Out of Sight, Out of Mind//A Beetlejuice Fanfiction

||Chapter Twenty Eight|| Benefit of the Doubt

"Hmm... it could be possible that this prophecy you mentioned to me might have something to do with Lydia, but I'm gonna need to know more..." Verity turned her attention solely onto Lydia. "How did the visions start?"

"I don't know. The first time it happened, it just happened. That's all," was Lydia's reply, the teenager glancing around the room then at the floor.

Verity nodded in response, writing all of that down before turning her attention over towards the Maitlands. "What happened every time she had one of her visions?"

The Maitlands glanced at one another, having some sort of mental conversation with each other, then returned their attention back over towards Verity, Adam choosing to be the one who spoke up, "she's been talking in her sleep and falling off her bed."

Verity nodded again. "How often are these visions of hers?"

"Once a night," replied Barbara. "She's had one every night for the past three nights."

Verity quickly wrote that down, turning her attention back to Lydia. "Have you experienced anything of the sort before you had any of your visions?"

"Like voices in my head? Shadows out of the corner of my eye?" questioned Lydia. Verity nodded. "Well, I have been hearing a voice in my head before every vision I have. Although it's brief. And I can't tell what the voice is. It just comes and goes. The shadow out of the corner of my eye thing happens before. Be it five or ten minutes before I happen to have a vision."

Verity nodded again, writing that down. "You said the visions were about members of your family, living or dead, getting possessed?" Lydia nodded. "Did the visions have anything in common?"

"Other than possession, no," was Lydia's response.

"Did you get a voice in your head that said anything about your visions?" Lydia shook her head. Verity turned her attention to the Maitlands. "Did you guys feel as though anything was wrong when Lydia first started having the visions?"

The Maitlands looked at one another, trying to think. After a few minutes, they turned their attention back over towards Verity.

"Well," said Barbara, looking at Adam again before turning to look at Verity again. "We did get strange feelings that Lydia might be in trouble. Which we fear might happen if she has more visions." She and Adam turned their attention over towards Charles and Delia, the two living adults nodding in agreement to what Barbara had said. "In fact, these visions Lydia's been having did start after Betelgeuse showed back up in our lives and afterlives."

Adam, Barbara, Charles, and Delia glanced up towards Betelgeuse, who had been floating in midair and looking down at everyone else, their eyebrows raised and scowls set on their faces.

Betelgeuse took notice of the looks, levitating down towards the ground and holding his hands up in front of him. "I don't have anything to do with Lydia having visions. If you read through the Handbook, it explains that a medium's psychic powers can come up at any given time." He turned his attention over towards the Maitlands. "And Lydia's might have come to be after she first met you guys."

"Well," Barbara had to say. "It does explain why Adam and I needed to protect her in a time of need. Maybe the two of us shared some sort of psychic link with her that we didn't know about?"

"Well," Verity said, looking over towards Barbara. "All mediums and psychics do have psychic links with ghosts."

Adam and Barbara nodded in response.

A while later, the six of them were back in the hotel room Lydia shared with her deceased pals, Charles and Delia sitting on the edge of the Maitlands' bed, Lydia sitting down on the floor, Adam and Barbara standing over by Charles and Delia, and Betelgeuse was once again floating in midair, looking down at the rest of the family. Lydia was reading through the book on mediums she'd been given, learning all she could about mediums, their psychic abilities, and the links they shared with the dead. Adam and Barbara seemed to be looking through the section on "psychic links with the living and the dead" in the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, wanting to learn more about the subject.

Adam came across a very interesting paragraph in the book. "Hmmm... it says here that mediums will have the strongest links and/or connections with the ghosts they feel closest to," the male ghost said, his eyes scanning that particular sentence in the paragraph over and over again.

"Huh! That's weird," Lydia suddenly commented, gazing down at the page in her book that she was currently on in confusion. The attention of the rest of the family snapped towards her, all the adults stopping what they were doing. "It says that exact same sentence right here!" She pointed at a paragraph in her book.

Handing the Handbook over to Barbara, Adam floated over and took a seat on the floor right beside Lydia. Lydia handed him her book, which was still open to the exact same page as earlier, and he gazed down at the page, eyes set on the paragraph containing the same sentence as that particular paragraph in the Handbook. After a few minutes he looked up at the rest of the family, all of whom were looking towards him with worry.

"She's right," he finally said after a few seconds of silence. "That sentence is phrased the exact same way as it is in the Handbook. I wonder what other information in this book matches up with the information on mediums given in the Handbook."