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“Well, I think that’s everything arranged now! What do you think, Lydia? Everything’s where you want it?”
Lydia Deetz looked around her new room and at the position of her bed, her dresser, her vanity, and her desk. “Yeah, Mom, it’s fine,” she said softly.
“Ah, wonderful!” Delia adjusted the mirror on Lydia’s vanity one more time before turning to her daughter. “Then we’ll leave you to unpacking your things! Unless you need some help with that?”
Lydia shook her head. “I can handle it. You two can go and work on whatever you need to unpack. Thanks for helping with my room.”
“Let us know if you need help with anything else, pumpkin,” Charles said as Delia whisked him out of the room, leaving their daughter alone.
Once her parents were gone, Lydia sighed, not bothering to even try to fake a smile anymore. Instead of turning to her boxes of belongings to unpack, she moved to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the room, looking out at the countryside below.
Maybe she could be happy here. Maybe. At the very least, it had to be better than before, right?
At least it was quieter here… of course, anything would seem quiet compared to the hustle and chaos that was living in New York City. A city that, the livelier it became, the deader Lydia felt inside, day after day, night after night. She had been surprised to feel relief when her father had told her that he’d gotten a new job in a small Connecticut town—not so much surprised at being relieved by the news, but more surprised that she could actually feel relief at all. Depression and despair had seemed to be her modus operandi for the past few years. Even watching old horror movies couldn’t give her the joy they had in the past.
And, well, how could they? Her love of all things creepy and macabre was what made her an outcast in the first place. No one at school had ever wanted to talk to her. Sometimes she’d get a classmate who would be polite enough to her for a few weeks and give Lydia false hope, but in the end the classmate would always end up getting weirded out by her and keep their distance. And trying to act like she was interested in the same things as her classmates was hollow and false and didn’t make Lydia feel any better, either. Nor did it fool any of her peers.
Perhaps it was stupid of her to hope that she could find a friend here, starting over in a new place, but she tried to keep even the tiniest flicker of optimism alight in her heart. And if nothing else, she thought as she looked out her window, she had a much nicer view than she had from their old Manhattan condo. Exploring the woods behind the house and taking nature photography was an intriguing idea, one that gave her more joy than anything else had for a good, long while.
Lydia turned away from the window and towards the various boxes stacked near her vanity. Which one had she packed her camera in? The one labeled “toys”? Probably not. Maybe the one labeled “personal belongings”?
She moved her arm to pull open the top of the box, but then stopped, suddenly.
Had she heard something?
Surprised, her eyes darted around the room, although she didn’t see anything.
But she still… felt something.
Was this house haunted?
Once again, she did her best to quash her quickly rising optimism. Logically she knew she was just being hopeful. For all the research she’d done, she’d never actually seen a ghost or any proof of their existence at all. As much as she wanted ghosts to be real, she had to accept that they likely didn’t exist, and her weird feeling that she was being watched was just that, a feeling, nothing more.
She thought she saw something moving in her vanity mirror.
Intrigued, she pushed her moving box aside and cautiously stepped closer to the mirror. If there was a ghost there, she didn’t want to scare it. And she nearly laughed out loud at her worry about herself scaring a ghost.
There didn’t seem to be anything… anyone… there.
Lydia was not convinced.
She took another careful step towards her mirror, her brow furrowed in concentration.
She could swear that the glass in her mirror rippled the tiniest bit.
“Is… someone there?” she called out, tentatively.
There was no answer… for about two seconds.
And then, suddenly, her mirror was filled with the image of a specter pulling a horrific face at her.
Lydia jumped back from surprise, but a second later the smile that had been hiding inside of her for all these years broke through. “Yes! I knew it! This house is haunted!”
The ghost in her mirror seemed to freeze in place for a moment or two, before shrinking down with a disappointed, confused look. “Okay, that’s not the reaction I was counting on,” he said in a raspy voice.
“I can’t believe it! A real live ghost! —Okay, maybe the ‘live’ part isn’t accurate—” Lydia quickly pressed herself against her mirror in such a way that her eyeballs would have slammed against the ghost’s, if he wasn’t stuck in her mirror and if he hadn’t automatically recoiled against her the second she did so. “Are you haunting this house? Did you die here? Are you a restless spirit? Are you—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone, kid!”
Lydia pulled away and finally got her first good look at the spirit that was haunting her room. He didn’t really look like a spirit at all, she had to admit. He looked more like a zombie. He had pallid skin and stingy light hair and sunken eyes that still had a lively spark to them.
He was also, quite literally, holding a phone, and Lydia couldn’t help but laugh at the sight.
“You think this is funny?” he demanded of her.
“Well, yes,” Lydia admitted, trying and failing to stifle her giggles.
“Wow… a breather with good taste!” the specter declared approvingly.
“I can’t believe I’m actually meeting a ghost.” Lydia pressed herself against the mirror again, and the specter only backed away a little bit this time. “Are you trapped? Is there something about this house that has kept you a prisoner? Or my mirror? Although if it was my mirror, where were you before I moved here?”
“Not your mirror,” the ghost said, “nor this house. But yes, I am trapped. Lamentably, I am unable to roam the mortal coil that you inhabit.” His voice grew more dramatic with this, and he flung his arm over his face, a dramatic thunderbolt striking behind him.
Lydia giggled again. Part of her felt bad for laughing if he was actually being sincere, but it was hard to take seriously a ghost who was wearing a pin-striped suit and talking so obviously melodramatically.
“You wound me!” the ghost replied, a dagger running through his (presumably already dead) body.
Lydia did her best to get her laughter under control. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
“Absolutely.” The ghost leered at her. “And it’s so easy. All you have to do is say my name three times, and I’m free!”
“That sounds easy enough,” said Lydia amiably. “What’s your name?”
“Yeah, there’s the rub. I can’t tell you.” The ghost looked annoyed at this. “One of those stupid rules that I can’t break… and believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Well, maybe I could guess,” said Lydia, although she had to admit that he didn’t look like a John, or a Steven, or a Mitchell, or really any other name she could think of.
