Chapter 12
(53 years later)
He did not know how long he had been there. It had been long though. (Time just isn't the same here in the grave) Obviously they had decided this was to be his punishment. It was fitting, anyways. He just knew they were relishing the idea of him being trapped in a cell that looked like an empty basement, without his Juice.
He had grown accustomed to the burning agony in his limbs somewhat, at least enough that he could get around, even though he was hunched like an old man. He had not expected that his reaction to his Juice being stripped away would be so severe. Nobody had. But they had found out, and it had delighted them to no end. They had come especially to taunt him, all except Juno, who was there, but couldn't even look him in the eye.
It seemed that in the presence of their aura's, his Juice was accustomed to rejecting it, and shielding himself, all completely subconsciously. His body continued to try and do this, although since his access to his juice was completely blocked off, what happened was something along the lines of immensely painful dry heaving.
He couldn't insult them, he couldn't make rude noises at them, and he couldn't even ignore them, for their presence, and the presence of their energy put him in even more pain, pain that lasted for hours after they left.
Naturally, they were highly amused.
At first, he would storm the walls, shaking his fist and roaring that they couldn't keep him in there forever, he would find a way out, and then they would all pay. But as time wore on (Time worked like that once you were dead. It just seemed to slip away.) his threats came less and less often, as he concentrated more and more on finding a way to block the pain.
He couldn't even remember Her face anymore. Couldn't remember all the little nicknames he had given Her. All he remembered, and clung to, was the fact the Juno had blocked Her from calling him back once. Was that the case this time, too? Or had She abandoned him too, and felt good riddance?
But most of the time, he was screaming himself hoarse.
Even before he had been sent here, (Gods, there was a before? Was it a dream?) he had been teetering on the edge of insanity. But whatever bit of sanity he had left he had earned, and was proud of it, even as he hated it, wishing to be abandoned to the depths of madness so he wouldn't feel anymore.
He couldn't remember Her name. Neither could he remember his own, it had been so long since it was last called. (Get me out, get me out!) Something to do with a star, and armpits. Was that his name? Armpit? It would be funny if it was. Ha-ha funny. He didn't think that was it, though.
Another shockwave of pain. This one he couldn't deal with. He curled up in a bundle on the floor, glaring senselessly at the wall in front of him as he spasmed.
Footsteps tapped down what was presumably a hall, though he had never seen it. A gopher, an errand-boy from the council. Must have done something right, and then been rewarded by being allowed to take a peek at the once-dangerous bane of society. Like a zoo. It wasn't like this was the first time.
It was his hatred that kept him alive, his attachment to his faceless nameless angel that kept him sane-ish. Right now, hatred was winning. The messenger's aura was fairly weak, although still extremely painful. He forced himself to ride out the shockwaves. He was nothing if he couldn't still scare the piss out of this punk.
Ah, exactly as he had imagined. Wet-behind-the-ears, green as grass, young, recently dead, early twenties, punk. Probably a suicide. Ah, and there it was, a faint vertical slash starting on his wrist, just peeking through the cuff of his sleeve.
Staring at him, all doe-eyed with fear. He pulled himself up, watched the kid skip back in alarm. He slumped slightly, making the effort to look harmless. He gave a low, harsh cough for good measure.
It worked. He hesitated, then returned to his previous spot, something suspiciously akin to pity in his watery brown eyes.
He nearly trembled in his desire to disembowel the little puling puke in front of him. But no. Not yet.
"What's yer name kid?" he rasped out, his voice hoarse from disuse. The wretched pile in front of him twitched, and squeaked in alarm.
"W-Willard Dunn, sir," he dithered. He suppressed a wince. No wonder the kid committed suicide, with a name like that. And what was with the sir? Didn't the council teach their new recruits to treat their prisoners with disrespect?
He beckoned Dullard, as he'd dubbed him, closer. Dithering frantically and wringing his hands, he inched closer.
He leaned forward, despite the protests of his body, and whispered conspiratorially, eyes darting back and forth like he was afraid someone was listening. "You look like a bright kid, Dul--Dunn," he told him, lying through his pointy teeth. Not noticing his almost-slip, Dullard puffed up proudly.
"You want to know my secret?" he whispered. "The secret to how I got so powerful?" Just for a minute, he thought he'd miscalculated, had tried the wrong tack. But no, there it was plain as day, greed shining out of Dullard's eyes. Malevolent glee danced in his mind, but he kept his expression feeble and pained.
Everybody knew about him, knew the stories, and knew the stigma behind his name. Everybody wondered how he had gotten so powerful. In all actuality, it was because some idiot had put a decimal point in the wrong spot in his papers back when those things were done much more sloppily, but nobody else needed to know that. Especially not Dullard.
