Archive of Our Own ^beta

Maybe communicating with living people who can see you wasn't as bad as Beetlejuice first imagined. For hundreds of years in the world of breathers, he got used to the fact that the first reaction of a person to the undead was either fear and flight, or fear and desire to destroy. He had already witnessed the rites of exorcism more than once — fortunately, from afar, he himself was careful enough (or lucky enough, because there were very few people who had seen him without summoning over all these years) and never became the subject of such an event. But, although it was believed that demons only care about their own survival and are incapable of empathy, a couple of times he did feel quite bad for the other poor, unlucky, and exorcised demons.

It seems that over the past few decades, people had tended to become either smarter or dumber — a double-edged sword — but the reaction to the supernatural was increasingly not primal horror, but cautious, yet obsessive interest. Many have started to want to interact with Netherworld entities, and teenagers over the past three or four generations have turned this into a form of stupid entertainment. Stupid — because in ninety-seven cases out of a hundred they were mumbling some nonsense, while being absolutely sure that it would summon someone. But there still were three remaining cases. There are very few rituals that are actually working, but they do exist, and if someone is lucky enough to find out the working spell, then oh boy will they get their entertainment. The main reason why these spells are still unknown to most people is that a mortal who successfully summoned the undead usually did not live longer than thirty minutes after that. But these were definitely the brightest and most intense minutes of their now shortened life.

Beetlejuice himself liked getting his hands dirty from time to time — like many other demons who were lucky enough to physically interact with the world of the living, he had a sporting interest in this activity. The fear of mortals spread through his body with a pleasant warmth and charged him with some special, sweet energy. And the process of inventing original, sophisticated ways to bring a person to a heart attack or to just slay them was an occupation no less interesting than the event itself. Just summon him and he will become visible and real to everyone, and not just a spirit hanging somewhere between two worlds in desperate hope that someone will be able to see him and unravel his clumsy pantomime of trying to explain the spelling of his name.

The thirst for fear and blood after the summoning was partly due to the intoxicating, almost ecstatic feeling of realizing that he could now fully interact with anyone in any way, distort reality and bend and morph it as he wanted — all those things that were impossible without the summoning. Each time it was a short, but incredibly bright and pleasant outburst of emotions, and if he had a beating heart, it would probably have pounded crazy every time. But it's one thing when this period is short and you savor every minute of being in the physical dimension. Another thing is when you have been in this state for almost a year and no one is in a hurry to expel you back. Just a few days - and there is no trace of the former ecstasy. You just get used to it. And you begin to take it for granted.

It was even a little disappointing. It's like you got unlimited access to your favorite sweets and ate so much of it that it no longer seemed like anything special or desirable. Scaring people from time to time was still fun, but... the excitement had worn off. Probably because he knew that now there is no metaphorical timer that ticks with every second, measuring an indefinite time until someone repeats his name three times and sends him back to the phantom state. And, having closely communicated with three whole mortals during these months, he began to think that, probably, other breathers can also be considered not only as punching bags and scaring targets, but also as part of his new social circle.

Maybe communicating with living people who don't think you're weird by default wasn't as bad as Lydia imagined. In general, she had long been accustomed to the fact that everyone at school either doesn't care about her, or that she gets bullied by all sorts of jerks for being a "creepy goth". By the time she reached high school, she already got used to the bullying.

Trying not to pay attention to the idiotic teenagers around her, she plunged headlong into her main and only hobby — photography. Especially after the birthday present she received from her parents — a DSLR camera. She had never felt more like a professional photographer than with this device in her hands. After several years with a soap dish, owning such a camera seemed like a real paradise — even just the plants in the garden, shot on it, looked like a masterpiece compared to all her old pictures.

And, of course, how could she resist the temptation not to upload her masterpieces to the web? Thus, her Facebook page got rapidly filled with photos that she took in her spare time and edited with her rather shallow skills in Photoshop. Usually there were landscapes or macro shots that didn't involve people. She had always believed that there were many more things in the world that were much more interesting to contemplate than constantly snooping around humans.

There were very few people interested in her photos — usually she got only a couple of likes and sometimes, on a lucky day, she would receive a single comment of approval. Most often it was people she didn't really know, who accidentally stumbled upon her page. But then suddenly, likes from one of her classmates began to appear under the photos. And, oddly enough, from one of her usual school bullies. Then there was another girl of the same. And then two guys. They left likes under all her photos, didn't write a single comment, and then consistently liked all her new uploads.

At school, Lydia noticed that they stopped picking on her, but watched sneakily from afar — their glances accidentally crossed several times, and she could not identify any clear emotions on their faces to figure out what all of this was about. It annoyed her, despite the fact that in general the situation looked quite harmless.

And the longer this strange uncertainty lasted, the more nervous she became. Being forcibly stuck in the same room with them turned into a constant silent expectation of some kind of trouble. It felt like the calm before the storm, and her social anxiety, which she, not really successfully, but still tried to fight in recent months, began to ring all the bells and shout "brace for impact!" But this "impact" never came, and because of this, the tension only grew. Because the longer the calm is, the worse the storm will be, right?…

At school lunches, Lydia always sat at the farthest table and ate in proud solitude. Not that anyone liked to sit down with her, it was rather the opposite. But at least this way she attracted less attention to herself, and felt relatively safe near the walls... as much as she could feel safe in this place at all. Therefore, when she noticed that that company of four appeared in her field of vision again and headed straight to her "shelter", the alarm bells in her head immediately went off. But she won't run. It's not in her nature. She will take the blow in cold blood, pretending that she does not care about their bullying. And she will let the emotions take over only as soon as she is alone.

When the bench on the opposite side creaked under the weight of the uninvited guests, Lydia emerged from the pool of anxious thoughts and forced herself to look up at them — as calm and cold as possible. The four of them looked at her expectantly, as if she was the one to start the conversation. But Lydia only narrowed her eyes in disbelief and locked her fingers, digging her nails into the skin of her hands.

“Hello?...” a girl with curly brown hair named Rachel said uncertainly.

It didn't sound like a prelude to bullying. ‘They decided to approach from afar,’ Lydia thought gloomily.

“Mgm,” she decided not to give her a return greeting, she simply didn’t deserve it.

“You… uh…” Rachel hesitated, while the other three just silently watched her awkward, but nevertheless determined attempt to strike up a conversation with the most taciturn person in the class. “How… How are you?”

“A good question, considering that regardless of my answer, you’ll make sure that I won’t be ‘fine’, thanks," Lydia said in response.

“Here you go snapping back right away…” One of the guys, Mason, with long dark hair, always hiding in the cowl of his hoodie, meant to mutter it to himself, but she heard it anyway and barely refrained from snorting.

The blonde — Zoe — who was usually the main instigator of all the antics of this squad, shushed him and leaned forward slightly, forcing Lydia to tense up.

“We've been following your passion for photography for a little while, maybe you noticed…”

“Uh-huh,” Lydia replied dully, continuing to stare at her with distrust and caution.

“And, in general... we thought maybe we shouldn't have treated you like that…”

“Like what exactly?” Lydia decided to play the fool. To let the blonde find the courage to point out her errors out loud.

“Well. You know. Being mean and stuff?…”

“Calling you a sketchy freak," added Rachel.

“Maybe not all Goths are terribly strange after all,” said Mason and almost instantly got elbowed by Ethan, a brunette with a crew cut.

“He meant to say that he thinks he was wrong about you, like the rest of us,” he finished for his buddy.

Lydia raised her eyebrows in surprise and gave them an incredulous look. She was waiting for the insult, the punchline, a whack upside the head, or something thrown in her face. But none of this happened. They just stared back at her in silence, taking turns crushing awkward smiles. This silence lasted for an indecently long time, so Lydia coughed defiantly.

“When should I laugh?” she asked coldly.

Zoe blinked in confusion. “There’s no prank here, we really decided to try, well... offer you to start all over again with us, if possible. I don't think you really deserve this whole shitty treatment after all. Your photos are very cool.”

“Nah…”

“No, really,” Rachel assured her. “I myself once tried artistic photography, and had just some bullshit coming out all the time. And you seem like having... I’d say professional skills.”

“A lot depends on the quality of the camera. I just got a DSLR recently.”

“Not everyone with an expensive violin in their hands becomes an excellent musician,” remarked a long-haired guy named Mason. “So stop belittling your talent. We're trying to compliment you here, after all.”

Despite the fact that this sentence was formulated as indignation, there was practically no actual indignation in Mason's voice. Only friendliness. It felt weird. Very weird. But, despite all the skepticism, Lydia was already beginning to think that perhaps all this was really happening to her right now. And that she won't get a slap, or another insult with nasty guffaws and exclamations of "ah-ha, she fell for it!"

