Sponge: WOW I picked a time to go on a hiatus, huh? Thanks everyone for being patient - I hope you're all okay! I hope that everyone here in the US with me are able to stay home, if possible. And I hope that everyone, no matter where you are, are all healthy and that you're keeping up with your mental health as best you can! I also hope that you can use this story as an escape if the real world is too much for you right now. Anyway, welcome to chapter 10 and Act II! I hope you enjoy. Warning: language and kissing. Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Scooby Doo characters. They belong to Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, and Hanna-Barbera.
Chapter 10: Wish I Were Here
"Holy shit," Tony murmured from behind them. "What the hell happened in here?"
Fred, who was still gazing aghast into the dressing room, had wrapped an arm around Daphne's shoulders. Shaggy glanced sideways at Velma. He wanted desperately to comfort her somehow, but he was too afraid of Scooby noticing.
"It was like this when we got here," Velma murmured numbly.
"What's going on?" Holden appeared from seemingly nowhere, and gasped when he saw the state of the girls' dressing room. "Oh my God," he muttered. "Who did this?"
"Rhe Rhantom!" Scooby exclaimed. "Rye raw rer ragain!"
"Yeah like, I saw the Phantom too," Shaggy spoke up. "She was on the other side of the stage like, over by the stairs to the wood loft."
Holden knitted his brow and glanced back into the dressing room. "Okay listen," he said. "Like I said last night, the legend is all bullshit. I don't believe in the Phantom. I never have. Props and shit go missing all the time during performances here, regardless of if any characters die in the play. But nothing like this…" he gestured to the mess. "…Has ever happened in the entire four years I've been here. This is a first."
"What's a first?" asked Leesa, who entered from the hallway. She gave a small scream and clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh my God!" she moaned. "Mr. Atwood's going to freak the fuck out!"
"Not if we clean it up," Tony said. "I'll go find some brooms and wipes and stuff. Scoob, wanna come help?"
"Rokay," Scooby agreed. Anything to get out of the haunted theater.
"I'll get some trash bags," Holden said, turning to go.
"Shag, I'll bet you and I could turn that couch back over." Fred had let go of Daphne.
"Like, okay," Shaggy replied, following him into the room and trying not to trip on any of the many items that littered the floor.
Leesa gazed at the words on the mirror, then turned to Daphne and Velma. "Are you all right?" she asked seriously.
"I'm fine," Velma answered truthfully. She shot a furtive glance at Daphne, who still hadn't spoken. "How about you, Daph?"
"Holden's right," she murmured. "The Phantom has never gone this far. She's never tried to frighten people out of a production before."
Leesa put a comforting hand on Daphne's shoulder. "Which bag is yours?" she asked kindly. "I'll help you gather your things back."
Scooby, Tony, and Holden returned shortly, and they all worked swiftly and diligently to clean the dressing room. The words on the mirrors turned out to be written in lipstick, so that was a quick clean-up job. The room was back to relative normalcy in about fifteen minutes.
Leesa sighed and shook her head. "Thanks everybody," she said. "We better not tell Mr. Atwood about this yet. This'll stress him out even worse than he already is, and I don't want him to have a heart attack." Everyone nodded in agreement. "But we'll figure out who did this," Leesa finished resolutely.
"Yeah, Daph." Holden pulled her in for a brief one-armed hug. "Don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay."
"We better go," Fred said loudly, taking Daphne's hand.
"What about the investigation?" asked Velma.
"I think it's more important to get you girls home," Fred replied, glaring at Holden.
Shaggy and Scooby looked at each other in concern.
The gang left for the Mystery Machine, all deep in thought.
"Daph, like, are you really okay?" Shaggy asked her as they all climbed into the van.
Daphne sighed. "Yeah. That was so strange, though. Why would someone have wanted to destroy our dressing room? And who was that message meant for?"
"Well, we're the only two girls in the production, and everyone knows that we solve mysteries," Velma pointed out. "Obviously it was intended for one of us."
"Like I said earlier, nothing like this has ever happened before," Daphne said with another sigh. "There have been misplaced props and burnt out bulbs and people like Leesa and Scooby and Shaggy who say they've seen her, but the Phantom has never tried to scare anyone out of performing before."
"Is it maybe because there are so many non-drama kids involved in the production?" asked Velma. "Would that be why this so-called Phantom wants someone to quit?"
A horrible thought hit Shaggy like a ton of bricks. What if the Phantom was after Velma? Of course, it wasn't preferable for any of his friends to be in danger, but Daphne had fallen into so many trap doors and been locked into so many secret rooms that at this point it was almost expected of her. It was never fun when Daphne was in trouble, but if something happened to Velma…Shaggy didn't think he could handle it.