“And I can help you!” The specter pulled a bug out of his jacket. “What do you call this?”
Lydia blinked in confusion. “Uh, a bug?”
“Oh, we have a real Einstein here! But what kind of bug?”
Lydie peered a little closer. “A cockroach?”
“Roaches are delicious, but come on. This is a little shinier than a roach.”
Lydia squinted her eyes to get a better look at the bug. She liked spiders, true, but her knowledge of actual insects was sorely lacking. “Some kind of beetle?” she guessed.
The ghost snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”
“Your name is Beetle?” Lydia asked, confused.
“That’s the first half,” the ghost said. He tossed the beetle in his mouth and crunched on it like a stick of chewing gum. “So for the second half, uh, let’s see… I know. What do you mortals like to drink with breakfast?”
Lydia blinked, trying to think. “Uh, milk?”
The ghost groaned, pressing his face into his palm.
“Is your name Beetle-milk?”
“No, Neitherworld help us, that’s the worst name I’ve ever heard…”
“Coffee? My parents drink coffee in the morning.”
“For crying out loud, no!” The ghost pulled at his hair in frustration. “Look, when you, uh, squeeze fruits and stuff, that’s what comes out… right? I dunno, I don’t drink the stuff myself.”
Lydia’s eyes brightened. “Oh, do you mean juice?”
Excited, the ghost snapped his fingers again. “Yes! That’s it! Now put them both together!”
Lydia looked at the ghost, trying the name out with hesitation. “Beetlejuice?”
“YES! Now say it two more times!”
Lydia had to admit, he really did look like a Beetlejuice.
“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”
With a mad cackle, Beetlejuice easily slipped out of Lydia’s mirror. He continued to laugh maniacally while floating in the air, which confused Lydia a bit since it seemed like he had two perfectly good legs. Beetlejuice seemed to have completely forgotten about Lydia, however. “It’s showtime!” he proclaimed, jubilantly and menacingly, and he zipped straight out of Lydia’s room, still cackling with glee.
Lydia gasped. “Wait! Wait!” He was going to find her parents and haunt them, she was certain of it. What had she done?! In her joy at being in a haunted house she had completely failed to acknowledge that if her parents, her dad especially, learned of the ghost’s presence, they’d pack right up and move right back to the city, back to where Lydia had been so miserable she had honestly thought she’d forgotten how to be happy until this moment.
That couldn’t happen. She couldn’t let Beetlejuice make that happen! But how to stop him?
In her panic, and with no other ideas, she could only hope that the method to bring him out also worked in reverse. “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!” she screamed.
There was a weird silence for a few moments.
And then Beetlejuice pressed his hands up against the inside of the mirror, looking laughably pouty. “Ha ha, very funny, kid. Now let me back out.”
“No,” Lydia said firmly. “Sorry, but I can’t let you scare my parents. If they saw you, they’d move us back to New York City, and I never want to go back there.”
“I’m a ghost, babes—scarin’ people is kinda my thing, know what I mean?
“Well, you need to find someone else to haunt.” She brightened a little bit with an idea. “You could haunt me! I’ll even pretend to be scared, if it’s that important to you.”
Beetlejuice, completely gobsmacked, stared at her for a few seconds. “Wow, you’re weird,” he finally said.
Lydia sighed unhappily. “I know… I must be even weirder than I thought, if even a ghost thinks I’m weird…”
“Hey, nothin’ wrong with being weird,” Beetlejuice said quickly. “I’m just more used to the guys and ghouls I hang out with being weird, not you mortals out here in the Outerworld.”
Lydia sighed again. “Wish we could trade places,” she murmured without thinking.
“No you don’t.” Beetlejuice looked oddly sincere with this statement, and Lydia leaned forward a bit in surprise. “Listen,” Beetlejuice continued, “how’s about a deal? You let me out and let me have some fun in the land of the living, and then I can show you around my digs for a bit?”
Lydia drew in her breath. An actual offer to visit the afterlife? This was like Christmas morning to her! But… unfortunately… the cost was too great. “I would love to, Beetlejuice, but I really can’t take the chance of you haunting my parents.”
Beetlejuice rolled his eyes slightly. “Look, I promise to not haunt your parents, alright?”
Lydia glared at him. “Cross your heart and hope to die?”
Beetlejuice gave her a disbelieving look. “Seriously?”
“Oh.” Lydia drew her hands to her mouth. “Sorry. Well… cross your heart, at least?”
“Bold of you to assume I have a heart.” Beetlejuice abruptly flung open his ribcage like a door with the apparent intention to prove its nonexistence, but noticing something, he gave a small “what?” of surprise and yanked something from his left side. Lydia tried to get a closer look. It was very small, withered, and a ghastly pale green-gray color, but it was, in fact, there. “Huh. Whaddaya know.” Beetlejuice seemed even more surprised by this turn of events than Lydia was. “You assume correctly, then!” he said to Lydia.
“Alright, cross it, then.”
Beetlejuice sighed in annoyance, but with his pathetically tiny heart still in his outstretched left hand, he moved his right hand and made a crossing motion over it.
And this gave Lydia a good look to be able to see both his hands and acknowledge that he wasn’t crossing any fingers. For all she knew he was crossing his toes, but, well, if he misbehaved she knew exactly how to send him back. Satisfied then, she nodded and closed her eyes. “Beetlejuice… Beetlejuice… BEETLEJUICE!”
“Jeez, no need for the theatrics,” Beetlejuice muttered as he slipped out of Lydia’s mirror once more and placed his heart back in his ribcage.
“I just let a ghost loose; I’d say that’s pretty theatrical.” She was now finally getting to see all of Beetlejuice, and yes, he looked more like a zombie than a stereotypical ghost. He wasn’t even see-through. “How come you’re not transparent?” Abruptly, she reached up and touched his arm, startling him a bit. “You’re solid!”
“Lay off the merchandise, babes, I ain’t a petting zoo!” Beetlejuice snapped at her.