The kid was nodding frantically, afraid he would retract the offer. He leaned forward further, beckoning him to do the same. Dullard leaned forward, glee on his face at the thought of finally being someone. Closer . . . closer . . . His ear was almost right up against the bars that contained him. It was time.
He launched forward those last few inches, and bit down on Dullard's ear with all the strength in his jaws. Dullard unleashed a panicked, high-pitched scream of pain and started writhing and swatting at the monster, screaming all the while. His ear bled a dark, thick liquid, dripping down both of their faces.
When Dunn's escorts heard the racket, they bolted down to the cells to see what was going on. Their combined aura's proved too much for him, and he passed out and began spasming.
Meanwhile however, his teeth were still locked around Dunn's ear, and it was growing steadily more obvious that either Dunn was going to have to spend the rest of his life attached to a condemned poltergeist, or he was going to have to leave his ear behind, especially as it was now bearing the creature's full weight, who was thrashing and moaning.
No amount of tugging, or short blows at his face could loosen his grip, and finally, tiring of it, one of them pushed to poltergeist's jaws closed even tighter, while the other pulled on poor Willard. The result? An awful ripping sound, and one last squeal of pain.
The two men pulled the blubbering Dunn after them, scolding him roundly for his stupidity and threatening to have him demoted him to janitor.
Back in the cell, he lay on the floor, waiting for the tremors to cease, staring glassily at the ceiling, before rolling over and spitting out the auricle of Dullard's ear. He had gotten almost all of it.
He knew he would pay for his 'fun' later, but Juno had been right after all. He was rather wishing they would just exorcise him already.
He would make sure somebody remembered him, though. Dragging himself over to the walls of his cell, he dug his elongated fingernail into the stone. The first layer of stone fell away under his finger. After nearly five minutes, he finished.
I wuz here was carved into the wall in curly manuscript letters.
He looked at it and decided it wasn't enough.
Which was why when the guards came to get him, he was lying on the ground, shivering in pain, inscribing the last I wuz here on the floor. Every square inch of his cell was covered in those three words.
"Just to let whatever poor bastard who gets locked in here next know he isn't the first," he muttered, as they dragged him away.
The guards were performing an interesting balancing act, holding him by the arms so that his feet never touched the ground, simultaneously trying to hold him as far away from their personal selves as they could, possibly fearing for the safety of their ears.
It was during transport that he began to feel curiously light, something echoing in the back of his mind that seemed very familiar. But before he could ponder upon it, he had been unceremoniously plopped into a chair, and was suddenly facing the entire council.
The man sitting in the middle was obviously the head. At first glance, he could have been mistaken for handsome, but a closer look revealed how sunken and transparent his features were. He was obviously a fairly old ghost, the telltale beginnings of mold beginning just at his hairline. It would probably be a few more centuries before he would be powerful enugh to get rid of that. He himself hadn't bothered for a long time.
"So, even while locked away in the bowels of the earth without your powers and almost completely helpless, you can still manage to cause trouble," the head intoned, his eyes glowing maliciously. "With that last stunt of yours, you finally tipped the scale. It wasn't a big thing in and of itself, but your crimes have added up over the years. We've been keeping track. Activated an obscure clause in our laws. If one ghost breaks the rules x amount of times, they are exorcised without warning and without trial."
He shuffled his papers, looking morbidly pleased. "It has been proven that in no way, in no capacity, and in no place can you ever be considered safe, and you certainly have never been productive. Keeping you around is proving to be a drain on our resources. One from which we are receiving nothing in return.
"Indeed, instead of being grateful for our mercy in not excorcising you immediately, you instead bite off the ear of one of our representatives! Appalling! Simply appalling!"
Looking as bored as one can when being handed a death sentence, he cocked an eyebrow at the council head, who opened his mouth to shout something. But somehow, his words were drowned out by a faint cry, a word that made him bolt upright in a mix of terror and elation, as the council reacted too slowly to prevent the sudden influx of Juice that carried him far away from them.
"BEETLEJUICE!"
He was falling, falling fast, and for the first time in years, his body experienced the absence of pain, and it was the most beautiful thing in the entire world.
Then he landed with a bump on a floor that seemed very familiar, with a beautiful face peering at him concernedly. He had just a moment to wonder why she looked so familiar, before his Juice surged through him in an enormous burst that would be felt for miles, and everything seemed to disappear.
It had been fifty-three years, but the sting of guilt was as fresh as it had been when she had first realized she was helpless to aide him. She missed him, the same way she would miss her foot if it was suddenly cut off. Taken for granted when there, although still needed. And when its gone, you begin to find out just how much you had depended on it.
