"I don't think he can, Charles. The binding doesn't work that way. Let that be. You have to wait. Do what you can in your world, I'll do what I can in mine. Stay strong for her."

And wait is what they did. For fifteen years. Charles grew elderly before his time. Delia retreated into her sculptures even more than she already had, their subject matter growing even darker. The Maitlands drifted around, taking it upon themselves to take care of their suffering and living family. Charles rarely left his rocking chair, and he always had the picture of Lydia on the day she left for university near at hand, her smile giving him a glimmer of hope. He thought and pondered on how to get his Pumpkin back. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would feel her presence. Just slightly. Maybe it was just a father's wish. But he'd always go outside and call to her, just in case.