Time, lives and afterlives went on. Lydia kept visiting about twice a month, the last confrontation forgotten, at least on Beetlejuice's part. But Lydia kept watching Kevin who still hung out with Sappy Face Ghouls. He also gave them names to stop the constant confusion – Bobby, for the high kid, Violet and Mark. The specialty of the girl's name didn't go pass Lydia, but Beetlejuice seemed to be ignorant to which Lydia was very thankful. She didn't notice how she started to consider Kevin something close to a son, or a younger relative for whom she must care about and look after. She quite often played nanny for the kids while Beetlejuice was somewhere… Somewhere he didn't invite Lydia to since the time in Las Vigorous.
Somewhat good news was also that Lydia was dating again. When Lydia told the news in the Neitherworld explaining her rare visits, Beetlejuice only shrugged and disappeared, Kevin shrugged too, but was obviously sad by the development. The three of them knew that she didn't belong to their world, but the one of the living. And she will leave eventually, leave for good.
One evening Lydia came back to her flat, planning to continue her date through the night. She left her boyfriend in the living room, skipping to the bedroom to get rid of the useless layers of clothes. She jumped to her vanity mirror to check her makeup and froze mid-brush. A message from the Neitherworld was shining brightly, half of the letters smeared with blood: Come ASAP. BJ is ill dying.
Lydia rushed back to the living room and practically threw the guy out of her flat, not even bothering with explanation. A minute later she was already running towards the Road House. Slamming the door open, she looked around to find anyone who could explain what was going on.
'He can't die. He is already dead. Nothing can happen to him, he is the Ghost with the Most,' Lydia kept repeating a mantra in her head, searching for the inhabitants of the house. She was halfway towards Beetlejuice's room when a crack ran along the floor barely missing her. The closer she got to the room the more frequent the cracks and shakes were.
Finally she stumbled through the doorframe, finding everyone beside Beetlejuice's casket-bed. A chill ran down her spine as she imagined just for a moment what the sight could mean in her world. Thankfully, she was in the world of the dead where coffins were as common as sofas.
"What's going on?" Lydia breathed out, taking in the desperate expressions on everybody's faces. She also saw that the floor of the room had become brown instead of grey.
Kevin whispered something to Jacques, who returned to what he was doing, tilting over the bed's occupant. The boy in turn rushed to Lydia, grabbed her hand and pulled her to the next room, his own.
"It all started about two weeks ago, maybe earlier, but I didn't notice anything," Kevin started to explain, chopping the words in his rush to say everything as fast as possible. "I saw two dark spots on his shirt, but thought nothing of it; this grime or another, I thought. Then the spots got larger, I asked him about it, but he told me not to worry. And then, about five days ago, we were on a walk around town, and his all front turned red. He was freaking bleeding!"
"Bleeding?! And he hasn't told you anything?!" Lydia shouted, panic sinking into her voice.
"Yes! And he has been bleeding ever since! And we can't stop the blood! And the house started to shake today! Yesterday he said to me, 'Call her. The closet'. And I don't know what to do! What if he dies?!" Kevin cried, tears running down his white cheeks.
Lydia tilted down and hugged the sobbing boy. "Everything will be alright, BJ can't die," she reassured, wanting to believe in what she was saying. Beetlejuice did die six years ago, but he revived, but what if this time it was final?
Feeling Kevin calm down a bit, Lydia released him and led him towards the bedroom they just left. She neared the bed, afraid to look. Several vessels were standing around the bed, full with crimson liquid. Lydia swallowed, suppressing the urge to throw up. A half full bucket stood beside Jacques where he twisted a cloth filled with blood and replaced it on Beetlejuice's chest, where Lydia saw a gash over his left side, just where the heart is supposed to be.
'But he doesn't have a heart,' Lydia thought. 'Not anymore.' "What closet was he talking about?" Lydia mused, throwing searching glances around the room. With piles of junk around it could be anywhere, even in the Land of Lost Things. And then her eyes landed on the closet with locks and chains over it. The one Kevin forbade her to touch or even near. As if hypnotized Lydia walked towards the creepy looking piece of furniture.
