Happy Halloween! Here we are again, another chapter down. I promise you guys, I'm not purposefully putting these out annually, although it kinda works, huh? I just...I don't know, I'm writing other stuff (mostly non fan fiction these days) and if you have by chance tried it, you might know it's hard to kill your darlings. Well, call me sentimental, the Scooby Gang are my some of my childhood heroes, and killing (or maiming, or otherwise torturing) them is hard for me. Depressing too.

But no matter, it's here now, the next chapter in the epic saga, lol. I'll try getting the next part out before next Halloween! (no promises)

Thank you for bearing with me and keeping up with this story, I know I've been an exceptionally shitty author in its upkeep. I can only hope the substance of it is enough to keep you coming back for more. Enjoy.

"Fred!" Daphne's screech pushed Fred back into a right state of mind.

His head felt like a tire iron's punch bag with a hangover. He didn't need to be at full mental capacity to feel the heat though. Rising around them like the insanity of the entire God forsaken night, all at once it was getting unbearably hot.

Outside the oven, the cannibal was screaming with delight, "DINNER BELLS RINGING! FEED ME FEED ME!"

The oven was made of old brick and metal, and the door had been locked.

"Just like before" Fred told her, pushing against the bricks with all he had in him. She helped, both of them thrashing against their mortar cage. Fire was beginning to spew up from the metal bowels below them, and the metal tray that was quickly becoming their deathbed was glowing.

Their clothes were singing, their flesh beginning to cook. The wall was giving way. Just a bit more. Just a bit more.

"AAAAARGH!" Fred reached down to a very dark place he didn't know existed, and suddenly Mount Massive moved away from him, so did Daphne and momentarily the killer. All that mattered was escaping the oven.

He burst through the brick and tumbled out with Daphne, both of their legs blackened from the glowing metal they'd been sitting on. The cannibal screamed again, this time with frustration.

"YOU'RE NOT FINISHED COOKING YET!" He shouted, grabbing Daphne by the throat, moving to throw her back in the burning and broken little tomb. Fred tripped on his way up, but grabbed the cannibal just in time.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT!?" The monster shouted, letting Daphne go, and locking arms again with Fred.

"No more!" Fred shouted, going for the second time to that very dark place, and finding untapped strength there, along with many discarded things. He was going to have make a trade for this power. He knew it as he agreed, shaking hands with the devil that lived there. 'No more' those were his words. He meant them.

The cannibal thrashed against him, but Fred was immovable now. He pushed himself forward, and the Cannibal also took a step towards the fire. Realizing what he was faced with, the Cannibal began to chomp at the air, trying to bite Fred, but the two kept a fair distance. When the Cannibal attempted to kick Fred, he only fell towards the oven faster.

His last desperate bit to escape his own burning at the proverbial stake was to stop fighting for a split second and twist his body, eager to tear himself away from the determined teenager at any cost. Fred saw it coming, read the trapped animal like a book. This time Fred was screaming loudly and the monster was quiet. His quietness ended as soon as his back was shoved onto the burning metal.

The fires seemed to like the taste of his flesh, and they lit up brighter, engulfing the monster fully. Fred pinned him down with one arm, letting the oven - the barbecue, the cannibal called it, do the work.

As he was set ablaze the Cannibal was stripped of many things. First his bravery, then his skin, then his fight. The last thing to go was his humanity, and his final screams were terrible because for the first time in years they were human.

Fred fell onto his back, his arm blackened and stiff. Daphne was crying on her side. She saw it all, saw the predator die at the hands of his own devices. She saw her best friend murder for the first time. She saw the most horrible things she had yet seen at Mount Massive, and between insanity and fury and despair, her only recourse was to weep.

"Hey! Hey, you still with me?" The mad doctor snapped his fingers over Velma's face, but her eyes did not move. He opened her mouth and pulled up on her eyelid, but the blank expression did not leave her face. He smacked her on the cheek, and she remained quiet.

He shook his head, "Hmm. Quitter."

The doctor turned to Shaggy, holding the old pair of sheers, "Well, she's checked out. Let's focus on you instead."

"Like, let me OUT OF HERE, MAN!" Shaggy thrashed against the restraints as best he could he felt them tug, but he could not pull them out. His arms, despite their tendency to summon unseen strength in many dire times beforehand, were too weak.

"Out? There is no out, don't you get it?" The mad doctor leaned in closer, "We're all floating over the big red sea. Sinking is not an escape."

He pulled back, holding the garden sheers up over his head, bringing his hands close then far apart, watching the sheen of the light glint over the length of the bloodied blades as they cut the air. Shaggy fought on in the losing battle with the gurney.