It had been so long since she had received sincere attention from people who were not her relatives and did not live in the same house with her that she had already forgotten that such a thing was even possible. And if now there is a chance to finally make at least some positive acquaintance in this miserable educational institution, she should use it.

With each new day, the traditional evening expectation of Lydia's return from school became more and more protracted. At first she came half an hour later than usual, then an hour, then an hour and a half... Delia and Charles were absolutely calm about this, because of course she warned them on the phone every time that she would be late. And the reason for these delays was not a secret at all, but it still annoyed Beetlejuice as hell — she found new friends. And not just some other ghosts, but ordinary, human, meat friends. In which there was not an ounce of strangeness or anything supernatural. It offended him to the core, even though he tried not to show it. Before that, he had the proud title of Lydia Dietz's only best friend, but now it felt like he had been pushed off to the side. He, a mighty demon, was pushed off to the side for the sake of some mere breathers.

“At first I thought they were kidding and just wanted to prank me, but it turned out they really wanted to make friends with me,” Lydia said enthusiastically when, after a week of late returns, he finally asked what she was doing after school that made her linger some place else that long. “We're just walking around and... chatting about everything. I showed them my camera and sometimes I take pictures along the way…”

“So you’re saying, these four fools are more fun than me?” Beetlejuice asked dryly, hovering in the air above the sofa in the living room.

“Pffft, what?” Lydia chuckled. “What nonsense! I didn't say that.”

“Well, then why do you hang out with them?” he turned upside down and sat on the ceiling cross-legged and frowning.

“Because I want to! I have never had friends among normal people, after all.”

“I respect your compliment to my abnormality, but I don't respect your attitude to your already existing friend,” he lifted his nose high and closed his eyes.

This was a strategic mistake on his part, because in that same second a slipper flew into him; he grunted in surprise and fell with a crash to the floor behind the sofa, miraculously not knocking down the floor lamp with his feet.

“Stop being jealous, I won't leave you, you moron,” Lydia came up and put her foot in the slipper lying next to the discontentedly snorting demon. “In case you didn't know, people can have more than one friend. There's no slot limit or something like that. So calm the heck down.”

After that, he honestly tried to calm down. He really did. But the reality was that when after hundreds of years of loneliness you have finally found someone you can call your friend, and then this someone gets distracted from you by other people who are objectively more boring and lame than you, then you simply can’t help starting to feel abandoned. And Lydia, of course, could not help noticing his growing discontent every day. And as a result, by the end of the second week, she apparently got completely tired of his eternally judgmental and offended look meeting her each time she returned home, so she just took a deep breath and said:

“Jesus... stop sulking. If you're so pissed off about me hanging out with them, you can just join in. As far as I know, unlike the Maitlands, you can leave the house…”

“I can, but I don't do it for safety reasons,” the demon snorted.

“Specify please, whose safety are we talking about here, yours or people outside?” she asked wearily.

“Both options. As far as I know, even though exorcism became a less popular thing, it still pretty much exists,” he narrowed his eyes. "How do I know what's going on in their dumb heads?”

“Don't call them that, they're really nice.”

“Don't know, haven't met, can't agree.”

“Well, go and see for yourself then!”

Beetlejuice grumbled under his breath, and his tousled hair slowly turned from green to muted blue. Lydia took a cursory glance at it and hummed.

“If you don't do bullshit, they won't have a reason to do anything to you.”

“But doing bullshit is literally my natural state! This is my lifestyle, Lyds.”

“Then you need to pull all your self-control together and survive at least a couple of hours without your antics.”

“I'm afraid you're asking for the impossible,” he smiled lightly and shrugged. But as soon as Lydia lifted her foot and took a hold on the slipper again, he immediately waved his hands. “Jeez, could you stop doing that?! Yeah, I get it, you’re all cocky and stuff. I just... don't know. It all is kinda weird.”

“Weird to finally look at the outside world in a normal way? Meet more than three living people?” Lydia sat down on the sofa and rested her cheek on her hand. “Don't worry, I'll introduce you as carefully as possible, and they’ll be cool with you. I'm sure they will.”

“Well... um... if you're SO sure, then I can probably trust the words of my best friend," Beetlejuice put a strong emphasis on the last two words and crossed his arms. “We could put out feelers. But you have to come up with a plan, because I'm still too unsure about this working.”

“No prob,” Lydia gave him a smile and clapped her hands triumphantly.

“Dad never allowed me to have pets,” Lydia muttered a little absentmindedly, clutching the camera in her hands and looking somewhere into the distance.

A group of five friends was walking along the side of the road in a quiet area; on one side were cozy one-story apartment houses, and on the other — a low hedge, beyond which stretched a beautiful field. The sun slowly sank towards the horizon and periodically hid behind a few frequent clouds, creating a picturesque golden-pink spectacle in the sky. Lydia has already taken enough sunset shots to turn off the camera and just enjoy the view with her own eyes, and not through the display.

“Moreover, it seems to me that the problem would be less acute if I wanted, like, a cat or a dog…”

“What did you want?” Zoe asked, also squinting at the setting sun.

“Well, I still do, to be honest,” Lydia sighed. “A tarantula.”

“Eugh, fu- ahem, I mean, an unusual choice,” the blonde gave out in response and giggled nervously.

“I understand, almost everyone reacts like this to such pets,” the goth shrugged with a slight smile. “But you just have to get to know them a little bit more and then you’ll stop seeing them as nasty creatures and understand that they are actually quite interesting animals.”

“I don't know, I've never been a fan of anything with more than four legs," Rachel muttered. “Or everything that has no legs at all…”

“Snakes are also cool pets!” Lydia remarked.

“And what is wrong with, let’s say, cats, that you never wanted one as a pet?” Ethan asked and pointed his finger somewhere ahead. “Like that one, for example?”

All five of them looked at where he was pointing. On one of the fence posts at the side of the road, twining the support under him with his tail like wild ivy, sat a hefty, very fluffy and very uniquely striped cat. He carefully watched the group of teenagers approaching him, and seemed in no hurry to move anywhere else.

“That’s a really damn big boi,” Mason whistled. “I haven't seen such a cat for a long time… Look how fat he is.”

“I think he's just fluffy,” Lydia corrected him quietly, noticing how the cat pressed his ears to his head from Mason's comment.

“Yea, as if he understands me,” the guy grinned in response.

When they walked past him, the cat suddenly jumped off the post, landing soundlessly on the sand of the roadside, hurrying after them.

“Why is he following us?” Ethan asked, turning to look at him.

“‘cause he’s a local stray cat, obviously everyone here feeds him. He hopes that he’ll get something from us," Zoe replied and waved her hand. “Scram! No food here!”

The cat ignored her exclamation and did not slow down. He didn't even look at her — he was running at an easy trot to keep up with them, and looked straight ahead with an indifferent gaze.

“Come on, let him follow us if he wants to, he'll fall behind in a couple of blocks anyway,” Rachel said. “But look at the stripes he has though! I've seen a lot of striped cats, but this guy took the contrast to a new level. He's practically like a zebra... perfect black and white.”

Four, except Lydia, synchronously turned towards the cat to evaluate Rachel's observation, after which the goth finally spoke again:

“There’s nothing really wrong with cats or dogs, it’s just that it’s already too loud in our house.”

“Do you have, like, a younger sibling?” Zoe finally got distracted from their unplanned companion. “You didn't mention anything like that.”

“No, I'm the only child in the family,” Lydia replied, and after thinking for a couple of seconds, she added: “Thank God.”

“Oh...” a sympathetic sigh was heard from somewhere behind.

“And not in that sense either!” the brunette hastened to assure them. “It's just... we have a cohabitant... sometimes he really behaves like an animal, not gonna lie," she grinned. “Okay listen, now it will sound gothic as hell, but don't laugh, I swear I'm not kidding,” Lydia took as much air into her lungs as possible and... “We have a demon living in our house.”

The four friends stopped and while Lydia was turning around, one of the two guys let out a loud unrestrained "HA!!" But by the time she could see their faces, they were just looking at her puzzled. If she looked closely, she could probably see the running question marks in their eyes.

Zoe pointedly poked her finger in her ear, squinted and asked with a grin:

“I'm sorry, what?…”

“You heard right, we have a demon living in our house.”

“If that's the nickname of an ex-con uncle, then that's kinda cool?” Rachel muttered softly, still hoping for a realistic answer.

“No, I meant it literally,” Lydia barely restrained laughter at the sight of confusion and disbelief on their faces.

