Mishaps & Missteps
Yuletide 2018. For Calacious.
"Like, you have got to be kidding me."
Shaggy eyes the latest in a long line of allegedly haunted locations that Fred's dragged them to in the lengthy span of their friendship. This one is like all the others in many ways, but as they approach the place in the Mystery Machine, something about it sends a chill up his spine, something tells him that there's something bad lurking inside that they shouldn't be messing with.
If someone were asked to describe a haunted house to someone who had never seen one before, he's sure that this would be the one they inevitably would end up describing. Lurking in the midst of a clearing in a dense forest just outside of a small town called Groves Hollow, they've found a tall, imposing Victorian structure with a striking tower, the siding weatherworn and faded with age. It has a porch complete with broken railings and rotted out steps, the windows are broken here and there, the shutters swaying creakily in the wind, and the shingles are loose on the roof in much the same way that the bricks are loose on the tall chimney. There's a lone tree in the front yard, long dead, and its bark has long since fallen away, leaving nothing more than a hollow, ghostly pale skeleton with its remaining branches barren and foreign looking compared to the lush woods that surround the house. There's a path of wobbly cobblestones leading up from the old, rusty, wrought iron gate that keeps all but the most brazen of visitors away. Best of all, it appears to be cemetery adjacent, with a small family plot of old, faded and cracked gravestones in a fenced off side yard.
It was perhaps a magnificent house back in its day, when it was well kept and maybe even well loved, but now it's far from magnificent and arguably far from still even being considered a house and it makes for quite the imposing sight.
"If there really is a ghost here, Freddy," Shaggy laments, taking in the house in the eerie orange glow of the early evening. He shivers, and it's not entirely due to the winter chill in the air, "why not just let it have the run of the place? Chances are it's the only thing that even could live here anymore." Nonetheless, he follows the other boy up the daunting steps to the front door – slightly open, hanging lopsided on its hinges - and into the darkness within.
Scooby-Doo trails after them, stepping carefully over the splintered wood, "reah, it's spooky."
A single crow caws its agreement from somewhere nearby.
The inside of the house is no better than the outside. Might even be worse, actually – at least out there the walls had looked like they were standing. In here, it's clear that a slight breeze would be more than enough to take down the entire structure. The whole place reeks of mold and mildew. The steps of what was once a grand staircase up to the second floor are useless now, all rotted out, and its railings hang precariously from very few remaining supports. The broken windows let in an eerie chill, causing the moth-eaten, threadbare curtains to sway ominously, and soft skittering noises can be heard through the walls – rats, bats, something else? Elaborate cobwebs line the walls and ceiling and there's a thick layer of dust on every available surface.
In all of their mystery-based adventures, Shaggy has learned that the problem with creepy, old, abandoned houses isn't actually so much that they are creepy (though he's not really a fan of that aspect, either), but rather that they are old and abandoned and thus generally tend to be poorly maintained. In fact, in some cases, even most cases, he'd argue, they should probably be classified as condemned and nothing short of a bulldozer or wrecking ball should dare to enter them ever again.
But try telling Freddy that.
"We won't be long," Fred insists, the beam of his flashlight casting crazy shadows around the dark room in search of whatever ghost or ghoul is said to reside here by the locals who say that they avoid the forest as much as they can – let alone the house itself. "We'll go meet up with the girls in just a few minutes."
"Alright," Shaggy relents, knows it's a losing battle trying to argue Fred out of any of these places, "Just remember we've left Velma all alone to reign in Daphne's shopping spree and you're not the one who's going to have to share the back of the Mystery Machine with all the bags."
Fred laughs and disappears into the next room, "I'm sure you'll be fine, Shaggy."
They wander through several of the rooms on the expansive first floor – a dilapidated kitchen, a once-extravagant dining room now left in shambles. They come to a large room that seems to run the length of the house. The walls on one side are lined with floor to ceiling bookcases, though most of the shelves are broken or askew now; here and there, old, ruined books are scattered about. A couple of old armchairs, long left to decay and covered in a sticky layer of mildew, sit beside a large stone fireplace in the center of the room.
But something has caught Fred's attention - "Are those footprints?" he asks, staring at the floor around the fireplace, where there are clear voids in the dust.
They are, Shaggy concedes, which isn't exactly a good thing - "Ghosts don't leave footprints, Freddy." On closer inspection, Shaggy notices, there's fresh ash in the fireplace's hearth, too. Suddenly, he's far more concerned about the potential of a human threat (no one sane would willingly inhabit this place, he's sure) more than a ghostly threat or even a structural threat.
"Someone's definitely been here," Fred remarks.
"Fantastic. They can discuss the terms of their rental agreement with the ghost, then. No need for us to bother either of them – we should go."
