Random Reviewer the 2nd - I'm not sure what you mean by Velma being angsty. The whole tone of the story is a bit darker than the usual feel of the show, so the characters have all been adjusted to fit. While she is having a few emotional moments, that's only to be expected from someone being injured/threatened by vampires/reuniting with an old friend all at once. (Unless you were talking about her little asides. Those are pretty much pure snark.) Also, yes, I spend far too much time on TV Tropes.
Animefan29 - Congrats on being the first person to make that connection. (Or, at least, being the first person to mention to me that you'd made that connection.) To be honest, I've never managed to make it through a Lovecraft story; the descriptions just go on way too long for me. Still, I really like the Cthulhu Mythos universe and Scooby Doo is a classic show from my childhood, so it seemed only natural to mix them. Hopefully, my massive amounts of wiki-ing and research will be able to compensate for my abysmal lack of firsthand knowledge of the style.
Hells Mercenary - Glad ya think so. It's a hard balance to maintain, the original cartoony personalities and a more realistic/mature version. I'm heartened that you think I'm pulling it off.
Katerina Riley - Yeah, well, as much as I like Velma/Shaggy myself, I'm just not confident in my ability to write romance. So, such shipping will likely remain as subtext or light hinting. But, yeah, I really gotta write faster. Two months or more per chapter is redankulous.
To all others, be you reviewers or just readers, I hope you're enjoying the story. Remember, if you have any questions or comments or thoughts or wild theories, just put them in that little box at the bottom of the chapter.
10
"So..." Shaggy stared at her for a long moment, no doubt absorbing everything Velma had just told him. "What you're saying is, you're, like, not mad at me?" Ah yes, she could always trust him to cut to the most pressing issue at hand.
"No, Shaggy." The researcher said slowly, shaking her head. "I'm not mad at you. Did you catch anything else I just told you?"
"Of course, yeah." He nodded, bringing up one hand to count off the most pertinent points. "Like, find Scooby and the girls, stick together, find some clues, and, like, get back to the school." Velma gave the gym teacher a flat look over her glasses.
"And the parts about the monster in the bog?" She prodded. He laughed, nervously.
"I was, like, trying to pretend you didn't mention that."
"Of course." While the years had inured him to the girl ghouls, it seemed Shaggy was still as easily frightened by other monsters as he'd always been. In a way, Velma was almost relieved; she wasn't sure her mind could handle the idea of a fearless Shaggy. (Not that she could blame him for being frightened of the stalking thing; she certainly was.)
"So, I'll just, like," Shaggy pulled himself to his feet and stood somewhat near the edge of the rubble-cliff. "Call the girls, then?" He put his fingers to the edges of his mouth, miming a whistle and looking to Velma for confirmation. For a brief moment, self-preservation and curiosity fought in the researcher's head. One one hand, the safest possible thing would be to get back into a group and return to Grimwood's. On the other, there might-could be possible clues in the nearby vicinity maybe.
"Not just yet." As was distressingly usual for Velma, curiosity won. It was a lucky thing she hadn't been born a cat. "I need you to tell me everything that's been going on." The gym teacher blinked at her for a moment, indecisively glancing between her and the land out and below them, before nodding.
"Like, ok." He perched himself upon a rock opposite her. "What do you want to know?" She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
"You came back to the school about four years ago." She prompted. "And everything was fine."
"Uh-huh." He smiled, waiting for her to keep talking. She did roll her eyes this time; apparently, she was going to need to lead him by the metaphorical hand for this.
"You wrote me a letter, asking for me to come help you." She reminded him, a touch forcefully. She didn't mean to be annoyed with him, but he could be clueless at the worst times. "Something prompted you to write it. What was it?" Comprehension dawned across the teacher's face.
"Oh, that." He leaned back a bit, nodding a few times. "Like, weird stuff has been goin' down." He brought up one hand. "First, we didn't really notice it, but it, like, it's been getting more and more far out." He rubbed his beard. "Like, it was small, you know? A sound every once in a while, little flashes in the distance, that stuff."
"It didn't stay small, I take it?" Somehow, she doubted he'd have written for help if it had.
"Like, no way. Miss G started picking up on some bad vibes, like really bad juju. They would, like, come and go without any warning, and it really put her on edge. Like, then the girls started seeing something, out in the bog." This, Velma found quite intriguing.
"What kind of thing? Do you mean the thing that, ah, attacked us?"
