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Lydia isn’t much for dating. Despite the best intentions of her parents, all four of them, encouraging her to go out and meet someone nice, she never does. She says that she is alone, and that she prefers it that way. Besides, Winter River is a small town, not like New York City where the anonymity of romantic mishaps and mistakes are forgotten in a single night by the tall cold and metallic witnesses that are the skyscrapers or the faceless crowds that clog the streets. The last thing Lydia wants to do is date someone and hear her reputation dragged through the mud because she wouldn’t put out. She’d be rumored to have anyways. That loose city girl, tarnishing the name of their humble, good old fashioned values town. By the same snooty old biddies who’d no doubt taken it up the ass when fooling around with their own high school sweethearts years before.
But the Maitlands knew a lot about Winter River. They knew who the biggest gossips were, knew what they were liable to do with even the smallest scraps of information. The fact that they’d gotten married right out of high school had been enough to set tongues wagging, that Adam was being forced to marry her because she couldn’t keep her legs closed like a good girl. Despite the fact that Barbara Maitland was one of the most wholesome women in life or out of it. And forget what had happened to Adam’s own mother, the woman who had left Winter River for college and returned home four years later with a worthless degree and a baby in tow. Needless to say without a wedding ring on her finger. No one except the most desperate of business owners had been willing to offer her a job, and Adam had thus grown up under the watchful, opinionated, and society-minded eye of his matriarchal grandmother. Any rebellion his mother might have had in her was sorely beaten out by the time she’d been forcibly returned to her childhood house on the hill. And still the biddies had talked.
So Lydia didn’t date anyone. And she was quite content with that. At least, that was how it all appeared on the surface. But like with all situations, there was more to it than first appeared. They didn’t seem to notice the perpetual dark circles and constant exhaustion that marked her. And considering how delicate and pale she was it really should have been obvious. But Lydia was good at explaining things away. Late nights doing assignments, developing photos for her portfolio. She wanted to get into photography professionally, so it was important to constantly be learning and updating her work. She wore makeup regularly so smudges could always be attributed to long nights and bleary eyes rubbed without a second thought as to the products being smeared across the skin. But that wasn’t the case. Because Lydia, had a secret.
Late at night, when the house was quiet and the moon was full, Lydia would rise from her bed, and dress. Flowing inky materials that allowed her to become one with the night, a simple shadow streaking across the ground as she ran through the deserted roads of Winter River. Gossip had started of a wraith like lady who wandered the streets at these hours, but no one truly knew it was Lydia Deetz, with an appointment to keep. There were nights where she simply couldn’t make it, where inclement weather kept her homebound and longing for the moonlit nights. Where silver light would gleam off the polished and decaying headstones in the Winter River Cemetery. Where she would fly.
But it was not simply her and the dearly departed dead in that necropolis. The bodies remained, the spirits had long since vacated. But she was never alone. He would be there, lurking in the darkness, waiting for her call. Their marriage may have freed him from the jurisdiction of the dead, but even he had his limits. Unless she called for him, he could only appear at the house of his demise, or in the graveyards. And after their first reunion Lydia had forbade him from visiting her at home. Not because she was ashamed of him, but rather because it was too much a headache to deal with everyone else’s disapproval of their being together. And she liked keeping him as her little secret, her secret demon, her secret lover, hers and hers alone. The truth was that Lydia was selfish, and greedy. She’d lost her mother to death and oblivion, her father to shared partnership, no way was she going to share her husband with anyone.
They’d made a quaint little nest for themselves out in one of the crypts so old the family buried there had all died out. Having a partner with reality warping abilities really came in handy as with his aid and her vision, the place became somewhat livable. At the very least, it had a couple of the creature comforts of home. A couch, a flat screen, some kitchen appliances so that she might keep herself alive, and most importantly; a bed. Sometimes they would settle in and watch old black and white horror films, munching on popcorn and crypt insects respectively, sometimes there would be nothing they wanted more than to lose themselves in each other, the passing hours almost an idle thought until she needed to return for the morning. But on nights like this, when the moon was high and full in the sky, they’d meet in the graveyard.
