Chapter Text
Every town has one. Makeout Point, Lovers Lookout, Sexcapade Summit… call the spot what you will, it’s the place where horny teens (and adults) go for a little “alone time” with a nice view. John Body and Miranda Doe were no exceptions.
“Come on, baby,” John coaxed, pulling his girlfriend closer. “No need to be shy.”
Miranda batted her glued on eyelashes at him, pursing her lips coyly. “I’m not shy.”
He eyed her pursed lips and leaned in, his own lips puckering.
His anticipated kiss was interrupted when Miranda sat up straight and looked around. “Did you hear that?”
“Uh… hear what?”
“I thought I heard footsteps.”
John paused, listening. “I don’t hear anything.” After another beat, which he considered long enough, he again leaned down. Distracted from her worry, she leaned up. Their lips met.
And that’s when the high heel broke through the windshield and the screaming started.
~*~
Charles Deetz shook out his newspaper and sighed, flipping the page. “Terrible,” he muttered. “Just terrible.”
A photo of the local dairy society shifted and an unfortunately familiar figure shoved its way to the front of the group. “What’s the matter, Chuck?” it said, hands on its hips. “Finally acknowledging that the newspaper is an archaic relic? ”
“Like you?” Charles responded absently, to which Beetlejuice gasped, hand to his heart. Around him, the dairy people murmured, and even the cow looked astonished.
“Chuck… did you just make a joke?”
“Of course not. I have no sense of humor, ask Lydia. Now, please get out of my paper. Bad enough you interrupt the morning news with fake broadcasts, but interrupting my reading is going too far.”
“Oh come on, Chuck! I’m doing you a favor by spicing this stuff up. The news is depressing and this paper is boring. I mean, a whole article about a dairy society and not a sexy milkmaid in sight? What’s the point? Cheese isn’t that interesting, even if it did win an award— Hey! Hey! Knock that off! I’m gonna be sick!” Charles had turned his newspaper around and started shaking it.
Beetlejuice had only returned a month ago, but Charles, ever a practical man, had already figured out a few key points to dealing with the demon. The first was to use time with Lydia as leverage (or bribery), or to get her to control her insane best friend. The second was that the rules of reality were what you made of them. Turns out old cartoons were excellent learning materials in this regard, and Charles had taken a few pointers from Bugs Bunny himself. With a few more brisk shakes, he had the demon out of his paper. Unfortunately, Beetlejuice landed in his cereal, which was now probably infected and definitely inedible.
Spluttering, Beetlejuice clung to a heart healthy cheerio and glared. “Oh, you suck, Chuckles.” Then he froze and stared up at the headline.
LOCAL TEENS GRUESOMELY KILLED IN CAR BY UNKNOWN ASSAILANT!
Charles saw him staring and glanced at the front page. “Terrible,” he repeated.
“Huh?” Beetlejuice shook his head, then snapped his fingers and reappeared full sized and dripping next to Charles. He snatched the newspaper, ignoring Charles’s protests, and squinted at the picture below the headline. It was of the car and the investigating officers, but he was focused on something half hidden in the trees. After a second, his already pale face turned pasty. "No way.”
“What’s wr—” Charles broke off with a sigh as Beetlejuice disappeared, taking the newspaper with him.
You know how annoying morning alarms are? Doesn’t matter when they go off, you’re never ready for them. They’re deliberately designed to be annoying. And when they go off, they bring with them a sense of dread because you have to get ready for work or school. Nobody likes them.
Morning alarms have nothing on an over excited demon.
“ Lydia!!!”
Lydia jolted into full alertness. Her ear was ringing and her heart felt like it was about to pop out of her chest. At least being fully awake and alert gave her the necessary reflexes to grab Beetlejuice by his tie and yank. Hard.
“Beej! It’s the first day of summer vacation! I told you not to wake me up!”
Beetlejuice flailed, but all he was able to say was, “Gak!”
Calming down a bit, she loosened her hold on his tie. He pulled it out of her hands and floated up, out of easy grabbing range. “Geez, Lyds, you think I’d wake you for no good reason?”
Rubbing her eyes, she sat up and gave him her best withering glare. “Uh, yes?”
“Oh, that’s just rude,” he protested, folding his arms in a huff. “I was going to to let you sleep in today and prank you, but something more important came up.”
“More important than pranks?” Lydia forgot her ire and gave the demon her full attention. He wasn’t smiling and his wild hair was streaked with white, and that was scary. She hadn’t seen white in his hair often, the most clear memory was when his mother had appeared after the fateful wedding incident. For BJ, “hair gone white from fright” was more than a trope.
“Yeah, more important than pranks.” He ran a hand through his hair and seemed to realize the color had shifted. A quick ruffle turned it back to green. “You remember those cryptid things you were telling me about? Like, not too long ago?”
