1~
"Atlantis, Pompeii, Roanoke, places where civilization once thrived, and then, in an instant, were wiped clean from the Earth, by design, accident, or Mother Nature.
"Months ago, Crystal Cove, California, a once prosperous town whose local claim to fame was that it was "The most hauntedest place on Earth," tragically joined that sad elite, prompting conspiracy buffs, the world over, to still debate over the mysterious cause for this quaint town's violent end.
"Today, as state officials focus on the ongoing clean-up, their attempts are being stymied by, yet another mystery. Construction crews and rescue workers are having their efforts hampered by vandalism done to their vehicles and equipment, and some have said that they've seen, and been attacked by, some sort of large specter, perhaps the vengeful spirit of the town's dead. Local police are looking into the possibility of vagrants or squatters making themselves at home among the ruins.
"This is Chaz Manning, WBNS."
The coifed reporter signaled to his cameraman to end taping, and, jadedly, looked around at the devastation that still spanned the breadth and width of Crystal Cove.
Even in the light of day, among the looted and destroyed buildings and homes, the quiet pall of mass death still lingered over the town. The ocean breezes would sing a soft dirge through the dead trees, blowing the pong of rot out to sea, only to call gulls and other scavenging birds of prey inland, to find new, undiscovered bodies to feast over and pick clean.
Chaz, himself, didn't want to explore or move further into the town to select a place to shoot his report. The air, itself, seemed to warn him away, carrying a vibration of threat in every direction.
"This place has seen better days, huh, Barry?" the reporter asked, more to settle his nerves than to just state the obvious.
Barry, his cameraman, was about to put his gear into the nearby news van, when he saw a pair of figures approaching at high speed.
The one ahead seemed washed-out in the strong sunlight, almost giving the illusion of being near-translucent, the one coming from behind was larger, robed and almost shimmering with a soft glow of colored light trailing it.
Barry blinked the obvious trick-of-the-eye away, and when he looked again, not only were the figures closer, with the one up ahead, screaming, they were, also, making a beeline straight for either both men, or their van.
Chaz turned his head to the cry and gasped, "Survivors!"
He straightened his tie and gestured to the duo, smiling with perfect teeth, and asking the foremost one, "Excuse me! Chaz Manning, WBNS. Are you two survivors of the tragedy that befell this once idyllic town? Do you have anything to say to your viewers?"
Despite the misgivings this scene was giving him, Barry had raised his camera to witness it, but then, was puzzled because he couldn't see any one there, other than Chaz.
The figure the reporter was interviewing, screamed, "Help me!" before blindly running into and through a stunned Chaz. The other figure, now seen to be chasing the first one, stopped his pursuit near the reporter, and raised his hand, like a judge pronouncing sentence.
A ray of concentric energy sprang from its open palm, reached out across space, and snared the panicked apparition before he could pass into the van to hide.
The captured spirit struggled and tried to fly to higher ground, but he couldn't resist the grip of the energy field that began dragging him back into the presence of his robed pursuer.
"Please! I'm just looking for my wife," the ghost wailed. "She died somewhere around here!"
"I know," the taller ghost hissed. "She was delectable."
The ray's energy rings, suddenly, changed color, and the ghost who was encircled by it, cried out in apparent pain, as he began to break apart, visually, until only a pattern of glowing balls of light remained, which was then drawn into the palm of the other ghost's closing hand.
Blown away by the spectacle of that event, Chaz whispered to Barry, "Did you get all of that?"
His cameraman, also in awe, but not wanting to be yelled at for not having footage of the existence of ghosts, on hand, nodded slightly and murmured, "Yeah."
The robed spirit began to glow with a new energy as the power of his prey flowed through him. He, then turned to the two humans who bore witness to his feast, and pointed a clawed finger at the tip of Chaz's nose.
"You, reporter," the creature intoned. "You will be my herald. Tell your viewers, tell the world, that these dead lands are the hunting grounds of The Phanplasm!"
To punctuate his announcement, The Phanplasm raised a hand, waved at the news van, and sent it tumbling into a high arc in the sky, to land, crushed, against the gutted foundation of a nearby building.
"Now, leave, before you suffer a worse fate far worse than dying!"
"Wh-What would that be, Mr. Phanplasm, sir?" Chaz, ever the reporter, asked in a sputter.
"Being devoured by me!" The Phanplasm hissed in a sepulchral voice that spoke of graveyards and deep, sorrowful loss.