“Sorry!” Lydia pulled her hand away in embarrassment. “But you just have to understand, I’ve never met a ghost before, and you’re so different from what I thought a ghost would be… can you change form? Is this your natural form? And how did you die? What’s it like to die? Is there an afterworld, or are you just trapped in the world of the living? Do you haunt houses because you have unfinished business? Oh, wait, I was supposed to act scared!” Quickly, Lydia flung an arm over her forehead, trying to make her eyes pop out as much as she could. “Aaahh, a ghost!” she said in a sort of whisper-yell, as she wanted to act scared yet she didn’t want to alert her parents to the strange goings-on in her room. She let out another soft, wordless yelp of terror and let herself artfully and daintily fall to the ground in a heap, and closed her eyes in a pretend faint.
She lay very still for a few seconds, before finally creaking an eyelid open to see Beetlejuice’s reaction.
He was giving her a funny look, actually standing on her floor now with both hands on his hips and an eyebrow raised in her direction. “Well, I’ve seen better acting, but I’ve seen worse too,” he finally said.
“Scale of one to ten?” Lydia prompted.
Beetlejuice thought for a moment. “Seven.”
Lydia scoffed, disappointed.
“Seven and a half. That’s my final offer.”
“Guess I’ll just have to practice more.” Lydia jumped back to her feet, prepared to enact another show of fright—
—but Beetlejuice apparently wanted to give her a stimulus this time. Without warning he was suddenly towering over her, filling the room, letting out a horrid screech, his eyeballs popping out of their sockets like champagne corks and his hair turning into horrid, hissing snakes.
And Lydia, to be sure, jumped back in surprise at this display, but instead of focusing on his size or his snake-hair or anything like that, she instead followed his eyes, as they fell back down on the floor and clinked together like billiard balls.
And, once again, she laughed.
Beetlejuice deflated. Literally. A loud, obnoxious squeak of air came out from him as he slowly crumpled into a flaccid puddle that only sort of resembled his original shape, while his snake-hair all slithered away despondently.
“Sorry,” Lydia said, still unable to stop giggling. “I’m not that easy to scare.”
“For real.” Beetlejuice awkwardly flung his arm out to the side and grabbed his eyeballs after a few tries and popped them back into their sockets. He then stuck a thumb in his mouth, blew, and inflated himself back to his original form. “I must be losin’ my touch if I can’t even scare a little kid…”
Annoyed, Lydia put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Excuse me, I am not a little kid! I’m eleven and a half years old! I’ll be twelve in December!”
“Ohhh, my mistake, old lady comin’ through!” Beetlejuice was suddenly all hunched over and holding a walker, his hair wound up in a stereotypically old-lady-bun, but he was still giving her a cheeky smile, and Lydia couldn’t help but smile too. Even though they’d just met, even though she wasn’t reacting the way he was hoping, even though he wasn’t technically alive, it was nice to know that he was just teasing her and didn’t actually hate her.
The thought that she’d finally met someone who not only didn’t hate her or scorn her, but even seemed to like her, made her heart feel so light and happy that she was afraid it might break right out of her ribcage too and float away. After all those years of it weighing heavy and aching inside her chest, she barely even recognized the feeling. All she could do was think that her entire life had been leading up to this day, this moment. There was finally a bright spot in her life, a bright spot brought on by a dead guy.
“Well,” Beetlejuice said with an accepting shrug, back once again to his regular form, “I guess if I can’t make you scream, makin’ you laugh is the next best thing! What’s your name, anyway?”
“Lydia.”
“Lydia, huh? Definite old lady name.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Says the old, dead guy.”
“Exactly; I know my stuff!” Beetlejuice held out his hand to her invitingly. “So then, Lydia, ready to find out if this’ll work?”
“If what will work?”
“I promised to take you to the Neitherworld, didn’t I? Only I have no idea if the living can even visit or not. But I have an idea how it might work!”
“Do I have to hold your hand for it?”
“Yeah, unless you can think of anything better.” Beetlejuice shrugged apologetically. “I figure if you say my name three times and send me back while you’re holding onto me, you’ll get brought right back with me! And if it doesn’t work, well then, I’ll be out of your hair and won’t bother you again since I can’t keep up my half of the deal.”
“Oh, don’t say that! If it doesn’t work, we can try something else!” Granted, Lydia had no idea how this was supposed to work either. But Beetlejuice’s option did seem like a logical one. She reached out and grasped his hand fully. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to feel—maybe something cold and clammy, but he wasn’t that. Nor was he warm, to be fair. He felt like… a mannequin. A soft, unassuming mannequin. Touching him wasn’t unpleasant in the slightest.
Lydia took a deep breath. “Okay… here goes.” She turned to make a quick peek at Beetlejuice. “Can I be theatrical?”
“You’re the one behind the wheel here, Lyds,” Beetlejuice reminded her with a smirk.
“Oh, good.” Lydia smiled more fully. “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, BEETLEJUICE!”
…
The sensation was like being yanked through a vortex.
Granted, Lydia had never been yanked through a vortex before, so she had no frame of reference and no way of knowing if this assessment was an accurate one. But the instant the third utterance of “Beetlejuice” left her lips, her shoulders seemed to be seized by an unknown force and pulled violently through a whizzing background of dark colors and shapes, the rest of her body flapping along behind like a windsock. And just as soon as she felt the sensation, it was suddenly over—Lydia was standing on the floor in an unknown room, in an unknown house, Beetlejuice at her side and still grasping her hand. For half a second, that is. “Hey, look at that! It worked! Just hope I can get you back from here, of course…”
“Get me back?!” Lydia repeated disbelievingly. “Don’t say that when I just got here! Oh my gosh, I’m really here! I’m getting a glimpse of the afterlife!”
“Not just a glimpse, but a whole taste! Welcome to the Neitherworld, babes—people are dyin’ to get in here!” Beetlejuice cackled maniacly at his own joke.