She had to strain her memory. ‘Not too long ago’ for Beetlejuice could mean yesterday or a decade back, but she thought she remembered this conversation. It had come up after a late night mockumentary with BJ and the Maitlands, and her strongest recollection was Beetlejuice swearing up and down that Bigfoot and Mothman were real and, in fact, a long term couple. “Is this about Mothman and Bigfoot? Because until you actually let me meet them, I’m going to stick with you being a liar.”
He jabbed a clawed finger at her. “I am not lying! They’re super cute together, but that’s not what I want to talk about.” He flipped around until he was sitting cross-legged on her bed. “Look, you said Winter Pines had its own cryptids, right?”
“Yeah, you and me.” Her grin was wicked. “Especially you, B-man.” That got a smile from him, but it wasn’t his usual thousand-watt grin. Worried, she put a hand on his forearm. “Hey, what’s up?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Has there been any other… cryptids around?”
“Um, not that I’ve heard, but I’m still new in town. Give me a second.” Getting up, she grabbed her laptop and came back to sit next to him. He moved in close to watch over her shoulder as she started to google his question. The results were surprising. She and Beetlejuice featured prominently, as she’d said before, and were apparently well on their way to becoming urban legends. Besides their haunted house, they had been blamed for multiple events they had nothing to do with— though BJ wished they had thought to haunt the grocery store’s frozen food section. But what really piqued his interest was the thing haunting the nearby woods. There were stories of some strange creature frequently seen dashing or flying across the road just at the edge of headlights, gruesome tales about animals found with their heads caved in, and strange footprints. There was a picture of one of the footprints, and it looked like a…
“A high heel shoe?” Lydia said, squinting at it. “It really kinda does, doesn’t it?”
“I dunno. Never really known a lady in heels who would tramp through mud,” Beetlejuice admitted. He had a bad feeling though. “Are there pictures of the creature?”
“There’s a video, but it’s really blurry and the idiots who filmed it are screaming the whole time.”
“Screams are my dreams, remember? Let’s see it.”
She clicked play and they watched the shaky phone footage, obviously shot through a windshield. The scene was a dirt road at night, tall pine trees on either side, illuminated only by headlights. The video takers were breathing hard and talking about the near miss they just had.
“Dude, there it is! Look at it!”
The image shifts jerkily and zooms in a little. There's something lurking in the bushes, small, blurry, but definitely moving with little hopping jerks. Then it’s suddenly flying at them, too fast to see with the crappy phone camera, and slams into the windshield. The screams of terror and the sharp sound of cracking glass almost blow out Lydia’s speakers. The image jerks and bounces like the worst low budget shaky-cam horror movie as the driver hits reverse. Whatever it was that hit the windshield is shaken free and vanishes from view. The video ends with the witnesses talking about what they saw, which honestly isn’t much of anything.
“Rewind a bit,” Beetlejuice said, eyes narrowed. “Can you slow it down?”
Due to the terrible quality of the video upload and the site itself, the only real way to slow down is by hitting pause almost constantly, but they make it work. After a few tries, they hit the jackpot and get the moment of impact. There’s not much to see through the spiderweb of cracks except something bright red and roundish.
“What the H-E-double hockey sticks is that?” Lydia demanded, looking at Beetlejuice. He was paler than usual, even his hair was bleaching out again. “Beej? What’s going on?”
“Um…” He swallowed hard, then ran his hands through his pale hair. “So, yeah… you remember when my mom showed up?”
“Yeah…?” That moment was branded forever in her mind as one of absolute terror.
“And how I rode a sandworm in totally epic cowboy awesomeness, and Big Sandy ate her scary ass?”
Lydia rolled her eyes at his description, but nodded. It wasn’t every day you saw a giant worm eat a demon, and it had been pretty awesome. “Yup. You were actually pretty badass for a second.”
Normally, having his ego stroked would perk Beetlejuice up, or at least earn her a smirk, but not this time. Now that was worrying. Instead, he started popping the knuckles of each finger, one after another, making her wince.
“It was pretty badass, but Big Sandy didn’t get all of her.”
Lydia flashed back to that moment.
Beetlejuice hopped off big Sandy and patted the great beast, then gently shooed it away. “Now, go on girl, get out of here, you know you’re free, go on, get out of here!” He turned to Lydia with a huge grin and waved Juno’s leg at her, protruding bone, high heel, and all. “Check it out Lydia! Now we both have dead moms!”
It had been terrifying, horrifying, and weirdly funny… which also basically described that whole week. Everything had happened so fast she’d forgotten about--- Lydia’s eyes went wide and she looked back to the frozen image on her screen.
“Are you telling me that your mom’s leg is out there terrorizing people on the backroads?”
Beetlejuice held up the newspaper with its blaring headline. “And killing horny teenagers.”