"Like, I don't think so." He shook his head. "This thing was, like, a guy made of shadow, they said." Dark, darker than it should have been. "They said it would just, like, stand at the edge of the treeline and stare at them, then disappear." He shuddered. Velma felt a chill travel up her arms.
"Did... did you ever see it?" Something about this shadow felt familiar, though the researcher couldn't say why. It was not a pleasant familiarity.
"Like, uh-uh. Miss G either." Shaggy looked out over the bog. "That's, like, when things really started getting worse. The sounds got louder, and they happened, like, all the time. They were, like, metal tearing and wood breaking and glass smashing all at once." Noise. A cacophony. "And the flashes, they, like, stopped being so far away. You would see 'em in the corners of your eyes and sometimes you would see, like, things in them."
"Monsters?" Her heart was pounding, and sweat pooled upon her brow. She clenched her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. Troubling as she found Shaggy's tale, she couldn't account for her body's extreme reactions to it. She had stronger nerves than this, she was sure.
"Like, places." He rolled his hand in front of him, searching for the proper words to explain. "That we'd been to. People too, like memories or... I don't know." He gave a helpless shrug. "Tanis locked herself in her case for, like, three days when it happened to her. Never found out what she saw." His hand came up and ran through his hair once, then lay upon his knee and began tapping. "Like, must 'a been pretty bad."
"What about you?" She was probably prying a bit too much, but her curiosity cared little for trying to discern the blurry lines of politeness in matters of supernatural visions. "What did you see?" He paused, then gave a little shrug.
"Like, just a bunch of stuff. Crystal Cove, the Mystery Machine, like, my great uncle's mansion." He sniffed. "Like, you and Fred and Daphne and Scoob." He turned back to her and gave a small smile. "I guess that's why I, like, wrote those letters; had you guys on the brain." She smiled back, then took in a deep breath through her nose to calm herself.
"Is that everything that happened?" Velma went for a joking tone. "No fire raining from the sky or demon hordes besieging the school?" He laughed, the tension draining from his voice and taking her apprehension with it. Good; seeing him so subdued had felt at odds with the natural order of the universe.
"Yeah, like, I guess it doesn't sound like all that big of a deal when I just list it all out like that." He held up his hands in a playfully imploring way. "But, believe you me, it was, like, super freaky at the time." The researcher picked up on the past tense immediately.
"But, it's not anymore?" She asked. "Happening, I mean." She clarified. No doubt it would still be 'super freaky' if it were still going on. The teacher shook his head.
"Weirdest thing," He leaned in towards her, resting his elbows on his knees. "Everything stopped five days ago." Velma frowned. She'd been here, relatively speaking, for one day. It had taken her four days to reach the school. She had left the same day she'd gotten the letter. Assuming magic was involved in the delivery (and she was quite sure it had been), that would mean...
"It stopped when you sent out the letters?" That, if true, would be a far sight more than she could chalk up to coincidence. Shaggy blinked, straightening.
"Huh." His brow furrowed thoughtfully as he put together the pieces. "You don't think something, like, wanted me to me to...?"
"It's a possibility." A stronger one than she liked, at that. He didn't need to know that, though; at least, not until she was sure of it. "I'll need to talk with Miss Grimwood when we get back to the school." Bracing her hands against her knees (and wincing because both of her shoulders were sore now), she stood up. "We need to figure out if your Shadow Man is really gone, and if the, eh," She thought for a moment for an appropriate name, as 'thing in the bog' was becoming a cumbersome and, unfortunately, not specific enough term. "Bog Stalker, let's call it, is connected."
"Sounds good." The gym teacher rose to his feet as well. "Like, totally scary and horrible, but good. Just like old times, huh?"
"Just about." Velma nodded, letting a nostalgic grin tug at her mouth. "I doubt we'll find Old Man Jenkins responsible for this one, though." Not that she really minded. No matter what the cause behind the shadowy emanations and psychic bog monster, it was certain to be fascinating.
"Guess that'd be, like, too much to hope for." Shaggy sighed. "So, like, do I call the girls now, or...?"
"One second." She held up a finger, then closed her eyes and concentrated. She strained her awareness, trying to pick up any sign of the Bog Stalker. Nothing. Of course, she was hardly psychic, but something told her the creature had retreated for the moment. "Ok. Clues first, then call the girls." She really didn't want to have any more distractions running around and disturbing possible clues than she had to.
