Chapter Five: Must be Crazy

[Lost Souls Room]

Date Even More Unknown

Lydia couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't stop crying. Nothing made sense.

At least she had figured out that she was in the lost souls room. Assuming Betelgeuse was telling the truth, and that the tank driving workman she had met wasn't some way of tricking her, then the lost souls room was the only place she could be. There was a distinctive lack of lost souls though. It wasn't comforting.

Betelgeuse probably could have been summoned during that brief window in the office hallway. She hadn't thought of it at the time. Her paltry two attempts in this new void had went as well as her attempts in the Henry Moore tank. So she was helpless once more.

Physics were the worst in here. Down still felt like down. Her hair wasn't free floating. Her tears rolled down her cheeks. But then, whenever one of the drops stopped touching her it was free-floating, like there was no gravity. Then if Lydia touched it again it continued to travel in the direction she considered to be down. It was maddening.

Worse though, was the sound. She had tried talking to herself, humming, even doing silly voices and they only made the void seem more empty, more consuming, more maddening. She had stopped trying. After spending so long in that empty void without speaking though she'd become hypersensitive to every little sound, her own breath, heartbeat, even the churning of her stomach. But at least the thrumming of her body changed rhythm occasionally, as she went through phases of panic, and calm. The watch, however, remained constant.

Tick, tick, tick.

She hadn't been able to ignore it.

Tick, tick, tick.

It was like the sound was crawling under her skin.

Tick, tick, tick.

She had pulled the watch off, let it float through the void, but the noise vacuum didn't take it away.

Tick, tick, tick.

Eventually she had to smash it. For the sake of her sanity. Only an hour had passed from the brief moment of freedom to when she made the call to destroy it. Now she had no idea how time passed.

Then she had taken to scratching. At first the sound of her nails dragging against skin had been stabilizing. Then the pain of her skin having been rubbed raw held her. Once that sensation of rawness faded she started again on a different patch of skin. It wasn't too bad. She wasn't drawing blood. Though, she wasn't sure what she would do with herself once she ran out of healthy skin and had to start over.

Tick, tick, tick.

Oh god. It was back. But she had destroyed the watch, she was certain.

Tick, tick, tick.

Lydia plugged up her ears, knowing that it wouldn't help.

"Lydia!"

Oh god. Voices now? She was really going crazy. If she ever got home she'd be sent of to a loony bin like Delia.

"Lydia! Open your eyes!"

Lydia shook her head. She didn't trust the voice.

"Dammit babes! I'm trying to help."

It sounded like Betelgeuse. Only Betelgeuse called her babes. But it would only make sense that she would hallucinate the ghost because she was depending on him to save her.

"Lydia. Come on, help a dead guy out here."

If it was real she should be able to feel it. The real Betelgeuse would touch her. He would touch her and she would feel the unnatural cold that came from his skin.

"Please Lydia. I can't do anything."

He wasn't supposed to touch her though. Lydia made that a rule. Still, she should feel him nearby… She could. Once she had thought to feel for it the icy sensation was close, though it seemed smaller than normal. But that could be in her head just as easily as anything else. Still, if she had imagined that too then she had to open her eyes, there wasn't any other senses she could trust.

Carefully she opened her eyes, and watched relief spread across his facial features. It was weird. Lydia cringed. Could she have imagined his face like that? Would he make a face like that outside of her imagination? Only one way to tell. Lydia reached forward, and grabbed him. The cold rush of touching a ghost made her shiver rather than shudder. If he wasn't real then she was too far gone for it to make a difference.

"So… are you scarred for life yet?" Betelgeuse asked with a lecherous smirk.

"Rat bastard!" Lydia yelled loudly, and pushing away. "What took you so long?!"

"Hey, I got here as fast as I could," Betelgeuse scoffed, "I mean… with the cops… the wading through the sea of lost souls… and the identity crisis…"

"What sea of lost souls? There's nothing here."

"You probably can't see them… I don't know if that's good luck or bad. They're here though."

"Adam and Barbara?"

"Didn't see them, and we could be going 'round in circles for days if we tried."

"Fine, just get me home," Lydia said, trying to fight back crying with relief.

Betelgeuse held out his hand, "Magic B-word three times."

"I'm not touching you," Lydia sneered.

"Dammit, Lydia, stop being stubborn. It's the only way out! The most you could do right now is banish me. The only difference is then I'd be invisible to you. Just trust me for another five seconds and you're home. I can drop us right in your living room."