The two men stumbled and sprinted, in the wake of the creature's laugh, back the way they originally drove into town, with dreams of Pulitzers, and the ancient fears of the supernatural, driving them on with each panicked step.
The sunset of 1871 Crystal Cove fell away into the usual, visual madness of the time vortex, once more. With their precious cargo riding along with the "crew" with the Mark II, it was a cramped, shuffling, and sometimes, painful affair, but Marcie and Daisy couldn't be happier with their success, especially since Marcie bade Velma to sit on her lap for the duration of the trip.
A feeling of shifting pseudo-gravity, suddenly, tugged at them, and then, the chaos of the vortex relented into a hazy, blue vista, all sensation of motion, ceased.
As did everyone else's motion and biological functions, yet death did not come over them. Marcie's brain couldn't process thought, couldn't access memory, and couldn't perceive people in glowing blue, counteractive outfits, like hazmat suits, only bulkier, come out of nowhere and haul the petrified bodies of Velma, Daphne, Freddy, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo from the time machine.
Trapped like insects in the amber-like stillness of a stasis field, the rest didn't recover from the restriction until the Mark II, finally, materialized on the launch platform in the center of Hangar A, where they had escaped from Sundial, mere moments before, according to the instruments displayed on one of the Mark II's touch screens.
After a luxury of hot showers and a full meal in Sundial's facility, what followed next was a series of blood, cognitive, and physical tests, as well as a full debriefing of what eras they visited and what they did there. Despite their disruptive presence in Sundial, they were making up for it in crucial data that was worth their weight in gold.
A knock on the door of the Head Director's office brought Schrödinger out of his studies of their test results, and he bade the visitor enter.
Marcie and Daisy filed in and marched up to the desk to glower at the, otherwise, nonplussed cat.
"Where are the other two?" Schrödinger asked them. "Herring and Wyatt?"
"Your people took them home," Daisy said. "I'd like to take my sister home, too. Where is she?"
"And Velma?" Marcie added.
"You know," Schrödinger said, as if he hadn't heard them at all. "I've been going over your test results and debriefings and they are fascinating reading. You should be proud to be America's very first chrononauts."
"Yippee-skipee," Marcie deadpanned. "I'll save you a ticker-tape parade, if you'll just tell us where our friends are, Schro."
"Must you call me that?" he sighed. "They're in an Un-Time Booth, in stasis, like your bodies were on E-001. We detected your return to our present time, so we over-rid the controls and sent you all into an Un-Time Booth, first. Then, we separated you from them. Your friends are now in quarantine."
"Quarantine? Are they sick? Did they catch something from the past?" Daisy asked, haunted with thoughts of long-dealt-with contagions ravaging her sister's body.
"No, although they will be given a thorough check-up when they do come out," the cat explained. "They're in isolation, right now, because, as humans love to do, you went off half-cocked, instead of waiting, like Nova and I asked."
A fluffy Cocker Spaniel's tail flashed from behind the desk, and then, Nova padded out to meet the humans.
"Let me say that I'm so glad that you succeeded in finding your friends, and that they're safe and whole, but Schrödinger is right, Marcie. You should have waited until Mystery Incorporated reached Arkham, Massachusetts, first."
Before either girl could argue on the point, a buzz sounded from the intercom on the desk.
"Sir, communication is ready, now," said the secretary, from outside.
Schrödinger pawed a button to reply. "Excellent. I'll patch it in here."
"Yes, sir."
The cat walked over to another button on the desk, batted it with a paw, and the sound of small motors hummed across the room.
On the wall of one side of the office, the canvas of a large painting began to slide away from its wide frame, revealing a flat-screen monitor. What Marcie saw after that twisted her stomach into a knot of betrayal and the haughtiest of righteous indignation.
"What do you want, liar?" she hissed at the pensive, real-time visage of Velma Dinkley coming from her laptop's webcam. Behind her, the rest of her friends stood by, worryingly, watching their collective chickens coming home to roost.
"Marcie, let me explain."
"What's there to explain?" Marcie asked, calmly, at first, then yelled, "You led me on!"
"You led us both on, Daphne Double," Daisy added, venomously. "You tricked Mom, Dad and the rest of us into thinking you were our Daphne. Why?"
"Re'er sorry."
"Muzzle it, you," Marcie chastised the Great Dane.
"We didn't mean to, honest!" confessed Freddy, trying to placate. "We were just so confused about everything. We had just survived The Evil Entity, then we were brought to this un-destroyed Crystal Cove."