"Uh, ok." Shaggy nodded obediently, more than willing to follow her lead. "Where do we look first?" A bit too willing to follow her lead, perhaps, considering that there was a near-sheer drop on one side of them and an unexplored ruin on the other; no way his investigative skills had become that rusty. Velma stared at him silently over the top of her glasses. "...Like, right." He gave an embarrassed laugh, then held out his arm towards the only possible direction for them to proceed. "Ladies first?"
"Good manners, or are you just afraid of going first?" The researcher asked rhetorically, stepping past him. The piles of splintered wood and rotted books nearby suggested a small library or study. Disappointment that it was, that such a valuable store of information had been lost, Velma had expected it; practitioners of dark magics (especially the 'stupid and powerful' ones) often failed to properly protect their tomes and accoutrements from their own misfired spells, or they simply rigged things so that their knowledge wouldn't outlive them. The very notion got her dander up.
Still, if the Witch of the Web had been following the usual conventions of evil magus (and the mountaintop castle certainly suggested she had), then the ritual chamber couldn't be too far away. The Occult Hunter wasn't betting on any books or parchments having survived in what would have been the epicenter of the magical overload, but she hoped to find a trinket or two that might give her an idea of what kind of effects the Witch's demise may have had on the surrounding area. Even if she didn't, the nature of the destruction closest to the event could possibly clue her in to the nature of the overload.
Of course, suspecting the ritual chamber was nearby and actually finding it amoung all the ruin and rubble were two different things.
"Ok, let's get down to it." She absently waved for Shaggy to step up beside her, eyes roaming over the area. "We need to find what's left of the room where the girls were, uh, what'd you call it? Revoltized?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Right, that room." She tried to mentally reconstruct the layout of the castle, based on what Shaggy had told her and her own (admittedly less than expert) knowledge of typical fortress construction. "Skylight says top floor, which is lucky for us, and a fireplace suggests a central room."
"Like, yeah," The gym teacher agreed, nodding. "And I got in there through this, like, rotating wall. You know the kind." She did. The rotating wall was probably the single most popular form of hiding a secret passage in existence. (Well, in her experience, anyway.)
"Ok, she probably didn't have any Engineering or Architectural degrees, so she likely just copied an existing castle design. That means the layout wouldn't typically have a proper ritual chamber, and she'd have to make-do with something else..." A safe-room maybe? In the event of an attack, the non-fighting nobles could withdraw through the secret passage into a hidden room until the fighting ended. Plenty of castles were built with such rooms in mind, usually a product of paranoid or flat-out insane leaders. It would be an ideal place for a long-burning ritual, serving to hide the magic and the practitioner both.
Third brick from the top, on the right side. Slightly discoloured, if you know to look. Slide it open, down the hall, keep quiet. Crack the light for air and fresh water, can't be seen from outside, ration the food correctly to last a fortnight. Won't be found. Hang them on hooks, the bats do the rest. Powder in the fire puts the bats to sleep. Use the thin needle.
"If the room wasn't accessible through the normal hallways," Velma reasoned, not bothering to wonder why she was suddenly picturing a hypodermic needle; her mind made odd connections sometimes. "Then the debris may lead us right to it." Or it might be totally buried. "Given the way the rubble seems to have fallen, we should be able to tell which parts were halls and which parts were walls." Upon realizing her unintentional rhyme, she forged ahead, lest Shaggy try to play off of it. "If we find a spot that indicates a walled-off hallway, it could be our secret passage."
"Like, beats checking under every last rock to see what we find." Her companion shrugged, scanning the ruin as she had. "I guess we're standing in a hall right now?" Velma glanced down and, sure enough, it appeared as though Shaggy's assessment was correct.
"Looks like it." With that, the hunt for clues began in earnest.
In another part of the bog, a hunt of a different sort continued at a frantic pace. The Beast was fast, and it was only the fact that it kept stopping to look around and pick a new direction to run that allowed the trio to maintain the chase.
Abraham, unsurprisingly, led the pack by a wide margin, leaping over roots and crashing through dried-out underbrush with an undeterrable fervor. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Daphne was quite impressed with his ability to move so well with all the heavy fur he was wearing. The front of her mind, however, was occupied with not falling too far behind the Cajun, and making sure Fred didn't fall too far behind her. Fast as the blonde was, he seriously lacked maneuverability.