“The Neitherworld, huh?” Lydia looked around the room. It looked suspiciously like a family room that one could find in the land of the living… that is, a very dark and dingy living room, with a misshapen couch unlike any she’d ever seen before, facing a particularly boxy looking TV. The doors had bones for handlebars, and the fireplace had a particularly skull-like shape that Lydia was envious of. She glanced back at Beetlejuice. “Is this your house?”
“Yep! Welcome to BJ’s Roadhouse.” Beetlejuice gave Lydia a surprised once-over. “Huh, weird, bringing you here gave you a change of clothes.” He pulled the sleeve of his suit and sulked a bit. “No new clothes for me? I see how it is…”
Lydia looked down at her body and gasped. She was wearing a long red robe that fit her almost like a spiderweb. “Oh, wow! Deadly vu! I look like a horror queen!” She flung her arms out and felt it follow her arms, creating a triangle-shape with the garment. “Do you think I’ll be able to take this back home with me?”
“Don’t ask me, I don’t make the rules,” shrugged Beetlejuice.
They were suddenly interrupted by a loud knocking at the front door. “Bee-atlejuice, you ‘ave gone too far zis time!” said a voice, oddly sporting a thick French accent.
“I have?” Beetlejuice asked, surprised. “Uh, I mean, go away! No one’s home!”
“We can hear ya in there, Beetlejuice!” came another voice, a female one this time, who sounded like she was from Joisey. “And we’re tired of your pranks!”
Lydia threw Beetlejuice a questioning glare. “What did you do?” she asked.
“Heh, that’s the problem, Lyds—I do so much to those geeks that I can’t even remember what it was this time,” Beetlejuice admitted with a nervous laugh, tugging awkwardly on his shirt collar.
“Must have been pretty nasty,” said Lydia.
“Yeah… you’re right!” Beetlejuice brightened at this, although it hadn’t been Lydia’s intention. He quickly zoomed to the door and flung it open. “But I am not tired of my pranks! In fact, I love relivin’ them! Tell me exactly what I did this time, and don’t leave out any details!”
“Ze instant I picked up my dumbbell, it turned into a smart clock! A very lightweight smart clock, might I add! And it ‘as done nothing since zen but recite calculus equations!” The speaker was a skeleton, oddly enough wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and a ball cap.
“And my shoes went shoe-fly! Although I’ll admit they were very tasty,” said the other speaker, a spider that seemed to go halfway up to Beetlejuice’s knees. “But you owe me a new pair of tap shoes!”
“Oh yeah, that’s what I did!” Beetlejuice chuckled. “Got ya good, huh?”
The skeleton and the spider seemed ready to rip into Beetlejuice some more, but Lydia couldn’t hide her eagerness and curiosity any longer. “Hi!” she spoke up, alerting the guests to her presence. “Are you ghosts, too? I can’t get over how different you all look!”
“Sacre bleu, who is zat?!” cried the skeleton.
“You dragged a kid here?!” demanded the spider. “Whatchyu playin’ at?”
“I wanted to come! My name’s Lydia.” She popped up between Beetlejuice and the visitors and extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you! I came here all the way from the living world, and—”
The two visitors gasped even louder at this. “Not just a kid, but a living kid?!” cried the spider.
“Zis is beyond ze pale, Bee-atlejuice, even for you!” accused the skeleton.
“What?!” Beetlejuice yelled defensively. “You two are always going on about how—” And suddenly Beetlejuice’s head turned into the skeleton’s, and he grew a second head that looked just like the spider’s—“You need to be more considerate of what other people want!” both heads said, in the voices of their likenesses.
Lydia giggled.
“And she wanted to come here,” Beetlejuice continued, in his own voice and with his own head again.
“I find zat hard to believe,” the skeleton quipped.
“But I did! I do! This place is amazing!” Lydia peered at them, unable to keep her curious questions down. “Are you both ghosts like Beetlejuice too? Or are there different types of ghosts? Is there a reason why one looks one way and one looks the other?” She turned to the spider specifically. “Are you the ghost of a spider? I love your outfit, by the way!”
“Oh… thank you!” The spider looked genuinely flattered by the compliment. “See here, Beetlejuice, this is how you should treat your neighbors!”
Beetlejuice scoffed. “She’s a kid, not a life coach.”
“Well, you could stand to learn from her!” The spider turned back to Lydia with a kind, friendly smile. “My name’s Ginger, and this here’s Jacques,” she said, motioning towards the skeleton. “What didja say your name was again?”
“Lydia. Lydia Deetz.” Lydia shook Ginger’s hand… or, rather, her foremost right leg that seemed to function as her hand.
Jacques also seemed to have shifted from frustration at Beetlejuice to delight at Lydia. “Enchanté, mademoiselle Lydia!” he said, taking off his ballcap and bowing towards her slightly. “If zere is any’sing you need while you are here, please don’t hesitate to ask us!”
“Or maybe you could ask me, since I’m the guy who brought you here!” Beetlejuice spoke up testily, sounding annoyed at being temporarily ignored.
“I have so many questions,” Lydia breathed excitedly, paying no heed to Beetlejuice. “But I guess my main question right now is how does this place even work? How did all of you come to be here, and how did you become who—and what—you are?”
“Well, you see—” Jacques began.
But he never got to finish, because in that exact moment, the front door was violently kicked in and off its hinges entirely. “BEETLEJUICE! You are hereby under arrest for failure to appear in court!” yelled a policeman who looked suspiciously like the Wolfman. He had a police dog on a leash, which also looked like the Wolfman.
Beetlejuice took an abashed step backwards. “That… was today?”
“TODAY’S THE THIRD TIME YOU’VE MISSED IT!”
“You’re keeping track? Let’s really set a record then!” Beetlejuice leapt over to Lydia, grabbed her hand, and made a move with his other arm as if he were about to do something—
—but another policeman, who looked like he was melting from radiation, grabbed both of Beetlejuice’s arms and pinned them behind his back, ripping his hand away from Lydia’s just as quickly as it had been placed there. “You’re in a bind now, Beetlejuice!”