The guys gave her a doubting look and started whispering about something. Zoe then confidently took a step forward, shaking her head.

“For the first time in these two weeks, I’m starting to doubt you again, Lydia, I'm sorry.”

“I didn't expect you to believe me straight away,” Lydia shrugged with a slight smile. “But if you want to see the evidence, I’ll be happy to provide it.”

The confusion in their eyes suddenly and abruptly switched to curiosity. They clearly did not expect that she would be ready to prove her absurd statement right there and then. Mason and Ethan stopped whispering and the latter scratched his head thoughtfully.

“Well, um...” he began. “Uh... if you can prove THAT... then go ahead, I dunno…”

“With pleasure,” Lydia put her hands on her waist and looked down.

Everyone also turned their gaze to the ground and saw that the same black-and-white striped cat, which everyone had completely forgotten about in the last couple of moments, rounded them from behind and stood in front of them next to Lydia. He raised his yellow eyes to the teenagers and looked them up with predatory interest. After which, he suddenly gave an unnaturally wide smile, opened his mouth and spoke in a hoarse human voice:

“Well, at least they're not ugly.”

At the same moment, all four screamed and jumped back in horror; Rachel stumbled and fell on the dusty side of the road, but was in such shock that she completely ignored the scraped hand and soiled clothes, instead continuing to stare at the cat like everyone else. Meanwhile the cat was clearly experiencing an incredible buzz from their reaction, because he burst into wild laughter and swept his fluffy tail from side to side, raising a small cloud of dust behind his back.

“Oh, yes, these are the faces I expected to see,” he wheezed and poked Lydia's leg with his paw, while the girl was slowly bending in half from a fit of silent laughter. “I must admit, your plan was neat, Scarecrow!”

“I... eh... wha..." were all the sounds Zoe could make; anyway, out of the four of them, she was still the only one who could squeeze out anything other than hysterical sighs, so it was kind of an achievement.

“Meet our pet demon,” Lydia bent down slightly and pointed at the cat that was still shaking with laughter. “Name’s Beej.”

“You have a possessed cat?!” Zoe squeaked.

Beetlejuice finally calmed down and theatrically rolled his eyes.

“Of course not, babes, this form sucks, my neck is already numb from looking up at you cornstalks,” in one black-and-white whirlwind, he turned into his usual humanoid form, almost knocking Lydia off her feet; fortunately, she managed to recoil in time. He straightened his favorite dirty striped jacket and stroked his tie. “That's better…”

Rachel finally found the strength to get up from the ground and dust herself off. The four slowly, still with great apprehension, dared to approach Lydia and Beetlejuice closer than five meters. The demon stood with a wide yellow-toothed smile, his hands in his pant pockets and patiently waiting for their initial shock to finally fade away. Lydia slapped him on the shoulder and said in a completely matter-of-fact tone:

“The ‘Vibe-check’ plan has been completed... with tremendous success," she was still calming a ringing giggle in herself.

“Did I act well?” he asked in an undertone.

“I’d say, eleven out of ten. You need to turn into a cat more often.”

“Buzz off,” he wrinkled his nose, but his smug grin still did not slip from his face.

While they were chatting among themselves, Zoe brought a hand to her face and coughed into her fist. The two looked at them again.

“Well, do you still doubt her?” Beetlejuice asked with a chuckle.

The teenagers slowly shook their heads.

“Good,” he smiled proudly.

Mason raised a trembling finger and pointed at him. “Are you like... a real demon... like from Hell?”

“No, from Heaven,” Beetlejuice giggled. “Lydia has told me a lot about you. Actually, I didn't want to meet you initially, but this Scarecrow persuaded me. Well, then, let's shake hands to celebrate our acquaintance!”

Suddenly, two extra arms materialized, and all four reached forward, lengthening enough to reach each of the teenagers who were still afraid to approach. They screamed in unison again and jumped back.

“Gah, you pussies, how indecent! Come on, come on, shake ‘em, I don’t bite. If not hungry," he winked slyly at them.

Lydia, standing behind him while enthusiastically watching, just clicked her tongue with a smile and shook her head. The friends looked at each other in uncertainty, in their looks one could read a stormy silent polylogue, most likely purely consisting of obscene language. Ethan was the first to show courage — well, actually, he initially looked like the guy who would be the first to dive into the unknown, because everyone else would be too scared. He reached out and clumsily squeezed the demon's rough palm with his fingers. Beetlejuice immediately dug his claws into the back of his hand, causing the teenager to barely squeak, and vigorously shook it up and down.

“Which are you, Ethan or Mason? I know the names, don't remember the descriptions, you're all so boring I would hang myself.”

“Eth-Ethan...” the guy stuttered, not knowing how to react to the fact that the creature is talking to him now, in the existence of which he would not have believed five minutes ago. And not just talking, but shaking his hand with excessive enthusiasm.

“I see... Welp, you look like a typical Ethan. Could have guessed,” Beetlejuice finally let go of his palm and turned his gaze to the second guy. “By the process of elimination, I suppose you’re Mason.”

“Yes...” the long-haired guy brushed away a strand that insistently fell into his eyes, and also shook the hand extended to him; more confidently, because he was convinced by Ethan's example that his own hand would not be torn off and devoured the second he touched him.

“Girls, why so shy? I can't stand like this forever, imagine what the locals will think if they look out the window now," the demon giggled, although he didn't look like he was really concerned about this issue. Rather, he seemed to use this as a way to hurry up the remaining two new friends.

Still they managed to overcome their fear enough to shake his hands too.

“Zoe," the blonde barely managed to say.

“Rachel," the curly-haired one squeaked.

“Finally,” the two extra arms immediately disappeared, and the remaining two shortened to normal length. He straightened the sleeves of his jacket and gave all four of them a toothy smile again. “Well, you already know my name thanks to Lydia. It's nice to finally meet her new boring friends in person…”

“We're not boring,” Zoe said with a touch of resentment.

Beetlejuice only raised an eyebrow at this and tilted his head slightly to the side.

“What hobbies do you have besides smearing your face with make-up? And extra-curricular activities imposed on you by your parents?” he chuckled, because he already knew the answer from the look in her eyes.

“I... uh…”

“Don't bother yourself, it’s obvious,” the demon shrugged, then turned to all four of them. “But you know, people with boring lives are not always boring interlocutors. Well... I'll give you a chance to interest me. Lydia is so wildly attracted to you, I can't understand why, but I have to find out,” he threw his arm heavily over Lydia's shoulders, who was now standing to his right, and she staggered a little from the sudden weight, but the satisfied smile did not disappear from her face. “We're like BFFFs forever. Before you, I was her only friend at all, so-o-o,” Beej let out a quiet laugh. “You now know who you beat in the race for the attention of this mademoiselle. And don’t you dare not justify this win,” it was presented as a joking threat, however Lydia could not help but notice a couple of barely visible strands of blue above his temples.

“You're still jealous.”

They were sitting in her room — Lydia was editing photos from her last walk on her laptop, and Beetlejuice was idly twirling a Rubik's cube he found somewhere in the house in his hands; he wasn't even trying to solve it, he just liked the quiet clicks and cracks with which its sections turned. He didn't even look at the object in his hands, but lay across the made-up bed, his legs hanging over the edge and thoughtfully looking at the ceiling. The response to Lydia's statement was exhaustive and detailed:

“No.”

“Well, listen, now we can hang out all together, what’s still bothering you?…

Beetlejuice propped himself up on his elbows and sighed noisily.

“I just still can't figure out why they are so important to you, God, they're even more boring than the Maitlands,” he looked at her narrowly, forcing Lydia to turn away from the laptop screen and look into his eyes. “Is it all about that they are just... normal? Is that all?”

Lydia wanted to object, but bitterly admitted to herself that, in general, it really is. First of all, she got hooked on talking with them just because they were guys from school. The first people in this cursed place who started treating her not like shit. She couldn't help but drive for their approval. Although they were not even close to being as interesting, strange and funny as this demon. He is dead, and always has been, and he will never be able to understand the importance of ordinary, living people to her. It was hard for him to understand even such a simple concept as love between mother and daughter, because he himself had never experienced motherly love. And we’re not even talking about such an ambiguous thing as the image and authority among toxic teenagers, against their will packed into one dull gray building five days a week.

She wanted to not just survive, but to live in this place. And four new acquaintances after so many years of being the outcast felt like a lifeline. Of course, she grabbed it at the first opportunity…

“I don't know. Maybe," she shrugged.

Beetlejuice frowned and looked away.

“It doesn't look like a germ of a long-lasting friendship, to be honest.”

