Sooooooooooooooooooo...it's been ages, eh? I apologize, as I have stated many times before, I am too good at coming up with ideas, and not good enough at seeing them through. As a result, many works suffer, which is why I tend to do many one shots. Either way, I'm glad you have enjoyed this story so much, it remains a very popular one of mine, and I never dreamed it would be. I am once again very sorry for the large delay, I can offer no excuse or explanation other than I simply have so much to do and limited time to do it all in. (On another note, if George R. R. Martin isn't your bitch, I don't see why I should be. That's my only defense here, and I'm not excusing myself, really, just pointing it out. Delays happen, but this has been an unacceptably large one.)
On another note, this story is officially M rated now. I think I stepped up the intensity this chapter, and believe you me, the "best" is yet to come. (Hopefully I can get the next parts up before a year or so passes, huh? Doh!) And we have a cover image that isn't my profile pic! Yay! Don't sue me guys...Red Barrels, huh? I just googled "Outlast Scooby Doo" and found a Chris Walker picture, lol.
Thanks for checking back in and/or continuing, I hope you enjoy!
Shaggy moaned as the sedative wore off. His mouth was dry, sapped of life from the screaming he'd been doing. As he slowly rose off the padded bed and took in the horrors around him, he recalled why he'd been so terrified. Never before had he so yearned to be rid of a mystery. Whatever hell on Earth that had happened here at Mount Massive, he could care less, just so long as he was very, very far away from it.
He was locked inside an inmate's cell, given the circumstances, the previous occupant was more than likely dead or dying. The gruesome truth of the situation hit when he began examining the padding on the walls, and the messages scrawled on them in blood.
The truth is here!
RIP Wernicke. To hell with the doctors
NO ACCEPTANCE
GET the BLOOD OUT
The truth is dead
Hail Walrider Hail Messiah Hail Hail Walrider
This is the EXPERIMENT of the DEAD ON THE LIVING
Shaggy found the flashlight, plus an extra battery on the equally padded but less graffitied floor beside the bed. He pocketed the battery and kept the flashlight close by him. This part of the facility was well lit, and mostly intact. The door swung open ominously, but as Shaggy nerved himself to peak outside it, Father Martin was nowhere nearby.
Several patients were out of their cells, some were still locked inside. Shaggy was uncomfortable with them all, but was thankful the released ones did not appear to mind him much. The cell he had left was on the ground level, but there was no discernable exit, so, trembling along, he ascended the catwalk to the second level.
He had just made it to the top when two voices, identical and sinister in their monotonous tone, made him stop cold.
"Swallowed up by the asylum."
"Oh dear."
"Looks like the priest's little shit."
"I want him."
"As do I."
Shaggy backed up the wall. Behind a, mercifully locked, metal door were two patients, twins, with complimenting scars and not so much as a sock worn between them. Their grotesque nudity hardly dawned on Shaggy though. Their words had trapped him unlike anything else yet had.
"I shall eat his liver. And his tongue."
"Then I will take the stomach."
"May I indulge in his eyes?"
"If I can take the toes."
"Yes."
"Yes."
Shaggy forced himself to move on as the brothers continued to plan out and divide their spoils, which Shaggy planned on keeping all to himself. He ran onwards, and made it to the end of the long row of second story cells when the naked brothers departed into the shadows of their part of the cellblock. Shaggy had no choice but to round the corner of the rectangular block and go through the gate, which was unlocked, but sticky and hard to force open. Once he did pry his way through, he found another long hallway, full of doors and blood splatters and footprints.
When would the nightmare end?
…
The echoes in the Operating Rooms were ghastly and haunting compared to the melancholy isolation of administration building. Fred and Daphne had managed to get themselves separated from Velma and Scooby, and were wandering through the many dark and unbelievable halls and the flickering lights that illustrated medical horrors unlike anything in their sickest nightmares.
Daphne accidentally brushed a body as she passed, and it gasped for air and reached desperately for life through its blinded eyes, flipping around on the operating table, its body left incomplete and unfinished, though the changes looked less constructive and more demeaning than anything else.
"Trager….Flee…..TRAGER!"
Fred darted to his friend's aid and removed her from the dying thing on the table. They were both pretty jarred by now. The Asylum was bigger than they had imagined it would be, and thus, there were numerous more terrors, some lurking beyond them, some in plain view. All of them unwanted. It felt like an eternity since they had seen Scooby and Velma, and twice as long since they'd seen Shaggy.
Another note on the wall, this time blood drops along the side of it.
I've talked to a lot of people at Murkoff: Andrew Smithers, Charlie Bojdeck, Jeremy Blair, Samantha Wilders, Rick Trager, among others. Each one compliments the stories of the rest, none of them linking perfectly, but the cracks that exists aren't enough. We can't prove anything, we can't get close.
All we can really do is swallow their bullshit, and learn to like the taste of it. Unless…..
The rest of it was torn…
"Rick Trager….." Fred mumbled.
"Jeepers, that can't be coincidence."
"I don't think so," Fred whispered, "Keep your voice down, your eyes and ears peeled, for our friends and danger."
…
Shaggy was wandering through blank halls that all looked the same. Innocent, and probably guilty, blood decorated each wall, blanketed all the floors, and unified with the buzzing and flickering of the lights and the thumping in his chest to create his worst nightmare. Once or twice he swore he saw a distorted ghost float through the blood stains, like a phantom that was scurrying from the sins of the asylum; was it that much of a Godforsaken place, that ghouls would wither within its cursed halls? What a silly question. Of course it was.