"Holden did make that comment once," Velma continued. "He wasn't too thrilled about us 'outsiders' being in the play."
"Rat's right!" Scooby said. "Rand re rasn't rhere rhen Rye raw rhe rhost."
"What, you think Holden is behind this?" Daphne turned around to look at them.
"He could have been dressing up as the Phantom," Velma pointed out. "Scooby's right – he's never been around when she's been spotted. We even saw him sneaking out of the auditorium last night. "
"And," Fred added, "he's the only one whose props and costumes have never gone missing."
"What would be his motive?" asked Daphne, still skeptical.
The gang said nothing for a while, but the gears in Shaggy's brain were turning. He felt there was a clue here somewhere. He knew that Fred had said Holden was gay, but he'd made that comment about Velma at homecoming…would he have said he'd wanted to "hit that" if he truly was gay? Shaggy thought about how Holden acted around Daphne. How he'd put his arm around her this afternoon while trying to comfort her.
"Maybe he like…has a crush on you?" Shaggy heard himself suggest.
Everyone looked at him.
"Are you serious?" Daphne said incredulously. "He's gay! He has a boyfriend."
"Are you sure he's gay? Like, at homecoming he made a comment about a girl to me," Shaggy told her.
"He did?" asked Velma, sounding perplexed. "What girl? What did he say?"
Shaggy avoided her gaze. "Just like, some girl." He didn't want Velma to know that he and Holden had been talking about her. "He said she looked good and like…some other stuff."
"What other stuff?" Fred wanted to know. Shaggy just shrugged, too embarrassed to say. He wished he'd never brought this up.
Daphne shook her head. "I promise you, Holden is gay. And I don't think he did this. He cares too much about the production."
Scooby gulped. "Rhen rit rust re a rhost."
"It's not a ghost," said Fred, Daphne, and Velma all in one voice.
Shaggy scowled. "Like then what did Scoob and me see this afternoon?"
"Someone in a costume," Fred said. "Like with all the other cases we've had this year."
"But it must be someone involved in the production," Velma added again. "How else would they know to hide behind the legend of the Phantom?" She turned to Daphne. "How does that story get passed down from year to year? Just by word of mouth?"
Daphne nodded. "Usually a senior, like Leesa or Harmony, will tell it to the underclassmen."
"Reesa rold re rhe rory," Scooby piped up.
Daphne glanced over at Scooby. "When did she do that?"
"Rhe rirst reek," Scooby replied. He told the gang everything he could remember that Leesa had said about the legend.
Daphne furrowed her brow. "I've never heard that part about how we were the first school to ever do Phantom," she said. "But then again, if the legend's been told every year for the past twenty years, I'd be surprised if parts didn't get skipped over with every telling."
Velma leaned forward thoughtfully. "I think I'd like to do some more research on the Phantom of the Auditorium, and figure out how the legend began."
x.X.x
Shaggy was looking forward to his day off. He planned to park his butt on the couch in front of the TV and have a scary movie marathon with Scooby. But he was surprised the following morning to hear a knock on his front door, and even more surprised to find Velma standing on his porch.
"Get Scooby," she told him. "I called Daphne and Fred. They'll be here in ten minutes."
"Like where are we going?" asked Shaggy.
"To the library. We have to do some research if we want to solve this mys—"
"Shh!" Shaggy shushed her desperately. His parents were just in the kitchen, and he didn't want them to hear the word "mystery."
Velma stopped talking.
"We can't go to the library," Shaggy reminded her. "It's Columbus Day, remember? It's like, closed on federal holidays."
Velma reached into her messenger bag. "Which is why we'll be using this." She extracted a key. "They give these to exemplary library volunteers," she said by way of explanation.
Shaggy sighed. "Velma..." he started.
She looked at him fiercely. "Listen," she said. "Daphne could be in danger. Someone wants her out of the play. I don't want her to get hurt. And the more we know about the legend of the Phantom of the Auditorium, the closer we are to catching the saboteur." Her expression changed – now she looked at him imploringly. "We have to do this" she murmured. "Please, Shaggy."
Shaggy was suddenly gripped by an overwhelming desire to kiss her. Maybe it was because they'd never gotten to go back to the practice room yesterday, or maybe it was the fact that she could be the one in danger, or maybe it was the way she was looking at him now, or maybe it was the way she'd just said, "Please, Shaggy." It could be any number of things.
He shook his head. He could get horny later. She was right – they had to help Daphne. "I'll like, go get Scoob," he said.
x.X.x
No one else had any qualms about breaking into the library, and soon the gang found themselves seated at the research computers in "the morgue." Fred was scrolling through webpages. Daphne examined slides of microfiche intently. Scooby was searching through the archival drawers for microfiche for Daphne to investigate, humming the tune to "Wish I Were Here," from the musical under his breath. Velma had selected a large tome of archived newspapers from twenty years ago and sat at a table flipping through it with Shaggy.