“What do you even understand about it?” Lydia realized too late that it sounded rude, because when the demon looked up at her, dirty yellow strands seeped into his green hair.

“I'm just trying to compare your relationship with them and my only friendship for who knows how many years,” he snapped back.

“You don’t pass as a psychoanalyst.”

Beetlejuice snorted and squeezed the Rubik's cube in his hands with such force that it made an unpleasant crack, as if it was already on the verge of breaking and falling apart.

“Listen, I'm trying to make everyone happy!” The girl exclaimed in despair. “So that I can spend time with them, and you also don't feel left out. I'm trying! I can't just refuse to talk with them, so that everything will return to the way it was before... when I.. every day, when leaving home, all the time outside I only thought about returning back here. Because every new hour in the outside world had to be endured, not lived.”

With relief, she noticed how the yellow strands turned back to their usual green. Beetlejuice finally relaxed his fingers and put the poor cube on the bedside table.

"You have to try being better for all of us,” she said softly, carefully watching his reaction. “And there is another thing in the list of good qualities — not to be selfish. I really appreciate our friendship, but you... have to understand that I can't just throw the rest of the world away to hang out exclusively with you. After all, I have some kind of life outside this house. And I don't want to spend it alone.”

“You’re right,” to hear this phrase said by him was unexpected, but pleasant and reassuring. In arguments, she rarely managed to convey her thoughts to him, because he was by nature a terribly stubborn and persistent creature, but now he seemed to have made an effort. For her sake. “Okay, maybe...” he scratched his scalp and sighed again. “Maybe I really need to calm down. They’re the buddies you chose, after all... since you're so excited to hang out with them, despite the fact that they're terribly boring, it's not for me to decide if they’re good enough for you. What would you say, we'll wait and see and see how it goes?…”

Lydia smiled, got up from her desk, sat down on the bed next to him and gently hugged him. At first he froze like a statue, but after a few seconds he relaxed and slowly hugged her back.

“That's the approach I prefer,” she said quietly, but with a noticeable smile in her voice.

The way the whole next week went, Lydia could not help but rejoice. Beetlejuice finally stopped looking at her with an eternally judgmental and offended look, endlessly wailing about what boring friends she had chosen for herself, and began to really try to find common ground with them. The teens, meanwhile, began to behave more boldly in his presence. If at the beginning they were afraid to approach him and could not find words to start a conversation, after a few days they finally seemed to have recovered from the shock and began to be sincerely interested in him. Every time the group of five friends left school and went for another walk, after a couple of blocks, a sixth joined them as if out of thin air — several times he scared them by screeching as a sudden greeting, while Lydia just casually greeted him in response.

The teenagers bombarded him with questions — often it was banality out of a desire to understand how he was built at all — whether he had a pulse, whether he was rotting alive, whether he could float... and if he was a real demon, then did it mean that holy water really had some power. For Beetlejuice, these silly interrogations were an easy harmless entertainment — he was happy to satisfy their interest and periodically tease them. Gradually, he stopped whining to Lydia about their boredom — because, although these four personalities were inherently much less interesting than Lydia, their curiosity led their aimless dialogues into quite entertaining routes.

They chatted for hours about everything — from a stupid argument about the reality of the theory of evolution to absurd conspiracy hypotheses about manufacturers deliberately increasing the volume of air in chips packages in order to cash in on inattentive consumers. They even had a brainstorming session on making a tier list of insects by the degree of crunchiness — it is obvious who the initiator of this one was.

In the grass and ditches along the roads, Beetlejuice, with his special sense for dead things, constantly found all kinds of deceased animals — from a shrew who died of natural causes to a fox hit by a car — and there was no way to pass by, no, he had to lift the rotting corpse from the ground, demonstrate it to everyone, speculate aloud about the stage of decomposition of the specimen, and then try to devour it. Usually Lydia would just start yelling at him in disgust, after which he would laugh and throw the find to the ground with a fake sad sigh. After he started doing this on walks, the desire of the teenagers to shake his hand when greeting him noticeably decreased.

They continued to be actively interested in Lydia's photographs — sometimes they even found some interesting places or objects and offered to photograph them. Most often this was some average stuff that wasn't particularly interesting to her, but sometimes she came across some really interesting offers.

On that day, the company was taking its next spontaneous walk. Lydia did not let go of the camera, and Beetlejuice was telling some stupid dark jokes, from which everyone laughed more out of embarrassment than sincerely. The demon was not bothered by this, he was confident in his status as a great comedian even without someone else's approval. When he was once again distracted by a thick ground beetle running along the asphalt and enthusiastically rushed to catch it, Zoe suddenly turned to Lydia, who, while there was nothing interesting, was sorting through the gallery of the camera and erasing unsuccessful pictures in order to save some memory space.

“Listen, we recently found an abandoned church... it's just like, old, tall, dilapidated... maybe you wanna check it out? I think the photos will be fire!”

The rest of the teenagers nodded actively, looking at the goth.

“Oh, yes, there's already moss crawling up the walls, and almost all the stained glass windows are knocked out,” Ethan supported.

“Quite the post-apocalyptic atmosphere," Mason added, tightening the laces of the hood of his hoodie. “Maybe Beej will like it too?”

Lydia turned her gaze to her demonic friend, who had already ran away to the other side of the street and was actively chewing something (apparently, that unfortunate beetle didn’t get away from him). He obviously missed the last minute of the conversation, so she called out to him:

“Beej!”

“That’s me,” he licked his fingers contentedly and stared at his friend with attention.

“The guys offer to check out an abandoned building!”

“The old church!” Rachel specified.

“And what's interesting there, it’s not like I haven’t seen abandoned places before...” he shrugged and began to carefully examine the path under his feet, as if looking for more snacks.

“Maybe I’ll get some cool shots in there,” Lydia raised the camera above her head and defiantly shook it from side to side.

He raised an eyebrow skeptically and looked at her like that for a few seconds, then shook his head and crossed the street, returning to the rest of the company.

“Well, okay, let's go,” he said in the most bored tone possible. “Personally, I would prefer to go destroy a Target, at least that would be fun,” he caught Lydia's disapproving gaze and abruptly spread his arms to the sides, almost slapping Ethan in the face. “What? It’s not like I just suggested to murder someone!”

“And thank God!”

“Well, and the photos of the process would be much more… entertaining.”

“Shut up.”

In response, he just snorted and muttered something inarticulate. When he caught up with Lydia, he turned to the four and crossed his arms.

“Ugh, fine, show the way...”

The church was not big, you couldn’t call it a cathedral, but also not a chapel. Such a medium-scale God-forsaken example of Gothic architecture. Decrepit, covered with cracks, with broken windows, but standing quite firmly. Perhaps this building will stand for another hundred years, slowly turning into nothing; no one planned to allocate the city budget for the restoration of this structure, and it stood idle on the almost deserted outskirts of the city, slowly living out its days. The path to it, however, was well trodden — the abandoned building was obviously popular among the locals. Lydia didn't know the city well enough yet, because it had been barely a year since she moved, so she learned about this place for the first time. And when she saw the church firsthand, she immediately began to regret that she had not found out about it earlier — it really looked majestic and a little creepy, stretching upwards the sky with its pointed roof and gaping dark window openings. There was not much left of the rosetta above the portal — it crumbled and looked like a single empty eye socket, as if emphasizing that the building was practically dead.

Lydia, without taking her eyes off the church, turned on the camera and brought it to her face. But the second she was about to take the first picture, the view got half blocked by a black-and-white striped silhouette.

“Beej!” she hissed and looked out from behind the camera. “Don't get into frame!”

“Sorry-not-sorry," he muttered in response, taking long strides along the path and looking at his feet, as if walking through some kind of strange minefield. Lydia watched his behavior in confusion for a few seconds while the other guys caught up with her frombehind.

“What are you doing.”

“Trying to figure out if the ground here is still holy or if this stuff has already worn off,” he took every step with caution, but the stupid gambling grin did not slip from his face. “Because for me to walk on the holy ground is the same as for you to stomp barefoot on red-hot sand,” he looked up at his friend and wrinkled his nose. “Not much of a pleasure, to be honest.”

“Well... and how is it? Is there... any sense of the holy spirit?” She raised her hand and described an indeterminate figure in the air.

“Not yet. If it doesn't appear even after I cross the threshold, it'll be gorgeous. But the ground around is clearly fizzled out.”

It was interesting to learn that the holy ground has the property of "fizzling out". Although, if you think about it, it even sounded quite logical. Letting Beetlejuice a little ahead so that he would fit into the frame entirely, she still took a photo — a demon does not count as a human, probably, so technically she still followed her principle of taking photos with no people on them. And let a striped suit, seemingly completely out of place in aesthetics, flaunt in the foreground.

