Beetlejuice~~~Also Casper
-Lydia actually says 'I do' during the first marriage ceremony because she assumes that if she doesn't keep up her end of the deal that his side will be repealed and the Maylands will resume their second deathification.
Their marriage afterwards is...okay. He kinda just goes off to do his own thing for most of the year and pops in every now and then to mess with her and hang around, then leaves again.
Their relationship eventually developes into a platonic friendship after she rebuffs any early flirtations. Any flirtations after he gets solidly turned down are unserious and just for fun. Once he cares about her, he'd stop if it actually bothered her.
Since he's got his green card, Beetle doesn't have to come when summoned and is aware of whenever someone says his name. All this for the chapter premise ---> Lydia has a stalker.
This stalker eventually escalates to the point of outright attacking her. Lydia doesn't know that she can summon her friend for help because the one time she tried a few years prior, he was busy and ignored her call since he could tell from her voice and intent that there was no danger. They just never really talked about it either.
She gets very injured trying to defend herself and the stalker takes this opportunity to start to undress her while she bleeds out. With her last bit of dying hope, she whispers Beetleguese's name in an irrational desperation that she might see him one last time.
Beetleguese shows up.
The stalker dies in an extremely horrific but time efficient way. He can't save Lydia though, and she dies in the arms of her best friend.
Since neither Lydia nor Beetleguese are citizens of the living world anymore, they have to set up in the underworld. Maybe she convinces him to eventually move on with her. Maybe he doesn't because he knows he'd go to hell. Either way they spend a good amount of time together in death.
A young child wanders into Whipstaff manor
Can be a sweet and/or pitiful child or could be the typical bratty little resource drain, doesn’t change much anyway.
I think that since they fully intended to kill Cats dad to make him a ghost until he showed them some affection, and they felt bad about their now previous plan to kill him, they very probably wouldn't kill a kid as they do seem to have some conscience, and they wouldn't want the ghost of another little kid around.
They'd probably leave them to Casper. The uncles might remember certain parts of what young kids should and should not have, and give derisive bits of instruction to Casper on occasion. Or maybe Caspers read enough books about kids to know general guidelines of what to do.
The point is though, the resident ghosts are gonna take care of this kid, and whether they like it or not, they’re going to get attached.
But after a while, someone's gonna come for that kid.
Maybe the story will end with the kid leaving hand in hand with their guardian/parent, the ghosts watching with their reluctantly developed attachment, not saying anything to address that they will miss the kid at all except for Casper. If the kid lives in Friendship, you bet they're gonna visit sometimes. I can make that more angsty too though, don't worry:) (The kid is talking about ghosts. hehehehehe. Hospital.)
But maybe, the person who comes looking for them is the reason the kid ran in the first place.
Maybe they're a pedophile. Worst of the worst and someone who should have never existed in the first place. Maybe they very obviously are bad news in the way they act when they finally catch the kid in one of the halls or rooms they search, looking for the kid after they hear their footsteps running to hide.
Imagine one of the ghosts hearing them telling the kid they all got attached to exactly what's going to happen when the adult gets the kid home, or worse yet, they decide the mansion is abandoned enough to not care about getting them home first.
Then, imagine it's Casper that was around to hear what that adult was saying to his little sibling(I won't give Casper the trauma of seeing stuff no child should ever have to explicitly know about). He...he doesn't entirely understand what. that all means. But he thinks he knows enough, and he doesn't like it.
Casper snaps.
He thinks he was trying to mess something up inside the adult, rip something out-or just stop them, but it doesn't quite happen that way.
He's never possessed someone before. He's also never killed someone before, but, well, he can think about that later. The pedophile he's possessing gets hurled out the window from four stories up.
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If stretch(and the other uncles) are the ones around, the pedophile just gets straight up exploded. Viscera everywhere--the works.
Kid's catatonic from...everything. But hey, pedophile's as dead as he's gonna get, they and Casper can comfort the poor kid. (Casper is horrified when he sees the room and clutches his sibling close, as he gets their blanket wrapped self out of there and to a bathtub to clean all the blood/organ bits/pedophile juice off of them.)