Though I Know I Should be Wary...

[DhampyrX2]

Title: Though I Know I Should be Wary...

Author: DhampyrX2

Genre: Drama X-over between the cartoon and the movie

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Don't sue me, I'm poor.

Summary: Ok, this was inspired by Msmelanie's great fic "The Second Time Around" where she came up with the brilliant concept that rather than the cartoonverse following the movie, the movieverse for Beetlejuice followed the cartoon after Delia discovered the truth about the Ghost with the Most and had Lydia institutionalized and brainwashed until she forgot her best friend.

This fic got me thinking. What if Beetlejuice had been a bit more direct here? What if he HAD talked to Lydia or called out Charles and Delia for taking away him best friend? What if people started to remember the Ghost With the Most early enough to matter? Well this will be my interpretation of it.
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"Indicates speech"

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It had been a fruitless effort to get Lydia to show Delia's guests her new ghost friends as they traveled down the steps from the attic in the Deetz's new home. Otho, Delia's fat interior designer friend was claiming he could possibly summon the recently deceased couple if "properly motivated" as he talked with Lydia's father, Charles.

For her part, Delia was just trying to decide what to do as her hand traced it's way over the railing of the staircase to she tried to decide what it was bout her daughter that seemed to attract ghosts. After that...disgusting creature back in Peaceful Pines was removed from her life and a stint in the City to civilize her Lydia was acting much more like a proper young lady in her stepmother's opinion. Well refusing to cell her "mother" again since the... hospital visit was a bit unsettling, but still it was better than that awful influence that other ghost had on her.

All the while Delia never noticed that the banister's texture had changed into something sinewy, rough, and scaly. Well, not until she heard an all too familiar sounding cackle mixed with a rather serpentine hiss.

For his part Beetlejuice almost couldn't believe it. This stupid bio-exorcism job he took basically to keep himself occupied and out of the Neitherworld where everything reminded him of his lost friend had paid the greatest dividends he had ever witnessed. Well the fact he got to take out his frustrations on Chuck and Delia on other breathers until he could get loose and find Lyds didn't hurt either. The pocket money was good too. For all Juno bitched, the government still paid him well as a freelancer for ghosts too green to scare away their own problems.

But now... things were different. Almost as if by magic, something greater than his very Juice, he had landed smack dab in his dream job. Lydia, his Babes was here. And so was that no good bitch that ripped her away from him alongside Chickenliver Chuckie himself. Oh, this was gonna be great.

The Ghost with the Most started small as his "rattlesnake with a Beetlejuice head" removed itself from the banister and he surveyed the group. He popped under Delia's skirt and looked up at her face, he certainly didn't want to see anything else about the little friendship-wrecker no matter what he wanted her to believe, and she screamed in fright and tried to cover her modesty. "You like it," Beetlejuice taunted ina gravelly mockery of her sickly sweet tomes as she ignored whatever opinion people like Charles and Lydia had about her little projects.

It was a simple matter of batting her fat idiot friend down the stairs as he tried to run before Beetlejuice zeroed in on his next target. Charles was trying all he could to slip into a bedroom and away form the terrifying encounter as ge felt an enormous rattled tail wrap around his left leg and haul him up until he was face to face with the most frightening face he had ever seen.

"Hey there, Chuck," Beetlejuice said with a familiarity he felt he was entitled to. He almost asked if Charles might need his old handyman to fix his banister but thought better of it. So far they couldn't trace exactly what was going on and might think this was all the Maitlands Juicing them. Why encourage them to run before he got Lyds to let him out totally so he could follow? Instead he settled on a menacing "We've come for your daughter" as he dragged the man close enough to smell Beetlejuice's breath from his precariously inverted position.

Beetlejuice dragged the cowardly father over the stairwell and let him dangle with a cleat view of the nasty fall to the floor. It was tempting, oh so tempting, to toss the blond man with enough force to break his neck. God knew he deserved no better after failing to stop Delia's attempts to send Lydia to a damned nut-house for being Beetlejuice's friend.

Still, something he never intended, and hoped to never hear, staid his hand.

"Stop it! Why are you doing this?" Lydia demanded as tears of fright started to stream down her face.

Without even realizing it, Beetlejuice let his tail lower Charles to a safer distance before dropping the man on his rear as the serpentine form of Beetlejuice came face to face with the girl he had spent the last several years trying to return to.

"Lyds? Babes do ya recognize me?" Beetlejuice asked, his tone lowering to an almost reverent whisper.

"Beej?" Lydia returned with a great deal of uncertainty. Almost as if she wasn't sure where the moniker had come from in her mind.