And suddenly Beetlejuice’s body was shuffled into an abstract, angled shape, his arms and legs bound uselessly and rigidly together. “Using my juice’s need to illustrate puns against me?!” Beetlejuice whined in protest. “Not fair!”
The two officers began to drag the very awkwardly-shaped Beetlejuice away.
Lydia rushed towards them and vainly pulled on their sleeves. “Wait! Stop! Leave him alone!” she cried.
“What’s this?” the Wolfman policeman asked.
“A witness?” the melting policeman asked.
“Conspiritor?”
“Evidence?”
“Grab her too!”
“Wait!” Lydia protested again, but she was no match for the police officers, who hauled her away just as easily as they had Beetlejuice.
…
Lydia was ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until they were already in the courtroom, and Beetlejuice’s abstract-art shaped form was already tied up over some sort of trapdoor, that she had an idea of how to help get him out of his… tricky position. Of course, by then her arms were pinned tightly to her sides by the two police officers, now standing to the side of the courtroom, and the more she struggled and fought against them, the tighter they held her.
“Order in the court!” the judge commanded, striking his gavel against the podium.
“I’ll take a blood sausage— to go!” Beetlejuice quipped irritably.
“I hold you in contempt of court for using a joke that’s even older than you are,” the judge replied icily. “Beetlejuice, you are charged with larceny, fraud, acting as a menace to the public, impersonating a dentist, and wearing white after Labor Day. How do you plead?”
“Whichever plea will get me outta here,” Beetlejuice said, trying to shake his contorted form out of the ropes that trapped him.
“Ah, guilty, then?” The judge smiled cruelly at Beetlejuice. “Because a guilty plea will get you out of those ropes, alright—and right through the trapdoor!”
The floor underneath Beetlejuice cracked open suddenly, and a huge, striped, cylindrical creature with four eyes shot out, licking its lips hungrily.
Beetlejuice’s eyes grew twice the size of his misshapen body. “SANDWORM?!”
Lydia had had enough of this. “WAIT!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs, finally managing to push away the officers that had been holding her.
The judge, shocked, looked at Lydia, acknowledging her presence in his courtroom for the first time. “What’s this?” he demanded the officers.
“Uh…” started the melting one.
“We’re… not sure, exactly,” admitted the wolfman one.
“You brought me here; will you let me speak?!” Lydia demanded, boldly stepping up in front of the podium, doing her best to stay as far away as she could from the chasm and the sandworm therein.
The judge sighed, sounding almost bored. “State your full name and address for the record, then.”
Lydia looked the judge in the eye. “Yes, your honor. My name is Lydia Katherine Deetz, and my address is… well, I’m not from around here, actually.”
From the jury box, one of the jurors leaned in, flabbergasted. “Is she… breathing?”
“She’s ALIVE?!”
An uproar of shock flooded the courtroom.
It was a few hectic seconds before anyone could hear the judge frantically striking his gavel. “Order, order!” He glared at Lydia as the commotion died down. “Did Beetlejuice bring you here, Miss Deetz?!”
“Not here to this courtroom specifically,” Lydia answered levelly. She jerked her thumb back towards the two officers. “Your cops were the ones who did that.”
“And are you, in fact, actually alive?”
Beetlejuice, from his precarious perch above the sandworm trap, frantically shook his head (or what had probably once been his head) at her, but Lydia ignored him. “Yes, your honor, I am.”
“I see.” The judge glared at Beetlejuice. “In that case, Beetlejuice, I must add ‘bringing a mortal to the Neitherworld’ to your list of charges, and I would ask the jury to reach their decision quickly so that we might conclude this posthaste.”
“Is that against the law?” Lydia demanded.
The judge spluttered for a moment. “Of-of course it is!”
Lydia raised an eyebrow. “What’s the specific law?”
“It’s—it doesn’t matter what specific law it is!” the judge erupted.
“In a court of law, it kind of does!” Lydia put her fists on her hips. “Open up your law book and show me exactly where it says that me being here is illegal!”
“That—that is unimportant right now! Jurors, please give me your decision!”
“It’s very important! How is anyone supposed to know what the law is if you don’t even have a reference to it in the courtroom? You do have it, right?” Lydia glared at the judge. “You can conclusively prove in writing, in your own court, what is and isn’t the law, right?”
The judge stammered awkwardly for a few moments. “Now—now see here!”
“What kind of courtroom is this?!” Lydia demanded. “How can you even prove you know what’s legal and what’s not when you have no way to back it up?!”
“She has a point!” one of the jurors piped up.
“Yeah, I didn’t even know that impersonating a dentist was illegal! Can you prove that it is?”
“Can we even prove that Beetlejuice did all the things he’s accused of?”
“Can we even prove that I exist?!”
“ORDER! ORDER!” the judge screamed, slamming down his gavel rapidly. “Jurors, I beseech that you throw aside your philosophical queries and just give me a verdict already!”
The jurors all converged and discussed for just a few moments before the head juror (who was, fittingly enough, just a head) addressed the judge. “Your honor, it is the unanimous opinion of the jury that Beetlejuice cannot be found guilty of his crimes, seeing as there is no way to prove that any actions he took were, in fact, crimes. Or, in other words… not guilty.”
“WHAT?” cried the judge, in shock and rage.
“WHAT?” cried Beetlejuice, in shock and optimism.
Lydia stepped closer to Beetlejuice, at least as close as she could while still avoiding the sandworm. “Beetlejuice,” she said, carefully and concisely, “pull yourself together!”
It worked. Beetlejuice’s arms grew out of his misshapen mass, and instantly grabbed his angular parts and pulled, yanked, and brought his form back to its usual shape. With one yank he was able to pull the ropes that bound him loose and free, and they fell into the hungry sandworm’s mouth, while Beetlejuice easily teleported his way back to Lydia’s side.
“Beetlejuice,” growled the judge, “while I cannot charge you with any crimes, I also cannot control the crowds that have gathered here in their dashed hopes of seeing you brought to justice… nor do I want to.”
And indeed, the throngs that were gathered in the wings were angrily approaching, eyes blazing with fury.
