Sleeping Beetle

A Beetlejuice fan fiction by Lady Norbert

A/N: Naturally, the big question on everyone's minds after the last chapter is "Where the heck did BJ go?" Well, he hasn't gone very far, just... far enough.

Chapter Twelve: Forest of Thorns Shall Be His Tomb

Like Lydia, Beetlejuice was plenty suspicious about things. Most particularly, he didn't have a whole lot of appreciation for the way Vasile looked at her. Whether or not she had formed any suspicions about that particular thing, he wasn't sure, but he was irritated enough for both of them.

He was, after all, a selfish sort. Yes, he'd improved in that vein somewhat over the years, owing to the wife's gentle influence, but he could still be pretty possessive about the things he considered his. And nothing had ever been more his than Lydia. He was equal parts possessive and paranoid where she was concerned; he couldn't help it. He'd come close to losing her too many times to be otherwise.

In this specific instance, he was pretty sure he wasn't being paranoid. Vasile had looked practically furious at the news that he and Lydia were married. They didn't see him often, but whenever they did he was constantly watching her, speaking to her, offering her his attention. And the look in his eyes while he studied her... Beetlejuice couldn't help but recognize it.

Exactly why Mr. Fangs For The Memories wanted his Lyds, he didn't know. The why didn't really matter. What mattered was that Vasile definitely did want her, and Beetlejuice was quite possibly the only thing standing in his way.

This was probably not the safest place to stand, really.

But he wouldn't be moved easily. Not when he was in front of her.

"It's just a headache, Beej," she said.

"You're sure you're not really... y'know?"

"I'm as sure as I can be without access to a doctor," Lydia retorted. "Look, I'll be fine, I'm just going to take a nap. I'm not exactly eating a whole lot, it's taking a toll on me."

"I'm kind of glad you're not," he admitted. "Who knows what he might be slipping into the stuff he's serving."

"It doesn't seem to stop you from eating it," she observed with a little smile.

"I'm already dead, Babes. He can't exactly poison me. You're a different story."

At her insistence, Beetlejuice left her to take a nap in peace, and decided to amuse himself by wandering around the castle. Unlike when Lydia roamed the halls, however, the lamps and candles ignored him and refused to light. This wasn't a real issue, since he could see better in the dark than she could and he could always turn himself into a light source if needed; but that didn't make it any less rude on their part. "Hmph. Who needs you anyway," he muttered.

"We do," grumbled a different voice.

"Quiet, he'll hear you!"

Beetlejuice squinted up at the shadowed ceiling, which seemed to be the origin of the voices. "Lemme guess," he said after a pause. "Monitor's crew, right?"

"Uh... yeah, heh," said the second voice. "Sorry, Beetlejuice."

"Hey, no problem. Somebody ought to keep an eye on things around here. Just stay out of our rooms, okay? Lyds ain't feelin' great today."

"Oh, yeah, we're under strict orders not to go past your door."

"Not that we'd want to," muttered the first speaker.

"Shh!"

"Look, all I'm saying is, some things can never be unseen. And I'd just as soon not see them. Especially where he's concerned."

Chuckling quietly to himself, Beetlejuice continued his explorations, pointedly ignoring the glares of the owl figures. There were way too many owls in this place, really. But as he rounded a corner, he heard a new sound - the creaking of a door.

"Hmm... never went this way before," he said to himself, mostly for the benefit of whoever was watching. "Could be something useful up these stairs. This must be one of those towers we saw from outside."

The steep staircase had no handrail or protective measures of any kind, which might have worried him more if he weren't already levitating. The individual steps were made of stone, and their edges were jagged and unfriendly as they wound around the inside of the tower wall, leading him up to a small round room at the top. "Odd place, this." He peered around thoughtfully, noting the two small, red-curtained windows on either side of the little chamber. The room itself was empty except for one thing.

"A spinning wheel?" He floated over and circled it, studying the antique carefully. "Didn't think they made those anymore. Haven't seen one in at least a century. Wait, there's a note."

The note was impaled on the spinning wheel's spindle, and he pulled it free in order to peer closely at its message. For the sake of the viewers he read it out loud. "Spindle is not sharp. Please feel free to handle. In no way dangerous." Snorting, he cast a wry glance at the darkened ceiling, which was where he presumed the camera to be situated.