She grabbed the newspaper, skimmed the article, then rolled up the newspaper and smacked his shoulder with it.
“OW! What was that for?!” he whined, rubbing the abused spot.
“I should’ve aimed for your head, you big dope!” she yelled. “You’re a demon! Didn’t you guess something like this would happen?”
“Not really! I mean, I didn’t think about it!” he whined, scooting to the far side of the bed and out of easy reach. “I just tossed the damn thing stage right and figured it’d get eaten by a raccoon or something! Which would’ve been the ideal, then Ma wouldn’t be able to access her full powers even if she manages to re-corporate herself. And even if it didn’t get eaten, it’s here, not in the Netherworld. It shouldn’t be running around on its own! That’s cartoon level bullshit!” He tugged at his hair, which had finally gone completely white.
Distracted from her ire by a new tidbit of demonic trivia, Lydia tilted her head to one side. “Wait a sec. If I ripped your arm off, you couldn’t use all your powers?”
He blinked at her, confused by the non-sequitur. “What? No. If I can see it, I can still manipulate it, so I’d just try and strangle you with it.”
“But you just said without her leg she wouldn’t be able to access her full powers,” she argued.
“Yeah, to jump between planes!” he said, frustration making his words sharper than he meant be. Taking a breath like Delila was always telling him, he tried to explain things a little better to his breather friend. “So long as a demon is separated from a significant body part, they can’t jump between worlds. So, even if a portal to the Livingworld opened in Sandy’s stomach, Ma couldn’t go through. And don’t ask me why. It’s a plot device and there’s no arguing with that.”
“Magic is such crap. It makes no sense,” Lydia complained, flopping back onto the bed. Honestly, he couldn’t argue with her. It really was crap, especially if you didn’t have any of your own.
“Them’s the breaks, sweetheart,” he drawled in a fake mobster accent, then scowled at the newspaper. “`Specially since the rules are getting broken. I don’t have any idea how her leg is running around like a really stupid horror movie cliche!”
Lydia sighed. “You told me she’s a lot stronger than you.”
“Yeah, like a ton stronger," he grumbled. "She’s old, and age equals power in the demon game.”
“So… maybe she can do stuff regular demons can’t?”
He thought about this, then cursed. “Yeah, that checks out. She’s half eldritch too, so that makes it worse.” With a groan, he also flopped back onto the bed next to her and pressed his hands against his eyes. “This is so unfair! She’s supposed to be part way through a digestive tract right now! I thought I finally beat that bitch, and she’s still fucking up my life! Death! Whatever!”
Lydia glanced over at him, then moved so she could rest her head on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Beej. We’ll figure this out, together.” She smiled. “There’s no way we can lose. Especially not against a disembodied leg.”
He lowered his hands to look back at her, then smiled, hair turning green again. “Yeah, you’re right. I mean, this is like Payback the Sequel!” His voice echoed dramatically, then went back to normal. “You’ll help me?”
“I already said I would, dumbass.” Even though the words were sarcastic, her tone held nothing but affection.
“Thanks, scarecrow.”
~*~
Lydia was beginning to regret her decision to help hunt down the murder leg.
No, that was a lie. She was way past beginning to and all the way into simple regret. Tramping around in the backwoods at night searching for a psycho demon leg was not as much fun as she’d thought it would be. For starters, Lydia hadn’t realized how dark it would be. Don’t laugh. In the modern world, humans have forgotten what real dark means, and Lydia realized now she was no exception. She’d grown up in New York, the city that never sleeps. Darkness there was more metaphorical than literal. Moving to rural Connecticut had been an eye opener to a big city girl. Who knew there were so many stars in the sky? But the house was close to the small town and there was still faint ambient light pollution. Away from any man made lights, under a thick tree canopy, and with a bare half moon, it got DARK.
Like, dark as fuck.
Like can’t-see-two-feet-in-front-of-you dark. And that made simple things like walking complicated. Even her flashlight didn’t really help, except to attract bugs.
The brush was thick and scratchy, spiderwebs were awesome until you ran into them, she’d almost lost her shoes to a muddy spot, had fallen into a creek, and Beetlejuice was, by his very nature, unable to resist giving her jumpscares. She gave her companion’s back a dirty look, tightening her grip on the back of his coat. It was so unbelievably unfair. He could see in the dark and was having no problem. Heck, he was in his element out here in the dark, spooky forest. And, to compound insult to injury, the mosquitoes that thought she was mana fallen from heaven for their convenience left him completely alone!
“Beej, are you sure we’re in the right place?” she asked tiredly as she slapped yet another bloodsucker. Ugh, she could feel it splatter across her skin.
He glanced over his shoulder at her and gave her a smile big enough to see even in the gloom. She narrowed her eyes at him, then flicked her flashlight on so it got him right in the face.
“Augh! Lydia!”
“I know that smile! You have no idea where we are, do you?”