Unfortunately for him, Beetlejuice grew far too happy at the sign that Lydia might recognize him and forgot that he was still a snake-shaped possessed banister. To anyone that did not know their past his move to hug Lydia as hard as he could would look very threatening, and that was what Barbara Maitland saw as she called out "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice," and sent him back into his current temporary residence of the Maitlands model of the town of Winter River.

"Awww no, c'mon," Beetlejuice griped as he vanished before he could even try to hug Lydia.

*****

"How dare you two interrupt a professional while he's working!" Beetlejuice ranted a few moment later as he looked up at the normal sized Maitlands from where he stood miniaturized in the town model. Although BJ had to secretly give Adam a little credit, he had picked up on two facts. Beetlejuice had proper frightened the Deetz's AND he hadn't really hurt anybody, no matter how much they deserved it.

"Now look, I'm no fan of Charles Deetz, but even that man didn't deserve that. You could have killed somebody," Barbara scolded in a matronly fashion.

In a different time and place, where Beetlejuice was calmer and thinking about his words he might have just made a comment about not wanting to bother with the Maitlands and having more of an interest in Lydia. But now, he was pissed and excited all at once as he got to see the one living person he ever cared about and he wasn't going to be treated like a kid from someone younger than his mother's newest dishtowel.

"No fan of Charles Deetz? You don't even KNOW old Chicken-liver Chuckie. He's not the one you should hate. It's that talentless redheaded BITCH! She's the bad guy here! Or didn't you wonder who brought all this ugly CRAP into your house? Hell Chuck just likes peace and quiet. You two boring ass deadbeats would get along great with him. And after what she did to Lydia she deserves worse that rotting in the belly of a Sandworm for the rest of her afterlife!" Beetlejuice ranted angrily.

Both Adam and Barabara looked at the irate ghost in shock before Adam muttered, "You know them. You know the Deetz's personally, don't you?"

"No shit, Sherlock! How long did it take you to figure that one out? Before or after your old lady kept me from hugging my best friend?" Beetlejuice snapped back before he stopped short and realized what he had just said.

"Best friend? What best friend? And what did Delia do to Lydia? What's going on here?" Barbara demanded as he picked up the tiny form of Beetlejuice in her fingers to look him eye to eye.

"None of yer' business, toots. Now put me down," Beetlejuice snapped at the larger spirit as he made spikes shoot out from all angles of his body. the sparp pain made Barbara wince as she dropped the Ghost With the Most back down on the table where the town model resided.

"Wait please. Tell us what you meant. Lydia... we care about her. If you know something, please tell us," Adam pleaded in a much more polite tone.

Beetlejuice snorted to himself, disgusted with the pair. Still, where his Babes was concerned he was far softer in temperament than he liked to admit.

"You two aren't the first ghosts she's been friends with. A few years ago she made a friend. A best friend. They had loads of laughs together and some great adventures, but they kept it a secret from her parents so they wouldn't freak out. But secrets don't ever stay secret. And when it came out and Lydia fessed up Delia decided she was... diseased for liking her friend. The red-haired bitch had her sent to a nuthouse where they brainwashed her to the point she though she was crazy for believing in ghosts. The things they did to her there. I tell ya' the first place I'll bio-exorcise on my own if I ever get out from the Neitherworld's eye again is that dump. Anyway, she convinced herself that her friend wasn't real on doctor's orders and Delia moved her away so he wouldn't know where to find them. You two pretty much know the rest," Beetlejuice explained.

"Then you?" Barbara asked, wholly confused at the way the disgusting creature they had met before was acting.

"Look, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm sick of dealing with you wishy-washy deadbeats. I'll take care things myself now. I'm not the Ghost With the Most for nothing. Now beat it," Beetlejuice snapped before he stormed over to his grave in the model cemetery and sank back down into it. He had thinking to do and he was tired of dealing with people that barely understood that they were dead.

 

[Prince Charon]

Interesting.

Please, continue.

 

[DhampyrX2]

Adam and Barbara looked at each with with an equal mix of concern and confusion at Beetlejuice's words after the poltergeist has vanished back into his grave.

"Adam you don't really think that he was telling the truth do you?" Barbara asked worriedly.

"I don't know, honey," her bespectacled spouse replied. "He seemed too mad to be lying, but it it's true..."

"Then I want that woman out of my house even more. Putting such a sweet little girl in an institution? That's outright monstrous," Barbara responded.

Any other conversation the pair would have on the conversation was abated when the suddenly found themselves taken from their attic and deposited into Juno's office, where the spectral case-worker was trying to explain to a college football team that they were dead.

"It's about time you two got here!" Juno scolded the couple as she shooed the football players out of her office.

"But coach," one player protested.