Daphne hadn't been able to another good look at the Beast again, though she did catch glimpses whenever she looked forward to spy Abraham and caught sight of the creature beyond him. It blended in well with the environment, being, as she found, an earthy brown colour. She thought once or twice that she had caught sight of long, green appendages, but she couldn't be sure between the distance, dust, and dashing.
And, speaking of dust? Her clothes were almost certainly ruined.
Still, onwards they rushed, through the remains of the bog, heedless of the dry, crackling underbrush and the deep troughs where water once flowed. The empty branches of the trees stretched a patchwork carpet of sunlight and shadow across the ground, the gnarled and twisted roots of withered trees piercing upwards from the dirt like grasping fingers. Daphne did what she could to avoid them.
Somehow, the trio found themselves gaining on the Beast. The Beast, in turn, slowed considerably and turned to face its persistent pursuers. Warning bells sounded loudly within the heiress's head, and she halted well away from the creature. Abraham, too caught up in his bloodlust, continued his charge.
"Die!" With a shout, the Cajun dropped his shotgun and lit the molotov, his supposed last resort, and lobbed it at the Beast. It sailed through the air in a sharp arc, spinning slightly as it descended towards its target, and was deftly snatched from its path by a long, green vine. The light from the burning rag illuminated the creature, giving Daphne her first proper look at it.
Its body was large, around the size of a person, and oblong, like a misshapen egg. It had no arms or legs, nor a neck and head, but a multitude of writhing, undulating vines sprouted from its sides and bottom. A single massive, lidless blood-red eye took up nearly a third of its front, the sclera as black as the pupil. Taking up the rest of the 'face' was a gaping maw, lined with rows of long, thin teeth that were stained red and black with blood.
"D-dass..." Abraham could only stare at the creature, too shocked to move. "Dass not da Beast." He whispered. Daphne felt Fred grab her wrist as she took a step towards the older man.
Then, before anyone could react, the creature whipped the molotov back at the Cajun. He managed little more than a sharp intake of air before it exploded against his chest.
The flash was blinding. When the redhead got her vision back, just moments later, Abraham was on the ground, screaming in pain and fear as he tried to fight the flames racing over his body. Freddie was faster to react than she was, darting to the Cajun's side and trying to pull away his heavy furs, despite the already-spreading fire around him. There was movement from the monster, and Daphne's gaze snapped to it.
It was staring at her, its tentacle-like vines whipping to and fro excitedly. It looked from her, to the fire. She took an involuntary step back as it contorted its mouth into a pleased grin, and it let out a wet, thick chuckle. Then, it turned and vanished into the bog.
The fire was beginning to consume the ever-present brush that permeated the bog. Knowing that it would be impossible to contain if it were allowed to grow, Daphne did the only thing she could think of and grabbed up as much loose dirt as she could in an attempt to smother the flames. It wasn't enough. The fire continued to consume unabated, and the heat quickly became too intense for Daphne to approach.
Stumbling back, she nearly tripped over Freddie, whom had managed to separate Abraham from his furs. Luckily, the furs had taken the brunt of the heat and actual flame, but there had still been damage, Daphne could tell, especially to the Cajun's face and hands.
"We've got to get out of here!" She shouted over the increasing roar of the fire, helping Fred haul the near-unconscious Abraham to his feet. They only had one real chance of getting out before the fire gained enough momentum to overtake them. "Back to the truck!"
They only managed to make it a few yards when the earthquake knocked them to the ground.
"I think were getting close..." Shaggy paused, pointing to a pile of broken glass and metal. "I, like, recognise that mirror." Velma, recalling what he had told her of the mirror and its monster when recounting his time with the ghouls, approached the shattered glass cautiously. There were a few different kinds of entities that could be bound to mirrors, fewer of them pleasant, and the researcher was unsure if breaking the mirror would be enough to release this one. She knelt and peered down at the dusty, smudged shards.
"Anyone in there?" On one hand, if there was nothing there, it no loss. On the other, if something was there, it could provide them with information. Or it could try to pull them into some kind of mirror-world and eat their souls. Movement through the grime caught her focus.
"L-like, maybe we should, uh..." Shaggy trailed off when she pulled her sleeve over her hand and began wiping the largest shards clean (relatively speaking).
"SoMeoNE is HeRE." She froze in her efforts as a voice answered from the broken mirror. Shaggy's voice. "I sERVe beYoND thE ShAttERinG." It was dark, rough, and halfway growling, but definitely Shaggy's voice. It seemed to breathe as it spoke, snarling out heavily in the middle of words.