Apparently, she had depended on him a great deal, because it was fifty-three years later, and she still felt his absence like a physical slap in the face. She had exhausted every outlet she knew to check on, with absolutely no results. She was helpless, trapped in her house, refusing to see Juno, and cut off from anybody that could help her. It was maddening.
Just as bad as his tragedy, was the tragedy of her family. She had been so happy when her son had stayed in her house. When he died, they would be able to keep each other company.
No such luck. Sara had shut up both her parent's in a nursing home as soon as she could, about fifteen year's after her poltergeist's disappearance. Lydia had never seen her son again, and she doubted she ever would. He had died in that home, it would be a miracle if she found him now.
After getting the house to herself, Sara immediately had all of her stoner friends come and live with her, in something resembling a large, twenty-four/seven orgy. She did eventually get into the band that she had wanted to be in so badly. Trying to scare the people out of her house proved impossible, as everything that happened that was out of the ordinary was attributed to the drugs.
After destroying her brain with drugs, she followed her band off onto the streets, traveling by van to catch as many gigs as possible, which wasn't very many, and was growing steadily less and less.
Five years later, five years of living in an empty house, a letter was sent to the house, asking for someone to come and identify a body. Apparently, Sara had overdosed and died in a gutter.
Thus was the end of Lydia Deetz Carmichael's bloodline.
And, to make it all so much worse, just last year, Barbara and Adam's alloted time in the house had run out, and they had had to move on.
The family living in her house now was a pleasant enough family. They never ventured into either the basement or the attic as the wife was afraid of heights, and the husband had claustrophobia, preferring instead to store their things in the garage.
Occasionally she would play a few tricks on them, but most of the time she settled for being helpful. She needed something to do, or she would go insane. She vanished all the dust, mopped up all the mud, wiped out all the fingerprints, scrubbed out all the stains in the carpet. The Allen family had long ago become accustomed to a house that they never needed to clean, Mrs. Allen especially.
At that moment, Mrs. Allen was washing the dishes, Lydia feeling that they could do their own dishes and laundry. For what felt like the millionth time in the last fifty years, Lydia turned her star over in her hands, watching it explode, then seemingly implode. For a long time, Lydia had been wanting to find out which star it was, but hadn't been able to find any resources.
However, come to think of it, the Allens had a computer, and had recently connected it to the internet . . . With a strange light in her eyes, she tucked the ball under her arm and marched over to the computer. Sitting down, she typed the description quickly into a search engine, and waited for results.
She was rewarded with literally thousands of results. Apparently, big red stars aren't exactly uncommon.
After weeding out all the advertisements for Clifford the Big Red Dog on Ice (t), Lydia was starting to lean towards her star being Antares or Aldebaran.
Another name caught her eye, but as soon as she read it, it struck a chord of wrongness. She tried to grasp it with her mind, but the name refused to stay with her, slipping out of her memory the moment she looked away from the screen. She thought about saying it aloud, but the very thought sent her swimming in nausea.
Lydia grasped her chair, wondering desperately what in the world that one word could be, to provoke such a reaction from her.
The knowledge of what it could be, and probably was, was just as evasive, and proving just as frustrating, the feeling that it was something she should know.
She forced herself to say it out loud, as though maybe saying it would force the weirdness away, even though her tongue felt like a block of wood.
"Betelgeuse," she said firmly. And, almost buried under a new wave of wrongness, was a tiny feeling of rightness. "Betelgeuse," she repeated, feeling braver. A face popped into her mind, and suddenly, she understood. Leaping to her feet and knocking her chair to the ground, the star rolling away unnoticed, she shrieked out, "BEETLEJUICE!"
What landed on the floor in front of her was not what she had been expecting at all, despite the fact that he should have been the first thing she was expecting to see.
He was there, on the floor in front of her, looking dazed and infinitely worse for the wear, positively skeletal. Green eyes set deep in his head, burning fiendishly. Teeth, much sharper than she remembered. Long, ragged nails.
Her scrutiny was cut short as a yellow wave burst forth from his body.
Lydia was thrown backwards into the air and smashed into a wall for the first time in her afterlife. She slid down to the ground, dazed, watching in vague horror as the swirling vortex in front of her sent off another pulse.
She braced herself, crossing her arms in front of her chest and bowing her head. The sickly yellow energy washed over her, stinging like thousands of tiny bees. Her own power tried feebly to reject it, but it was batted away in the pure, overpowering rush of energy that was Beetlejuice.