Lydia whimpered slightly. Betelgeuse couldn't blame her for that. The lost souls room was essentially solitary confinement. Ghosts were too weak to see each other, so it didn't matter how many souls were crammed in, they were all alone. Betelgeuse was apparently the exception to that, the dead had swarmed him until he turned his energy output down to normal ghost levels and they had dissipated. Luckily though, Lydia's hesitation didn't last, she spread her fingers forward, and wrapped her hand around his until his knuckles started to hum, a sigh that on a breather she might've broken something.

"Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse," Lydia whispered with uncertainty.

[Lydia's Living Room]

It was simple to follow the trail of her living energy back to the Outerworld, back to where she belonged. In a flash Lydia's wispy trail turned into the spitfire that she truly was, that intoxicating rush of a young girl too big for the mortal coil. Unfortunately as soon as they had returned to the land of the living she pulled away and fell back against the wall, burying herself in her knees, and trying to stop shaking.

Don't bug her , Betelgeuse thought to himself, Lydia trusts you, don't fuck that up. Betelgeuse stepped back, and then slumped onto the couch in defeat. He didn't like it, seeing her curled up and shuddering like that. There was no soul-tie. He had checked. He wasn't tied to her that strongly. But whatever messy emotions he felt for her were pretty damn close. He would continue to be compelled to do whatever she wanted, just as he had before, if she so much as looked his direction.

The clock read 3:35, fat lot of good looking did him, couldn't even tell what day it was. It could still be the day they left, or the next, or the day after that. He had lost track of time. Times like this, with Lydia sitting in the corner and shaking like a leaf in a strong wind, barely clinging to the branch called reality, Betelgeuse wished he'd gotten more practice with the genuine human communication thing. The only way he knew to make a girl feel better was not the sort of behaviour Lydia would approve of.

Why do I even care?! The ghost demanded of himself silently, beginning to gesture to himself as he did so. I shouldn't care, she's fucked up my afterlife, not the other way around, I don't have to give a... Lydia gasped slightly in her crying, which brought Betelgeuse out of his angry internal rant. It didn't matter why, not while she was crying and he was being useless.

Betelgeuse leaned over the arm of the chair to watch her reaction carefully, "It's okay..." Lydia's head shot up to look at him, for a moment her trembling had stopped, and her face, damn her cute little scared shitless face. "It's okay to be freaked out. It'll pass though. I've been through it too, the isolation. Things go back to normal, faster than you'd think, sometimes faster than you're ready for. You'll get through this."

For a moment Lydia was silent, but her shuddering had started again, she turned her face to the ground, away from Betelgeuse, and muttered softly, "Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse."

For once he didn't even try interrupting her. She needed to be alone, though he had no idea why after enduring the lost souls room. It didn't mean he wasn't going to hang around. He shifted the banishment to land himself back on his old stomping grounds, the town model created by Adam Maitland. Picking a clear view he settled himself down to watch Lydia. After everything Lydia had gone through she needed a good breakdown. Betelgeuse knew what that was like. But unlike his own breakdown Lydia was having this one with an unseen safety net. Not that he could do much to stop her if she tried anything stupid.

Lydia took a shaky breath. She was alone again. She wasn't even sure why she had sent Betelgeuse away, because after the ghost was gone she was left with a pang of emptiness. Burying her head back into her knees she tried to block out all but the simplest of sensations. If she could recreate it, come out of that void of nothing more gradually, maybe she could forget how close she was to clawing her own skin open. She felt the wall, and the floor, and her skin burning where she had been scratching at it. Her throat was dry and scratchy from crying so much. Even the tick, tick, tick, of the mantelpiece clock was like a soothing balm compared the the watch that Betelgeuse had given to her.

Was it expensive to have a clock attuned to time in another dimension? Lydia hummed in the place of the question. Her voice sounded better now, sounded real. She cut out the other sounds, other sensations and focussed on her own humming. She didn't even know what tune it was but it helped her calm down.

Something tugged her shirt. Lydia whirled in panic until she saw the lithe figure of black fur. Percy. He meowed, and in response Lydia lowered her high knees, crossed her legs, and let the cat crawl into the space and curl up. She ran her fingers over his silky spine, and slowly let in the world around her. Percy's purring. The sound of a fly circling somewhere nearby. The thump of feet on wooden steps.