A tear came to the mad doctor's eye, "No escape...no relief. Only pain and death. That is the law of the Great Old Ones. I'll make you see."

The giant scissors rushed suddenly, and before he could even take a breath they hovered mere inches over his eye. The Mad Doctor turned his head. It took Shaggy a moment to realize the only thing that spared him was a loud crash down the hall. A bloodied, naked man sprinted past the open doorway, and the Mad Doctor dropped everything and rushed after him.

"HEY! Where you going buddy!?"

Shaggy closed his eyes, thankful that he still had them both. He shook his head, crying himself now. He hurled what little food was left in his stomach over the side of the gurney, the putrid upchuck mixing with the watered down blood on the floor.

And then there was silence. Sweet, sweet silence. It was a comfort Shaggy didn't realize he had taken for granted until the sounds of death and pain and mutilation were far away from him. Every fiber of his being was on edge. He tried the restraints again. They loosened, just a little bit, just a very little bit. He went at it until he was out of breath, but had made scant little progress on breaking free. The halls were still quiet.

"Velma! Velma!" He whispered.

Silence still.

"Velma, please be okay! Can you hear me? What's wrong!?"

Her head was facing the other way, and she was barely breathing. The only tool he had available being his head, Shaggy tried using it to nudge her shoulder. She was limp and growing cold, he thought.

He tried a few more times, and finally her head swung towards him. Whatever a person kept behind their eyes was gone from behind hers. He recognized the look from all the patients of Mount Massive who hadn't gone off the rails and become psychotic killers, the ones who curled into balls in the corner or under beds. Drool slipped out from her mouth, but words looked beyond her capabilities right now.

He tried again to break himself free, and gave it five good tugs. The first four amounted to wasted breath, the last one he shot upwards and almost shouted. A familiar paw grabbed his mouth and kept him quiet. Scooby popped up from under the gurney, terrified, but unwilling to see his friends die now.

"Boy am I glad to see you!" Shaggy whispered, hugging his dog harder than he ever had before, "help me with Velma and let's get out here!"

"Ris she rokay?" Scooby asked in a hushed tone, grabbing her by one arm while Shaggy got off the gurney and clasped the other.

"I don't know man, but this mad doctor guy who found us is the scariest monster we've ever seen! Be quiet. If we get caught again…."

He didn't finish his sentence, but gulped as he looked over his shoulder towards the door. Still, silence there and nothing more. If only it was certain to remain that way. History tended to push the two of them right into the monsters. Shaggy prayed if there was ever an exception it would be tonight. They propped Velma on Shaggy's back and moved as fast as they could while staying as stealthy as you could while running for your life.

Scooby checked the corner, and found the way clear both right and left. They were rolled in from the elevator from the left, but that was also the direction the escaped victim had ran, and the doctor after him. Shaggy pointed his nose right, and Scooby led the way, his owner one step behind him.

The next door led into a big room full of cots, and in the back stood four windows that shielded the haunted halls from the pelting rain. As the gang went deeper into the Asylum, the storm seemed to rage on harder, just one more final obstacle to prevent their escape. Most of the cots were empty, but a few held semi-conscious blobs of meat, no doubt once human. Neither of the friends looked at them for longer than a half second. The smell here was on the next level of repulsive.

They found one more door, locked, but loosely clinging to its frame. Enough force could knock it down, but where did it lead? Scooby crept back towards the way they came in, and scurried back quicker, shaking his head. Shaggy put one hand to his mouth, nibbling on his index finger's nail.

The mad doctor's voice carried over from the next room, "Well, that's just great. One cockroach after another running about in here. Where's the GODDAMN UNDERSTANDING!?" His voice was rising as Shaggy decided they needed to start working on the door. If they were 1 in 1,000 kind of lucky, he wouldn't hear them.

The doctor went on, "I don't make the rules! Somebody wins, somebody loses, but everyone dies! It's not about the details! Why do they all quit on me!?"

The sound of broken glass erupted and gave the friends enough courage to try harder. The door buckled, and opened, and came completely off the hinged, falling down stairs. Shaggy and Scooby were already on the way down by the time it hit the floor below.

"IN MY BRAIN!"

A screaming man ran up the stairs and chased them back. The bleeding lunatic grabbed onto Shaggy's shoulders and shook him, Scooby growling through a wave of fear.

"They're in my brain! Please get them out! Walrider!"

Just like that he let Shaggy go and ran out to the hall. Shaggy and Scooby were already moving, but out of the corner of their eyes they saw a giant blade slash into the fleeing variant, and a fresh coat of blood paint the door.

The mad doctor rushed into the room, his sheers leaking on the wooden floor. He gave chase with a comfortable jog, lugging his instrument behind him. In his haste, he did not notice that one window was open.