"Stop, you can't!" Kevin warned, but Lydia already touched the chains and they fell even with no need for a key. The doors opened on its own accord. "Oh my God," he whispered upon seeing the contents of the closet. Pictures upon pictures of Lydia in different years, little things, obviously gifts for one occasion or another, numerous pictures of Lydia and Beetlejuice together at different sights of the Neitherworld. "You definitely had a blast back then."
But Lydia didn't hear him. All the memories about her escapades in the Neitherworld rushed back, not that she had forgotten any of them, but now they were so clear and vivid in all their splendor, craziness and fun. "How could I throw it all away?" she asked herself, tracing a large golden frame with a photo on her eighteenth birthday which stood in the very center. Beside it lay something colorless and broken in half. Lydia touched it and a spot of red color appeared under her finger. "Why, BJ? Why did you do something like that to yourself?" Lydia asked softly, tenderly taking a piece of flesh into her hands. In was instantly mended and was turning red by the second. Very slowly she cared it towards the bleeding poltergeist and put it inside his chest through the gash which instantly sewed itself up.
Everyone in the room held their breaths, waiting for the result. Several minutes later Beetlejuice's eyes bulged open and Lydia was ready to release her breath of relief when…
"Take it out!!! Out!!! Out!!! Now!!!" he screamed, teleporting around the room at random places, looking completely mad.
Suddenly a wave of pain went through Lydia. She grabbed the front of her blouse, feeling as if something literally broke inside her. Her vision began to turn blurry. She glanced at Kevin, seeking help, but he was out cold on the floor.
The house shook again.
"What have you done?" Ginger wailed, coming down from the ceiling on a web's thread. "It is going to happen again. He will destroy everything again. Run! Run while your legs are still intact!" She followed her advice right away, disappearing in the direction of the attic. Jacques grabbed Kevin and cared him out of the room, overthrowing one of the buckets in the process. The floor was instantly covered in blood, but nobody paid any attention to it.
Lydia's insides clenched again. She felt down onto her knees – the pain was that strong. Her vision was getting fuzzy, but her mind remained clear. She looked up and saw Beetlejuice ripping the room apart in a form of a tornado. Despite the speed Lydia still managed to catch glimpses of his pain stricken face and tears running down cheeks.
'It is his pain that I feel,' Lydia came to a shocking revelation. 'Why doesn't he want his heart back? Wasn't he incomplete without it? Why did he take it out in the first place? So many questions and no answers.' And then phrases and episodes since her second appearance in the Neitherworld started to resurface in her mind forming the global picture as puzzle pieces.
All he felt towards her was hate from the moment they meant again.
He always criticized her actions, especially ones in the past.
One moment he was saying that age had improved her appearance and the other that she looked nothing but plain.
He didn't want to take her to the wedding, but asked her to a dance.
He was laughing his head off with Kevin, but was always depressed around her.
Gave her revealing dresses and presents, but pushed her away on every opportunity.
Mocked her on her lack of love life, but remembered whom he dated almost six years ago.
The salty waterfall in his mind over her portrait -
'Tears! Beetlejuice was crying over me. He started bleeding two weeks ago, the day I told him I had started seeing someone… And back then he was angry when he discovered that Henry was more important to me than him… Oh God, he was jealous.'
The truth behind Beetlejuice's attitude was so simple, so… ordinary if only they lived in the same world. Lydia knew that she didn't even think about it because it seemed to be utterly impossible with her best friend being a poltergeist, one of the dead.
"Girls have disadvantages." "But boys fell in love too." "That's the bloody problem!"
'He fell in love with me… And I broke his heart. I made him rip his heart out. I killed him.'
A bolt of shock went through Lydia, but she knew it was not associated with Beetlejuice's pain that time. It was purely her own. An immense sense of guilt and shame overwhelmed her, but she fought them away for now. At that moment another pressing matter was at hand.
"Stop, Beetlejuice! Please, calm down! You are going to ruin the house!" Lydia cried, but was not heard through the cacophony of Beetlejuice's crushes into the walls and curses on everything dead or alive. "Please, I beg of you. Don't you want Kevin to be happy here, to have a wonderful afterlife?" With every word she crawled closer and closer to the center of the room where was the epicenter of Beetlejuice's 'storm', but her pleads fell on deaf ears. She got hold of the chain from the closet, and an idea struck her. "Beetlejuice, aren't you all chained up at the moment?"