He stopped and turned to face her. This time, she kept the light out of his eyes, but she didn’t turn it off. “No, I don’t, but I know how to get back to the house. That’s all that matters. I figure if we run around and make good targets of ourselves, then we’re bound to attract its attention.”
“Jeez, why don’t we just drape ourselves with raw meat while we're at it?” she asked, rolling her eyes. He looked down at her uncertainly.
“I mean, if you think it will help…”
She facepalmed and ended up squishing another mosquito. Ew. “Maybe we should go look at the crime scene instead. They say the villain always returns to the scene of the crime, right?”
“Do they?” Beetlejuice rubbed his chin, then smiled. “I guess I did come back to the house after I tried to kill all you guys that one time.”
She gave him a flat look and shone the light in his eyes again. “Yeah. You’re a textbook villain, Beej. Can we go?”
“I’m not sure teleporting while I’m blind is a good idea, Lyds!” he shot back, rubbing his eyes furiously.
“Don’t be such a baby.”
“I’m not a baby. I have sensitive eyes,” he muttered, pulling her into a hug. The hug, while nice, was for practical purposes this time around. He was always a little worried about losing her when jumping between locations.
Teleporting was not her favorite. It felt a little like jumping inside an elevator. There was a feeling of weightlessness, then the ground rushing up to slam into your feet, rather than you falling down. Yes, it was unnerving, but extremely useful. Beetlejuice had dropped them right at the edge of the crime tape.
Thanks to the light from the town below them and her flashlight, she could see again. However, there wasn’t much left of the scene. The bodies were gone, the car removed, and the crime techs were obviously finished, leaving behind little flags as markers where evidence had been gathered. Except for the tape, flags, and glitter of broken glass as her flashlight ran over them, there was nothing. Those little flags reminded her of something though. “Can you make sure we don’t mess up any of the evidence things? Or leave any evidence? I don’t want them thinking we were the ones who killed those guys.”
“I don’t have fingerprints, so you’d be the one on the hook,” he pointed out and she stared at him.
“You don’t have fingerprints?”
“Uh, no? I’m a demon, hello?” Beetlejuice waved his hands in front of her face and she saw he really didn’t have any. Chalk that up to one more weirdness for the B-man. “And I don’t have to worry about footprints either.” He was smug as he lifted off the ground a few inches, then leaned back to lounge on air.
“Fine, can you make sure I don’t, or do I have jump up and use you like a paddleboard? Don’t!” She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t even go there. I know you’re about to make a dirty joke, I can see the pervert thoughts in your brain.”
He closed his mouth with a snap. “No you can’t!”
“Can too!”
“Can not!”
“Can too! They float around your head like little nasty clouds." Her eyes narrowed as she raked him with a scathing glare. "Like a pervert Pigpen from Charlie Brown.”
Beetlejuice looked around him suspiciously, as if trying to see the aforementioned clouds, then shrugged and put his hands behind his head. “They must be there all the time then.”
“At least you admit it, you weirdo. Now, can you fix it so I don’t go to prison for murder?”
His smile had a bit of a bite to it and Lydia realized what she’d just said. It’d been more than two months; they’d made up before he left and hashed things out when he returned a month later, but, well… being murdered was hard to get over. She didn’t blame him for still having mixed feelings. She had them too, along with a fair share of nightmares. “Sorry,” she said, voice quiet.
“Hey, no problem, babes.” He snapped his fingers and she found herself floating an inch off the ground. “I can’t let my bestie go to juvie. Not without me, anyway.”
“Thanks, Beej.”
He leaned over to ruffle her hair. “Anything for you, Scarecrow. Now come on, let’s see what there is to see, huh?” He pointed across the open space. “That’s where I saw the leg in the newspaper picture.”
They tramped across the crime scene, Lydia looking all around. She’d read the article and honestly expected more blood, but most of it had probably stayed in the car. There was glass everywhere though, so she was glad for her new floating skills. They got to the spot and spent time poking around the bushes. After ten or so minutes of searching, Lydia found the print. “Beej! Come look at this!” The shoe print was deep, with the front end much deeper than the back. She thought back to the research she’d done during her detective phase. “Looks like it was running, or maybe jumping?” She rubbed her ear thoughtfully and slapped the mosquito she found sucking her blood. “I guess all it can do is hop around like a pogo stick.”
Beetlejuice thought about it, then snickered. “Yeah, I guess so. Man, bet that looks stupid.” They took a moment imagining it and giggling. It felt good to laugh. Then Lydia glanced back to the crime scene and stopped giggling. “Beetlejuice! Look!”
“Watch the name, Lyds! Wha— holy moly.” He let out a cackle and his biggest, sharpest grin. “Looks like we got ourselves some eyewitnesses!”
Standing in the middle of the crime scene were two ghosts.