"Who..." Velma stopped herself from asking 'who are you?' (mirror monsters rarely had a strong sense of personal identity) as an image began to form in the shards. Shaggy's face. Like the voice, the visage was dark and rough, the eyes, ears, and teeth betraying an obvious demonic taint. A moment later, she realized that it wasn't just a twisted reflection of Shaggy, but of what he had looked like all those years ago. The monster was still in the last form it had taken. "Who do you serve?"
"HaaAah..." The mirror monster let out a disgusted snarl. "Do yOU tHink I HAVe foRGottEN?" It growled accusingly. "OR do you BelieVE MY loYALty has shATTERed aS Well as mY mIRRor? I SERve you, MiStreSS, as ALWays."
This, understandably, gave the Occult Hunter pause. She quickly sifted through the possibilities: Either she had, somehow, a demon bound to her will without realizing it, or she was being mistaken for the monster's actual Mistress. Well, she could put both theories to the test with one question.
"And who am I?" She asked, going for an authoritative tone. The monster knit his brow in confusion for a moment, before his expression returned to anger.
"My sENSes HAve dARkeNed in thESE yEArs, but a MirrOR MONster cANNot be foOLEd." It declared vitriolically. "You ARE the WITch oF The WeB, mIStrESS." Well, question answered, then. Velma decided that she could roll with this quite well. She discreetly motioned for Shaggy to go on looking for the ritual chamber; the monster probably wouldn't react well to his presence anyway, and she could handle a weakened demon that couldn't even leave it's mirror.
"Speak, then!" She commanded dramatically. "What have you seen in your long vigil?" She worried momentarily that she might be overplaying it, but the mirror monster didn't seem to find her performance odd.
"DaRKNesS aND DUst has cOVEreD MY sight SINce the sHATTerINg," The demon spat. "But THe taSTE of MAgiC shOWED mE mUCh. MagIC RAn wilD ANd witHOUT diREctioN, until it sETTled inTo thE eARTh of the BOG. It gAVe rIse tO THe noT-UndEATh, and the tHREAd toRe fREe frOM the fABRIc." It grimaced. "The sHADoW pasSEd by My mIRRoR maNY times."
"Er..." Okay, not as helpful as she'd been hoping, though still rife with information. Magic running wild was probably how the monster saw the magical overload, which was nothing new to her. The tidbit about it settling into the bog was a good bit of information, though. From what Velma recalled of her research, free magic tended to be absorbed by living beings, which only rarely resulted in an serious manifestations of said magic. But, with everything in the bog dead, there would be nothing to absorb the magic, leaving it to soak into the surrounding area, which could lead to a few interesting outcomes...
A 'not-undeath' rising, however, was a bit harder to puzzle out. Magic could be used to animate the dead or keep those not quite gone from passing on by suspending them in undeath, though both of those required the will of a soul, be it that of a magic user or a restless spirit. To raise something in a way that wasn't undeath, however, was something Velma had never heard of. Magic was quite incapable of creating genuine life, so the monster likely hadn't been speaking of a living thing, either. Not living and not undead, yet still risen? Maybe one of the girls or Miss Grimwood would know more.
Freeing thread from fabric, she would have to puzzle out once she had a better idea of what had been going on in the ritual room. She suspected some kind of spell-weaving, or maybe a slow-burning enchantment that the overload interrupted. And as for the last thing...
"The shadow?" If this didn't somehow relate to Shaggy's Shadow Man, Velma would be very surprised.
"He oF THe thoUASnD masKS. He seARchEd foR the ANCHor." The researcher-come-witch-impersonator really hoped she wasn't entering an infinite loop of unknown nouns being the answer to questions about other unknown nouns.
"And the anchor would be...?" Somehow, she already knew that the answer would be less than helpful.
"The aNChoR is yOURs anD YOurS ALone, miSTREss, oF CouRSe." The monster recited in a well-practiced manner, bowing slightly. "AnD I Will SPEAk nOT of it." Velma sighed inwardly; Of course he was ordered to keep quiet about anything that might actually explain things. (That kind of knowledge would have made things far too easy, obviously.)