This was the part of mystery solving he liked best. Not running from a specter, not setting a trap. Just quietly sitting and doing research with his friends. It always made the monsters seem less scary. However, today he found himself continually distracted by Velma's closeness, especially in the dim lighting. He kept glancing down at her legs when he was meant to be reading newspaper articles, or sometimes his attention would be diverted when he'd catch her biting her lip in concentration. Why couldn't he concentrate? Was it because of the moment earlier, on his porch, when he'd wanted to kiss her? Whatever it was, it was making it hard for him to focus.
Fred, too, was having trouble paying attention to the task at hand. But he was thinking about Holden. Daphne seemed so sure that he wasn't to blame. Fred was inclined to believe her, but Holden had been acting so strangely. And Velma was right – he had made a comment about there being too many non-drama students in the play. But then, why would he want to scare Daphne away? To punish her for bringing in the outsiders?
That didn't seem right. Holden clearly cared for Daphne. And Shaggy's story about talking to him at homecoming was compelling. Could Holden be lying about being gay? Could he be saying that so that no one would suspect him of being in love with Daphne?
Daphne herself sighed exasperatedly from her machine just then. "We've been at this for an hour," she complained. "I can't find information about any schools doing Phantom twenty years ago, let alone Coolsville High."
Scooby cocked his head thoughtfully. "Reesa red rit ras rig rews," he told them. "Rit rould rave reen rin rhe rewspaper."
"Scooby's right," Velma said from the book that she and Shaggy shared. "We would have found something in these archives by now if it was as big news as Leesa claims, especially if somebody died."
Fred sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Do you think the entire legend is made up then?"
Daphne shook her head. "It had to come from somewhere."
"It's possible the news of her death was overshadowed," Velma murmured, flipping through the heavy tome that rested on the table in front of her. "There are a lot of headlines about other fatal accidents in these archives – car crashes, falls, even a basement lab explosion."
"But why would those deaths be in the papers and not this girls'?" Daphne wanted to know.
"There may not have been a death if Coolsville High didn't really do Phantom that year," Fred pointed out.
"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," Velma suggested. "Let's first figure out what play Coolsville High actually did twenty years ago."
"Like, how do we do that?" asked Shaggy.
Velma got up and walked down a nearby aisle. She reappeared shortly, a stack of old yearbooks in her arms.
"You know how I've been volunteering at this library for the past few years?" she huffed under the weight. Fred ran to help her set them down. "One of the things I had to do," she continued once her arms were free, "was catalog all these old yearbooks."
"I had no idea the library had these," Daphne murmured.
"Most people don't," Velma replied. "They're just for reference purposes, so they can't leave the library. Like I said, the only reason I know about them was because I had to organize them."
Everyone grabbed a yearbook and started flipping through, looking for anything about performances from twenty years ago. They read in silence for a while, until…
"Jeepers!" gasped Daphne. "I found something!"
Everyone crowded around her so they could see.
"This yearbook is from exactly twenty years ago," Daphne said. "I just found the pages dedicated to the production they did that year."
"What was it?" asked Velma.
"West Side Story," Daphne replied.
"I've like, never heard of that play," said Shaggy.
"Neither have I," Fred replied.
"It's like Romeo and Juliet but in the 50's," Daphne told them. "The star-crossed lover characters are from different racial backgrounds and rival teenage street gangs."
Shaggy furrowed his brow. "That's like, not even close to the same plot as Phantom, right?"
"No," Daphne agreed. "But look at the cast list!"
The gang peered closer.
"The lead female character, Maria, was played by a student named Christine McCormack," Velma murmured.
"Hey," Fred interrupted. "Isn't Christine also the name of the main character in Phantom?"
"Exactly," said Daphne. "And look at her."
The girl in question was beautiful. She wore a long white dress, and had beautiful thin black hair.
Scooby gasped. "Rhat's rer," he whimpered. "Rhat's rhe Rhantom."
"She does look just like the ghost we saw," Shaggy agreed with a gulp.
Daphne squinted at the photo again. "Is it just me, or does she look familiar to anyone else?"
"Like I said, she looks just like the ghost Scoob and me saw," Shaggy replied.
Velma peered closer and gasped. "Jinkies," she breathed. "Did you see who played the male lead?"
Everyone read the name together.
"Harrison Walsh."
Fred glanced sideways at Daphne. "Could that be…Holden Walsh's father?"
Daphne's eyes widened. "I don't know…" she replied. "Walsh is a pretty common last name…"
"Hey gang," Velma said. She'd picked up another yearbook and had flipped to a page near the center. "This is the yearbook from the year before that. There's a pretty interesting fact about Harrison Walsh in here."
