Hi everyone! This is my first Scooby-Doo fic. I hope you like it!
Prologue
He loosened the collar of his white button-down, which appeared to glow with an array of faint colors in the neon lights. He sat at the bar- partly to drink, but partly to distance himself from the noise of the dance floor. A discotheque had no place in a small town, he had decided.
The mayor had insisted on touring him around town, as he'd been the first to arrive to the summit. Surprisingly, amidst the flashing lights and pounding noise of the first of many stops along their tour, he had lost sight of the mayor. Now, he sat at the bar, wishing more than anything that he were alone in his hotel room, or, better yet, back in his own town, on the other side of the country.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and glanced up to find a woman looking down at him with lustful eyes. He didn't appear to be having much fun, she noted. The man nodded. The woman leaned towards him and retrieved a small capsule from between her breasts. With delicate hands, she opened the pill and poured its contents- a metallic looking powder- into his whiskey. She stirred the concoction with her finger, telling the man this would help him. She touched her own glass to his, which sat patiently on his napkin. Cheers, she sang. When he peeled his eyes from the swirling liquid to question the woman, she was already long gone.
Tentatively, he lifted the whisky to his nose. It smelled normal. He examined the glass more thoroughly, but any trace of the powder had long since dissolved. The man sighed. Bottoms up.
Instantly, the man felt different. The colors of the nightclub all appeared brighter, and the noises, once sharp and abrasive, were diminished to next to nothing. The room spun as the man tried to find his bearings. Flashes of blue and red made it impossible for him to navigate throughout the crowded building. But there was something else.
It followed him. Its growls were the only sounds the man could make out clearly. Its shadow grew closer to the man. Every time he turned, it was there. Stalking its prey.
The street was cold, and it stung against the man's damp flesh. He stumbled toward the road, holding his hands in front of him as though her were trying to find his way in the dark. He felt his way toward a cab and collapsed inside, hurrying the driver to return him to the hotel where he was staying.
It followed.
The man slammed to door of his hotel room, locking the chain with hot and shaky fingers. He hadn't taken the elevator, out of fear that it would be waiting for him inside. It had chased him up the stairs, it's thick growl ringing in his mind. It had followed him all the way down the hall, but now it appeared as though the man was safe in his room.
A noise grabbed the man's attention, and he turned to look at his bedroom. The lights from outside the window cast various shadows in his room. He squinted, attempting to make out each one.
He heard the noise again, quiet at first, but then loud enough to decipher. The growl. His eyes darted frantically through the room. A large shadow moved across the wall, making its way towards him. It had beaten him there.
The man reached for the door, grasping aimlessly at the chain lock. The growls grew louder and louder, and the shadow seemed to engulf the man. He screamed for help, as it reached out towards him. There was nothing he could do to save himself.
Chapter One: Nothing Will Ever Happen
I bounced my head off the steering wheel, producing a quick honk upon impact. I repeated the motion again and again, my head throbbing more each time i made contact with the leather horn. I let my head fall towards the wheel again, but Daphne grabbed my arm before I could hit the horn.
"Stop," she whined through a mouthful of bubblegum. Daphne hoisted her left leg up onto the dashboard and tugged on the laces of her roller skates, retying the knot for what felt like the thousandth time that morning. She grabbed her knee socks by the thick green stripe at the top and yanked them up her leg. With a huff, she let her left leg fall to the floor and pulled the right one onto the dashboard, going through the motions yet again.
I groaned. Nothing ever happened. Since graduation the previous month, every day had felt the same for me and my friends.
I drove the gang around: to the freak show that passed through town a few weeks ago, the midnight showing of Nightmare on Elm Street in the park, to carve our names in the "Welcome to Coolsville: A Cool Place To Live" sign on the edge of town. It didn't matter where we went or what we did, nothing in our lives felt new. It was all just filler.
I sighed, leaning back so that my head dangled over the back of my seat.
Finally, the back door of the van swung open, and in hopped Scooby-Doo. He bounded up to me, licking my face until I managed to shove him off. I sat back up, grabbing the bottom of my tee shirt and using it to wipe the slobber off my face.
Shaggy followed Scooby into the van and sat down in the back seat. He shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a bag of gummy worms. He tossed one in his mouth before feeding one to Scooby. Velma, who sat across from Shaggy, scoffed and made a quip about how bad candy was for dogs. Shaggy threw a gummy worm at her.
"So, where to?" I asked as I didn't bother to quiz Shaggy about why he'd been fifteen minutes late. Whether it was mom stuff or oversleeping, it was a wonder Shaggy ever made it anywhere on time.
