Chapter 2: Thinking

Betel Geuse was engaging in his usual way of dealing with things that bothered him with the rotgut shit they called alcohol in the Neitherworld.

He. Was. BORED. A bored Betel Geuse was a storm of mayhem waiting to happen. A bored Betel thought... And a thinking Betel wasn't always a good thing.

He had a few jobs over the years, the usual pissy sort of stuff, the type where the ghosts couldn't or wouldn't make the effort to get the damn Living out of their homes themselves. Hey, made life interestin', though, when he got the call for a job.

Never got another chance for interesting like he had a few years back with the Deetz girl, though. Nope. And, nope, he wasn't gonna start thinkin' 'bout her again, either, fat lot of good that did. He was still stuck in the Neitherworld, and she was... Well, he didn't know where the hell she was, and he didn't like to dwell on that too much either.

Fact o' the matter was, he dwelt upon it, far too much. That night fifteen years or so back, it felt like a hole was being burnt into his throat, and his ring finger burned, too. Made no sense, he hadn't been able to seal the deal with the kid to have a complete binding, but somehow he knew the pain (which Betel never felt anymore, not unless some absolute moron tried to exorcise him.. That stinged a little) had something to do with… Lydia.

Damn. There he went, thinking about her name again. Betel decided thinkin' did him no good at all.

Thinking made him think back to twenty years ago. When those Maitland losers called him to get rid of that crazy City family. Huh, and they thought he was weird? That dye job redhead was as weird as they came. And Chucky? Well, Chucky was a few beer cans short of a six pack, marrying that redheaded dame, and nervous as a seven-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. And Round Boy? Huh, he was unto a class all his own.

The girl, though, she was something else…

He remembered when he first saw her, all dark baggy clothes and makeup so heavy he couldn't even properly see her facial features except for those huge dark eyes.

Betel shook himself. Nope, not goin' there.

He'd been amazed that even while his powers were subdued to the point he was about two inches high and stuck in the damned model due to the damn binding on his name, she could see him, could even talk to him. Not many of the Living were able to do that. He'd been around over six-hundred years, and he hadn't run into that before. She'd been somethin' else entirely.

Betel definitely didn't think of himself as the getting hitched and settlin' down sort of guy, but, there was the nice convenient little loophole in his binding if he got himself hitched to someone Living. He'd get Out, and there was of course the added bonus of real potential in that one. He wasn't a pedophile or nothin', he knew he'd have to wait awhile for them to get to know each other real well and let her grow up some, but in the meantime, he could be free as a bird in the Realworld. But when the little girl grew up, he'd seen the possibility of a deeeelightful friendship. Harhar.

He'd wondered about the whole ring thing, afterward. He had had a LONG time to think after being stuck in the thrice-damned Sandworm that Babs bitch roped into eating him. He still hadn't figured out how she'd gotten it into the Realworld, either, without a damn door. Hrumph.

His thoughts went back to the ring. So, he'd said his "I do's" and, well, okay, he had to admit it, he said her "I do's" for her, cause she was just a kid, a female, and them damn females, and kids, well, they always change their minds, like the damn weather with them. It's why he usually had no use for them. Women were good for one thing only, ya know what I'm saying? Well, in Lydia's case, two, she'd been his ticket to ride, eventually in more ways than one. Harhar. He figured on once she got done growin', and growing into her powers, too, well, she had that spark.

He actually felt for the kid, the way she looked at him with those big damn eyes when she said she wanted in. Well, he'd have let her in, but not in the way she wanted, he needed her alive and kickin'. But she had that spark to her that he knew would have enabled her, even then, to come over to the Neitherworld when most Living would get their atoms smashed to smithereens just trying to do so. Lydia and him? Hell, they could have had a blast.

What he couldn't figure on was why she wasn't able to get the ring off. He wasn't going to kid himself, she probably burned the dress he'd juiced up for her and tried to get his ring off of her finger the second the damn Sandworm had its first set of jaws around him. He knew once the ring was off, it'd come straight back to his finger. But apparently it wasn't coming off. Maybe she just didn't want to take it off... He shook his mangy head. Nah. Couldn't be that.