“Do you know how to run, Lydia?” Beetlejuice murmured.
“Uh, yes?”
“Then RUN!”
They grasped hands and hauled butt out of there as fast as they could.
…
Lydia could be fast when she wanted to be, but Beetlejuice was faster. The length of his strides, leaving Lydia once again just hanging on tight for the ride, seemed far wider than what basic physics would allow—not that physics appeared to be a hard-and-fast force in the Neitherworld anyway. But even then, he still clearly outpaced his pursuers, their angry shouts dimming by the second.
After a few more lengthy and frantic strides, he darted into a dark alleyway, Lydia yanked right along with him. They pressed their backs against the wall as fully and tightly as they could and remained silent as, eventually, they heard their pursuers catch up to them… and run right past, not even thinking to look down their hiding place.
Once they were fully gone, Lydia let out a sigh of relief. “We… we made it!”
“You got me off the hook, babes!” Beetlejuice proclaimed proudly, flinging a fishing hook off of his finger. “You’re alright in my book.” He instantly produced a large, leatherbound tome, and flung it open. On the page was a picture of Lydia, with a caption underneath stating simply “ALRIGHT”.
Lydia giggled. “Thanks, Beetlejuice. I think you’re alright, too.”
“I need to keep you around to get any further charges against me thrown out! Because, believe me, there’ll be a lot more where that came from.” Beetlejuice looked strangely proud of this.
“Maybe I need to keep you out of trouble, rather than get you out of trouble,” Lydia said with a raised eyebrow.
“Aw, come on, Lyds! Trouble is where all the fun is!”
“You thought being dangled over that hungry monster was fun?”
“Semantics,” Beetlejuice mumbled grouchily. Lydia, once again, couldn’t stop her giggles.
What did stop her laughter, however, was the sudden appearance of one of their pursuers, craning his head into the alleyway. “There you are! Hiding like a coward!”
“Excuse me!” Beetlejuice cried, offended. “I prefer the term ‘lily-livered chicken’, thank you very much!”
“Oh yeah? Prove it! Show us your liver and how lily it is!” The antagonist was now, inexplicably, surrounded by a half-dozen other denizens who sported nasty smiles and looked eager to rip Beetlejuice to shreds.
“How many of you are there?!” Beetlejuice shrieked.
“Enough to leave you with no way out!” Lydia said, panicked.
“We’re really up the creek now!” Beetlejuice exclaimed.
With those words, a steady flow of water suddenly cascaded down the alleyway, with Beetlejuice and Lydia plopped into a rickety canoe.
“We need to paddle!” Lydia shrieked.
“We can’t!” Beetlejuice cried with an apologetic shrug. “We’re up the creek without a paddle!”
“Well, we need to get out of here without a paddle! Think of something!”
It took only a second for a lightbulb to appear over Beetlejuice’s head. “Here, look!” He grabbed Lydia’s head and pushed her so that she was looking down into the water.
In the reflection, Lydia could see a shimmery, backwards image of her bedroom. It looked almost near enough to touch, yet far too out of reach to grasp.
“What do we do?!” Lydia cried, desperately, as Beetlejuice’s enemies surrounded them.
“You know! Say those three little B words and get us out of here!”
“But what if they follow us?!”
“They’re following us now!”
Lydia couldn’t argue with that logic. “Beetlejuicebeetlejuciebeetlejuice!” she cried out desperately.
And they slipped out of the Neitherworld, like falling through a silk curtain, and were suddenly back in Lydia’s bedroom… with a whole host of ghouls and monsters hot on their heels.
“Quick!” Lydia shrieked, slamming her mirror onto the floor in a desperate attempt to keep their enemies at bay. “We need to hold them back!”
She held onto the mirror as best as she could, although she could only do so much with the force coming from the other side. Beetlejuice was quickly by her side, applying pressure of his own. “Let me help get the drop on them!” he said to her with a wink, and suddenly he was on the ceiling, falling down in the shape of an anvil, landing with a solid thud against the mirror and pressing it down firmly against her floor.
“That should do it!” said Lydia, still applying as much pressure as she could with her small, ridiculously useless hands.
The two of them kept their pressure for as long as they could, until the muffled grumbles of their adversaries slowly began to die off, and the shakes against the mirror became less and less frequent, until eventually there was nothing left to hold back. Cautiously, Lydia removed her hands, and Beetlejuice resumed his usual form and hovered above anxiously.
“I think we’re in the clear,” Lydia murmured. She looked down at her arms, surprised to see the regular sleeves of the shirt she had been wearing before going into the Neitherworld. “Oh, darn, I guess I didn’t get to keep my outfit after all.”
“Guess you’ll just have to go back to the Neitherworld if you want to wear it again!” said Beetlejuice with a smirk.
“Oh, I want to go back anyway!” said Lydia excitedly. “I know I wasn’t there for long, but what I did see was amazing! Except maybe for those people chasing us…”
“And the sandworm,” Beetlejuice added with a shudder.
“And the judge.” Lydia brightened a bit. “But I definitely did like your friends Jacques and Ginger.”
“Friends?!” Beetlejuice laughed at that. “They’re my neighbors. I don’t have friends!”
“Well, I think you have at least one now,” Lydia said warmly.
“And who would that be? That wishy-washy jury doesn’t count!”
“Me, silly!”
Beetlejuice seemed legitimately stunned by this; he stared at her, unblinking and with his jaw uselessly hanging open, for a good five seconds. It probably would have been longer if Lydia hadn’t, once again, broken into giggles at the sight.
“Oh, I get it, you’re pullin’ my leg.” Beetlejuice yanked his own leg off to demonstrate.
“No, I’m not!” Lydia insisted. “I’m laughing because you’re funny, not because I’m making fun of you! Trust me, I know what that feels like…”
“Oh LYYYYYYYYdia!” a voice suddenly rang out from the hallway. Her mother’s voice.
Lydia’s eyes grew wide. “Hide!” she whispered quickly to Beetlejuice.