Then suddenly, the yellow waves checked themselves and came rushing back upon their source, (like the birth of a star) compacting, until finally she could see Beetlejuice in the center. The sickly yellow was sucked inside of him, and then just as suddenly as everything else had been it was over. It was just Lydia and Beetlejuice together alone in a wrecked room.
Lydia was feeling rather faint and weak, having exhausted herself trying to fight off the foreign energies. In front of her, Beetlejuice was making little noises of disbelief, examining the room. He didn't appear to have noticed her yet.
Her clothes made a rustling sound as she slid further down the wall. She was so tired. She just wanted to rest. She noticed with what should have been alarm but wasn't, that her form was growing rather faint. She could see the floor through her hand.
Beetlejuice noticed the sound, whipped around, noticed the woman with the angel's face awkwardly propped up against the wall and fading from sight.
No, that was wrong. That shouldn't be happening. He bounded over, marveling at how little effort it required, moving when he wasn't in pain. In a glorious, painfree moment he was beside her, trying to figure out what was wrong.
The house itself was rocking her, gathering her up into itself, and sending all of the energy it had collected from her over the years back to her.
Neither would ever know just how close Lydia had come to being completely destroyed. Never before had anything or anyone taken the full brunt of his Juice, and it would probably never happen again. The only reason she survived (in a manner of speaking) was because as a direct result of that same blast, the house gained a semi-sentience. It couldn't talk, it couldn't really even think, but it had gained the capacity to feel, and act on the instinct to protect.
So the first thing it did was restore its longtime tenant, Lydia. The next was to block all of the aggressive callings the Netherworld was sending her way, clamoring for the return of Beetlejuice.
Which was a blessing for him. It also blocked off all access to the Netherworld, which meant no more visits to the waiting room, no personal calls from Juno.
It was really indescribably fortunate.
However, neither of them knew any of this. All they knew, was that she no longer felt quite as tired, rather chipper atually, and he was relieved that she hadn't vanished after all.
He opened his mouth, but the words didn't come. He looked at her pleadingly, silently asking her to help him.
Lydia saw this, and felt her heart clench. Only once before had she ever seen Beetlejuice at a loss for words, and it hadn't been like this. Reaching out, she touched his starved face gently, asking him quietly, "What have they done to you B?"
He was bewildered by the question. Where to start? Not much had actually happened, but it seemed too immense for words, too long, too terrible, too painful.
"I -- they put me in a cell. Cell block 1010011010. And they blocked my Juice. It hurt. A lot." Even as he said it, he winced at the terminology. What he'd described sounded like paradise as opposed to what had actually gone on.
But instead of narrowing in scorn, her eyes widened with sympathy, sympathy that he would have rejected from anybody but her. He still didn't remember her name, although he now knew for certain that this was the woman who had figured prominently in his memories and dreams.
"They were about to exorcise me," he added after a minute.
"After waiting fifty-three years?" she asked in dismay. "Why?"
"For biting a man's ear off," he said off-handedly, growing more sure of himself. It was becoming easier to think of things to say. Besides him. Lydia gave a strangled, choking sound, that resembled closely the sound of desperately held back laughter.
Finally, she regained control of herself, and cried in dismay, "Why did you bite his ear off for? What'll he do without it?"
"He can go to Dr. Frankenstein and get a new ear," he told her. It was true, really. Nice guy, a little morbid, but he definitely knew his stuff when it came to piecing together dead people. He had become rather popular among the younger ghosts who would want their limbs reattached, or their head sewn back on.
The monster himself was much more successful in this life than the last, surrounded by plenty who looked far more freakish than him. On the whole he was rather content, if not a little miffed at his creator's success.
Lydia stiffened in dread. "They'll call you back," she whispered, stunned. Beetlejuice stared at her uncomprehendingly, slowly shaking his head. She grabbed his hands, and hissed, "I won't let them! They can kiss my dead, lily-white ass. I won't let them!"
Beetlejuice stumbled away from her, panic starting to grow in his eyes. She followed, insisting, "I won't let them! I won't!"
Strangely enough, this calmed him down, and he sat down again, apparently taking her words at face value. But Lydia was wondering how she could keep her promise. It would only be too easy for someone to reach into her mind like they had so long ago, and rip his name from her once again.
So she engraved it on the floor, unwittingly copying what Beetlejuice had done to the ouija board half a century ago. There, like it was a natural part of the grain, was his name, spelled in its correct form, Betelgeuse on the floorboards.
They might go through her mind again, but she doubted they'd take the time to check what was on the floor.
She spent the next couple of hours trying to tug Beetlejuice out of his shell and shove something nourishing in him. Maybe it would help, despite the fact that he was dead and didn't really need to eat.
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