He came upon a spiraling block of cells, at least three stories high. Maybe higher. Three of the four walls were filled with iron bars, inmates locked behind some, others left vacated. Even the prison cells looked as though they were from hell, or perhaps had hell rendered upon them by the Walrider, or the hulking monster, or whatever else was causing this wanton horror.
He ascended the first stairwell and was walking by the cells of cat-calling inmates, lost in fantasies that had to be better than this reality, when he heard the terrible voices from before.
'There he goes."
"Let us engage him. He had his chance."
"Indeed," the voices spoke to the each other as though the walls themselves were speaking, the echoing menace rebounding all around him. Shaggy ran, shining the light wildly around, in hopes of seeing the yet unseen monsters, and evading them. But it was not his light that showed the first, but the thunder light shining through the broken windows that illuminated the first brother before him.
Shaggy skidded to a stop, and doubled back, narrowly evading the swipe of the man's arm, intent on grabbing him and not letting go until they had defiled and tortured him in a way that would do this nightmare justice.
The second appeared at the end of the long stretch behind him. The brothers faces remained unchanged, showing only controlled lust and an element of uncanny normalcy as the thunder and lightning outside revealed their figures, slowly stalking him like the trapped prey he currently was.
"I think I shall also have my way with his hair. It looks soft."
"I do not want his hair."
"Zoinks!" Shaggy cried as the two droned ever nearer his racing heart and shaking body.
Was this the end? There was no way up. No way down. Forwards and backwards were certain doom. To his left was a drop that would leave him at the bottom of the cell block, exposed if he could not recover fast enough. Just an easier setting for the naked twins to enjoy themselves with his body. To the right was the window, partially shattered, and a drop that would leave him to face the elements and anything unknown lurking in the dark. It was also a higher, steeper drop, given the position of the building relative to the mountain's landscape. There was a choice to make, and he would have to make it now.
"Here goes nothing!"
…
"Can you smell anything?" Velma asked, aware of how poor a question it truly was. There was always something about the horrible situations they found themselves in that made all the senses strong, she could only fathom what it was like for Scooby's superior smell and hearing.
In this instance, however, things were elevated so much more than ever before. Evil was a word that bounced around a lot in their circles. An evil spirit was afflicting the people here, or an evil curse had descended on that place over there. She used to inwardly laugh at those claims.
She had never, even as a child, been predisposed to superstitions and nonsense like evil things. Her short experience in Mount Massive had taught her that evil was not something exclusive to mythology or imaginary ghosts. Evil lay in the hearts of men, and what they did when their self-control was taken from them.
Evil was not supernatural, but human.
"Rope…" Scooby informed timidly.
The hall before them was long and dark, and to be sure it was also full of horrors. Far on the other side, they could see a light, and hear the quiet mutterings of the insane and the lost. What was in between them….who could say?
"Well we've wandered around this part of the facility long enough….let's give it a shot. We'll stick close, and if it gets bad, run back here like your life depends on it."
Because, truly, it would.
In the darkness everything was louder. Colder. There was a distinct anxiety that made you feel like the Asylum was watching you, silently motioning you onwards, into the terror, into the dark, into the doom that it boasted quietly in the Colorado mountains. Velma allowed it to psych her out, and her sensation of sight had completely abandoned her for a moment, so she grabbed Scooby's collar, keeping a tight grip on it.
In a moment her vision would return, her heart would beat more regularly than the erratic pace it was going now, and in the meantime she recited things to herself. A calming technique. Horror did not change fact. Even in Mount Massive, gravity pushed you down. Two plus two was still four. Colorado, and by extension the Mount Massive Asylum, was still located in the United States, which was still in North America, which was still in the Western Hemisphere.
And from the starry view of her facts, nothing seemed so bad. Until her sight returned, and she was dragged back down.
A wet sound came from under her feet for a few steps, and she dared not try to figure out what it was. The bright light at the end of the hall was close now. They were almost out of it.
"Stay close…" She warned, fully aware of how quickly a hopeful situation would turn awry.
"Reah…" Scooby breathed, "Ralmost rhere….."
The darkness seemed poised to strike at them as the doorframe became visible and the sounds of many poor souls made themselves heard, but as they stepped into the light, the darkness and its many facades were disproven.
They were now at the bottom of a large cellblock. A head fell from the third floor, missing many components; Velma screamed in muffled terror into her hand as the perpetrator muttered something to another and walked out of the block.
"Most satisfying, if I do say so myself."
"He was quite fun to chase down," She caught the other saying.
"Let us look for another."
"What else should we do?"
By that line, the two monotonous voices were totally drowned out from all the chaos and horror inside the cells.
"Ro no!" Scooby cried.
"What!?"
As she turned, Velma nearly fainted. Chris Walker was carrying a freshly made skull wrapped in leaky human flesh, and heading towards them.
"RUN!" She called.
With one mighty kick, the beastly patient broke through the door and gave pursuit, tossing his trinket aside with the rest of the bloody trash. He was fast on his feet, for such a large monstrosity. It took all their energy to keep out of his wide reach, but they slammed the doors behind them and headed towards the showers, hoping those facilities would not become their tombs.