"Now, I know what you're thinkin'," he said. "You're thinkin' that I'm about to do something really, really stupid. But come on. If you can't trust a note, found in the tower of a haunted castle belonging to an evil vampire ghost and written in what kind of looks like blood, well..." He paused. "Actually, that does sound really, really stupid when I say it out loud. Unfortunately, I have my doubts that the plot is just going to let me walk away from this."

Sure enough, as Beetlejuice returned the note to its original spot, the spindle - almost as if compelled by, say, magic - caught the skin of his hand and jabbed him quite unpleasantly. "Ow! Hey, that hurt! This message lied!" He cast a derisive look at the ceiling and added, dryly, "What are the odds?"

Backing away from the spinning wheel, he looked at his injured hand. It wasn't bleeding, at least not very much, but there was definitely something not right. Of course, that could also have been the fact that the room was suddenly and rather violently tilting sideways. "Uh-oh."

As the floor rushed up to meet him, the last thing he could think to say was, simply, "Damn plot. You know I hate it."

When the warlock had promised to assist Vasile, this wasn't quite what he had in mind.

That was, of course, who had arrived in the middle of dinner, just after he'd received the extremely unsettling news that Princess Lydia was, in fact, infected with the disgusting ghoul's hellspawn-in-progress. He'd welcomed an excuse to leave the table, in truth, and seeing Oscar on his doorstep was also promising.

"All right, Your Lordship, here's what I've got," he said. The warlock brandished a vial at him. "The Endless Dream, it's called. I had to ransack a few particularly obscure spell books, but it was worth it in the end."

"Splendid. Now, what exactly do I do with it?"

"That's entirely up to you and your creativity. You just have to find a way to get it into Beetlejuice. Make him drink it, inject him, whatever works for you. Once it's in him, it'll knock him out in seconds."

"Knock him out?" Vasile repeated. "I want him eradicated."

"Look, this is the best I can do," Oscar grumbled. "The guy is the embodiment of death itself. That's more than a little challenging. But at least if he's asleep, you can get him out of the way until your seven-year itch is satisfied."

"Fine, I'll take it. I suppose it's better than nothing... barely."

"Your gratitude is overwhelming. One more thing, Your Lordship," Oscar cautioned, even as he turned to leave. "There's an antidote. No way around it. She ever finds him and kisses him, he'll wake up."

"...seriously? A kiss?"

"The kiss of a princess undoes a lot of magical messes. So does true love's kiss. Whichever one you want to call it in this situation, it'll put you right back at square one or worse." Oscar shrugged. "Don't look at me. I didn't write the rules."

So from there, Vasile had been forced to come up with a means by which to trick Beetlejuice into getting the poison (or whatever it might be called) into his system. The spinning wheel had struck him as a particularly ridiculous ruse - but it had been quite effective in a fairy story, from what he was given to understand. This would not normally have been a compelling reason to do much of anything; but when one is waging a war against a complete idiot, one must look at things in the way that a complete idiot might see them.

Nevertheless, it still came as a deep shock when the ploy actually worked.

He had still been asleep, as there was some daylight left at the time; but the castle took care of things, helpfully getting rid of the spinning wheel and replacing it with a pallet bed. The snoring body of the princess's erstwhile spouse was already sprawled on it when Vasile arrived to survey the situation.

"This Neitherworld is ridiculous," he muttered. "Logic would dictate that even this buffoon would have evaded my plan - but logic has no place here. It's not even worth conquering; let the prince keep it. I shall concern myself with the living. With this striped monstrosity out of my way, the path to Lydia is clear."

Nearly clear, at least. There was still the matter of the unborn.

He pondered the matter as he made his way to dinner. A simple accident could end things very quickly; he'd seen it often enough in his mortal days. He recalled a maid who, finding herself most inconveniently with child, had engineered a fall down the stairs. Another had made effective use of a certain herb. Regrettably, there was too much danger inherent in such plots; considering his intentions for her, Lydia was of no use to him dead.

No, much as it pained him, he would have to allow her to carry this abomination to term. He might even have to arrange for her to receive the visits of a physician, lest she be lost in childbirth. But if he played this game correctly, by the time the spawn made its appearance... its father would be of no further concern to her.