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

||Chapter Thirty Seven|| Impulse

"Now that's strange," commented Barbara, glancing down at the bottom of the page in the Handbook that they were currently on. "And that makes me wonder if it's trying to tell us something."

Adam turned to his wife, nodding in agreement. "And I think you're onto something, hon. I'm beginning to think all of these words that we've been seeing show up in the pages of the Handbook are connected somehow; have something in common with each other. And the fact that they're only just appearing in the section of the book that covers mediumship... do you think that has something to do with the reason why Lydia was the only living person who could see us at first?"

"I... never really thought about that," Barbara stifled a laugh.

Lydia moved to the living room, a half eaten granola bar in hand and sat herself down on a chair opposite her dad, Delia, and the Maitlands. She took another few bites of it and set the wrapper aside as she turned her attention onto all four adults. "You guys happen to find any more words yet?"

"Not yet, Lydia," Barbara replied, her, Adam, Charles, and Delia turning their attention back onto the tired looking teenager.

"Well then... let me know if you happen to find any..." Lydia's tired sounding voice faltered and trailed off halfway through her sentence as she closed her eyes, drifted into sleep, and started to quietly snore. Adam, Barbara, Charles, and Delia looked worriedly at one another then turned their attention back over towards Lydia, who had since lay herself down on the couch across from the one all four adults were sat on.

The same thing ran through each of their minds.... was the teenager okay?

Barbara stood up and moved to sit herself down on the opposite couch next to the sleeping teenager and shook her awake. Lydia's eyes opened and closed a few times as she sat herself upright and glanced around the living room, her gaze eventually landing on her worried ghost mother.

"What happened?" the teenager mumbled.

"You fell asleep," Barbara said, the other three adults nodding in unison. "We were worried something was going to happen."

"Like me just suddenly getting tired at random times all of a sudden?" Lydia questioned in a tired, but curious tone of voice. She closed her eyes again and Barbara tapped her gently again, waking up the teenager. She looked around the living room in a daze. "It happened again, didn't it?"

All four adults nodded in response to the tired looking teenager's question, and Barbara commented, "that's new. Wonder what's going on," as she snapped her fingers, making the teenager stay awake for hopefully the rest of the day. Adam flipped through the Handbook until he got to the same section where they'd found and read out the side effects of being a medium. Maybe having an excessive amount of sleep was a new one???

He read through the list again until he got to its bottom. "Aha! There we go. It must have just appeared there. As well as a few more new side effects that weren't there before."

"Can you read the rest of them off?" asked Barbara, turning her attention over towards her husband and the older Deetzes. "That come after 'having an excessive amount of sleep at random times during the day'?"

Adam nodded, then read out the new set of side effects, "staring blankly at random things at various times, sensing certain things that are either about to happen or may or may not even happen, speaking nonsense, sensitivities to a variety of different things, a loss of self, and feeling that something's off when it's really not."

The rest of the adults nodded in response as Adam read out each and every one of the new side effects.

THUMP!!!

All four adults focused their attention towards the carpeted floor of the living room just in time to find an unconscious Lydia laying on her side in the middle of it. The four of them acted on impulse, each of them immediately standing up from where they were sitting and kneeling down around the teenager. Barbara quickly snapped her fingers to create a sort of electric shock, used it to try to rouse the teenager, and Lydia's eyes snapped open as soon as possible as she rolled over onto her back and glanced up at all four of the worried looking adults.

"I didn't fall asleep this time, did I?" Lydia asked tiredly as if it was the least of everyone else's worries.

Barbara shook her head. "No. I think... we think you just happened to lose consciousness as per the side effects of mediumship. Hopefully that doesn't happen again. Did something happen? Did you see something of any sort? Sensed anything?"

"I think I saw the barrier between this world and the Netherworld weakening, thinning, and disappearing completely. Which may happen very soon..."

A/N: a headcanon of mine is that the reason why Lydia was the only living person able to see the Maitlands at first is because she's always been a medium and you can't convince me otherwise.