Everyone looked at Velma's book. She was turned to the page for that year's fall musical: Grease.
"Mark Warner, pictured above, took over the main role of Danny Zuko," Fred read aloud from the yearbook, "after original cast member Harrison Walsh was involved in an accident during rehearsal."
"What kind of accident?" asked Daphne.
Fred shook his head. "It doesn't say. But it clearly wasn't fatal, because he was able to come back to be in West Side Story the next year."
"I'm beginning to see how the legend got started," Velma said slowly. "It looks like people just got their wires crossed on who got hurt during what year."
"But how did The Phantom of the Opera get involved?" asked Fred.
Velma shrugged. "That's the mystery."
The group was quiet for a while.
Fred broke the silence first. "If this is Holden's father," he began, "maybe that would give him another motive."
Daphne rolled her eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"Holden could be annoyed that this legend is attributed to some anonymous girl instead of to his father," Fred replied. "But then the question is, why would he try to scare everyone by pretending to be the Phantom instead of just telling everyone the truth?"
"Because Holden isn't the Phantom, Fred," Daphne said sharply. "He doesn't even believe in the legend. He's told us so himself, multiple times!"
"Which is why he's the perfect suspect," Fred countered. "We wouldn't think to look into him, because he's so adamantly against the idea that the Phantom exists. But look at the facts: he's never been around when the props have gone missing, or when the dressing room was destroyed, or anytime Scooby or Shaggy have seen the ghost."
"Holden would never want to sabotage this performance!" Daphne exclaimed. "He cares about it too much. Which is more than I can say about you – at least Holden has all of his lines memorized!"
Daphne knew she'd taken it too far, but she was so annoyed. Fred was grasping at straws to blame Holden, all because he was jealous of him. And he didn't have any reason to be.
The two of them glared at each other as Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby looked on uncomfortably.
"I think we should leave now," Velma finally said. "We've done everything we can do here. Let's all go home and maybe…calm down a bit."
Without speaking, Fred and Daphne began cleaning up their work areas. Scooby put away the microfilm slides and Velma and Shaggy walked down the aisles returning the books they'd pulled from the shelves.
"I wish I hadn't said anything yesterday," Velma sighed.
"Like what do you mean?" Shaggy asked.
"About Holden possibly being the Phantom," Velma replied. "If I hadn't mentioned my theory, maybe Fred wouldn't be so suspicious of him now, and he and Daphne wouldn't be arguing."
"Hey," Shaggy said, catching her arm. She turned to face him. "This like, isn't your fault, Velm," he told her. "You haven't done anything wrong."
She shrugged and dropped her gaze. "It feels like I did," she sighed.
"Like, I'm the one who mentioned Holden talking about a girl," Shaggy pointed out. "If anything, this is my fault."
"But would you have said anything if I hadn't said something first?" she asked.
"Like it doesn't matter," Shaggy said. "We did this together. So like, we'll fix it together."
Velma looked up at him and Shaggy felt his throat grow dry as their eyes bore into each other. She gave a small smile. "Thanks, Shag," she said in a soft voice. Then she cleared her throat. "Here." She handed him one of the archival books. "Why don't you put this one away? I'll take this one." She dashed into the next aisle as Shaggy watched her go. Her skirt flapped behind her and again, he tried not to stare at her legs.
He put the newspaper tome on the shelf where it belonged, wondering why he was having more trouble than usual around her today. It must be because he'd gotten used to his intimacy with her, and they'd gone so long without it. Right?
He rounded the corner of the shelf and nearly ran directly into Velma coming from the other direction.
"I think we're all finished," she told him.
They were so close to each other.
Like, fuck it, Shaggy thought to himself. Completely throwing caution to the wind, he pulled Velma to him and kissed her fiercely. He surprised himself with his urgency, but they'd gone for nearly two weeks with no physical contact. Shaggy had been wanting to kiss her all day, and it was driving him out of his mind. He pushed her up against the shelf – they were pretty well-hidden – and claimed her mouth with his over and over again. He held her hips and felt her arms snake around his neck. His heart turned over in his chest in response to her embrace.
When they broke apart, she looked at him curiously. Shaggy swallowed. This was the first time they'd kissed offstage and outside of the privacy of their practice room.
"Like, sorry," he said. "I just…I don't know."
She smiled softly at him. "It's okay," she told him. "I understand." She shot a cursory glance on either side of them before standing on her toes to peck him on the cheek. "We should go," she said. "The others will be wondering where we are."
With that, the two of them dropped their arms from each other and walked back towards the door, where their friends were waiting for them.
Sponge: Thanks for reading, and for being patient with the mysteries. All will be revealed, I promise. More next week. Review if you please!
