Dedicated to Winona Laura Horowitz
Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz
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LYDIA DEETZ AND THE HOUSE’S GHOST
Chapter 3: Beetlejuice
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After the dinner, which went on without a hitch, I became very nervous, I knew that my mistress would try to enter the "No World", to look for the ghosts and if she found out how they were expelled from the house... I felt guilty, I recognized that I behaved like a real jerk, but those ghosts wanted to evict my mistress from her house, besides, I sensed that they were stupid enough to invoke something dangerous to do the dirty work for them, a real danger as the manual indicated. I thought of going to the "No World", but the passage of time was so different in that place that I discarded the idea. In that, an old woman appeared out of nowhere.
I jumped up and down with a great leap of fright, I may have fought with evil entities but I never saw anyone appear out of nowhere instantly.
“Are you Mr. Percy?” a woman so old as to look like she was about to fall apart, asked.
Yes, I'm Percy.
“A pleasure, my name is Juno and I am in charge of the Department of Non Permanent Accommodation and Relations Between the No World and the World, I come to talk to you about the Maitlands.... I heard that they were evicted from this house, a house they should live in for at least three hundred years before relocating them to No World.”
I swallowed saliva and began to apologize, fortunately Juno, although annoyed, respected the rules that gave me the power to expel the Maitlands. It turns out that the ghosts broke several rules, such as trying to scare away the living residents of the house, leaving the manual behind, and the fact that as they themselves confessed, they were tempted to invoke a dangerous entity to scare away the Deetz. The latter was what led Juno to decide that the Maitlands should be relocated to another house.
I was relieved and asked Juno to stop Lydia from meeting the Maitlands. She assured me that with the level of magic she possessed at the moment it would be impossible for her to enter No World, not without the help of some ghost and they all knew that was forbidden. There was only one problem, Lydia had to hand over the manual, there was no choice I had to leave my ordinary cat mask and let Lydia know that I had magical powers and could talk to her.
“Well, since everything is decided, I ask you to accompany me to No World at this moment.”
“I can't go there, time is running oddly in that place, what would seem to me a moment, surely it would be quite a while here.”
“I'm afraid there is no alternative, when you decided that the Maitlands should vacate the house, I had to deal with a lot of paperwork, paperwork that I want you to read before signing.”
“But I don't know how to read.”
“Don't worry about that, now come with me because I don't have much time.”
A light seemed to envelop me and suddenly I found myself in No World, in fact to be more specific, in Juno's office. The office could be defined as "organized chaos", piles of paper rows piled up in the corners. Juno told me to jump on a table on the side of which there was a row of documents that I was supposed to read and sign.
“Please use this," she pointed out to me, then she put me on a kind of helmet that looked more like an old-fashioned scuba suit. The contraption was very uncomfortable, but I discovered that when I looked at a document, inside the helmet I could clearly hear a voice as if the documents were read to me. At first I thought about the absurdity of the situation, as someone might well read the document for me, but I discovered that the helmet made me fully understand all the legal terminology and didn't need to ask any questions, which saved me a lot of time.
I read as quickly as possible and signed each of the damn papers, well actually I just stamped my footprint on them.
“Well that's it, remember that now you only have the issue of the manual pending.”
“Do I have to deliver it to you in No World?”
-Not necessary, just leave the manual in the attic by tonight.
“Okay...” I didn't finish talking and I was instantly transported home. I found myself somewhat displeased, but at the same time I thanked the quick dispatch because I was worried about how long it had been.
It seemed like night and at that time I heard music, it seemed to be a wedding march.
I ran into the room and discovered that part of it had been transformed into a kind of altar where there was what seemed to be a little zombie priest, and in front of him was a whitish-faced guy with an outlandish tuxedo and beside him... My mistress!, she was wearing a red bridal gown. Both Delia and Charles were imprisoned by Delia's enormous sculptures. The situation was urgent, after the fight with the Maitlands, I had not been able to sleep the eight hours necessary to regain my magic level.
