Sleeping Beetle

A Beetlejuice fan fiction by Lady Norbert

A/N: Hard as I tried, dear readers, I couldn't get this finished before disappearing on my family vacation for the first week of May. But I greatly enjoyed cruising on the X. X. Orcist (yes, that's a reference to the cartoon) down to the Bermuda Shorts Triangle. And now I'm back and have some fresh ideas for keeping things weird.

Special thanks to my friend Naomi, who is not part of this fandom but is of Romanian ancestry, for her assistance with geography and the Dracula mythos.

Chapter Seven: So Familiar a Gleam

"So just to get the obvious question out of the way first," said BJ, "we're not visiting Dracula's place, are we?"

"No." Lydia's nose was buried in a Romanian travel guide; he was reminded of the one she'd gotten for their New Orleans trip almost a year earlier. "Castle Bran - his home - is a really amazing place and I'd love to stop in and see it if there's time, but everybody and their brother has delved into the Tepes line. I read recently that the British royal family is said to be descended from Dracula's half-brother, actually," she added. "The Prince of Wales is apparently very invested in preserving the Romanian forests on account of his connections."

"You scare me sometimes, y'know, the way you soak up information."

"You like being scared."

"Eh, I'd rather do the scaring." He stretched a bit, glancing out of the airplane window at the clouds. "All right, so where are we going?"

"Moldavia. It's the region of Romania to the immediate northeast of Transylvania, across the Carpathian Mountains." She pointed at the map, which had the region in question colored in blue.

"Ooh. I like the name - sounds good and moldy, right up my alley." He peered at her book. "Mold isn't blue."

"Oh, BJ." She shook her head. "We'll actually be really close to Transylvania. See this little bit of land that sort of curls northward into Bucovina? It's in the county of..." She squinted, and pointed at the word Iași on the map. "No idea how to pronounce that. There's a commune there that I can't pronounce either." She pointed at the word Tătăruși, adding, "A commune is the smallest administrative subdivision in Romania. Anyway, we'll be heading north of that commune; the castle that the magazine wants me to find is there in the mountains, near the borders of both Bucovina and Transylvania."

"And it definitely doesn't involve Dracula?"

"Nope. In fact, Vince did a little wandering around Tumblr and ended up talking with someone who's studied the whole Dracula thing. It's a common misconception, but Vlad Tepes wasn't even from Transylvania. Well, I mean, he was born there, but he moved away as a little kid. And when he was prince, it was in the Romanian region of Wallachia - much farther south than where we'll be. I guess Stoker picked Transylvania instead to make it more fictional." Lydia shrugged.

"So they've asked you to do this assignment because no one else wants to do it. Y'know, Babes, I can't help feeling like..." He frowned. "Like we're missing something."

"I thought about that too," she admitted. "Something's waiting for us, I think. It just seems..." She gestured sort of aimlessly.

"Convenient?"

"To put it one way, yes."

The weather was decent, at least, and BJ supposed he ought to be grateful. Once Lyds had found all their luggage at the airport after landing, they made their way to a train station and, by suppertime, were chugging northward to their unpronounceable destinations. The mountains loomed in the not-exactly-distant west, casting ominous shadows over everything as the sun sank behind them.

"Nice and gloomy," he noted approvingly. "What's the name of this place we're trying to find, Babes?"

She pulled out her letter from Terricula and frowned at it. "The magazine editor says that the original name has been lost for ages. It's apparently a very old structure in the foothills of the Carpathians, some long-forgotten fortress of the ancient nobility." She shrugged a little. "The locals nowadays call it Castel Bufniţă."

"So... we're going to a place that time forgot in search of a ghost who may or may not exist?" He folded his arms. "Babes, no offense, but it's starting to sound more and more like this outfit is sending you on a wild goose chase - and you know I hate those."

"More like a wild owl chase," she corrected.

"Huh?"

"That's what the castle name means - 'Owl Castle,' literally," she explained. "But why they call it that, I don't know."

"Hmm." BJ drummed his fingers on his sleeve. "Well, maybe that's not so bad. They better pay you good for this, that's all I know."

"Tickets, please," said a new voice, before Lydia could respond. She smiled up at the gentleman peering into their compartment, and handed over the tickets.

As he punched the slips of paper, she asked, "Sir, are you familiar with the northern parts of this county?"

"Yes, miss, I've lived here all my life."

"We're looking for an old castle in the Carpathian borderlands," she said, "and I'm told it's very hard to find. In English it's called Owl Castle. Do you know it?"