The question seemed to answer itself as I pulled out onto main street. Four police cruisers, each with flashing lights, were parked around the Coolsville Ritz Hotel. More cops than I'd ever seen were all gathered around the entrance, interviewing people or simply guarding the revolving door to keep eager eyes away from whatever was going on inside.
I glanced around me, curious to see my friends' reactions to the scene that was unfolding in front of us. Velma's nose was buried in a novel as she mindlessly tapped Shaggy's calf with her derby shoes. Shaggy fed Scooby another gummy worm. Daphne was peeling gum off her nose. I pulled the wheel of the van right up onto the curb next to the cruisers. The bump brought them all to attention, like soldiers at the sound of a bugle.
"What happened?" Velma asked. She shut her book, stuffing it into her brown leather satchel.
"Let's find out." I offered, leaping out of the driver's seat and onto the pavement below. They all followed after me.
Daphne knocked into me as we walked up to the hotel. She was wobbly on her new skates (or rather, old skates- she'd found them at a second hand store the previous day). Despite this, any attempt I made to hold onto her was met with a shrug and a childish whine. Clearly, the dirty vintage roller skates with hot pink wheels were a mountain she intended to climb all on her own.
Daphne was the only one of us who'd been having fun this summer. She'd made a vow to herself to make every minute of her break count, and so far she had been. So far Daphne had mastered archery, learned to drive a motorcycle, and then- to top it all off- invented her own sport called motor-archery, which was exactly what it sounded like. This week, it was roller skates. None of us bothered to question how or why Daphne had become so skilled at such useless things. Shaggy had always said that she had was he called "Chaotic Extra-Terrestrial Energy," which was true even if it wasn't a real thing.
"Hold it, kids," one of the officers warned. "This is a crime scene. I'm afraid I can't let you get any closer."
Before we could respond, the officer was pushed out of the way by a much larger man: The sheriff. He wasn't much taller than I was, but he weighed at least a hundred pounds more.
"Hi there, Sheriff Stone." Shaggy offered, "you're looking especially corrupt today."
Velma elbowed him in the gut.
It was true that Sheriff Stone was well known throughout town as a crooked cop. The rumors about him were plentiful, but only one was indisputable: Sheriff Stone was directly under the mayor's thumb.
"New badge, Sheriff?" I smirked, eying my shiny gold reflection on his chest.
"Yes, actually," the sheriff growled, "Some snot-nosed kids hit my old one with their paintball gun."
We snickered at this. Sheriff Stone was well aware that it had been us who had splatted red paint on his old badge, but with no proof, there wasn't much he could do to us. Besides, he didn't have the whole story. We didn't use a gun, Daphne had fired the paintball from her bow.
And she was aiming for his head.
I side-stepped past the sheriff and climbed through the web of caution tape and into the hotel lobby. The gang followed me. Dumbfounded, the sheriff did as well.
The Coolsville Ritz Hotel was one of the newer buildings in town. The mayor was always keen on modernizing what he believed to be a budding metropolis. In fact, "Let's put Coolsville back on the map!" had been his campaign slogan for the past three elections. With a population of 80, 000 people, Coolsville had never actually been on any major maps. But the key to any campaign is a strong campaign slogan, and this one seemed to be moving mountains- so, it stuck.
The Ritz looked like something out of a TV show. The floors were all marble, and a giant fountain sat in the middle of the lobby. Smooth jazz played over the speakers, and shiny brass luggage carts stood at attention, ready to be loaded up and pushed away by one of the many navy clad bell boys. The hotel was only three stories tall and no one ever stayed there, but everyone knew that appearances were more important than function to the mayor.
"So, what happened?" I asked, pushing the up button on the elevator. Eagerly, Daphne continued to push it as Sheriff Stone caught up to us.
"I'm afraid that's classified." He panted. He wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief.
"Probably murder," Velma mumbled, picking at the fraying threads on her satchel. "Judging by all the squad cars."
The elevator doors opened and we piled inside. Just as I'd predicted, Sheriff Stone joined us. I pretended to puzzle over the buttons until the sheriff swatted my hand away, pushing on level two. Just because he was corrupt didn't make him smart, a valuable lesson I'd been exploiting for as long as I could remember.
"It wasn't murder," the sheriff grunted. "The victim died under suspicious circumstances- and that's all I can say."
"If it wasn't murder, what makes it suspicious?" Daphne asked before blowing a huge bubble. Shaggy reached out to pop it, but she swatted his hand away before he got the chance.