He stopped in front of the portal, put his hands in his pants pockets and turned to the group of friends, looking at them expectantly.

“Come on, catch up, snails!”

The guys walked past Lydia, who was still standing on the path, taking a dozen photos of the gaping hole in the place where once was the rosette window. After a couple of minutes, she decided to stop and not waste the memory on her SD card for nothing — the interior was certainly much more interesting.

“Have you ever been to churches before, Beej?” asked Mason, who was the first to approach the entrance.

“Sure thing! Been a couple of times. Yeah, quite unpleasant sensations, but still.”

“Because…”

“Holy ground,” he raised his dark eyebrows and pointed under his feet. “But as for this little church... I'm not sure that it has the same strong effect. But we’ll find it out in a couple of minutes anyway.”

Lydia just caught up with them just in time to catch the moment when he was about to cross the threshold — the teenagers surrounded him and watched carefully as he raised his leg and froze in the doorway.

“Your bets?” he asked with a sly squint.

“Bruh, get in already!” Zoe muttered impatiently.

“Oh yes, you definitely deserve a ‘queen of boredom’ medal,” the demon giggled, still standing with his foot raised. “When we’ll be back home today, I'll tell the Maitlands that they are no longer at the top of the killjoy pedestal. You heard that, Lyds?” he turned his head almost a hundred and eighty degrees with a nasty crunch to look at his friend standing behind him. She just smiled and shrugged. “Fine…”

With that, he shifted his weight forward and stepped inside. Almost immediately, he was shaken slightly, and his hair stood up for a moment and flashed yellow. With a loud hoot, he crossed the threshold a couple of seconds later with his other foot and quickly smoothed his hair, which by that time had returned to its classic green.

"And what does that mean?" Rachel asked with a grin, while everyone else also entered the building and began to look around.

"There's still a little bit of holiness left here," he answered abruptly, straightening his jacket. “But just a little bit. It tickles a little, that's all. I'll get used to it in five minutes," he folded his hands behind his back and looked up, thoughtfully assessing the condition of the vaults. “It's standing strong, maybe even your grandchildren will hang out in here...” his face suddenly lit up, as if he remembered something, and he turned sharply on his heels to face the teenagers. “Oh, do you want to hear a cool story about how I disrupted the baptism and shooed a whole crowd of people out of the similar church?”

"That doesn't unclude infanticide, does it?" Rachel asked cautiously. Zoe, meanwhile, sat down on a pile of construction debris, which was formed once due to the collapse of a fragment of the wall, and was thoroughly looking for something in her backpack. Beetlejuice grunted in annoyance at the fact that she did not pay attention to his suggestion at all. He looked back at Rachel.

“Maybe not, maybe yes…” he winked at her and stuck out the tip of his tongue. “For details, you’ll have to listen to the whole story.”

“We'll do without the details, perhaps,” Mason interjected with a slightly agitated voice. Ethan, meanwhile, was leaning over the sitting Zoe and they were chatting quietly about something, and Lydia, it seems, got completely disconnected from any conversations and stuck her face to the camera’s viewfinder. Every few seconds, the soft clicks of the shutter echoed under the arches.

“Well, as you wish, I was just trying to cheer up the atmosphere,” said Beetlejuice and returned to observing the interiors.

There was practically nothing left of the altar — obviously, it was looted in the first years, and maybe even months of the desolation of the church. If there were once artful old icons here, now you could only guess about their appearance with your eyes closed. Of the rotten benches, only two were still somehow holding on - the rest were lying on the floor as a scattering of rotten pieces of wood.

There was some kind of pleasant thrill from being in the church with impunity — when your feet don't burn from every step, and your insides don't ache from the suffocating smell of church candles. He liked this opportunity to stand firmly under these arches, not feeling the saintly pressure that was trying to smear every bit of his demonic essence.

He lazily studied the marble floor covered with crumbled plaster with a wandering gaze. Until suddenly he came across something unexpected and very interesting, on which his shadow fell exactly from the sun shining through the empty rosette-window. He let out a quiet "huh" and approached the find, bending over it and studying the inscribed symbols with curiosity. The lines were quite fresh, as if they had been drawn just the day before. It looks like they were spray-painted. "Poor old marble," flashed through his mind as he straightened up and called out to the teens:

“Guys, look, here’s the pentacle!”

Zoe, Rachel, Mason and Ethan immediately noticed his exclamation; Lydia froze with a camera under one of the two somehow preserved stained-glass windows. When she finally got distracted and followed the others, she saw Beetlejuice carefully, keeping a distance of about half a meter, pacing around the pentagram drawn on the floor.

“It looks like the local occultist club is hanging around here as well,” he looked up at the guys with an enthusiastic look for a couple of seconds before again fixing his eyes on the figure on the floor. “It would be cool to make friends with them. But keep an eye on them so, heh," he playfully raised his foot over the circle before stepping back again. “-so that they won’t try to do their exorcism thing. Do you know what will happen to a demon if he gets inside this circle and…”

In the next few moments, everything happened so quickly that Lydia barely had time to realize what was even happening. Being fascinated by the interiors of an abandoned church, she completely did not notice the moment when a sports water bottle appeared in Zoe's hands. At which point Ethan got behind her, and the heavy front door slammed shut. And by the absence of a cap on the bottle, Lydia already understood with some fibers of her being that there was no ordinary water inside. Beetlejuice seemed to sense something was wrong, too, because he sniffed noisily, as if he had caught the scent of danger, and looked up from the floor, frowning in confusion. He didn't even have a second to react — because at the same moment his face was met with more than half a liter of crystal clear, pure holy water.

There was a loud, deafening hiss, followed by a squelching, wet cracking. God, that was probably the most horrible sound Lydia had ever heard in her life. He let out a piercing, completely inhuman shriek, from which her heart skipped a few beats and she rushed forward in horror.

“BEEJ!!!”

But of course they didn't let her get close to him — Ethan roughly grabbed her by the arms and pressed her back to him; she dropped the camera out of surprise, fortunately it was hanging around her neck and didn't drop on the floor, but it roughly hit her stomach, knocking the remaining air out of her lungs.

“Wo-o-o-o-ho-o-o-o!” it seems that this victory cry was issued by Zoe, who abruptly raised the emptied bottle over her head. “Didn’t lie about the holy water!”

“Exorcising the demon!” Rachel squealed excitedly and jumped on the spot.

Mason lunged forward and pushed Beetlejuice, who was clutching at his face and unable to resist the unexpected attack, staggered and stepped over the contour of the pentagram. He inhaled sharply and let out a second scream; a viscous black liquid began to ooze through his palms pressed to his face, staining the floor under him; his knees trembled and buckled, and his hair turned into a disorderly mixture of purple, blue and white.

Lydia had never wanted to beat up anyone around her as much as she did now, but unfortunately, her attempts to break out of Ethan's tight grip were in vain. She could only call out to her friend over and over again, hoping that he would recover and be able to look at her, but... it seems that this was only the beginning. In her whole life, she had never even imagined how the holy water would destroy the undead, but what she was witnessing now looked worse than any nightmare. The hissing sounded as if he had been doused with a tub of boiling oil, and there was more and more of the black liquid pouring onto the floor- it took her a few seconds to realize that this viscous squelching pitch was his blood. She didn't even know he had blood at all before this. As it turned out — he had, and there was a lot of it… It didn't smell like human blood — not the well-known smell of rust, but some kind of suffocating rot. This odour clogged Lydia's sinuses and she involuntarily broke into a fit of hoarse coughing.

The lines of the pentagram flashed dimly, and the demon standing in it fell to his knees with a loud thud; his third scream was already weaker than the first two, and he was still in too much shock to show any resistance whatsoever. For the next half minute, which felt like it lasted forever, he sat on the floor, making loud intermittent moans, his body shaking violently, and his palms were almost completely stained with black blood.

“Why won’t you take a picture?!” Ethan roughly shook Lydia, who was struggling in his arms. “Look, what a gorgeous shot, eh?! You'll miss it!”

With a guffaw, Mason ran up to the two of them, grabbed the camera hanging on her neck and shoved it into her trembling hands. She barely had time to squeeze it with her fingers so as not to drop it a second time, but that was all she was capable of. She was trembling now no less than Beetlejuice himself, and everything was blurred in her eyes from tears.

“A farewell photo, Scarecrow!” Mason was egging her on.

“Beej...” she could only mutter, without taking her eyes off the friend writhing in front of her.