After a moment, Scooby looked in from the exterior window ledge. The mad doctor was gone. Forgoing stealth now, he climbed back in and helped Shaggy and Velma, still unaware of the danger stalking them. They ran back out the hall towards the elevator, which could take them to refuge if they were lucky enough to get there.

"Oh dear, your arm! Oh my word, what happened here?"

Fred felt distant pounding in his head, and beyond that mist, a concerned voice. Opening his eyes proved an impossible task at the moment.

"Dafphne?" He whispered in a slur, "iz thatch you?"

"Shhh. Stay down, I'll get you to safety. Both of you."

He felt himself being pulled along the floor, gently, slowly. He heard slurred words beside him, which he knew to be in Daphne's voice.

"Who are you?" he whispered again, trying to move under the weight of aching muscles and charred skin.

"I'm a nurse," the voice replied, "and you're very injured. Let me take care of you."

He tried again to open his eyes, but they were heavy. Either he was more hurt than he realized, or the fatigue of being in this place had worn him down to nothing. All he currently knew was that the haze over him was lifting slowly, and that someone was taking him somewhere else. He hoped out of the Asylum, but a small voice in the shadow of his mind told him that was asking for too much.

"Shhh. Relax. I've worked here for years. I know all the shortcuts. We'll come to a safe place in no time."

The words, decidedly feminine and quiet, lulled him back into unconsciousness. He fought it for a while, even managed to open his eyes at last, but all he saw was rot and age on the ceilings above him as the nurse dragged him by his shirt collar. Daphne was beside him, sleeping. Every time he moved, even a little, the nurse encouraged him to stop.

"We'll be safe, and I'll treat you. I promise. Relax."

It didn't take long for his eyes to shut again, and he let go.

Fred woke up in his own bed. It was was raining outside, and he hadn't gotten around to fixing the hole in the roof. The pitter patter of water dropping into a large wet spot on his bed was the only sound in the house he shared with Shaggy and Scooby Doo. The alarm beside him was the brightest light in the dark room, a blazing red 2:49 AM.

He kicked the sheets off himself, and felt his toes touch the cold wooden floor. His cell was on the nightstand next to the alarm clock. He saw one text notification from Daphne as he went to turn on the flashlight.

"Great! See you tomorrow night. 3" it read.

After a few seconds, his eyes adjusted to the intruding light, and he shone it around the room. Football jersey on the wall, computer in sleep mode, weights all placed on the shelf, ascots hanging on the hat rack. Everything in order, cozy and perfect. A grin found his lips and spread out as he stretched his arms.

He'd been having some nightmare. Maybe it was the leak? He shone the light to the spot over his bed. The roof was blackened with the weight of the unkempt wound. More droplets fell every few seconds. He reached under his bed, and it was still there from last time. He put the pail under the leak and grabbed his robe from off the computer chair, and slippers from beside the door.

It creaked when he opened it, but Shag and Scoob were heavy sleepers. Shaggy's door was shut, and the lights were all off. He headed down the hall, which opened into the living room. The windows out here had no curtains, so the storm was louder, brighter. He shut down the flashlight on his phone and walked towards the kitchen when he stopped and spun. The television turned on to the late night movie channel, the blood curdling scream of a teenage girl facing down a bloody hatchet flashing into the room.

Fred ran for the remote and shut it off. Sweet silence filled the room again, save for the ringing storm. Shaggy must have put in some new feature to save himself the trouble of clicking through the channels. It must have started because it sensed somewhere next to the couch. Maybe it even backfired. It had to be something like that.

A bowl of a few popcorn kernels spilled over between the cushions and a few pop magazines lay on the small table between the couch and the tv set. Scooby's doggie bed (only used sparingly these days) lay in the corner, and something was sitting on it.

Fred reached down and picked up an old statuette, barely the size of his hand, with faded green paint revealing the gray stone it was carved from. A giant squid with dragon wings looked back at him. He dropped it back on the little bed when he realized it was chillingly cold and wet. As if on cue, a raindrop fell down onto the statuette, and sure enough, another leak had sprung above.

The leak was almost...growing. He was reaching for his phone again when another noise spun him around.

Something shattered in the kitchen. Fred ran around the corner and found the place was in tatters. It wasn't just late night snacking from his roommates either. Chairs were rendered in two, the table was leaning on its side, missing two legs. The refrigerator was open, most of its contents spilled onto the floor. The cupboards were mostly opened too, and a bag of sugar had been torn open, the white powder piled up on the ground. Even the wallpaper had been torn from something at least as large and powerful as jungle cat claws.