Ding-Dong

Lydia jumped. Momentarily flashing back to the last time she'd heard that bell, the day a lunatic who didn't wear stripes barged into her home, traumatised her parents, and took away the Maitlands. Then she came back to reality. That man was dead. Was dad home already? She hadn't had time to clean up, her face was probably a mess from all that crying. No, wait, her father wouldn't have rung the bell. Lydia wasn't going to answer it. That door had let too much misery into her life already. She wasn't going to risk letting in more.

"Lydia?" She recognized the voice. Bertha's voice.

Lydia stood, then stumbled, her legs felt like mush.

"Lydia? Are you home?" That was a softer voice, Prudence was out there too.

For a moment her mouth lolled, gaping like a dumb fish, before she managed. "I'm coming! Just a second!"

Lydia hobbled her way to the door. Percy circled her feet, purring like mad. Oh crap, when was the last time he was fed? He didn't look any skinnier, maybe he'd gotten his teeth into some mice or birds. "Just, give me one minute, Percy," Lydia begged, pushing the lovable little pest away, and finally reaching the door.

"Hey Lydia, you weren't at school so we- yeesh, you look terrible."

"I can imagine," Lydia said. "What are you guys doing here? I kind of thought we weren't friends after what I did."

"What you did?" Bertha tipped her head, and looked towards Prudence, who shrugged.

Lydia sucked in a breath. Right, Betelgeuse had tampered with their memories. "Nevermind, must've been a nightmare I guess."

"Are your parents home?" Prudence asked, worry painting the girl's petite features.

"Not at the moment," Lydia managed a crooked smile. "Did you want to come in? The place is a mess, but I'm not allowed friends over."

"Sure," Bertha smiled, walking right in.

Prudence took care to wipe her shoes, and gave a soft, "Thank you."

"You call this a mess? My room is tons worse," Bertha said loudly and threw herself down on the couch.

"I guess I'm more of a mess than the house," Lydia admitted.

"You did seem a little off, just disappearing from the Halloween party like you did," Prudence said, joining Bertha

"Yeah, something in the candy," Lydia said lightly, sitting with them.

"After that I just had this creeping feeling like we had hung you out to dry," Bertha said. "It crazy, but I had this niggling feeling that I was supposed to apologize for something, but I didn't know what. Then you never came back to school for a couple days and talking things over with Prudence we had to come see if you were okay."

"I'd had the same feeling, weird isn't it?" Prudence looked up.

Lydia blinked. Had Betelgeuse somehow left behind the thought that they had done something wrong? They hadn't, Lydia deserved every cold shoulder she got and more. Yet, in a weird way he had been looking out for her, even in the midst of petty teen problems. She hadn't thanked him. Not for getting her out of the lost souls room, or helping her over halloween or even for just trying. Then a gasp of misery escaped her and she curled into a ball. These were different tears than those of fear and panic she'd shed in that miserable void. Barbara and Adam would have thanked Betelgeuse, even if he was a disgusting misogynistic psychopath. He had been far more cooperative, helpful even, than Lydia had ever thought possible. It hadn't even worked, she'd gone to the Neitherworld, been tossed into the lost souls room, and all she had done was traumatize herself. It felt like she'd failed them all over again.

As Lydia sobbed a bony hand came to rest on her one shoulder, and a small hand on the other. Neither Prudence nor Bertha could think of anything to say.

Lydia heard the words she needed to hear anyway, cycling through her head in the gravely but strangely sympathetic voice of Betelgeuse. It's okay to be freaked out. It'll pass though. I've been through it too, the isolation. Things go back to normal, faster than you'd think, sometimes faster than you're ready for. You'll get through this.

The ghost lingered nearby, with absolutely no idea how Lydia was thinking. Betelgeuse just let out a sigh. He figured Bertha and Prudence were a better safety net than he was.

[Chapter Five: End]

A/N: Ugh, I can't believe I held onto this as long as I did after it was already done. I intended to post it shortly before Christmas, but my holidays got a little hectic and it ended up not getting pushed back to after New Years. I can't keep a schedule for the life of me. Anyway, I feel like Lydia's come full circle through her emotional distraught now, meanwhile Betelgeuse is still just starting to comprehend his own emotional garbage.

The next part still doesn't have a name set in stone, at the moment I think it will be One Year - Learning Curve but if it changes I will adjust this note accordingly. I make no promises regarding how soon any of that part will be ready.