Summary: The Maitlands have trouble getting used to the afterlife and meet their new roommate.

A/N: This fic is shaping up to be more like a set of interconnected scenes and drabbles than a straight-through narrative, but on the other hand that means that I can do regular updates fairly easily. To-May-To, Toe-Mah-Toe, right?

1: For Want of a Vacuum

She hadn't thought much about the Maitlands when they were alive. After a while it was a drag being invisible, and she didn't feel like terrifying them until the trauma made ignoring her impossible. She knew from previous experience that a normal human mind had a remarkable capacity for denying the strange and unusual, up to and sometimes including tap-dancing avant-garde statuary and every wall in the house oozing blood until it flooded the basement. (She had really enjoyed the intermediate interface chapter on haunting in the handbook.)

Therefore, Adam and Barbara had been more like furniture that walked and talked than actual people who required thinking about. She supposed they were a cute couple. They still acted like newlyweds after years of fruitless (but loud) attempts to have children. That was kind of sad, because they probably would have been good parents.

But aside from the occasional stint of hiding in the garage plugging her ears, she had ignored them just like they had ignored her. Now that they were dead she didn't know what to make of them. They kept trying to clean and eat and sleep and be human, not...whatever you become afterwards (it was up to you, really). Their attempts to figure out the handbook were hilariously bad. It was all so depressing.

She pressed her ear more firmly against the attic door.

"Where are all the other dead people in the world, why is it just you and me?" Barbara was asking. It sounded like a book was being flipped through.

"Maybe this is heaven," Adam suggested happily.

"In heaven there wouldn't be dust on everything."

Well, it was now or never. The attic door creaking open halted their conversation. A mop of messy black hair peeked into the room followed by the young woman herself, barefoot and wearing an old-fashioned black dress. "I can go get it for you. If you want," she said.

Startled, they traded glances and then looked back at her. "...Get what?" Adam finally said.

"I can go out to the garage if you really want your vacuum," she explained, leaning against the door frame. "My advice is to forget it, though. You've got bigger problems."

Barbara shot to her feet and began to fire off questions. "What do you mean? Where did you come from? Who are you? Are you...a ghost, too?"

"Yup. Name's Lydia. As for how I got here, I died. And I meant I could bring you your vacuum so you can clean."

They seemed to be expecting more.

"Lydia Deetz," she added. "With a D, like as in dog."

Adam shook himself, rather like the aforementioned canine, and started forward holding out his hand. Eventually, after looking from the hand to his face to the hand while he tried to follow the ping pong match, Lydia got the hint and tentatively shook it, her face bemused.

"Nice to meet you," he said. "We haven't run across any other, um, spirits."

"You wouldn't, not in the house. There's a phantom hitchhiker who shows up sometimes down by the covered bridge, though," she said. Then she shook Barbara's hand, just for the novelty of it.

That prodded Barbara into saying, "Oh! Where are my manners? Please, come in. I'm sorry for the mess, but - you probably know more about our situation than we do."

"That's right!" Adam crossed his arms and tried to look sternly over his glasses. "Young lady, were you spying on us?"

Against her will Lydia felt her sass melt into a somewhat sheepish expression. Shrugging awkwardly, she held up her thumb and forefinger a tiny bit apart. "This was my haunted house before it was yours. It's kind of hard not to," she muttered.

Recognition bloomed across Adam's face. "You're that girl? Barb, remember what the people we bought the house from told us? The owners before them had a daughter that mysteriously disappeared."

Laughing a little, Barbara nodded. "Right. And they also claimed the house is possessed by a demon, but we never had any trouble..." She trailed off and blinked.

Lydia smirked and said, "I didn't like them."