The conductor hesitated as he handed back the punched tickets, and BJ could see that his complexion had gone just the littlest bit paler. "What you seek, miss, is not worth finding," he said after a moment. "No one knows where the ruins are, but there is scarcely enough of a castle left to deserve the name. If it's castles you wish, Romania has many others much more deserving of your attention." He hurried down the train before she could ask any more questions.

"Okay, that's a dodge if I've ever seen one," BJ grumbled. "Looks like the mag may be onto something after all."

"Well," Lydia noted dryly, "we didn't elope to Transylvania when we considered it. I guess the plot was determined to get us here one way or another."

They remained on the train overnight, and by noon of the next day they found themselves in one of the little villages which comprised the commune. Over a modest hot lunch, they spoke in low voices and tried to figure out the best way to start the search for their target, but it seemed impossible. "How do we look for something we've been told can't be found?" Lydia wondered. "We don't know where to go, and I don't like the idea of getting lost in the mountain foothills, even with you at my side."

"Hmm." BJ twirled his fork between his fingers, thinking. "Seems to me, Lyds, that if the plot is directing us to the castle, it has business to be giving us a hint."

"That's probably true, but how do we get it to give us one?"

"Appeal to cliche," he decided. He swept his gaze around the restaurant. "Over there. That one," he said, pointing to where an elderly woman sat near a window. Whether she was gazing outside or in the process of dozing off, he wasn't quite sure.

"I don't know, Beej..."

"C'mon, these stories always have some old wise person giving advice to the adventurers! Right? Watch." Ignoring the wife's very apprehensive look, he got up and approached the lady, forcing himself to be almost excruciatingly polite. (Lyds still hadn't completely sold him on that catch-more-flies-with-honey concept, but anything that might result in more flies couldn't be all bad.)

"Excuse me, ma'am, but could I ask you a few questions about this area?" He adopted the most disarming expression his facial muscles could be persuaded to make. "My wife and I are exploring the mountains, and we're looking for a particular place."

There was a pause, in which the woman just stared at him. Then she opened her mouth and began speaking rapid-fire... well, he supposed it was Romanian, but he didn't know enough of it to be sure.

"She doesn't speak English," said another voice, heavily accented and thick with amusement. BJ turned to see a middle-aged man watching them. "She'd be happy to answer your questions, but she hasn't the first idea what you're asking."

"I knew it couldn't be that easy," Lydia muttered, coming to stand next to BJ. More loudly, she said to the man, "We're trying to find the Castel Bufniţă. Do you maybe know it, sir?"

Before he could answer, another stream of words, now harsh and excitable, flowed from the old woman's mouth. "The Owl Castle?" the man translated, looking back and forth between the speaker and the strangers. Those sitting nearby had fallen quiet in their own conversations, watching intently, and BJ instinctively put his arm around Lydia's shoulders. "You'll never find it, she says. Many have tried. It's gone."

"Gone?" Lydia repeated.

"It was at least five years ago when the trouble began," he said. "The ruins were untouched for ages - no one even remembers now who built the old castle, or when. But children in the villages began to grow ill, weak, pale. There were many deaths." He paused to listen to the old woman. "One night, an owl was seen flying away from one of the houses where a child was dying. A hunting party formed to follow it, and it led them to where the castle had been. But not a stick or stone remained of the structure, and the owl disappeared before their very eyes - as though it had flown into the building which no longer existed."

BJ and Lydia exchanged glances. "And the children?" she managed.

"Some recovered. Most did not. The work of a strigoi mort, some say - a ghost which feeds on the blood of the living. Young blood is what they like best, maidens and children, though they'll take what they can get. There are many who have attempted to pursue the monster; the lucky ones return without finding anything. Others have disappeared and never come back." He paused again as the woman continued to scold them in Romanian. "She says the ground is cursed where the castle stood. If you're determined to seek it out, head due northwest from the edge of our village - once you've gone far enough into the trees, it will find you. But if you have any sense, you'll abandon the idea. To find the Owl Castle is to find your own death."

BJ shrugged. "We've met before."

"Thank you very much," Lydia added hurriedly, seeing the confused look on the man's face. "We'll, uh, we'll just be on our way, then."

Once they'd paid their bill and more or less fled from the restaurant, Lydia caught BJ by the hand and pulled him into the alley between two buildings. "Does this make any sense to you?" she murmured. "A castle that doesn't exist, but sort of still does, and no one can find it and live to tell the tale?"

"Well, it didn't at first," he said. "But the more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm thinking there is a place where it might really be."

"That's what I'm thinking too - it must be in the Neitherworld!"