It seemed that Mason quickly ran out of patience, because next he grabbed the camera again roughly and threw it violently to the floor; there was a loud crunch, and the camera shattered instantly from the contact with the marble slab. Lydia sobbed noisily and hid her face in her hands, similar to how Beetlejuice was doing.

“Well, what ‘bout putting him out of his misery already?” Zoe's voice sounded as if through the thickness of water.

No.

“Should I get the other bottle?” Rachel asked.

No.

“Yeah, come on.”

NONONONONO!!!

It seems Beetlejuice also realized their words, because at the same moment he let out a low growl and for the first time in all this time he raised his face from his palms. More accurately… what was left of his face.

Lydia thought she was going to throw up.

The left side of his face, which had received the brunt of the holy water, was now practically absent. In its place there was only a quietly hissing bubbling mess, slowly crawling over to his lower jaw and neck. The right eye, which had not yet been reached by the hole slowly corroding his flesh, was now not even close to human; it glowed with a caustic yellow light and there was no visible pupil.

“Woah,” Zoe whistled. “Hey, scarecorbie, or whatever he calls you,” she turned to Lydia, who was unable to make anything but stifled sobs. “The original plan was to smash your camera and your face a little, but who knew that you would reveal to us something much more important to you so easily,” she threw the empty bottle aside and looked over Lydia’s shoulder; from where, apparently, Rachel was approaching with a new "doze". “And he, in turn, was happy to explain what exactly can kill him. You both got big ass mouths," she grinned. “You should know how cool it feels! To exorcise a real fucking demon! One would write a novel from our words…”

“This is unbelievable shit,” Mason approached the blonde and slightly opened his mouth, watching the unsuccessful attempts of their victim to get to his feet.

“Don't…” Lydia wheezed, hanging limply in Ethan's grip. He was obviously tired of holding her and, realizing that she was already unable to resist, let her go, allowing her to sink to the floor.

It was one thing to send a demon back to the Netherworld — with someone else's help, he may return from there unharmed, Beetlejuice himself was a vivid example of that. But holy water was a completely different case. It destroys not only the physical body, but also the essence itself. Leaving no chance to return. Erasing the sinful soul from the face of the universe once and for all. When Beetlejuice first shared this fact with her during one of the many evening gatherings in front of the TV, it was hard for her to believe that a couple of liters of properly prepared H2O poured on a demon would be enough to turn them into a fetid puddle. And it was hard for her to believe that demons really had such a big vulnerability.

"Otherwise, demons would be OP*, Lyds," Beetlejuice added in his usual frivolous manner, and Lydia even felt somehow embarrassed that he was using modern gaming slang when describing the only thing that could actually end his existence. “The guys from above are not fools, they have their own reliable means.”

Oh, how she wished now that the demons were this very “OP”... So that she wouldn't have to watch an actual murder in front of her right now, for which they won't even get arrested, because most people simply don't believe in the supernatural. Fuck everyone! Fuck these pieces of shit, fuck this world that doesn't notice what's right under its nose, fuck with this damn church; she'd be glad if the roof collapsed right now and buried them all under the rubble.

Behind her and Ethan, Rachel hurried, clutching another transparent plastic bottle, noticeably larger in volume than the first one. Lydia stared in horror at Beetlejuice still sitting on the floor, and he looked back at her with his one unfocused eye. The black blot spreading across his face had already begun to move across the bridge of his nose to the right side, and he mechanically shook his head, as if this could somehow stop the unstoppable. He still didn't seem to fully realize what was going on. But they both understood what would happen next if he won’t do something about it right then and there.

Zoe had already taken hold of the lid of the second bottle when he suddenly rushed forward, breaking the boundary of the circle with noticeable effort. Lydia even exhaled with relief, as she saw that he still had enough energy to fight back. With a guttural growl, he knocked the bottle out of Zoe's hands with such force that it flew several meters away and got lost in the dark end of the apse, and from the sweep of his hand, black viscous splashes covered her face. The blonde screamed and jumped back, frantically trying to wipe the fetid liquid from her face; in a matter of seconds, her self-confidence disappeared and she looked fearfully at her friends, who also abruptly recoiled from the circle. They were clearly counting on an easy and quick victory after a successful first attack. But the demon still had a trick up his sleeve for them. He wasn't going to give up so easily.

He froze, hunched over, and stared straight ahead for a few more seconds, even after Zoe ran away. And then, with a sharp crunch, he snapped his head towards the teenagers, and a low bubbling sound escaped from his throat, not even close to something that a human could make. When he opened his mouth, his lower jaw, already half-eaten by holy water, hung open, as if the joints had already dissolved and it was held only by skin and ligaments; several more large black clots falling to the floor. He could barely stand on his feet; his knees were still buckling, but he was doing his best not to fall.

Lydia froze at this sight, trying to see at least a fraction of recognition in the remnants of his face, but it was not possible to understand who he was looking at, and whether he saw them at all…

“Beej?…” She cautiously tried to call him, but he didn't react in any way.

The demon shifted from one foot to the other to turn his whole body towards them, and leaned forward in such an angle that he should have already fallen face-planted on the floor, but this did not happen. The teenagers huddled together on the stairs in front of the altar, as if this position could somehow protect them. His messy hair, scorched and blackened on one side, began to gradually turn blood-red.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..." Lydia heard the treacherous gang behind her whispering in fright. She finally found the strength to tear her gaze away from Beetlejuice and turn in their direction.

“Plan B... Ethan, get Plan B, RIGHT NOW,” Zoe managed in a trembling voice.

“Hurry up!” Rachel squeaked.

Ethan hesitated for a few moments, trembling in fear, but eventually he took off and rushed to the backpack left earlier at the foot of the steps. And this action worked like a trigger.

The air above Lydia's head stirred and she reflexively ducked. A striped silhouette flew right over her, continuing to sprinkle black drops on the dirty marble, and with another chilling roar, it swept past the three teenagers left on the steps, rushing after Ethan. A second later, the guy had already fallen hard to the floor, and the backpack he was aiming for was…

Lydia had to blink a few times to realize WHAT she was seeing in front of her right now. Something resembling a thick striped snake tail stretched past her feet on the floor. And another one. And another... There were so many of them that they already somewhat resembled the tentacles of some creepy mutant. This curly black-and-white thing stretched forward, slid down the steps and ended in two leathery forelegs with sharp claws and a disheveled pile of hair sticking out in all directions. Or could it already be called fur?

The creature turned its head towards Ethan, who stopped halfway. It was no longer a face... it was more of an elongated toothy muzzle, just as half-eroded with holy water as his face had been, but otherwise smooth, as if it was the skull of some predatory beast cleaned of soft tissues. Between the lower jaw and the remaining half of the upper one, it was clutching a backpack—its head was big enough to hold it easily. Ethan, who had barely managed to prop himself up on his elbows by the time he saw the creature in front of him, now froze, afraid to breathe. It silently looked at him in response with its one eye, and then let out a loud hiss and snapped its teeth — the fangs pierced the backpack like a piece of butter and the creature almost immediately growled and threw it aside; something in its mouth began to bubble, and a new clot of black blood hit the floor with a ringing slap. Lydia assumed that there was another bottle of holy water inside, which it accidentally bit through. And it seemed to have made it doubly angry.

“What the fuck is this?!” something broke in Mason's voice and he literally squeaked his words.

“RUN!” Zoe screamed and all four of them (Ethan almost on all fours) rushed to the exit.

But then their actions backfired again — the heavy door was slammed by them earlier, and there was absolutely no time to open it. The creature rushed forward with a roar, its heavy tails almost hitting Lydia, who was still sitting on the floor in shock. It flew over their heads, and with a wall-shaking smash landed on the vertical plane of the door, blocking the only way to escape. Due to the new dose of holy water, the hole on the left side of its skull began to spread faster, almost completely dissolving its upper jaw. A long segmented tongue hung and writhed between sharp yellowish teeth on the lower jaw. The creature reared its mane and the part of it that had not yet turned black turned into a dirty mixture of red, purple and white. Lydia had never seen white in his hair before. She could only guess what exactly it meant, but that definitely meant nothing good.

When it growled again, splattering them from head to toe with drops of blood, it jumped off the door, throwing out its clawed paws. Lydia finally found the strength to get to her feet. The teenagers ran screaming to the sides when the monster crashed to the floor in the place where they were standing just a second ago; the absence of one eye and the pouring of blood on the other clearly did not help it in coordinating its movements. Its paws buckled and it fell awkwardly on its side, hitting its skull on the marble with a ringing thud. The sound was so sharp that Lydia was even surprised that a piece of it didn't break off at that. While it was trying to get up from the floor, the teenagers had already piled on the heavy door in an attempt to open it. They managed to move it only about thirty centimeters, and Rachel managed to squeeze out at the moment when the other three were knocked to the floor by the sweep of one of the creature’s tails. A second later, they were all pinned to the floor by an enormous paw, and a muzzle hung directly over their faces, from which black rot dripped like rain.

