Really in the Land of the Living
Lydia lay on her bed, ignoring her homework and playing with her new kitten, Percy. She hated the name Delia'd given him, but it was the only way she'd been able to keep him. Delia was weird when it came to having pets, never having had one herself as a child. Percy was all black, and tiny, and still had that soft, got-tumbled-in-the-dryer look of new kittens, even though he was four months old.
Dad had agreed to let her keep him when she'd found him abandoned at their driveway two months back as sort of a consolation for moving away from the Maitlands. She still hadn't forgiven him for moving, but she understood. Heart and nervous conditions ran in her father's family, and ever since Mom had died he'd been terrified of leaving her alone. She knew he couldn't really take the constant stimulation of having spirits in the house, even though after the whole Beetlejuice mess, when he was able to see them, he'd grown to like the Maitlands. Delia, on the other hand, was at the forefront of "forgetting that regrettable gas leak that made us all a little crazy," which was how she explained everything-just one big chemically induced hallucination. She was growing increasingly pushy, and to appease her, Charles had been pretending to forget the ghostly happenings at the old house, and Lydia, though she hated herself a little every time she said it, had started calling Delia 'mother.'
Sometimes, the only way she knew she wasn't going completely crazy was on the days when she could bike over to Winter River. She'd come home late, all windblown and tired. Delia couldn't really gripe because she was getting good exercise and was out in the sun, so she let it go. Her father worried about traffic sometimes, but he knew Lydia was a good rider. It was after she'd come in and gotten settled that her dad would sneak up to her room and ask her quietly how the 'old owners' were doing. He always listened to what they'd gotten up to, which usually wasn't much, mostly tutoring and some dancing to the oldies, levitation optional.
Lydia looked up from her cat and her musings when she heard a knock on the door. It was her Dad. He poked his head in and asked if it was okay before coming in and sitting on her bed. She'd come up to her room in a huff that day, and stayed up there through dinner.
"Pumpkin, I know something's bothering you. I know I'm not as great in the advice department as your mom was, or the Maitlands, I guess, but you know you can always talk to me, right?" he said as he ruffled her hair. Lydia smiled.
"It's nothing really, Father…just some of the girls at school. You know, the usual teenage stupidity."
"Are they bothering you about the way you dress again?"
"…Yes."
"Honey, I don't understand you sometimes, and the fact that you like such dark, odd things…but that's who you are. I don't want to hear about anyone bullying my Lydia, but I know how kids are. If you ever need anyone to talk to, you can come to me."
"Um…Dad? What if it's…you know…girl stuff?"
Charles pinked about the ears a bit. He knew vaguely what she meant and absolutely that she wouldn't want to talk to Delia about it. He wished she would, but the two just were not the types to get along.
"Well…there's no reason we have to tell your mother everywhere we go when we go out on a drive…and it doesn't take nearly as long to get to Winter River by car." Lydia smiled as he waggled his eyebrows and looked around sneakily. She rubbed her hands together and attempted an evil laugh that came out so bad Charles started laughing as well. Percy mewed pitifully and hopped between them, demanding attention as the door creaked open again.
Delia popped in unasked for, an obnoxiously bright grin on her face as she unceremoniously dropped a large plate covered in shiny tin foil on Lydia's bed. "You didn't come to dinner, dear, and you're so thin and pale! You simply must eat to keep up your strength."
Lydia, her face barely concealing the effect the smells of Delia's cooking were having on it, seriously doubted that statement. Delia's suddenly turning into some sort of June Cleaver reject was seriously starting to get annoying.
It was the smell that hit them first, the scent of ozone and stagnant water, cigarette smoke and wet earth that suddenly infiltrated past Lydia's mimosa incense. Percy suddenly jumped into the air yowling like he'd eaten glass and dove under Lydia's bed. Delia followed suite as she turned her head at the smell
"Lydia, you really must stop burning that horrible incense, it smells li-AAAHHH!"
It was only at the sound of Delia's shriek and her overly-quaffed head hitting the floor that Charles and his daughter stopped trying to puzzle out what was wrong with the normally sedate cat to turn and see the green and purple laced fog billowing out of Lydia's vanity mirror and onto the floor. Charles turned white as a sheet and Lydia froze, her hands digging into her bedclothes. The fog twisted and contorted, finally forming two separate shapes, one much smaller than the other one. Stripes began to fade into the larger figure as voices became evident in the room.
"Just thought it'd look good on the books…"
"…no, they will not count an elaborate entrance as a courtship ritual, you idiot. Cut out this nonsense and lets get on with this mess…"
There was a slight 'pop' and suddenly the fog was gone, though the smell of swamp water and Virginia Slims still pervaded the air. In it's place were two spirits, both of whom the Deetzes recognized immediately.
"YOU!" Lydia cried as her eyes latched onto those pinstripes. "NO! No no no no no! Get out of here! Get OUT! Beetlejui-"
"Miss Deetz, wait a moment," Juno said. "And please calm down. I may be dead, but I still have eardrums."
"What is he doing here?" Charles quailed, still pale, "You said this was over with when you came to talk with us right before we moved." He screamed suddenly as the poltergeist in question suddenly appeared seated on the bed between him and Lydia, an arm around either of their shoulders.
"Well, Chuckie, I just thought I'd drop by for a chat with my lovely little bride-to-be, here. How's that sound, Dad?"
Charles and Lydia both went green, and Juno groaned, fending off Delia, who was muttering vaguely about finding the gas main and wringing her hands midair, which were stuck in the case worker's abdomen.
"If you don't knock it off and just do what I'm attempting to facilitate here, I'm adding 43 counts of General Pain in the Assery to your charges!"
Betelgeuse slid out from between the two fluidly and came to stand by his caseworker, looking like someone had stolen his copy of The Exorcist.