"Yeah, man," Shaggy added. "And, like, the next thing we know, we're met by friends and family who told us we did things, or were going to do things...that we never did."
"Freddy and I didn't say anything, then, Daisy," Daphne said. "Because we were in just too much shock."
"Culture shock, to be more accurate," the alternate Velma elaborated. "It was only after I talked to you, Marcie, that I figured out what had happened. That we were taken from our home universe and placed into this one."
"And you didn't bother to come back and tell me this?" Marcie huffed. "C'mon, Velma, or whoever you are, this Marcie you're talking to. Out of all of us, I would have been the most amenable to whatever had happened to you, and if you had to tell anybody else, I would have been there to back you up, but you didn't trust me to understand, did you? You didn't trust me. Period."
There were few times in Velma's life where she was so guilty of something that she was struck dumb in shame. This was one for the books. She was, then, rescued from the uncomfortable silence by the following question.
"Why did you leave?" Marcie asked. She wanted to ask, "Why did you leave me?" but thought better of it. She wanted answers, and like any good scientist, she knew that emotions could taint an, otherwise, informative investigation.
Velma sighed, the guilt never leaving her. "We realized that these other people, the other us, were good people, but they weren't us. We're detectives, where we come from, and these people were just too..."
She sought for the right word, but could only come up with, "Ordinary, successful, but ordinary. But then, we received a letter from Mr. E, someone we, sort of, worked under in our timeline, but this was a new one, who knew about our situation and offered us a lifetime of mysteries to solve over at Miskatonic University. He enrolled us, there, but we had to go right away."
"So you left," Marcie finished for her. "No explanations. No goodbyes. You just left. What a cop-out. You don't strike me as immature, Velma, so, why do that? Why tell yourselves that left to solve mysteries, when all you really did was run away from being adults?"
That assertion hit Velma and the others, like a physical blow. "What," she asked, stunned.
"You were told that you had these happy, successful lives," Marcie pressed. "Lives of promise and potential, and what was the reaction to all of that? All of you slipping out of town, like criminals."
"And you're selfish, to boot," Daisy added. "None of you cared what we thought. Didn't you think, at all, about what your folks would think when you didn't come home, later that night?"
"And the sad thing is that you all thought that running away from your problems was the right thing to do," Marcie continued. "But, here's the kicker. There were no problems to run from. But, if you're so serious about finding ghosts, just look in a mirror, because that's all you guys are, haunting one town after another, looking for the next spook to keep you from growing up."
"Now, that's not fair, Marcie!" Freddy interjected, strongly. "We love being detectives! It's our lives."
"Then, why didn't you come back and tell everybody that?" she shot back, then returned her attention to Velma. "Your parents were worried sick about you, Velma, I mean, my Velma's parents were worried, even if they were too strong to admit it, sometimes."
She turned her attention to the guilty party behind Velma. "All of your parents and friends were worried about you."
"But, like, you weren't really our friends and families, man," Shaggy explained their weak defense. "They're gone."
That moved Daisy, momentarily. Even she couldn't dismiss someone's loss, but the issue still needed to addressed.
"I'm sorry about that, but that's not the point. How would we have known that, if you never bothered to tell us?" Daisy countered, icily. "And why is it taking you so long to reach Massachusetts? You all left months ago."
"Re've been doing rhat re do best," Scooby confessed. "Solring mysteries arong the ray,"
"Really? Well, guess what? We've been solving mysteries, too," Marcie said, calmly. "And you know what we deduced? That you guys, never trusted that good people would, eventually, understand who you were, let those good people think you were their loved ones and friends with your silence, and then, destroyed those same people, by up and leaving, and making them grow old before their time worrying about you. You would have made that Evil Entity I was told about, look like Grandma Moonbeam."
"Hey, you don't know how evil the Evil Entity was!" Freddy argued. "When he appeared in Crystal Cove, he ruined so many innocent lives!"
"Apparently, he was going for your land speed record," Marcie deadpanned.
Inwardly, Velma's will to justify her actions was, sufficiently, weakened by the barrage of righteous condemnation, but, still, she summoned the courage to try and explain her part in this mess.
"Marcie...I'm truly sorry that I didn't say anything about us, before, and...you were right. I was leading you on, for a long time, until I felt so guilty about not being able to tell you the truth, that I decided to stop our web-chats, altogether. I didn't want to keep hurting you, and I hoped that, by the time you knew the truth, we'd be so far away that you'd forget all about me. Stupid, huh?"