Lydia was in her blackest dress, her choppy hair now barely touching her shoulders. She felt like a shadow, a shade, something not of the living world. Quite honestly she believed she hadn’t been for a long, long time. But now was not the time for introspection, it was the time for games. He loved to play this with her, to make her search the various plots and headstones, attempt to find him. It was a part of his desire to be wanted, to make her work and prove he was no idle romp in grave dirt. There was something there beyond the hammy performance and fight with Juno, the idea of her being his mother she still didn’t quite buy. Nor did she buy the idea of parental abandonment he had so clearly been using to sell her on pity, but he never offered and she never asked. Secretly she was certain he just loved the attention, loved the idea that someone wanted him, and he wanted to make her want him.
The swirling, winding paths of the graveyard were like a maze in and of themselves. Were it not for the paved roading she was certain one might lose themselves in the land of the dead and perhaps only barely make it out alive. But at last she found him. The centermost sanctum, with the moon glowing against gleaming marble and sinking into rough hewn stone that had faded with age. On one of the older headstones she found a grinning skull, a slight acknowledgement she had accomplished her task. In the dim light of the moon all was revealed in cold sterility. She looked like a mistress of the dark, and her lover was there, sitting atop Barbara and Adam’s gravestones nonetheless. Filing at his jagged, filthy nails like he had all the time in the world. Well, he was dead, technically he did. But they, they only had the night.
She stood there, panting from her wild search through the cemetery. Her chest was heaving as she took in sweet breath after breath, a testament to how alive she was all the while his own breast remained noticeably still. Lydia set a hand to her decolletage to slow her heart, staring at him as she licked her lips. Perhaps it might have been taken as an invitation for more amorous activities, but on a night like this they both knew what they wanted to do. Slowly Beetlejuice set his grimy boots back to the earth, putting away the file as he stretched to his full height. He took one step close, then two, and held out a hand,
“Shall we?” he asked, voice a rough grumble in the evening quiet. Breaking the silence of the dead.
Lydia’s head cocked to the side as she smiled at him. She offered no words in response, only her hand for him to take. He led her out to a small clear patch of grass, and with a wink and a nod music echoed around the graveyard. What she refused to tell anyone was that as a child she had been enamored with the black swan from swan lake, and had taken ballet lessons out of a desire to emulate her. The result had left her with an incredibly flexible body that he manipulated like a puppet on strings. High kicks, deep lunges, twining her around him like she was malleable fabric he was draping over himself. Music fueled their movements, dark and sensual and terrifying, yet romantic. A tune that spoke of lust, of madness, of desire and obsession. A song that, should anyone else attempt to stumble upon them that night, no one else would hear. And as a matter of fact, a sight that no one else would see either. When Lydia danced with him, she was no longer among the living, she was as dead as any one of the poor souls entombed in their crypts or deep below the earth.
And this was a death she chose. One she embraced. The death of her beloved, the breaking of the boundary. Queen of the damned, or queen of the dead. Was there truly a distinction any more? Lydia didn’t know, nor could she be particularly bothered to care. The nights were her time, their time, not a time for thoughts. Thoughts of morality, of right and wrong, black and white; those belonged to the daylight, to the righteous, to the living . And Lydia, in her heart of hearts, had abandoned them long ago. Sure; she still possessed a pulse, still breathed the air, felt the pain of heat and cold, the sharp sting of of a knife’s blade, the dull throbbing pain and seeping warmth of being shot -not that she’d experienced any of those latter things. Sure, she had promised to find the worth in living, but her heart… her heart belonged to the dead. More specifically, her heart belonged to him. The demon of stripes, snd shadows, snakes, and death. A murderer, a psychopath, a monster; but her monster all the same.