“Let her go!” I cried with all my might. At that moment my mistress turned to see who had shouted but she didn't notice that I was the one who did it, so she continued scanning the entire room with her eyesight, so I decided to approach where she was, it's a shame that the ghost understood that it was I who shouted.
“Fucking cat, get out of here!” he shouted, and with a gesture of his hand he sent me flying across the room to the wall.
“Percy! Don't hurt him” I heard my mistress pleading with him, that angered me, she should never beg for anything, for nothing!
I got up and ran towards the ghost, leaping at the last minute and dodging another magical shock that would have thrown me against the wall.
“Freak, say goodbye to your eyes!” I shouted angrily as I approached to his face and scratched the whole face trying to blind him with my sharp claws. The ghost cried out in pain but grabbed me with his hands and threw me into the display cabinet, so I crashed, smashing all the glassware.
My mistress was shocked to see that I could speak, but she recovered quickly and tried to run towards me, but the ghost stopped her.
“That's what you get out of fighting with the "super ghost"” he laughed, but then I jumped on one of the furniture in the living room to look him in the eye and said, "You may be the super ghost, but you're still going to hell.”
“Say his name three times, it's Beetle…” tried to say my mistress, but the ghost covered her mouth with his hand. I ran towards the ghost, but he brought the other sculptures in the room to life and placed them among us.
I dodged the attempts of the sculptures to catch me and jumped into his face, blinding him from the left eye.
“Fucking cat, give me back my eye!” he shouted, as he turned to look at me, covering the empty eye socket with both hands, while abundant blood drained from between his fingers.
I looked at him proudly, and with one bite I swallowed his eye.
“¡NO!” the monster shouted and with one hand outstretched he tried to approach me.
“Beetlejuice," I said in recalling the name of the evil entity that the Maitlands wanted to invoke, according to the documents in Juno's office.
The ghost stopped dry and began to scream like a pig or mouse.
“Beetlejuice , Beetle...”
I was interrupted when Beetlejuice, waved and hissed something incomprehensible. I was instantly transported to a kind of desert of sick and yellowish sands.
My surprise lasted very little, because immediately my whole body resented, the magical energy of the place was not ordered but ran chaotic without control. Every fiber of my body was screaming for me to leave that place, I felt every hair of my coat cracking. I cursed my stupidity, swallowing Beetlejuice's eye might have looked great, but it didn't allow me to say the ghost's name quickly. I looked around and strange planets could be seen incredibly close to that place, ochre-colored rock pillars were worn out by the force of erosion, I couldn't see much more because a roar that seemed to have come from an underground source caught my attention.
I could see the fin of a shark in the sand, which was moving at a rapid pace between the low sand dunes. All my fur was riddled with fear, thinking that from the sand would emerge a shark willing to eat me, but what emerged was a thousand times worse... A kind of sea serpent (although we were in the desert) emerged from the sands, his skin looked hard and rough, with white and black stripes that ran through his body like rings and red eyes devoid of life. The monster unfolded more horror in front of me as him opened its jaws and discovered that from them the true head was emerging, a sickly white color and sharp teeth.
The monster looked at me menacingly and emitted a colossal roar. Somehow it seemed to me that my mind reactivated primordial, archetypal memories of that creature, as if my species had to fight back against such abominations. I was paralyzed by fear, but then Lydia's smiling face appeared in my mind and all doubt and fear vanished...
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“And you decides to take this woman to be your wife," the somber priest said solemnly.
“I accept," said Beetlejuice, who was initially thinking of making a comic scene, but in the face of the eye pain he preferred to go ahead.
“And you, Lydia, decide to take this...”
“NO," shouted Lydia, "Beetl...” She tried to say the name of the ghost, but he covered her mouth.
“You see, the bride is nervous, so I will speak for her: Yes I am Lydia Deetz, you ask me and I answer, yes I love this man with madness.