A second later, Delia flung the bedroom door open, oblivious to any potential shock she might encounter. “Did I hear a—” Her gaze fell upon the overturned vanity mirror. “So that’s the thud I heard! What happened?”
Lydia chuckled non-chalantly and lifted it back up on the stand. “Oh, I just knocked it over accidentally while looking for my photography equipment!” She frantically glanced at the mirror for a split second, relieved to see that nothing from the Neitherworld appeared to still be visible in it.
“Oh, I see!” Delia glanced to her right. “Isn’t it in the box labeled ‘camera’?”
Lydia opened the box and found all of her equipment there, just as it should be. “Wow, can’t believe I missed this!” she said with a nervous giggle.
“Make sure you pick up all your hair supplies, too! I think some must have fallen from your vanity when you knocked over the mirror.” Delia pointed to the floor, where indeed some hair ties and brushes were scattered awkwardly… including a distinctively black and white striped brush that Lydia knew for certain she didn’t actually own.
“Don’t worry, I will!” said Lydia, quickly scooping the brush off the floor.
“Ouch,” Beetlejuice muttered quietly at the action.
Lydia bit her lip in an unsuccessful attempt to hold back yet another giggle.
“Oh, Lydia!” Delia was smiling, widely and genuinely, her lip quivering as if she were on the verge of tears. “I haven’t heard you laugh in so long! You really are thriving here, and after so short a time, too! I can’t tell you how relieved I am!” She abruptly flung her arms around Lydia in a tight, awkward hug.
“Uh… it’s no big deal, Mother!” Lydia tried to hug her back; the bristles of the Beetlejuice brush still in her hand touched against Delia’s back, and Lydia was pretty sure she heard Beetlejuice mutter “Too close for comfort!” And she did her very best to keep from giggling again as she continued, “I really do like it here! I want to stay living here for as long as possible!”
“As long as your father adjusts just as well as you have, I think we’ll be here for the long run!” said Delia.
“That’s great!” Lydia pulled away from Delia. “I want to go explore the woods out back and maybe take some pictures. Is that alright?”
“Sure!” said Delia breezily. “Just be back home in time for dinner!” She hummed to herself as she left the room. Once she had been gone for a few moments, Lydia shut the door.
“Yeech, your mom smells like strawberries and forsythia!” Beetlejuice groused, turning back into his regular form. He stuck out his tongue in disgust—his very long, purple, serpent-like tongue
“Wait until you smell her perfume when she gets dressed up for a fancy party,” Lydia said with a chuckle. She pulled out her most expensive camera, the professional-grade one her parents had given her for her birthday last year, and checked to make sure it had film in it. “Do you want to come with me to the woods to do some photography, Beetlejuice?”
“Do I want to do anything that keeps me away from the Neitherworld for a few hours while the angry mob calms down? Heck yes!” He jumped in front of her eagerly, peering into the camera supply box. “I’ll even help carry your things for you! As long as ‘your things’ is just one bag, that is.”
Lydia laughed. “I have all the equipment I need in my camera bag.” She hoisted the bag onto her shoulder. “Although, if you’d like to take some pictures too, you can use my Polaroid!” She handed him a smaller, boxy camera.
Beetlejuice grinned. “Just call me Ansel Adams.”
…
Lydia would have been fine with walking down the stairs, out the back door, and into the woods the normal way, but Beetlejuice had insisted on “juicing” them there instead, and so it was merely an instant later that Lydia found herself outside in the wooded area beyond their backyard. Thankfully, Beetlejuice hadn’t taken them too far, with the house still within view if you looked through the trees just right.
Lydia focused on taking some nature shots, hoping to get a bird or a squirrel, but Beetlejuice’s loud talking and, well, stench was probably keeping most of the animals well away from them. She didn’t mind, though; as much as she enjoyed taking animal photography, she found that she was enjoying her conversation with Beetlejuice almost even more so.
For his part, Beetlejuice seemed to have forgotten he even had a camera of his own, and was entirely focused on chatting with Lydia.
“And that guy in the jury who didn’t even know if he existed?” he was saying. “That was Duane Pipe. Sold him some phony oils that I told him would fix his leaky plumbing. Instead it turned his bathwater into jello! Guy should be thanking me; he’s got the most fun bathtub in the entire Neitherworld now!”
“I bet you could make yours more fun,” Lydia said with a smirk. She stopped walking and adjusted her posture a bit to get a picture of the sun beaming down through the trees above her.
“Joke’s on you; I don’t even have a bathtub.” Beetlejuice grinned proudly at this fact.
Lydia giggled. “I should have known.” She continued her trek through the woods, trying to find the vantage point for her next photograph. “Beetlejuice?” she asked. “I hope this isn’t too forward of a question… but how long have you been… you know, dead?”
Beetlejuice shrugged. “I dunno. After a couple of centuries you kinda lose track, know what I mean?”
“Do you remember how you died, at least? If you’re comfortable with telling me.”
“It’s not a matter of that,” said Beetlejuice offhandedly. “I just don’t really remember much from my old life, ya know? Including how it ended.”
“So it’s just been the Neitherworld for you all this time.”
“Yep.” Beetlejuice brightened. “Which is why it’s a real picnic gettin’ to explore here in the Outerworld with you!” A picnic basket fell on his head. “Ouch! Okay, it’s a real treat!” And suddenly he was holding a cupcake with real, live worms squirming out of it. “Oh boy, that’s better!” Beetlejuice ate it in one gulp.
Lydia tried to ignore the disgusting thought of worms squiggling down one’s throat. “What about everyone else? They’re all dead too, right?”
“As far as I know.”
“Does anyone remember being alive?”
“I dunno… I don’t really talk to anyone there about that. I think some do.”
“That’s good, at least.” Lydia sighed. “I think it would be really depressing to forget everything when I go to the afterlife.”
“Maybe it’s our punishment,” shrugged Beetlejuice.
“Punishment?” Lydia raised an eyebrow. “What, like eternal punishment? You’re not telling me that the Neitherworld is…”
“Hell?” Beetlejuice finished for her. He just shrugged at that suggestion, though. “Who knows? Could be hell, could be purgatory. If it’s the latter I don’t seem any closer to graduating outta it, though.”