Marcie felt like a fool exposed to the world. Her secrets, desires, and problems were all confided to this Velma, tears were shed and yearnings, expressed. But, all of that was for nothing. Nothing but ironic entertainment for a stranger in the skin of her beloved friend. She hung her head in quiet agony and said nothing for long seconds.
"Marcie?" Velma whispered, seeing the silent, brutal effects of her betrayal in real-time. "Please, say something." A world away, her Marcie had died for her and her friends to succeed, and this Marcie deserved better treatment than what she gave her, she knew.
The only thing Marcie could hear and feel was the sad thump of her broken heart, as she, quietly, told Velma, "I don't ever want to talk to you, again."
That Velma once had a Marcie as a rival, and then, a friend, a dear one, and in all of the time that she knew her, she never once hear those words come from her. They crushed Velma more than any curse she was prepared to hear. She couldn't bring herself to beg Marcie to say anything else, couldn't ask for her forgiveness, and say anything, herself, out of shame.
Both girls, silently, stood by their cameras, bridged, no longer, by a friendship, even if it was false, but by mutual pain.
Schrödinger decided that nothing more could be gained from this breakdown. He tapped the button on the desk, mercifully, cutting off communications between the two of them.
"I'm sorry you had to go through any of that. Both of you," the cat said, softly, to Marcie and Daisy. "If you must know, they're in Maryland, now. We approached them a few days ago, and wanted to give you a chance to touch base with them before they reach Arkham."
"Yeah, thanks," Daisy said, sarcastically. "Good talk. Now, lets talk about getting our people out of that bubble, or booth, of yours."
Schrödinger sat on the center of the broad desk, saying to them, "Remember when Mystery Incorporated entered your universe, and their existence shoved their doubles into the past?"
Daisy knew that she wasn't up on temporal events and theories, and so, rightly, assumed that he was, really, directing the question towards Marcie, who still fumed, silently, beside her.
The cat continued. "If your group were to step outside of the Un-Time Booth, now, while Mystery Inc. was still out and about, then Mystery Inc. would be the ones to get snapped back to their original timeline."
A black light bulb suddenly lit up in Marcie's brain with dark understanding, and she spoke. "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, huh? Good! Maybe they should go back to their universe, pick up the pieces, and move on, instead of disrupting everything, here, just because they bothered to clean up your mess."
"I don't understand why you're both so upset over this," Schrödinger sighed and looked heavenward. "Your friends and family are safe in the Booth. Time doesn't exist within it. While your friends are in there, they won't be pushed back into the past, so it's the safest place to be, until this blows over."
"Honestly, at first, we didn't know that our kindness would hurt the people who were already living here," Nova admitted.
"We just had to hope that the doubles were smart enough to survive in whatever era they were bounced to," the cat added.
"You know, for someone who likes to hear the sound of his own voice, you don't hear yourself!" Marcie said. "What if you were wrong? What if they didn't survive? What's the Annunaki word for 'oops?'"
"Until very recently, one we rarely found ourselves saying," sniffed the cat.
"Marcie, Daisy, I can assure you that all will be well, as soon as Mystery Incorporated reaches Professor Ellison," Nova coaxed. "In the meantime, I'm afraid that your friends will have to spend some time in the Booth, for their own protection."
Marcie glanced at Nova, realizing what was happening, what was always happening when Schrödinger and she went at it, it seemed.
Nova was the peacemaker, the diplomat, the kindly voice to counter the acerbic pomposity of the cat. Marcie knew that Nova was trying to smooth relations, all around, but she wasn't in the mood to be in the center of a 'Good Annunaki-Bad Annunaki' scenario.
"Spend some time?" she fumed. "Ugh! Multiple universes and several centuries, and we still have to wait to be our people. Why don't your precious Mystery Incorporated stop wasting time and go straight to Miskatonic? Why should we have to wait until they finish their magical mystery tour, to get on with our lives?"
"Why bother, Marcie?" Daisy scoffed, glaring at the animals. "Don't you know anything? We don't rate next to the mighty Mystery Incorporated. Let's get out of here."
Despite wanting to expend every calorie arguing the point to Schrödinger, a part of Marcie, a dark part of her, wanted to punish him and the outsiders for all she went through, and just then, a deliciously, devious idea gave her the proper nudge to achieve such an end.
"Let's," she agreed, following Daisy out of the office, and causing Nova to look at Schrödinger with big, worried eyes.