Lydia was outraged by the phantom's ventriloquist trick.
“And now I pronounce you husband and...”
A strong jolt shook the entire house and the ceiling of the room collapsed due to nothing less than a "sandworm". I was riding the monster, but I felt so different.
The sandworm opened the jaws and in one bite swallowed Beetlejuice, piercing the floor of the room and disappearing through the basement....
I was so tired but I tried to get up and saw my mistress and the Deetzes, looking at me with their eyes wide open, I ran towards Lydia and held her tightly.
“My mistress, my mistress... I was so scared!” I began to cry loudly as I embraced her. I didn't realize that now my limbs and body were not those of a cat, but those of a human.
I kept crying and finally Lydia hugged me with one hand on my back and the back of my neck with the other, while she stroked my head with her cheek.
“Don't worry everything will be all right, you'll see” she whispered to me as she smiled gently.
The Deetz's surprise was capital when Beetlejuice appeared before them, it turns out that Otto had all the guilt of it all (he had rudimentary paranormal powers, so Beetlejuice was able to communicate with him), who believed in the false promises of wealth that the ghost had told him and was foolish enough to pronounce his name three times. No one knows what happened to him, although Charles said that for a second he saw Otto turned into a sweetheart and then vanished in the blink of an eye. But the biggest surprise (apart from the sandworm, which mysteriously disappeared), was the fact that I had acquired a human form, well almost human, as I retained my ears and cat's tail, fortunately no other feline characteristic appeared in my person, did not have the eyes or nose of a cat, did not have moustaches, or cat's feet, not even small parts of my body covered with hair, except the head, even though humans call that hair.
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Lydia had to go to school, and even though I wanted to accompany her (since I was apparently the same age as my mistress), the Deetz told me that it would be too complicated so they ordered me to stay at home. Every time my mistress came back from school, she would teach me how to read and do basic operations in arithmetic and other basic knowledge of various subjects. My favorite subject was always Universal History, I didn't know that humans went through so much, maybe I was underestimating them too much and decided that from that moment on I would take a more humble attitude towards my environment and my relationship with others. But what I liked the most was that now I could take care of my mistress not only of the supernatural dangers, but also of the most real ones, because in my cat form I couldn't do too much.
Just as my mistress instructed me in human knowledge, I told her everything I knew about the magical world of cats, I would have liked to tell her more but my knowledge was very limited. Ah, I forgot that Juno became fierce when the existence of the No World was revealed to the Deetz, but then she calmed down when she learned of Beetlejuice's "definite death", of course she ordered the Deetz to keep the secret under pain that something really unpleasant would happen to them if they disobeyed. As for my mistress, Juno received Lydia's offer to write a new version of the manual in a good way, apparently no one had offered themselves simply because they were shy!
“And when you will stop calling me mistress," said Lydia, after a few days, as she looked at me with a look that I had not seen before.
“I don't know if I can get used to calling you by your name," I said with my eyes lowering a little (why was I so nervous?). These last few days I'd become increasingly aware of Lydia's appearance. When I was a cat, I didn't quite understand the concept of human beauty, but now I noticed how beautiful my mistress was, with a hair as black as the wings of the darkest of crows, a skin as white as the purest snow, eyes so black that one could see the universe in them and a smile so beautiful that it rivaled the very blossoming cherry blossoms....
“No matter how much you have changed, you will always be MY Percy," she said as she held my hand and stared at me.
“And no matter what decision you make, I will always be proud of you and will be by your side forever and ever Lydia," I replied, knowing that my words were not only a reflection of the loyalty I owed her for having rescued me from the cold and death, but that there was something warmer and deeper than just friendship that I felt for her, something much more important than just friendship.
Now I knew it, that even if I was surrounded by darkness, cold or rain, while she was at my side I could always smile and at the same time protect her smile...
The end
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