They would dance and dance until the sun would rise; him never tiring and her wanting to ache. Limbs stretched sore with exertion and delight, bare skin chilled with the exposure to the evening air far away from the sun’s warmth, eyes tired and darkened, and still he would make her dance on. Until the first rays of dawn could be seen stretching across the horizon. And then she would collapse into his arms, as weightless as a trembling leaf falling from an autumn tree. Her last conscious thoughts would be that it was his petty revenge, that Beetlejuice would in fact, one of these days, dance her to death. And then, when next she would wake it would be to her alarm clock, on her nightstand, in her room, in that house on the hill. Far, far, far from the Winter River Cemetery. Though she was one of the privileged few allowed to see what lay beyond the pale shade of mortality, past it and beyond the veneer of death, it was still sometimes hard to believe any of what she would experience at night was more than a simple dream, longing for her dearly departed husband, gone by her own hand.
Sometimes he left a trinket for her. A dying rose, an insect carcass, a photo of her sleeping face taken with her Polaroid, one she knew no one else would try to handle. It reassured her, even as her secret consumed more and more of her. But today, today was Saturday. So the fact that the alarm even went off was sign enough that he had been here as Lydia would never set her alarm on a Friday night. But Beetlejuice, despite not understanding time, would always ensure it was set before his own departure into the aether to make sure Lydia was kept out of trouble. Though the gesture was sweet -something she would never say to him out loud- at present moment the shrill sound was nothing more than annoying. With a well deserved smack, Lydia curled herself up into a ball, drawing the blankets over herself, and settled back down to rest.
As much as she adored reality, there were times when she preferred dreams more. No limbs to be made sore, no skin to grow chilly from her husband’s lack of warmth, and best of all; no dawn to part them until the next evening. Lydia’s dreams were a land of eternal night, where they would meet in their crypt and never tire of one another.
“Let me back in the house,” he would command her.
But Lydia would shake her head, “I do not wish to share you with them,” would always be her answer.
“As if I would ever let them take you away from me,” was his rebuttal, “Or me away from you,”
“I know that,” she would respond, and then look away, unable to meet his eyes, as if ashamed to admit her own human weakness, “But I’m…”
“Afraid?”
And she would turn her head back to her, unable to answer with words but her eyes would say it all. And Beetlejuice would chuckle,
“Would you believe me if I told you that was my fear too?”
“I can’t believe you would be afraid of anything,” Lydia told him, ‘You revel in fear, you know it inside and out,”
“I never had anything to fear before,” he said, “Because I didn’t have anything I cared about losing,”
And then he would cup her cheek and tilt her chin up to his, “You are mine, Lydia,” he intoned, “As I am yours, and no one will ever break that bond.”
“Not even death?”
And he would smile, a tired quirk of his lips that attempted to be like one of his trademark cocky smirks, a staple that would assure her everything was alright. But perhaps he was with her, and only because he was with her alone, he was a lot more sincere and honest than he would ever usually be,
“Not even then, scarecrow,” he told her, kissing her at the crown of her head, “You’re stuck with me forever babes, get used to it.”
“How will I ever survive,” Lydia quipped dryly.
“My own ball and chain,” he joked, “And to prove it, I left ya a l’il gift,”
“Where?”
And then he smiled at her, a smile of mischief and mayhem, “Wake up and see,”
When she opened her eyes again, the sun was well into the sky. She still felt sore, from the dance he had done with her. But he had told her he’d left her something. A scan around her room revealed nothing new though. Until that was, she shifted her legs beneath the covers. That was when she felt something. And when she ripped off the sheets to see what it was Lydia almost couldn’t believe her eyes. Circled round her leg was a delicate metal chain. An anklet, with a gem-inlaid beetle as its charm. A chain, his ball and chain. She could have killed him for the joke if he wasn’t already dead,
“Beetlejuice,” she hissed under her breath. But the more she examined it the more beautiful it became to her. Even though the setup had been a terrible joke, the thought clearly put into it meant there was a degree of genuity and seriousness to it one would never associate with him, Lydia sighed fondly,
“Beetlejuice,” she said again, and it wasn’t clear if she knew she’d said it twice as she said it. But when a slight breeze stirred the tufts of her hair despite her window being closed, she knew he was waiting, perhaps shaking with unbridled anticipation. Though they both loved the night, there was always something to be said for companionship during the day. And so, with prickles of awareness running down her spine she set him free, not with a bang, but a final, whispered,
“Beetlejuice,”