Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice

Chapter 6: Handbook For The Recently Deceased

   Since the events of the previous Friday, Beth had not been able to stop thinking about the little purple book Adam had been reading when he'd walked so casually into the attic. Handbook For The Recently Deceased. The title alone was fascinating to her, and yet there seemed to be no opportunity to go back up into the attic without her mom noticing. She waited for weeks and weeks before her break eventually came. 
  This time it was a rainy Wednesday afternoon. Katrina was in her room doing god knows what but probably not studying, and Beth was in the kitchen with her mom. She had just got back from school and was eagerly relating the days events when Lydia said suddenly "We're all out of milk and I need it to make the sauce for tonight's dinner." 
Beth seized her opportunity. 
"Go out and get some." She said. "Katrina's in, I won't be alone." 
Lydia narrowed her eyes. "What are you up to? As if I don't already know."
Beth tried to look as innocent as she could, her large, dark eyes peering up at her mom as though no such schemes had ever crossed her mind. "Don't give me that one, miss." Lydia continued. "You aren't to go in the attic again. Do you hear me? It's not safe- the floor boards, they're weak, and the beams..." She trailed off. She didn't really know where she was going the dishonest explanation and she was well aware that Beth wasn't buying it anyway. Instead she turned and called up the stairs. "Katrina!" A few seconds went by before the grumpy, teenage reply was heard. 
"What?"
"I'm popping out to get some milk, keep an eye on your sister." 
"But I'm trying to get on with-"
Lydia put her hands on her hips defiantly. "Now please."
A few moments later Katrina was standing in the kitchen looking grumpier than ever, having evidently been interrupted at some very important task only she cared about. 
"I won't be long." Lydia said as she stepped onto the porch and swung the door shut behind her. 
The two sisters stood for a second until they heard the car engine fade into the distance. 
"You can sit in my room until she gets back." Katrina said, looking at her sister in disdain. 
"I don't want to." Beth replied. 
"Fine. Don't. But you better be in my room by the time she walks through that door or we're both dead." And with that Katrina stalked back up the stairs and the tell tale sound of a door clicking shut announced that she was once again encased in her own little room and completely dead to the world. 
  Beth wasted no time. She shot up the stairs and bolted through the attic door. Adam was fashioning some new model for his village and Barbara was asleep on one of the old sofas. It had never occurred to Beth that ghosts needed to sleep too but perhaps they did. 
"Hello." Adam said quietly, so as not to wake his wife. "You seem in a hurry." 
"Mom's gone out for five minutes." Beth said as she got her breath back. "So I don't have long but it's been weeks since I saw you last and I wanted to make sure you were still okay." 
"We're fine, Beth." Adam smiled, "Was that all?"
Beth's eyes scanned the room for the little book. "Well I don't have long." She repeated, stalling for time. There it was! The Handbook For The Recently Deceased face up on the windowsill. "Ah!" She said suddenly, crossing to the window as fast as she could in hopes that Adam would not notice her intended target. "I wanted to see the view from here, I bet it's great." 
She heard Adam laugh a little, "It is rather lovely." He said. Beth turned to look at him. His back was to her, his head bent low over the table as he fixed a new sign post into place. She took her chance and stuffed the book up her jumped, folding her arms casually over it to hold it there. 
"Right, must be off." She said, sauntering to the door and trying as best she could to keep her back to Adam. "I'll come back when I can."
"Yes, don't let your mom catch you." Adam joked as Beth shut the door. 
She had done it! And the relief she felt at having not been caught. In effect it was stealing but that was a minor point- she was doing it for all the right reasons. Though, she must confess, she was not sure that she would find anything useful in the pages of the handbook when Barbara and Adam had been reading it for thirty years and found nothing relative to the problem at hand. Still, it was worth a shot;  "Sometimes you're blind for looking." As she had heard her grandmother say. 
Beth made her way to Katrina's room, making a brief diversion into her own in order to slip the book between the bed frame and the mattress where it would surely be hidden.
She made it just in time, collapsing onto Katrina's bed just as her mother reached the top of the stairs and peered in at them.
"Good girls." Was her only remark, before she went back downstairs to continue making the dinner.
  Beth did feel a little guilty at having gone against her mom but again, she reasoned, it was for a worthy cause.
  Over the next three days Beth read the book cover to cover, hardly ever putting it down - save for when someone might catch her buried in it. And yet, there was nothing. It was all stuff she didn't understand. How to get to the land of the dead, and haunting, and how to avoid being exorcised. It was a hopeless case and she was just about ready to give up when she flipped the final page of the book and there on the inside cover saw what was, she supposed a business card. 
It was white but yellowing slightly with age. The thick black cursive was still perfectly legible though and read as follows: 

Troubled by the living? Is death a problem and not the solution? Unhappy with eternity?  Then call Betelguese, the bio-exorcist for all your life and death needs. 

She turned the card over in her hand but there was no number written on it as far as she could tell. She tried to say the name out loud but the words felt strange in her mouth- she was sure she wasn't pronouncing it correctly. 
"Bet-el-guys." She murmured. Surely that wasn't right. 
  The last thing Katrina wanted that evening was to see more of her little sister, and when Beth came clattering through her bedroom door it took everything in her power not to throw her straight back out. 
"What do you want?" She asked through gritted teeth. 
"Can I use your computer? Really quick I promise." 
"What for?" Katrina replied suspiciously. 
"I just need to look something up for homework." 
The earnest act worked. 
"Two seconds and I mean it. You have until I get back from the bathroom." 
Beth set to work as soon as her sister was out of the room. She quickly typed "Betelguese Pronunciation" into the search bar and scrolled through the results. The first was a short video, only a few seconds long. She clicked on the thumbnail and pressed her ear to the speaker. A woman's voice rang out. Twice it said- and quite clearly so there was no mistake- "Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice." 
Beth shut the tab and ran back to her own room, flopping down on the bed and taking hold of the business card in both hands. 
"How do I call him?" She pondered, turning the white paper over and over in her little hands. "Call now? Who writes call now and doesn't include a phone number!" It was so frustrating. 
"I wonder who Beetlejuice is." She was thinking aloud to herself as she so often did. "Are they a man or a woman? Perhaps Beetlejuice is some kind of ghost like Barbara and Adam." She sighed and leant back against her pillows. She tilted her head to one side, considering the name carefully. "Beetlejuice." She said once more, just to hear it. 
"Good afternoon, kid. You want old Beetlejuice to help you out? Why didn't you say so!" 
She started at the sudden noise and sat up to see a man in a black and white striped suit sitting on her window sill. His hair was all over the place, mad-scientist style, and his eyes flashed with something akin to lunacy. His grin was so wide it appeared to take over his entire face and his skin... his skin seemed to be as pale as chalk yet slightly rotten in all the wrong places. 
She was about to scream when she felt a cold hand press against her mouth. The man had crossed the room so fast she hadn't even noticed and now he was standing mere inches from her. 
"Don't scream now!" He said, "You'll wake the dead!" He laughed at his own joke, throwing his head back and showing a set of yellow teeth. 
"Who are you?" Beth managed to squeak, though her mouth was dry with fear. 
"Beetlejuice. At your service."