Right on cue the Ghost with the Most fell down onto the floor, his wrists and ankles chained, but it was little help – he still didn't remain still, rolling around, hitting his head onto the boards, as if trying to get rid of something inside it.
'What should I do? What are the right words to relive him of this pain, to return him to normal? I am supposed to be his best friend, but in reality I know so little of him. I've never thought he could act… feel like this.'
Catching a moment, Lydia managed to catch him into her embrace with Beetlejuice's head on her lap. He stilled instantly, like a baby wishing to be picked by her mother and finally granted his wish. Lydia was shocked to see tears on his cheeks, he even looked paler than normal.
"I am so sorry, BJ. For everything. I was so selfish. And stupid too. I didn't understand how important you were to me. I am sorry I left you. I won't leave. Not again. Not ever. I've never even thought we can be more than friends," she added under her breath.
"We can't," came a muttered response, followed by a light snore. Beetlejuice felt into a deep sleep.
The moment of peace was somewhat interrupted by an emerged crack in one of the walls. Lydia thought it was caused by Beetlejuice even in his sleeping state, but the gap soon was filled with smoke that travelled all over the floor, making Lydia cough. A short woman stepped into the room through the opening and neared the pair on the floor.
"He is not going to take an easy way out, isn't he?" she snapped, examining the sleeping figure in Lydia's arms.
"Can you move it a bit?" Lydia asked, referring to the cigarette-holder, which was practically in the young woman's face. "And who are you? Who gave you the right to enter this dwelling?"
"I have the right to be wherever I want in this world. I am Juno from the Administration. I came to investigate him finally loosing it. Seems he was stopped in time. Everything is obviously your fault. You are Lydia, right?"
Lydia blinked several times from surprise. The woman was jumping from one subject to another too fast for her to comprehend anything.
"Breathers," Juno spat, as if the word was a curse, "don't understand anything of this world, even if it works exactly as theirs," she muttered, attempting to move Beetlejuice to his bed, waving her mouth-piece as if it was a wand, but he was not cooperative, he seemed to be quite comfortable where he was. "Release him, he needs rest to rebuild himself." Lydia removed her arms from his shoulders and Beetlejuice floated towards his coffin-bed.
"Taking an easy way out? Rebuild himself? What are you talking about?"
"He has an enormous debt to pay. Dying would've solved the problem, but Kevin is not old enough to take over."
"Dying?! But you are all already dead! And what debt are you talking about? Don't you think you owe me an explanation?"
Juno took out her cigarette and inserted another one. She took several inhalings, before saying her next words. "Why should I? You are not one of us. And basically I am forbidden to share with you the knowledge about the world of the dead. It will upset the balance. Not to mention you are just one of his ways to entertain himself."
"Kevin and I are not entertainment! We are his friends, we have the right to know what is going on with him and why it is happening."
"But you do know why," the smoking woman stated, giving her a strange look. It was one of wisdom, but also pity. "Perhaps, I do owe you an explanation… You are the only one in both worlds who has something similar to control over him. Where should I begin? From the very beginning probably… The Wielders of the Juice have existed from the beginning of Time. They were created to bring mayhem into the world of the dead for it to have at least a part of real life. They come one after another, the previous one chooses his successor and teaches him to control the juice and then steps aside loosing the power. In my time here the current Juice Wielder is the third one. They are all different, but He is definitely the craziest of them all in the whole eternity (their whole existence is documented, so you can check records in the library), and He kept up the charade for the longest, four and a half hundred years is a long time even around here."
"You can't say his name," Lydia interrupted, but instantly closed her mouth, she didn't intend to say it out loud.
"Yes, I can't. In reality nobody should, because the Neitherworld 'jester' should've been anonymous. The rule was instigated to protect the prankster from direct hate of other inhabitants of the Neitherworld. Those who could say the name were persons who… basically liked to be pranked, that number was quite a small one, as you gather. With time that rule disappeared somehow. Now everybody knows whom to blame for every prank in the Neitherworld. Now they all hate Him openly and gloat at every opportunity. The worst thing is that they all know that without Him the Neitherworld will stop its existence.