"Maybe you're right," Fred concedes, much to his surprise, though for much different reasons. "Chances are the lights people have seen and the noises they've heard in the woods were just whoever's squatting in here. Let's get back to town before it gets too late."
Shaggy breathes a sigh of relief that rivals Fred's sigh of disappointment and follows after him as they head toward the door at the far end of the room, which should circle them back around to the house's front entrance. Just before they can leave the room, however, there's a loud, resounding CRACK! and Shaggy feels the wooden floor beneath his feet buckle alarmingly and he reaches out in desperation as the darkness below seems to swallow him up.
"Shaggy!"
Somehow, and Shaggy isn't entirely sure how, Fred manages to spin around in time to get a solid hold on his arm before he falls out of reach. In doing so, Fred drops his still lit flashlight down into the hole, and it clatters to the hard ground below in Shaggy's stead.
"I've got you, Shag," Fred promises, as he carefully begins the monumentally difficult task of pulling Shaggy back up. It's slow going, which is fair enough given that they're all a little wary of the floor now, doubting its continued integrity now that it's betrayed them. Luckily, the floor remains debatably stable and finally Fred gets him back on his feet and safely away from the hole.
Back on level ground, but still clinging desperately to Fred, he manages a quiet, "Like, thanks," as some of the terror begins to wear off, leaving him lingeringly exhausted with the loss of adrenaline. He's glad to see Scooby's safe, too, still remaining on the far side of the sizeable new gap in the floor.
"You okay?"
Given that he very well could have ended up broken and bloodied all over the ground at the bottom of that hole, he isn't doing too badly. Still, he takes a second to untangle himself from Fred and take a quick inventory. His ankle stings, he thinks the breaking boards might have sliced into it a little when they gave way - he can feel a slow, steady stream of blood flowing from it. His shoulder aches, too, probably wrenched from the abrupt stop when Fred grabbed him. "Yeah," he assures the other boy and it's not much of a lie – it's nothing too bad and without the flashlight, it's too dark to inspect either injury any further, regardless. "Can we leave now? I think I need like three pizzas and seven root beer floats from that little diner back in town to recover from my near-death experience."
Fred laughs, as Scooby jumps the gap to join them, likely convinced that if Shaggy wants food, he can't be too badly hurt. "Sure thing, Shag, I'll even treat."
"Ah, a man after my own heart," Shaggy rejoices at the offer, heading for the door, stepping carefully, and limping just a little, with Fred and Scooby following after him.
But Fred stops dead in his tracks at the distinct sound of footsteps echoing somewhere overhead (and absently, Shaggy wonders how the hell anyone could get up there with the staircase all rotted out). Fred catches hold of Shaggy's wrist, pulling him along, "Alright, it is absolutely time to go now."
"You, like, don't need to tell me twice," Shaggy gulps, but he stops their forward progress yet again. "...Didn't we leave that open?" he asks, when they come to a closed door (as closed as it can be when it doesn't actually hang in its frame, at least), and he's once again overwhelmed by that feeling that something bad is going to happen.
There's a grunt from behind them in the dark entryway and before they can turn to face whatever this new threat is, there's the sound of something heavy being swung – it hits with a hard impact and Fred drops to the ground beside him.
"Fred!" He gasps out, just before the same thing hits him, too, and now he's falling into the darkness all over again.
Shaggy comes to with a splitting headache, and a small trail of sticky-dry blood from his forehead down the side of his face. He groans, wondering what the hell happened.
He reaches up, intent to see just what damage has been done to his head that's making it hurt so much, but a hand stops him, and it's then that he realizes he's laid out with his head resting on Fred's lap, a hand carefully dragging through his hair. Finally, he forces his eyes open – lets his vision swim slowly back into focus, blinks lazily up at Fred's concerned face (and sporting a colorful bruise of his own). He grins up at him, maybe a little bit delirious, "Fancy seeing you here."
"Shag?" Fred questions, "you with me?"
Shaggy isn't sure yet.
They were at a haunted house, weren't they? Only, not really, because none of the houses were ever really haunted and this one wasn't any different. There'd been footprints and footsteps. Mishaps and missteps. The memories come rushing back, then – the rumors in town, the house, the floor, the door. "Freddy," he whispers, suddenly wondering why they aren't more concerned about whoever attacked them, "what happened?"
"We found the Ghost of Groves Hollow."
"Huh?" Shaggy asks, sure that something important in his head must have been seriously damaged if that's actually true.
Before Fred can explain any further, an older woman comes shuffling into the room, wringing her hands. "Oh, good, your friend's awake," she chirps, anxiously pacing back and forth in a way that makes Shaggy's head spin if he tries to follow her movements. "I'm so very sorry for hitting you, young man," she says, "but you lot gave me quite the fright when I found you wandering around in my house."