“I don’t think it’s either of those,” Lydia insisted. “Other than the rude judge and the angry mob chasing you, I thought it was amazing.”
Beetlejuice laughed darkly at that, turning away from Lydia. “Trust me… if it’s the place I ended up, it ain’t heaven, babes.”
“How can you say that if you don’t even remember what you were like when you were alive?” Lydia countered. “Besides, I think you’re better than you think you are.”
“Wow, I really am the greatest conman if I got you believing a whopper like that!” Beetlejuice didn’t sound too happy about this, however.
“It’s not a whopper.” Lydia smiled warmly at him. “You helped me get away from that mob even though you could have just left me behind and worried about yourself.”
“I was worried about myself. And you were my ticket outta there.”
“Oh really? So if I wasn’t, you would have just saved your own skin and abandoned me?”
Beetlejuice looked poised to answer, his mouth even beginning to form a noticeable “yes”... but he stopped himself, surprised, his eyes growing wide with befuddlement. “I… don’t know,” he finally mumbled.
Lydia just smiled again. “See? What did I tell you? You are better than you think you are.”
Beetlejuice grumpily shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away from Lydia. “Don’t go spreadin’ that around.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll forget all about it,” Lydia said with a cheery laugh. She stepped up towards him and looked at the Polaroid camera still hanging on its strap around his neck. “Have you taken any pictures yet?”
“I wouldn’t know what to—wait, yes I would!” Beetlejuice stood up straighter and grinned, his gloomy mood instantly wiped away. He held up the camera and aimed it right in front of him. “Say ‘shriek’, Lyds!”
Lydia realized he was taking a picture of her about a millisecond before he did so, which was hopefully enough time for her genuine smile to register on the film. Click, flash, and the instant photo popped out of the camera.
Beetlejuice, apparently not being familiar with a Polaroid camera (actually, come to think of it, Lydia was surprised he was familiar with cameras in general), held the camera out with a confused, slightly guilty expression. “Whoops. I think I made it puke.”
Lydia had trouble talking through her giggles. “No, no, it’s supposed to do that. It’s a Polaroid camera. The film develops itself on the photograph. We just need to wait a minute or two for it to develop.”
“Huh, weird! Camera tech in the Neitherworld hasn’t caught up to this yet. How long have these been a thing?”
“I think a few decades. So you do have cameras in the Neitherworld, huh?” Another question suddenly sprouted in Lydia’s mind. “Wait, does that mean that ghosts can be photographed?”
“I don’t know why they couldn’t! Neitherworld cameras capture this prime specimen just fine!” Beetlejuice pointed to himself proudly.
“I wonder if mine will?” Lydia placed her expensive camera back in its bag and unhooked the Polaroid from Beetlejuice’s neck. “Let’s see!”
“Make sure you get my good side!” Beetlejuice cupped a hand around his chin thoughtfully, furrowing his brow in a very overstated attempt at looking intellectual.
Lydia laughed. “I don’t think you have a bad side!” She snapped the photo, and when it printed out, she set it down on her other camera bag next to the photograph Beetlejuice had taken of her. She could already see her body shape start to become defined on the pic.
Beetlejuice crowded next to her, peering at the photographs. “So now we wait?”
“We won’t have to wait long. See, the one you took of me is already beginning to show.”
“Maybe… it still looks like sand dunes to me. Hey, Lyds! I got an idea!” He motioned eagerly to her camera bag. “Next time you come to the Neitherworld, take all that with you! I can take you to the Scare-Hara desert—you can get lots of pics there!”
Lydia beamed. “Oh, deadly vu! I would love that! Thank you, Beetlejuice, I definitely will! Maybe tomorrow sometime? If you think you’ll be in the clear by then,” she added with a wink.
Beetlejuice smirked. “Yeah, no problem, babes! That mob will have forgotten all about me by then—and if they haven’t, I’ll give them something else to get all worked up over!”
“Beetlejuice,” Lydia said, trying to sound stern, but as usual a giggle accompanied her warning.
“Hey, look, that pic of you is turning out great!” Beetlejuice said quickly.
“Oh yeah, it is! And look, I can see you start to appear in the other photo. I can take pictures of you after all!” Lydia abruptly put one arm around Beetlejuice’s waist, and with her other hand tried to lift the Polaroid camera up in front of both their faces. “I want to get a photo of both of us, but I’m not sure if I can get it right…”
Beetlejuice, whose surprise at Lydia’s physical touch only lasted for a second or two, grinned at her. “Lemme give you a hand, babes!” With his left arm, he ripped his right hand off at the wrist, then tossed it onto the camera. He then linked his left arm around Lydia’s shoulders.
Lydia grinned and let go of the camera, letting Beetlejuice’s disembodied hand take over.
“What are we going to say? ‘Shriek’ again?” Lydia asked Beetlejuice.
“How about ‘toenails’ this time?” Beetlejuice said, still grinning. “On the count of three—one, two…” He turned towards the camera.
So did Lydia.
“Toenails!”
CLICK!
…
Later that night, dressed in her pajamas and examining the Polaroids she and Beetlejuice had taken (her nature photography would have to wait to be developed until the darkroom in the basement was ready), Lydia had to admit that the photo of the two of them hadn’t turned out the greatest. It was a little blurry, the top of Beetlejuice’s head was a bit cropped off, and Lydia’s eyes were nearly closed, in either a blink or laughter.
But still, she smiled at it, and at the one she’d taken of Beetlejuice. After all, these were just the first pictures they’d taken together, and she was certain there would be many more to follow. There would be plenty of chances to take a picture that was more focused or more carefully posed.
But while this photo of the two of them lacked those, it still had something that Lydia hadn’t seen in a photo for a very long time… her smile. Her very wide, very real, smile. And Beetlejuice’s smile was just as genuine.
And that, Lydia thought, as her eyes and mouth crinkled in happiness, was worth far more than any professional portrait quality.