"That's... yeah, great." Pushing for a better answer would probably tip the mirror monster off to her true identity, so that avenue was closed off, along with all the other things that the Witch of the Web would naturally be expected to know. Even under the guise of testing the monster's memory, it was a bit too risky. "Sleep now, and gather your strength." She commanded. She needed time to think up some new questions, and the monster's visage was starting to unnerve her. "I'll see about finding you a new mirror." The monster grinned at this. She rather preferred it when it scowled.
"THAnK you, MisTREss..." It growled, fading from sight. She would probably be safer just banishing the demon back to wherever it came from, but she wasn't sure of how to go about such a thing (the last thing she needed was to accidentally let it out of the mirror) and lacked the needed supplies anyway. She would see about finding a new mirror, though. Something small, so she could, if nothing else, deliver the monster to someone who could deal with it properly.
Velma stood, thinking over what the mirror monster had said, and quickly located Shaggy. The gym teacher was inspecting the back wall, which had managed to hold mostly intact. She jogged over to join him.
"Like, I thought this place felt smaller than before." He said as she approached, pushing on stones at random. Suddenly, the wall fell away, crumbling down a cliff not unlike the one they'd climbed to get up here. "This is only half the castle!"
When they fell, Freddie went in one direction, and she, along with Abraham, went the other. The Cajun already unsteady, was completely unable to stop himself from landing right on top of Daphne. She struggled to escape from under him as the shaking grew worse. Fred attempted to aid them, but the heaving of the ground made even crawling a difficult venture, and they remained out of his reach. The fire, which had managed to reach the nearby trees already, continued to spread at an alarming rate.
"It's coming!" Abraham managed to cough out, on eye burned closed and the other wide in fear as he rolled away from her. Daphne ignored his words and focused on inching away from the flames, keeping a tight grip on his arm. He remained prone where he lay, staring into the center of the fire. "It's coming!"
"Come on!" The redhead grunted, trying to drag the much heavier man with her. "We need to-" At that moment, the ground dropped three inches straight down, both surprising her and knocking the wind from her. A horrible, massive grinding sound tore through the roar of the fire and the rumbling of the earth. It was loud and angry and hungry, like stones in a meat grinder multiplied by several orders of magnitude in both volume and scope.
Almost involuntarily, Daphne turned and looked behind her, to the fire. The ground had started to swirl around like a whirlpool, drawing in the brush, trees, and fire. She redoubled her efforts to crawl away when she realised it was slowly expanding.
Still, Abraham would not move. She tried, in vain, to pull him with her, but he was little more than dead weight. As the edge of the dirt-whirlpool grew nearer, her bravado failed, and she released the Cajun's arm. Without him holding her back, she was able to adopt a steady crawl. There were sharp cracks and pops as the withered trees in the throes of the pool were shattered by the force of the churning dirt.
"It's here!" Guilt seized her at Abraham's cry, and she turned to look at him, her mind instantly conjuring images of the man being dragged to his death. To her relief, neither the fire nor the whirlpool had reached him. In fact, the pool seemed to have stopped expanding, and all of the fire was being drawn into the center. The Cajun was staring into the ball of flame, transfixed.
The rumbling of the ground intensified suddenly, and the earth began change. At first, Daphne thought the pool was sinking. Then, as the movement continued, she realized that the ground all around the whirlpool was slowly rising up. It picked up speed quickly, taking a more definite shape as it grew. Long, thin protrusions formed, five in number, connected by a thick slab, with the whirlpool in the center. The breath left the redhead.
It was a massive, earthen hand.
The hand closed into a fist with a sound like low thunder, snuffing out the flame and whirlpool at once. The rumbling decreased as the fist began to sink back into the ground. It lost shape as it sank, returning to a hill of dirt, then a mound, and then to nothing. It left behind a hulking, inhuman creature.
It was a seamless blending of plant and earth and animal, fur and moss and bark stretching across branching limbs of rotting muscle and wood. Its talons, of which it had five per hand, were bone, inches long and sharp as carving knives. Its legs were a single column of twisting dirt, rotating endlessly. The stench of rot and decay and wet leaves flowed from it. What struck Daphne most, however, was the rotting, long-dead human corpse that jutted out from its front like a grim decoration. The empty sockets of the skull glowed with a red light, and mist fell freely from the open mouth.
"Da Beast!" Abraham wheezed. "G-get my gun!" Daphne didn't move, some instinct within her commanding her to remain frozen. From a few feet away, she heard Freddie mutter to himself.
"...Gonna need a bigger trap."