No matter how strong or crazy the Juice Wielder is, they all fall with one disease sooner or later. I have to give it to him, he fought it the longest. Must come from his crazy nature. This disease is loneliness. Being hated by everybody and everything, having no-one to even talk to, sooner or later the jesters broke and gave their powers to somebody else. The same happened to Him. Two hundred years ago he was given two hundred additional years to his afterlife for a permission to bring a breather into this world. She was a cute little blond girl with a name Alice."
"Like Alice in Wonderland," Lydia remarked absentmindedly.
"The one and only. So everything went smoothly till she turned sixteen. The things turned really messy after that. The girl fell in love with Him. Head over heels and everything. Her feelings were one-sided though. So she hung herself."
"Oh my God!"
"Indeed. She did it in attempt to be reunited with her wanted-to-be lover in this world, but suiciders don't come through here, they go straight to you know where. That made Him quiet for some time, but he didn't attempt to bring another breather here. He got neighbors around that time too, so it was not that lonely for Him to exist. I am not sure what happened next. He watched the Outerworld at times, just to fight boredom and somehow he saw you. You were five years old. He watched you for several years before approaching me. I reminded Him about the previous case and He reassured me that he'd 'drop you before anything like that happens'. I asked for six hundred years as insurance and received them. That's how you appeared here. The years went on. Nothing drastic happened even it was clear that you were somehow special to him. You turned sixteen and there was no repetition of the previous 'best friend's' accident.
The problem was on the other end however. He couldn't 'drop' you. With each passing day you were growing apart, because you were growing up, preparing to have a life of your own. And He knew it. Knew it from the first moment He appeared before you – eventually you would part. It is the nature of life. Nothing is eternal. I even warned him when you were nearing eighteen that he must end that friendship of yours while it was still possible to have a clean break up. But, no! He dragged it on, the love-struck fool!" Juno even hit the side of the coffin in frustration. "And where did it get him?! Broken heart, juice malfunction, several districts turned to debris, not to mention loads of paperwork for me."
"I am so sorry! I know that I am at fault. I feel terrible only thinking about what Beetlejuice went through. I had the same experience, but I am sure his suffering was much more intent. All the tears and pain, to literally rip his heart out just to stop it all… I wanted to help, to somehow restore him to who he was when we were friends, but I ruined everything again."
"You are both to blame. He let the situation go out of control, which is very characteristic of Him. What is worse - he let you have power over him, and when you returned last year he gave you literal power without even knowing, purely from subconscious feeling. He became extremely dependable on you. You, on the other hand, were so understandable and caring and beautiful… I never understood why he chose you of all children on the planet."
"But what next? I do love him, maybe just not as deeply as he, but I could-"
"You can't and you won't," Juno cut her off. "Nothing has changed. You still belong to two different worlds. And the Neitherworld won't be turned to crumbles, not on my watch. I want another fifty years of peace, as it can be reached here anyway."
"Are you moved to another position? Retiring?"
"No, I am… moving on."
"Moving on?"
"We are dead, but our existence is not eternal here. We move on when our sentence is served."
"So this is the Purgatory?"
"Twisted isn't it? Doesn't differ from the real world in the slightest. They say that Heaven is the same, only there is no money and everybody is equal. For real."
"So Beetlejuice?.."
"Serves his sentence too, yes. With extracurricular 1200 years he wasted."
"1200 years… All alone. This is not fair!"
"Well, maybe the End of the World comes faster and he'll fall under amnesty. I am leaving, but you must stay by his side. You made a promise, didn't you? If he wakes up and you won't be around… Let's say, we all will move down to the lowest level. You know what I am talking about, right? It may take weeks or months, it's your choice. If you leave, there won't be anywhere to return to."
Juno left in a cloud of smoke, leaving Lydia on the floor broken and confused. She slowly stood up, her body heavy as lead, and stumbled towards the bed. Beetlejuice was sleeping peacefully, nothing indicated that something extraordinary happened hours ago. Only his eyelids twitched as if he was having a nightmare.
'Could it be about me? Will he hate me even more with returned memories? When he remembers what pain I caused him? But I am sure we can work things out… But what if he still loves me? If I am not here, he will suffer because of it, but if I am with him but not able to answer his feelings… Either way it will never be the same between us. It is too melodramatic and Romeo/Juliet like for my understanding, but it is real and it is now.' Lydia tucked him in and went to check on Kevin.