The broken glass was from the window, which was completely shattered. Lying amidst the shards was a small statuette. Fred grabbed it with a hesitant start. It was exactly like the one from Scooby's doggie bed, even down to the faded paint and small chinks.

"What the heck…" He whispered, going around the corner to make doubly sure it wasn't the same one. It wasn't.

The two statuettes were identical clones. That was enough of that. He was going to put it off until morning, but there was no time to waste now. Something strange was going on in his own home, and he didn't like it.

Fred marched back through the hall and knocked on Shaggy's door, all effort to be quiet and considerate evaporated.

"Shaggy! Shaggy wake up, we need to talk! Shaggy!"

After about ten more seconds of no response, Fred took the initiative of breaking down the door. It flew right off the hinges and revealed an identical scene to the kitchen. Shaggy's comic books were lying all over the floor, their shelf overturned. His alarm clock was broken, being half smashed into the floor. It was stuck at a flickering 12:59 AM.

His closet was open, his clothes torn up, and even Scooby's toy box was left on its side, the old knotted ropes and new squeaking bones left scattered.

Fred ran back into the hall, then the living room, shouting, "Shaggy! Scooby! Where are you guys!?"

He stopped at the front door, where sat a third little statuette of the squid monster. Fred could not see anyone, but a voice, gurgling and writhing with the wet plop of tentacles, whispered to him.

"Embrace the Call of Cthulhu!"

He kicked the little monster out of the way and ran outside. He only got as far as the steps of his porch, shielding himself against the rain. The storm was raging and the lightning flashed against him. When he opened his eyes again, his house was floating in a great open sea. The maelstrom was rocking it around amidst giant waves, and a bone chilling wind ran through him.

The same gurgling voice of a dark sea dweller echoed from the waters all around him, laughing, chanting in tongues he had never heard before. The sea turned from black to red, and the smell of blood choked him. He fell to his knees and puked into the wretched crimson liquid.

Giant tentacles began to rise up, towering over his house, his only life preserver in this monstrous blood ocean. They stood watch over his raft, judging it, judging him. They found him guilty by crashing down and smashing everything into pieces.

His last sensations were the tingling fear of flying hundreds of feet in the air, and like his helpless body, feeling his hope plunge downwards, looking all around him, observing the blood red world of endless seas.

Fred woke up in a strange place, as a teardrop ran down his forehead and over his left eye.

"You're awake…"

He lifted his head to look up, but his vision snagged on something in the corner, something fast and silent, but something that was real; a tentacle searched the floor, plopping up and down on the dirty wood a few times, then coiled up into itself and shrank into the shadows.

"What's wrong?"

"Huh?" Fred lingered on the darkness for a minute, then fell out of the bed.

The nurse was horrifying. Dried blood smeared her jaw and the right side of her face. Her eyes were wide open, but the beedy black pupils were shrunken into pins. They looked through him, like Fred was not a person, not even a cognitive entity, but something lesser.

He staggered up to his feet, and she put a slender hand on his shoulder, tilting her head like a school girl flirting with her crush. Her fingers were just as dirty as her face. Her shirt was torn open too, her left breast hanging out exposed, as dirty as the rest of her. Fred found her unnaturally strong, or he was still weakened by fatigue. She pressed and held him down on his knees with little effort.

"Stop, you're far too injured to leave. I'll take good care of you. Don't worry about a thing."

"Who are you?" Fred asked, trying and failing to break free.

"I'm Nurse Jackie. You're safe here. Murkoff has your best interests at heart, and so do I. Please lay back down now."

"Where's Daphne!?" Fred fought, still unable to get to his feet, but scanning the room eagerly for signs of escape and his friend.

"Don't worry about it. She's safe. You'll be safe too. Trust me."

The nurse suddenly stopped holding him and pulled him close instead, trapping him a hug. Her breath was warm on his head.

"Shhhh. You'll be safe too."

Father Martin walked the afflicted dark hallways, a pleasant bucket of red warmth beside him. He stopped at the turn and set the pail down, licking his index finger clean and inserting in the paint. It smelled wonderful, fresh paint often did. He gave his middle finger a quick cleaning and stuck it in as well, smiling inwardly at the slow drip of the falling crimson. The Wallrider was a gracious god, to gift him so much bountiful paint.

He drew a large arrow, and went over it several more times, making it nice and thick and bold against the faded yellow walls that were built up so long ago. Tonight was the ascension. Tonight was the final chapter. Soon, it would all be over. It was in the prophet's hands now, and those of his friends. If god was willing, they would endure the trials and find him. He was lighting the path, all they had to do was tread it.

He picked up the bucket again and walked quietly around the corner, off to establish the next marker. The hours were ticking by. Soon, it would all be over. In salvation or damnation, soon it would be finished.