Lydia didn't hear what exactly they were shouting at that moment, because she was running across the nave herself, but it seemed that Zoe, who always called herself a convinced atheist, began to pray out loud, and the two guys just whined pitifully, not knowing whether they could still hope for mercy, or whether they should be preparing for a painful death. The monster opened its jaws -or rather, lowered the lower one, since by this time there was practically nothing left of the upper one- and bent its neck, preparing to separate their heads from their bodies with one quick jerk.

“Stop!!!”

He abruptly raised his head from his victims and stared at Lydia. She froze a few meters away from him, a chill running down her spine from the look he gave her — completely wild, inhuman... not recognizing. He looked at her the same way he looked at them. Empty. Scared. Bloodthirsty. For a few seconds she thought she had just made the worst mistake of her life. That in his state of rage he didn’t care who he tore to pieces — the main thing was to save his own life. Therefore, when he agitatedly hit the floor with his tails, she shuddered all over and staggered back.

“B-Beej?...” it was almost a whisper in the sudden silence, in which only the steady patter of his blood drops on the floor could be heard.

Only now, when everything went frozen and quiet, did she realize that his single eye and his mane sticking out in all directions were the only colored objects in the entire church. Everything else seemed to have become... black and white. Like on an old film. Even the sky in the hole from the rosette-window turned light gray, although this evening it was clear. At what moment this change took place, Lydia wasn’t sure. But she knew for sure that this was the work of a freaked out demon.

She glanced briefly at Zoe, Ethan, and Mason, whom he was still pinning to the floor, and they stared back at her in horror. Even if the whole world around her wasn't so monochrome, she was sure that they would be paler than death at this moment. Actually, they were not so far from it. But even though Lydia was completely shocked by their betrayal, she couldn't wish people death... she just couldn't. It was too much. She will see the moment of their death in her nightmares until the end of her days, and feel partial guilt for it. And this is not to mention how she will not be able to look into Beetlejuice’s eyes the same after that.

“Don't do it," she said hoarsely, not taking her eyes off the slowly melting skull of the monster standing in front of her. “Please don't…”

She wondered if he was feeling the pain now, or if the demonic essence had completely drowned out all sensations, except for the desire to fight back, hurt in response, tear apart and protect himself. She wondered if he understood the meaning of her words, or if they sounded to him only as a noise provoking an attack. The monster slowly turned its head back and bent over the teenagers frozen under its paw again. And at the moment when he bent his whole body, sucking in air with a seething through the decaying mouth, Lydia, forgetting about fear, rushed forward.

“Nononono!!!…”

But, to her surprise, there was no massacre. With one jerk, the monster lifted his paw from his victims, hit the floor with his tails with a shocking noise, and let out a bubbling roar just a meter away from their distorted faces filled by fear. They were practically splattered with black drops from head to toe, and it seemed that Zoe was ready to pass out at any second. But Ethan and Mason, who came to their senses in time, jumped to their feet, grabbed her and dragged her to the door. They froze for a moment, unable to believe that they were still alive, and the demon who was following them with his gaze began to cluck lowly, as if hinting that he might quickly change his mind if they did not leave right away. With hysterical whining, they were able to move the door a little more, enough to fall out into the outside, and soon the church was quiet again. The retreating footsteps and hoarse, labored breathing subsided, leaving Lydia and... whatever this creature that Beetlejuice had turned into, alone.

He just stood there, staring at the half-open door, from behind which the dead, colorless light of the setting sun was oozing, and bowed his head to the floor. His mane had already turned half black, but the part of it that still retained color gradually finally lost its red coloring and faded into pure purple. Lydia was still standing with her arm outstretched, without noticing it herself, and was afraid to move. He slowly turned his head in her direction. The remaining eye was still there, and for the first time in all that time, she saw a glimmer of recognition in his gaze. It was impossible to understand what emotion was embedded in this look, because there was not a single muscle on his skull. But for some reason Lydia was firmly convinced that he would not hurt her. She knew it.

"It's over," she said in a whisper, but by the way his ears moved, she knew that he had heard her words perfectly. And, apparently, he fully understood them, because at the same second a heavy exhalation escaped from his mouth, and he slowly spread his paws wider so he wouldn't fall under his own weight. From the dangling, almost dislocated lower jaw, a black liquid continued to drip on the floor in an unstoppable stream. “Everything... everything is fine…”

No, everything wasn’t fine at all. Lydia understood that. Everything was not fine at all, because even though no more holy water got on him, a black blotch like a plague continued to slowly spread over his head and neck. Part of it had already reached the edge of his left shoulder, corroding the skin and exposing the muscles where the mane ended. ‘Why does it keep growing?’ Lydia thought in panic. ‘It shouldn't! It has to stop... why doesn't it stop?!’

She took a few steps forward on stiff legs and allowed herself to touch him, gently placing her hand under his lower jaw, as if in an attempt to support it. Almost immediately, he brought down almost the entire weight of his head on her hand and she barely kept her balance, clinging to the base of his jaw with her other hand. The lower fangs poked painfully against the solar plexus, but she didn't care. She also didn't care about the suffocating, disgusting smell of decomposition emanating from his huge wound. He made a short low sound, something between a sob and a tired howl, and Lydia sucked in air noisily, intercepting his head and propping it with her shoulder to wrap her arms around his neck.

The fur of his mane was rough, tangled and matted with blood, which almost immediately soaked her shirt and slowly trickled down her back in a nasty cold stream when he put his head on her shoulder and allowed himself to relax his overstressed body. Striped tails slowly wriggled, curling around her in an irregular spiral and barely touching her legs, trembling from fright and anxiety. They stood like that for half a minute, without making any sounds, until he suddenly sighed sharply again, his clawed paws gave way and he sank to the floor. Lydia was unable to hold him, and all her efforts were barely enough to prevent him from hitting his head on the ground, gently putting it to rest on the marble floor. At the moment of contact, the monster hissed irritably, a small convulsion ran through his body and in a matter of seconds he disappeared into the cloud of green smoke, suddenly turning into his usual, familiar humanoid form.

She gasped and pulled him up to her, gently placing his head on her lap. Before the transformation, the long, toothy muzzle, half-eaten and covered with blood and pus, already looked terrible, but now, seeing what was left of his face, Lydia could barely restrain the urge to vomit. The sight was as if someone had smashed his head with force and left him to lie in the scorching sun for a couple of days. Now there was no doubt that he would not have survived the second bottle of holy water. The right eye, thank-whoever-there-is, remained unharmed, but looked into the void in front of him from under the half-closed eyelid and did not react to Lydia in any way.

“Beej?” she shook him by the shoulders in despair, even though she knew that this would not bring him to his senses, but rather only inflame the pain. “Beetlejuice! Can you hear me?!”

She reflexively grabbed his hand, also partially eaten by the rot, and squeezed his wrist with her fingers — a completely stupid gesture, because he has no pulse. The blood was just... slowly oozing out like sap from a hacked tree. The world around them gradually began to take on colors again, and Lydia squinted at the sudden amber of the sunlight falling on them through the half-open door of the church. His hair, meanwhile, on the contrary, actively lost color and became lifeless gray, and the border of the black spot continued to slowly creep further and further.

“Why doesn't it stop?!” She finally asked out loud the question that had been on the tip of her tongue for the last few minutes. "Can... can I do something about it?"…

His hand, which she was still clutching, suddenly moved and freed itself from her grasp, he spread his fingers and slapped the floor with his palm. And then he froze again. Lydia frowned uncomprehendingly. He was trying to convey something to her, but she just couldn't understand what…

“I don't understand...” she muttered in a confused, trembling voice.

He slammed his hand on the floor again and a hard lump formed in her throat from a feeling of complete helplessness.

“I...I'm sorry, I don't understand...” she sobbed and gently ran her hand through his hair, which had completely lost all color.

His fingers clenched, and his nails rasped on the polished stone so that it felt like they were about to break. Lydia began to frantically went through their earlier dialogues in her head, trying to find at least some clue. And then…

"There's still a little bit of holiness left here…"

Floor. Ground. Holy ground.

In his full strength, he was practically immune to the essence that had faded over the years. But now that he was weakened almost to the limit, even such a small force still did not allow him to recover and slowly but surely contributed to the effect of the holy water. They had to get out. Right now.