He'd asked Juno 'bout it, and the bag just said he needed to "Think things through more before he acted out". Well, damn, thinking is what got them all into this mess in the first place! The Maitland chumps thinking they wanted the Deetzs out, him thinking Lydia was a good way out, the Deetzs thinking exorcising the ghosts in the house would solve everyone's little problems. Babs thinking that hitching a ride back to the Realworld from Saturn on a Sandworm so it could eat him and stop the wedding was a good thing. Hrumph. Thinking gotcha no where but in deep shit, and fast.

What he couldn't stop thinking of was what had happened to his little runaway bride. He feels nothin' for years, and then all of a sudden, the pains and a feeling like someone was trying to summon him, like they got to saying his name twice. He started feelingthe energy, the pull... And then it stopped.

Then nothing. All these years, and nada.

He'd read a bit about different bindings, and figured out that even though they hadn't gotten hitched by either the Neitherworld or Realworld laws, they had made a connection when he placed the ring on her finger with the intent on marrying her.

It meant the ring was a conduit for a binding. He would feel her strongest emotions. Nothing like a scare at a movie, or if she was happy 'bout getting a new dress or whatever girls liked, but a major, life changing or life threatening event.

And from what old June Bug said, that November night had been a pretty damn big event.

He still itched to get out and find out just what happened, for a couple of reasons. One, Betel was just a damn curious old fool - he wanted to solve the mystery. And two, dammit, he didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but he'd sorta wound up liking the skinny little morbid kid with the big streak of "Seeing" energy in her.

When Juno told him about what happened, his already cold body felt colder, if that was even possible. What was done to those kids wasn't kosher, in his book. One thing to scare 'em and maybe even cop a feel, but to kill them and torture them and then burn them in their beds? Damn. That was some evil shit he wasn't even capable of.

And it was worse for Lydia, she was still stuck with the fucker, Juno be damned, there was only a few ways she wouldn't have wound up back at the Fun House stuck haunting with the Maitlands. One, she wasn't dead, or two, someone must have bound her with somethin' mighty powerful. Someone who had the ability to slip through all of the Realworld's and Neitherworld's radar. The damn murder was never solved.

He didn't like to think about that, about if she was still alive what she was suffering…

But here he was, thinking about it again, like he did, every damn day, for the past fifteen years, dammit.

Betel swore and threw the bottle of crap he had been swilling from across the room, taking a small satisfaction in the brittle shattering sound it made when it hit the wall. The wall had a large number of similarly smashed bottles at its base and was covered with the stains and slime of the contents of said bottles.

He pushed himself out of his chair and went to go see Juno, again, just like he did, everyday, for the past fifteen years, to bug the old bat into letting him out a bit to go for a look-see. Maybe sometime this century he'd wear her down far enough to get her to do it.

He'd tried to stay out longer when he'd get called out for a job, but he was never able to get to where she had been because he was bound to stay in the same Functional Perimeters as the ghosts he was hired by, damn curse.

He'd even tried to weasel out a deal with his clients each time to see if they'd let him out out for a bit after the job was done, but nope, he always got his name called again thrice and wound up back in the piss hole he was forced to call home. When he tried to stay out longer or leave the immediate area of where he was called, he was never able to get to where she had been because he was bound to stay in the same Functional Perimeters as the ghosts he was hired by, goddamn curse.

He wished Juno would listen to reason, but she wouldn't, would always tell him that there was no way she was falling for it, that he wasn't going to let him con her into letting him into the Realworld to run willy-nilly, wreaking his usual form of mayhem everywhere he went. Even after the first year when he could see that she actually believed him, that he was just going to try to find the girl, she would shake her head no and tell him it was hopeless, she was off the radar and out of her jurisdiction. Which gave Betel pause for thought... Juno never gave up on a soul, and she could track the Living as well as the Dead.

He told himself he'd give it a shot with the old smokestack just one more time for the umpteenth thousandth time since Lydia disappeared from the damn murder scene over fifteen years ago.

Hell, a guy had to have a daily routine, ya know?