"The victim appears to have been attacked by some kind of animal- but there's no way an animal could have got into his room- and that's all you kids are getting out of me!"
Velma hummed, "what makes-"
The elevator dinged and the doors glided open, revealing the chaos of the second floor. Cops, forensic scientists, and detectives all hurried around- all seeming to be focused around one room- 212. We wandered in the direction of the room, but Sheriff Stone grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back.
"I wouldn't go in there if I were you," he whispered. "The mayor's been hanging around in there."
I shrugged, and he let me go.
The four of us (five, if you count the dog) stood in the doorway to room 212. On the floor next to the bed lied a black plastic body bag, which sat in a pool of blood. Other than that, the room appeared entirely as it should. The bed looked like it hadn't been slept in, the white sheets where crisp and without wrinkle, a little chocolate even sat by the pillows. On top of the bed sat an opened suitcase, filled with folded collared shirts. All of the artwork hung neatly on the walls and the large window was firmly closed. In fact, if it weren't for the body on the floor, I would have quite liked to stay in this room myself. Except for one thing.
The mayor stood quietly in the center of the room, tapping his dress shoe on the floor impatiently. He turned around at the sound of our voices, giving us a cheesy mayoral smile as though nothing was wrong.
"Fred," he greeted warmly, "what brings you here?"
I swallowed hard and put on my best fake smile.
"Hi, Dad."
Let's get one thing straight; my father and I got along fine.
That being said, there was always a barrier between us. Velma had said it was because I tried too hard to please him, which could have easily been true. I'd always gone out of my way to impress my dad.
In the ninth grade, I played the lead in our school's production of Romeo & Juliet, hoping it would earn me cool-points from my dad. Daphne had gone out for the role of Juliet, but she'd lost it to an eleventh grader who was too tall for me to kiss and always smelt pungent and over-saturated, like the inside of a Yankee Candle store. I spent every weeknight from three until six at rehearsal, and then walked eight blocks home, usually in the cold and always in the dark. My dad didn't even come to the show.
Trying a different approach, I went out for baseball in the tenth grade. It had its plus sides- I made a few guy friends (my dad thought spending all my time with Daphne would make me soft) and I learned to value a good workout. But I hated the sport. My dad went to a few of my games, but spent them all talking on the phone, and was never shy about finding athletes barbaric and unintelligent.
The eleventh grade was when my cry for help really began. I started driving around in a beat up white van that I'd bought at a junkyard, and I stopped hanging out with my baseball friends. Instead, I picked up a couple of misfits from the detention room and started my own little gang. Velma was one of those science fair geeks with a knack for getting a little too aggressive with the popular kids. Shaggy was a slacker with enough tardies to land him in detention for life. Daphne, who'd been my best friend since I'd taught her how to rig the claw machine in the arcade in the eighth grade, was going through a creative goth phase at the time. The dog was a bonus.
I watched as two men lifted up the body bag and carried it out of the room, dripping with blood as they went. My dad shook his head at the pool of fluids left in its place.
"What a shame," he sighed. "I'd been out on the town with him just last night."
"Who was he?" Velma inquired. She knelt down to get a closer look at the pool of blood on the floor, but my dad grabbed her corduroy dress by the suspender and pulled her away from the mess.
"Steven Adams- a councilor from Crystal Cove, California. He was in town for the summit I'm hosting- about small municipalities and how to-"
"Put them back on the map?" Shaggy offered with a smirk. My dad nodded.
"Precisely. Anyway, it would appear he was killed by some kind of wild animal. Terrible shame." My dad sighed again. I doubted that he was actually torn up over the scene in front of us. He had simply been putting on an act .
"What makes you so sure that it was a wild animal?" Velma inquired. I could sense my dad was growing impatient with the questions. "The doors and windows were all locked from the inside, and there's clearly no sign of a struggle."
"If you saw the body, you'd know, dear." My dad quipped, "no human could have done that. Besides, we'll be performing a routine autopsy today, and if there's anything out of the ordinary, we'll know. For now, there's clearly nothing worth investigating." My dad took off his glasses, huffing onto the lenses before wiping them down with his cleaning cloth. "Don't you kids have somewhere better to be?"
My dad left without another word, and a few maids wheeled their cart in shortly after. They didn't waste any time cleaning the bloodstain, and soon the room looked just as tidy as the rest of the hotel. All of the police filed off the second floor, and it was clear that any investigating that would have been done had already happened. It was as though the whole ordeal had never taken place.
So, we drove away. All I ever did was drive.
I hope you guys enjoyed chapter one! Please be sure to leave a review, and expect chapter two within the next week.