Lydia didn't voice her guess out loud, she just gasped softly, abruptly grabbed him under the arms and dragged him to the door. Damn, he was heavy. She could barely move him at all. She gently lowered him to the floor, muttering, "Just a second, I'll be right back!" and leaned on the door with all her weight. She could have crawled sideways by herself. But to drag Beetlejuice through…

“Gimme, gimme a second!...” with difficulty opening it a few more tens of centimeters, she returned to him, picked him up again and exerted all her remaining strength to drag him out.

The long sunset shadows of the trees crept across the clearing in front of the church, creeping up to the open door. A few meters away from it, aside from the path, two people were lying in the grass — one was trying to regain her breath and not faint in an attempt to calm her pounding heart, and the second practically did not move — one might even think that he was a corpse (although this was partly true). Lydia carefully looked at the... remains of his face. But no matter how much she wanted to turn the contents of her stomach out now, she forced herself to stare intently at the border of the black blotch to make sure that it finally stopped spreading. After that, she exhaled loudly, something in her heart clicked and she broke into quiet sobs.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…”

Yes, these four assholes betrayed them. But... in some sense, she set him up, too. If she hadn't insisted on his acquaintance with them, they would never have found out about him. And he would be safe and sound now. Defiantly offended, grumbling non-stop and doing small dirty tricks — but safe. She had led him to them. She had brought the trouble upon him. It was all her fault… She would’ve only got off with a broken camera and some bruises. It heals. It is fixable. The loss of a best friend is not.

"The best- and the only," a small voice corrected her from somewhere in the back of her mind. Her only friend. She didn't have any real friends other than him. All this was just a prolonged falsehood in order to backstab her more painfully. And, chasing after their artificial attention, she almost lost forever the one who really cared for her. And who she was truely caring for.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…”

And she didn't care that she was all smeared in his cold sticky blood. As long as Beetlejuice was alive -well, as much as a demon could be considered alive- nothing else mattered. Everything will be fine. Everything should be fine.

She squeezed his hand again with trembling fingers. It seemed as if his fingers had even become bony; they trembled and squeezed her palm a little in response. On the temples, uncertain, timid dark blue stripes slowly made their way into the lifeless gray strands. And it gave hope.

Without letting go of his hand, she put the other one in her pocket — fortunately, the phone did not fall out and get lost in the church while all this horror was happening. Barely focusing her eyes on the screen, she unlocked her phone and called her father.

In the cool shade of the trees, a chorus of crickets gradually began their quiet, peaceful evening song.

When Beetlejuice opened his eyes, he was first of all pleasantly surprised that there were two of them again. The last time he could actually see something clearly, there was only one eye and he and Lydia were still in that damn church, and he felt his head and neck literally dissolve, introducing him to levels of pain that he couldn't have even imagined. When you're a demon, you think you're invulnerable. ‘You're-a-demon’. You've been alive for hundreds of years and you can do whatever you want. And you begin to take lightly the few things that can really pose a danger to you. Talking to breathers. Thinking aloud about the deadly effects of holy water. Entering the holy grounds "for fun."

And if Lydia was a gullible scarecrow, then he was a total brainless idiot. And his guilt in what happened was as much, if not more, than Lydia's own guilt. And that's not taking into account those four jerks. He could not answer her then, comfort her in any way and try to convince her that she should not feel responsible for everything that happened that evening. Well, he couldn't even open his remaining eye properly when the atmosphere suitable for sincere conversations finally reigned.

He felt surprisingly well now. Here it is, after all, demonic regeneration. Yes, he almost kicked the bucket. But they got out of that place just in time, and the survival game was definitely won. Although the last thing that stuck in his memory were Lydia's sobs and the quiet beeps of her phone.

He finally realized that he was in her room. And occupied her bed.

In general, Beetlejuice did not have his own room nor his own "place". He just... existed in the whole house at once. He didn't need sleep for obvious reasons, but if he wanted to, he could take a nap somewhere on the roof, under the stars. And lying on a soft mattress under a warm blanket felt strange and unnatural.

He turned his head lazily and found the remains of Lydia's broken camera neatly laid out on the bedside table. He didn't remember that those bastards had smashed it. And, apparently, she went back to the church after she dragged him out, because even the smaller fragments had been collected — clearly not in a hurry. In general, the sight was quite sad. The DSLR camera is a very complex and weighty device, and they threw it on the marble floor with additional acceleration, so… It was probably easier to just buy a new one here than to try to fix what was left. But knowing the prices for such cameras…

A few minutes later, the door to the room slightly opened with a soft click, dispelling the gloom, and a dark silhouette appeared in it, pausing outside, apparently just to look inside through the crack.

“I see you,” this was the first phrase that Beetlejuice uttered since... what happened back there, and he himself was surprised how his usually hoarse voice could sound even more hoarse and pathetic. He cleared his throat.

Almost at the same second, the door swung fully open and Lydia practically ran into him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and squeezing him as if she was trying to crush him. He exhaled loudly, but quickly hugged her back. They froze and just held on to each other in complete silence for another minute.

"You're fine," Lydia said in a trembling whisper, and the demon chuckled.

“Of course, I'm fine, couldn't be any other way.”

“I thought you were going to die there…”

“Which sounds stupid, because I'm not even alive at the first place,” he said it as something obvious, although they both understood that this was not the case in this situation. Holy water for a demon is like oblivion for ghosts. Death for the dead. Lydia sat on the edge of the bed and lightly poked him in the shoulder, pretending to be offended.

“Dumbass.”

“Scarecrow.”

They both laughed softly, not looking into each other's eyes.

"How long was I out?"

“More than a whole day…”

Beetlejuice glanced at the curtained window, from which the light of a street lamp was slightly oozing. That meant it was already late in the evening of the next day.

“Well, I slept well,” he abruptly sat up and strenuously tried to hide the fact that his vision darkened from this rapid movement.

Lydia wanted to stop him, but decided that he would figure out what was best for him on his own. So she didn't try to put him back down and let him move to the edge to dangle his legs and settle down next to her. He once again ran his hand over the left side of his face and neck, as if to make sure that everything was in place and nothing else was squelching and falling apart. It was nice, however, to be whole again.

“Well…” He ran his fingers through his hair and scratched his scalp thoughtfully. "I'd say your 'buddies' were as sly and devious as they were complete fucking idiots.”

“What do you mean?...” Lydia blinked uncomprehendingly.

“They had a bold chance to have a real demon in their friend list. But they threw away this chance to try to bully you once again. And as a result, they did not achieve their goal in the slightest, and they got the same demon in their enemy list," by the end of the phrase, he began to sound somewhat ominous and Lydia tensed, fearing that the bloody massacre of teenagers might still be in his plans, and he only postponed it for later.

“Well, they managed to break my camera,” she replied with a sad sigh and turned to the bedside table to demonstrate it, but was surprised to find that... neither the camera nor its fragments were there.

Beetlejuice noticed her gaze darting around the room in confusion and couldn't help but chuckle softly. And then he stretched out his hand, put it under the pillow and pulled out the camera from under it. Whole and unharmed, as if it had just been taken out of the box. Lydia gasped in disbelief, and tentatively stretched out her hand to the device, which he placed on his lap.

"But this... this..." she looked up at the demon, pure childish joy shining in her eyes.

“A little demonic miracle from me," Beetlejuice chuckled and looked away. “Сan't guarantee the preservation of yesterday's photos, but otherwise it should work just fine...” he heard Lydia sob, and tried to feign irritation. “Oh, don’t go all sentimental over this, c’mon.”

And when she hugged him tightly again and began to quietly pour tears into his shoulder, instead of continuing to grumble, he simply put the camera aside, hugged her back again and sat silently, letting her vent her emotions. Yes, it was unnatural and unsafe for a demon to be friends with a breather. But he needed friendship with one particular breather as much as a breather needed oxygen. Meanwhile, Lydia thought that, perhaps, the demon may be a demon, but there was nothing wrong about being friends with him if he treated her a hundred times better than any "normal" people ever would.

The next day, a new series of photos was published on Lydia Deetz's Facebook account under the title of "An evening of the strange and unusual." The subjects of the photos seemed nothing out of the ordinary. Flowers by the roadside. A rusty road sign. A path in a quiet copse. The facade of the local abandoned church. Those few people who followed her page really out of love for her hobby were surprised by an unexpected artistic solution — all the photos were slightly distorted and noisy, covered in randomly scattered highlights, and they were all in caustic green tones — as if the red and blue channels ad been simply turned off. And they were even more surprised by the presence of the hashtag #NoFilter under all these "diligently edited" photos.