"What do you mean what you're facilitating? Juno, what is this?" Lydia asked, her voice small and fear in her eyes. She thought she'd been able to marginalize him, to shrink him down to something still disturbing, but not terrifying in her mind. But now that he was here, back in the same room with her, she remembered just how scared of him she was. It wasn't just the fact of what he was; a ghost she could handle. It was the aura of power that washed off of him in waves. She'd known he was different from Adam and Barbara, but it was easy to forget how different when you weren't around either example every day.
Juno sighed and summoned a chair out of nowhere before sitting down. Betelgeuse seemed perfectly happy to kick back mid air and float aimlessly.
"Miss Deetz, I apologize for our sudden appearance, but someone refused to wait. I believe I explained the situation well enough to you when we last met."
"Yeah, I'm engaged to him for basically the rest of my life! You didn't have to bring him to remind me."
"ENGAGED?" Charles yelled, his voice cracking at the volume. Juno raised an eyebrow and tried to ignore the snickering in the background. "Yes, Mr. Deetz, engaged. I thought your daughter had told you."
"That's right, Chuck, you're stuck with me!" Betelgeuse cackled as he drifted past, casually zapping Charles' tie into a small snake. The blond man shrieked and ripped the thing from his neck. Lydia flew off her perch on the bed and aimed a glancing swing at the poltergeist's face. He actually stopped floating and thudded to the floor in surprise.
"You leave my Dad alone, you asshole!"
"Geuse! Miss Deetz! That will be quite enough of that. Now, if we can get back to the matter at hand"
With a wave of her hand, Juno returned the tie to it's normal form and glared at the ghost on the floor. Lydia found her way back to her seat, handing her father back his tie. Charles looked at it warily.
"First and foremost, Miss Deetz, why did you not inform your parents of the arrangement?" the old case worker asked. Lydia looked at her feet.
"They've been trying to forget everything that happened. Delia just calls it a gas leak at this point. Dad's heart…I didn't want them to have to worry about it anymore."
"Well, as noble as that may have seemed, they had a right to know."
"But I-"
"We'll discuss this at a later date. As it is, I'm here in a more advocatory role."
"Um…what?" Lydia and Charles said in unison. Juno sighed.
"I'm here to make sure he doesn't destroy your house in some stupidity laced attempt at an apology for being the ass he is to your family."
"Hey!" Betelgeuse griped, getting up off the floor finally as he did.
"Well, it's true. Now get on with this before I send you back and arrange for Freud to talk to this poor girl!" Juno snapped, her foot tapping impatiently on the floor.
Betelgeuse gave a long look to the two breathers on the bed, ignoring the one on the floor, and opened his mouth. Lydia spoke up before he had a chance to.
"I don't want to hear it. You nearly kill my Dad, Maxie Dean and his wife, traumatize my step-mother, and almost re-killed Barbara. What on this plane of existence or the next makes you think I'm willing to listen to an apology from you?"
"Ah, c'mon, Lyds! We're engaged! Don't I get a little say in what's probably the rest of my afterlife?"
"After the way you treated all of us? I could care less about your afterlife!"
"Babe's, c'mon, please? It ain't like I forced you or nothing'"
"'Not like you forced me?' You freaking blackmailed me!"
"Now hold on a-"
"Yeah, the whole 'I Want Out' speech didn't twist my arm at all. Not to mention the fact that you could have told me you meant 'marry my right this damn minute!' I was thirteen, you sicko!"
"Hey! Would you shut up and listen to me for one fucking second?" Betelgeuse yelled, his head spinning at the last word. He stopped it, and after the two conscious Deetzes had stopped screaming, he continued. "Don't you hate it when that happens? Look, Lyds, Babes, remember how I told you I don't have any rules? Well, big shocker here, I lied. I have one rule, and it's NO DAMN KIDS! So don't even try and use that little guilt trip on me. Now, there's still the matter of you breaking the deal…"
"I'm not apologizing for that when you're the one supposed to be apologizing!" Lydia yelled. She looked over at her dad. "One thing Dad taught me was to never go back on your word…but I'm still just a kid. You couldn't honestly have expected a thirteen year old to not be a little freaked out. Not to mention the fact that, you know, I didn't know a damn about you, and you meant right then, and the whole you being dead thing. Not exactly a great formula there, Einstein."
Charles seemed to come out of his stupor to glare at the poltergeist after his daughter's spiel. "Lydia's absolutely right. And as much as I hate this deal she made with you, she still made it for noble reasons, and I can't exactly tell her that saving the lives, or afterlives, rather, of her friends is a bad thing. Not to mention the fact that the contract is binding in a world I have no power in. So I leave the decision up to her on this, because that's her choice to make, no matter the outcome. But God help me, if you hurt her, I'll dig up every exorcist I can find and put you down for good."
Betelgeuse gave Charles an appraising look. Dressed in a lumpy brown sweater, chubby, and pale as a sheet, he didn't look like much…except for the absolutely terrifying expression in his eyes. Betelgeuse knew that look, or something similar, and had worn it a few times himself. That was not a look to be messed with or doubted. The poltergeist sighed and looked at Lydia.
"Look, can we just talk about this? Without your Dad and that Van Gogh reject on the floor? I can't even really do anything, because of Attila the Nun back there."
Lydia looked at him for a moment. He looked tired; not bored or looking for trouble tired, just tired. Like being held back for all those months had actually been hard on him. Adam and Barbara had always said the messed up time there messed with them as well…and he'd been there for six months. And that was after getting eaten by that terrible two headed worm thingy. And her dad had made the final decision hers.
"Fine, we'll talk. But you do anything stupid and I'mm sicking Juno and Barbara back on you." The poltergeist nodded and sat with a flump on the bed. "Thanks, Babes."