"I keep telling you I'm not your coach. HE survived. Now get out of here!" the aged ghost shouted as the team shuffled out uncertainly. Her attention shifted to the Maitlands again as she said "Well this is certainly a fine mess now isn't it?"

"Juno, is what Be-, um he said true?" Barbara asked.

The smoking specter actually looked regretful as she eyed the newly dead pair before her and nodded. "Yes. It is. The Deetz girl and Beetlejuice were friends once upon a time. The best of friends really. She was even given permission to visit the Neitherworld with him."

"Neitherworld?" Adam asked in confusion.

Juno looked wholly exasperated as she replied, "You didn't read ANY of the handbook after learning how to make a door did you? THIS world is the Neitherworld. Neither Heaven nor Hell. A place in between for those not ready to move on. Although very few spirits here ever DO move on. They get comfortable with their afterlife and accept it. What did you think all of the afterlife was this office? There's a whole world out there to explore if you weren't so worried about your house."

Adam and Barbara looked at each other in shock for a second before looking back to Juno. "I guess, we never really thought about what else there was besides the house and this office. This is all still so new to us," she admitted.

"Typical. Newbies, you're all alike. Still thinking like the living," Juno said to herself with a shake of her head.

Adam was the first to come out of his shock as he pressed, "You were telling us about our Lydia and him?"

"Just say his name. You can shout it here for all you want and it won't do anything. enough people used to shout it at him in a day before and it never summoned him or made him go away. Only people in the living world can do that," Juno explained. It was better than watching the Maitlands try to figure more ways to refer to the self-proclaimed ghost with the most.

"Ok, then. You were telling us about Lydia and Beetlejuice," Barbara pressed.

Juno nodded a bit in satisfaction as she sat back heavily and motioned for the couple to sit was well. "Lydia Deetz was always a special girl. Even I'm not certain how she summoned Beetlejuice the first time, but they struck up a friendship almost immediately. Probably because she was one of the few people, living or dead, that could stand him or his sense of humor."

"But he's so... sleazy. How could a little girl be around him all the time?" Barbara fretted.

Juno actually looked sad as she answered, "He wasn't always like what you see now. Oh, don't get me wrong he was still rough and crude. He refused to take a bath and pulled the most childish pranks the Neitherworld had ever seen for centuries. He was a nuisance and a con artist that refused to work if he could possibly avoid it. But he wasn't as... hard as you see. He rarely swore, and I can't think of a time he EVER did in front of Lydia. He was actually far cleaner then than he is now. In many ways he was like a full grown adolescent with immeasurable power. And Lydia was a huge stabilizing influence in his life. He started making more friends here the longer he knew her. Even the Prince of the Neitherworld would and still does call him a friend because of that girl."

The case worker took a pause to take a drag of her smoke before she continued, "And Lydia was beloved here in her own right. She was a dear girl from all accounts. Gothic, by what they call it today, but still happy and joyful. She would always laugh at Beetlejuice's childish stunts, even as she apologized on his behalf and made him clean up his messes. I can tall you right now that Delia Deetz has best hope to be judged immediately at the moment of her death. there is a lynch mob a mile deep waiting to feed her to the sandworms with Beetlejuice himself leading the charge when that one ends up here."

The elder Ghost took another pause and puff as she gathered her thoughts and carried on, "When Delia had the girl institutionalized it should have been praised. The girl had immeasurable tangible proof of life after death, something we do all we can to conceal. I can tell you though, there is hardly a soul here that wouldn't want her back, if only for the influence she had on Beetlejuice."

"What do you mean influence" Adam asked totally immersed within Juno's narrative.

"As I said she was a stabilizing influence in his life. When she was torn away like that, brainwashed to think she was mad for thinking she could see him something broke inside. He went from an overgrown twelve-year old obsessed with acting gross to, well, what you see today. Harsh. Vulgar. Obsessively cruel to the living. The fact he is actually willing to WORK as a bio-exorcist, even freelance, scares people here to this day. And he's damned good at his job. Too good. For all we complained I can't think of anyone that wouldn't want him back to his annoying self rather than the whore-mongering workaholic lout he is now," Juno explained.

Something began to come together for Barbara in the back of her mind as she asked, "Juno, how did we end up with a flyer for Beetlejuice in our house?"

The case worker looked indifferent as she replied, "The same way you got a TV commercial from him. Every new case that needs a haunting gets one. He may work freelance, and I advise against his services but he is good at what he does. The Neitherworld Haunting Affairs Board pays him a bounty for each successful haunting. Or were you two planning on paying him?"

"We were supposed to PAY him? I wonder if that's why he started calling us deadbeats?" Barbara asked with a glance at her husband.

"No WE pay him after he does his work. That's why we prefer you to do it yourselves. Which you really need to do now as a matter of course. Although if you really want to help I'd keep Charles and Delia busy instead," Juno sniffed in irritation.

