Chapter 2: Thinking

Betel Geuse was taking his usual way out of things. 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 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 it 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 it too much, either.

Fact o' the matter was, he had 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 had 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 that 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 that thinkin' did him no good at all.

Thinking made him think back to twenty years ago. When those Maitland losers had 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 about 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 had been something else...

He remembered when he first saw her, all dark baggy clothes and makeup so he couldn't even properly see her facial features except for those huge dark eyes... Betel shook himself, nope, not goin' there.

He had been amazed that even while his powers were subdued to the point that he was about two inches high and stuck in that 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, nope, hadn't run into that before. She had been somethin' else entirely.

Betel definitely didn't think of himself as the getting hitched and settlin' down sort of guy, but, there was that 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 that there was 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 that little girl grew up, he had seen the possibility of a deeelightful friendship. Harhar.

He had wondered about the whole ring thing, afterward. He had a LONG time to think after being stuck in that thrice-damned Sandworm that that Babs bitch had 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 had said his "I dos" and, well, okay, he had to admit, he said her "I dos" 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. That'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 had been his ticket to ride, in more ways then one. Harhar. Besides, he figured on once she got done growin', and growing into her powers, too, well, she had that spark.

He had actually felt for the kid, the way she looked at him with those 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 it's first set of jaws around him. He knew that once the ring was off, it'd come straight back to him. But it apparently 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 had asked Juno bout it, and the bag had just said that he needed to think things through more before he acted out. Well, damn, thinking is what got them all into it 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, though, 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, and then it stopped. Then nothing.

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

It meant that with 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 puppy for Christmas, but a major, life changing or life threatening event. And from what old June Bug had said, that night that November had been a pretty damn big event.

He still itched to get out and find out just what had 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 sorta had wound up liking the skinny little morbid kid with the big streak of "Seeing" energy in her.

When Juno had told him of what had happened, his already cold body had 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 cop a feel, but to kill them and torture them and then burn them in their beds? Damn.

And it was worse for Lydia, she was still stuck with the fucker, Juno be damned, there was only a few ways that 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 had never been solved.

He didn't like to think about that, but here he was, thinking about it again, like he had, 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 myriad 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 even 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 this 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 had to call home.

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 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. That gave Betel pause for thought each time... 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 had disappeared from the damn murder scene over fifteen years ago. Hell, guy had to have a daily routine, ya know?