"Your house?" Shaggy echoes, incredulous that anything short of spiders, bats, and rats could actually survive here for any length of time. "You live here?"
The crone laughs, "Not quite. I live in a town through the woods, but I own this house and this land. It's been in my family for a long time. My great grandfather built this place in the early 1800's," she explains, "I just pop in from time to time to see if it's still standing."
Scooby comes bounding back in, then, carrying the first aid kit from the back of the Mystery Machine. "Raggy!" He happily calls when he sees Shaggy's awake, and he rushes to join them.
Fred helps him to sit up and then lets him lean back against him when he's more or less upright, about all the movement he can manage for the moment. "Yeah, about that – we're sorry for trespassing," Fred offers, "We thought this place was abandoned and some locals told us that they thought it might be haunted. We just wanted to check it out."
Shaggy gulps, "It's not, is it?"
"Heavens, no, boy. The closest thing this place has seen to a ghost is me," she answers, waving away their concerns easily. "Most of those local legends are probably about me, anyway – I've scared a few kids off the property, for their own good. It's not safe here." She eyes the door to the room that has gained convenient new basement access, "as you may have noticed."
"Sorry about that, too," Fred adds, "Is there anything we can do to help you out?"
"Not unless you want to save me the trouble and burn the place down," the crone teases before she shrugs off the offer, "No, no. Don't worry about me. You boys should be getting back to town before it gets too late. The drive out of the forest can be tricky at night."
They don't protest.
Shaggy winces as Fred pulls him to unsteady feet. The ankle that he'd sliced on the sharp edges of the splintering floorboards feels worse now – however he'd landed when he'd taken that hit to the head must have done it, he thinks – and so he's forced to heavily rely on the other boy to support him as they pass through the lopsided front door and down the rickety steps of the porch, trading more apologies and goodbyes with the old lady as they go.
It's darker now, the only light from the moon overhead, but the Mystery Machine still waits at the end of the cobblestone path, just on the other side of the rusty gate.
They hobble to the back of the Mystery Machine and pile in, intent upon some cursory first aid beneath the van's overhead lights before they head back to town to meet up with the girls with one hell of a story to tell.
They settle in quickly, and Fred sets to work. He ignores the dark bruise on the side of his head in favor of Shaggy's injuries first. A simple inspection of the gash on his head reveals that the small wound has stopped bleeding now, and he digs through the first aid kit Scooby carried back in search of something to clean it with. Then Fred finds his ankle, hissing out a sympathetic, "Ouch," when he pulls back the mangled leg of Shaggy's pants to reveal the wound from the floorboards – it looks worse than Shaggy had expected, bruised and bloodied and swollen – and sets to cleaning that up, too. Shaggy frowns – Fred is being entirely too quiet about this misadventure.
"You're not hurt, are you?" Shaggy asks, a little concerned that maybe Fred's hiding some other injury from him the way he was hiding his own when there wasn't anything to do for them.
"I'm fine," Fred insists, "Just glad you're okay, Shag," he adds, still too quiet, as he finishes wrapping a bandage around Shaggy's ankle. Shaggy can tell there's still something else he wants to say, but he's surprised when it turns out to be - "And I'm sorry."
"Why? You weren't the one who clubbed me in the head or dropped the floor out from under me."
"No," the other boy concedes, his hand lingering on Shaggy's leg, just above the bandage, like he's afraid to let go, "but you could've died twice tonight just because I wanted to go poking around in an old house."
Shaggy frowns, settles a hand over Fred's and holds on. "It's not like you forced me to come along, Freddy. I might complain about some of our Mystery Inc adventures, but I wouldn't trade them for anything."
The admission earns a smile from Fred and seems to relieve some of his anxiety over the whole situation. "Neither would I," he agrees, and then he's offering his hand so they can get up front and get the hell out of here. Within a minute, they're on their way back to Groves Hollow, their headlights the only thing illuminating the way through the dense forest, with not even the light of the full moon overhead breaking through the trees.
"I promise, Shag," Fred says, earnestly, when the lights of the small town appear ahead, "The next place we go – no mysteries. The whole time."
The old woman watches from the window as the colorful van drives away, taking its occupants away from her family's home in considerably better condition than most escape it. Echoing footsteps sound overhead, followed by a ghostly groan. She rolls her eyes and rebukes her great grandfather for his latest attack. Nonetheless, she's glad she was here in time to spare the boys, they'd seemed quite nice, and it's such a bother to clean up after him when she doesn't quite make it in time.
Maybe one day she will just torch the place.
But, she thinks, as she heaves a heavy sigh and goes to see if the bodies the basement hides were revealed when the floor caved in, not today. Not today.