*****

 

[Scygnus Darkhawk]

Why Thank You Exposition Man!



Anyhow, this is going well, but it's just the windup, so to speak, so I'm left wanting more.

 

[Deadpan29]

It feels like it needs a little more background and build-up, rather than cutting straight to BJ messing with Mr. and Mrs. Deetz.

 

[DhampyrX2]

That night was not an easy one for the living members of the Deetz home.

Delia dreamed of disgusting creatures and embarrassing situations that were totally beneath her sensibilities. She dreamed of serpents and promises of revenge. Of crawling bugs and assorted things that chased her through the night.


Charles dreamed of many things. He dreamed of odd situations, terrifying circumstances, and a rather disgusting if affable and friendly handyman that loved to take advantage of any financial gain he could. That, at least, Charles could respect. He may have been nervous to the point of foolishness at times, but he was still one of the top sharks in terms of the New York real estate market.

He also dreamed of a somewhat messy girl called Betty that always made his little Lydia smile and of a mysterious "cousin BJ" that actually made Charles himself chuckle from time to time.

But most of all he twisted and turned as he remembered the look on Lydia's face the day the doctor took her away. And the dead eyes that met his when she came back. Far deader than any resident that had ever occupied either of his country homes.


For Lydia sleep was rarely, if ever, a time for respite. Nightmares had tormented her for a long as she cared to recall. Or at least that's what they told her they were at the institute. She dreamed of white walls closing in on her, of whispers in the darkness begging for her to remember when she could not. She dreamed of losing her birth mother, only to have her father get snared by Delia a couple of years later.

But mostly, she dreamed of black and white stripes and a mop of messy blond hair. And she felt a longing to return to something her mind could no longer grasp... but always felt as if it were on the tip of her tongue.

"Beetlejuice!" Lydia shouted as she awoke from her nightmare with a gasp.

The startled seventeen-year old was covered in an icy sweat as she got out of bed and rushed to her mirror as if expecting to see someone there besides her own reflection. Even as she did she heard a myriad of whispers in the back of her mind insisting not real. not. real. notrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotreal...

But even as her mind rebelled a part of her heart pushed her to let out a shaky whisper, "th-though I kn-kn-know I s..sh..s...should be wuh-wary..." she stuttered in an almost reverent whisper.

Her incantation was interrupted has her light came on unexpectedly and a concerned voice inquired "Pumpkin?"

"Daddy?" Lydia asked as she turned from her mirror to look at her father.

"Are you alright. I thought I heard you scream?" Charles Deetz replied as he looked into the haunted eyes of his only daughter.

"I just... had a bad dream," Lydia replied softly.

A monstrous face several times larger than the body it was mounted on with strange striped protrusions coming out of the nostrils and disgusting drool oozing out of a frightful mouth.

"Bad bream?"

"Um yeah."

"Mine or yours?"

"Uh, mine father."

"Ok. Goodnight, pumpkin."

"Well try to get some sleep. Things will look better tomorrow," Charles counciled as he came in and tucked Lydia in. Her bedroom had gone past the Gothic spiders, skulls, and bats (which Delia forbade now anyway) to black lace and trimmings that seemed more appropriate in a funeral home. In many ways, Charles missed the way it was. He missed the way she was.

"Yes father," Lydia responded almost mechanically. It was the same tone she used with him since she came back. Since Peaceful Pines.

Charles nodded at her acquiescence as be moved the girl into bed and tucked her in, much the same way he had when she was very small. Although still clearly agitated, she drifted off soon as he kissed her forehead and whispered a gentle, "Good night."

As he made his way out and started to close the door, Charles couldn't help but mutter a regretful "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Had he stayed a moment longer, he might have noticed a lamp that seemed to have a black and white striped motif it lacked before sprout a pair of yellowed eyes and a mouth with distinctly green teeth as it replied, "Ya should be, Chuck. And you will be."

And despite the ominous tone of voice that was used, Lydia still grew calmer in her rest as she let out a comfortably reproachful "Beej," in her slumber.

"Just rest, babes. We'll talk about it tomorrow," the lamp promised before returning to it's normal color scheme with a pop.

 

[Prince Charon]

Well done. :hail:

 

[Latewave]

You get a Catgirl.
Don't lose it as it is nonrefundable. :sisi:
No returns. :evil2:

 

[Unicornzvi]

Very nice. This is the first BeetleJuice fanfic worth reading I've ever seen.

The Unicorn

 

[007]

Love to see how this works out.

 

[Youko_Rayah]

o.0

this is probably one of the best takes on bridging the gap between series and movie for any fandom, I've ever read. Very nice, and I hope you continue it.