2
Four lone figures wandered up the street in surprised and petrified shock. There wasn't another living thing in sight. Automobiles were left abandoned in the street as if they were parked in traffic and left behind by their owners. A vacant bus rested in the middle of the bridge over the Saugus River. A lone empty rowboat floated abandoned under one side and out the other while the empty sounds of a deserted town greeted the amateur detectives. The door on their old soda shop flapped back and forth in the breeze. The museum where they had a few months ago recaptured Professor Jacobo was entirely abandoned. Not a person came to see them. Not a bird ascended the sky. It was almost as if the town had been evacuated in the space of all of twenty minutes. Fred spanned the skies with Daphne clinging to him. Velma picked up a newspaper floating by her. It was from a week ago. Shaggy checked the door of the Blue Sky Oriental Buffet Restraunt trying to get inside it. It was sealed up tight. As he joined his friends on the front steps of the museum, he looked to them for answers.
The road to south to Boston seemed equally dismal. Fred had entered a telephone booth and tried to get a operator, but the line was dead. Daphne tried to check her cell phone, but it was dead too. Squeezing himself into an open Volkswagen, Shaggy tried to start it up, but there was either no gas or no juice in the battery because it wouldn't start.
Scooby meanwhile wandered down the line of the street as if he were walking a tightrope. He didn't seem scared, he just walked forward with his head low. His eyes furrowed at the ready for signs of life, his ears perched trying to hear something. Upon a lone hot dog stand, he poked his nose through for a scent of wieners or taste of buns, but it was cleared out. With his stomach growling and a whine from his lips, he was afraid of what they were expected not to find.
The Coeursville Methodist Church which they had long belonged to was as empty as a grave. Its pews dusty and its floor littered with fliers and Bibles both open an laying closed. Police cars were parked at the ready before the police station. Locked up tight, it was clear that no one was on duty. The town square especially down the block was devoid of life. Only their own echoes greeted them. The silence was almost deafening.
To Velma, it seemed they were the last people left on earth. The town still stood around them like the back lot of a movie set after the actors and crew had left. Only a few cars laid upside or on their sides. If something spectacular had happened, she would have figured all of them bunched together; it seemed everyone just got up and had left while something else came through and periodically knocked them over. There were no sounds but for the wind, their breaths and the noise of their shoes scratching the ground.
"Velma..." Fred got over his stunned shock. "Talk us down... you know what's going on. Please, tell us what's going on."
"I have no idea." Velma looked up and down the front of the museum and back to Fred. Obvious fears welled like tears in her eyes. "I have no idea what's going on."
"No!" Fred grabbed her by the arms and shook her. "You know! You know everything. Tell us, tell us now!"
"Fred!" It took Daphne and Shaggy to pull him off her, but he was just scared like them and maybe a little more panicked. As he recomposed himself and apologized under breath, Velma adjusted her glasses. She noticed her hands were shaking just a bit. Her breasts rose up under her orange sweater as she took a deep breath.
"My only theory is that..." She started guessing not by the evidence, but by TV and movie scenarios she had seen. "Somehow, someway, we've stumbled into another quantum reality... an alternate timeline which has diverged itself from similar but like events to events in our past. Think about it, what if we had never recaught Jacobo, if President John F. Kennedy was not felled by an assassin's bullet, if Hitler had won the war, if the South had won the Civil War... if... maybe... we had never come together to solve our first mystery in 1969..."
"You mean..." Daphne tried to comprehend what she was saying. "We've traveled in time?"
"Actually," Velma walked around Shaggy and stood before the steps to the museum. "True time travel such as exiting the time stream and re-entering it in the past or present is impossible; our past can never really be changed and therefore it can never be reached, but our future has always existed as multiple alternate possible future timelines ahead of us determined by the choices and decisions we make here and now. Technically, after reaching one future, the points to those alternate futures still exist even long after we've passed them and become the alternate quantum realities which co-exist in tangent to our own. Theoretically, Nick must have stumbled through the same inter-dimensional doorway which we have passed through to get here."
"Then..." Fred thought out what she had said. "All we got to do is find Nick and head back through the doorway in the school."
"Theoretically," Velma repeated herself. "But bare in mind, this is only a working theory right now. I could be wrong."
"Worst case scenario?" Shaggy asked, but then Velma started to answer him. "Don't answer that!"
"Okay, this is my plan..." Fred now found the strength and will to become their leader again. "Daphne and I will go north to the library since Nick likes reading. Velma, you take Shaggy and Scooby down to Colonial Apartments and see if Nick is in his apartment there. If we don't find anything, we meet here again in front of the museum in one hour, right?"
"Right." Shaggy looked around afraid, then felt a bit braver with Scooby by his side. "You're not scared, are you, Scoob?"
"Uh-uh, uh-uh." Scooby reacted almost human for him. Velma was a few feet away from them as they walked down the center of the street. Cars dotted around them parked in silent defiance to their presence. A few of the expensive cars were sealed up, but several were open with windows partially down or all the way down. One station wagon had a basket of laundry in it and a cherry red Jaguar they passed had a baby seat in the passenger side. An empty plastic soda bottle scratching across the street surprised Scooby enough to jump up into Shaggy's arms. After a pleasant laugh at each other, they looked up the street to Fred and Daphne. They were five blocks away and mere specks in the distance.
"Come on, guys..." Velma grinned a bit at them as they started passing the Crescent Hotel at the corner of Decatur and Demonbreun. Five stories tall and encompassing fifty rooms, it's high roof blotted out the sun from them. As Velma's eyes glanced and bounced off the front of the Indian Red brick structure, she noticed a curtain drop back into place as if someone had just pulled it back to see them.
"Guys, someone's in the hotel!" She rushed up the front stoop and through double doors for the second floor room with the bedroom. Shaggy and Scooby only got as far the front lobby and admitting desk. Shaggy just looked up that ascending stairway and was reminded of every bad dream, both real and imagined they ever had.
"Uh, we'll wait here..."He then realized Scooby was on his hind legs like a person and hitting him in the shoulder for his attention. Making excited happy noises, he then turned Shaggy's head to the dining room and they both looked upon a table of food out in the open. A platter of fruit sat on a glass platter a foot above plates and platters of steaks, chicken legs, complete hamburgers, vegetable combinations, pizza slices and every sort of dish he would imagine in this hotel. They slid into place and salivated upon casseroles, omelets and stews and stacks of fried chicken, platters of lobster and shrimp and cubes of cheese stacked upon silver platters.
"For this meal we are about to receive may we be truly grateful!" He and Scooby prayed together in rushed unbridled haste. "Dig in, Scoob!" Shaggy grabbed a chicken leg in both hands and Scooby dumped a plate of steamed shrimp into his mouth before scarfing the slices of crab. Shaggy took a handful of cubed cheese and Scooby took a chunk out of a slice of Swiss cheese. Barely chewing, they just started swallowing anything they could get in their mouths. More food landed on the floor during their rushed stuffing marathon as vegetables, stripped bones, pizza crusts, lobster shells and a banana peel took to the air on their way to the floor. However, as the taste hit them, they stopped and looked each other with swollen cheeks. They blinked their eyes at each other and realized the same thought before spitting out the contents of their mouths to the floor.
"It all tastes like dead air!" Shaggy complained as Scooby used the dining table sheet to scrape the awful taste off his tongue. "What is this? Some cruel joke?"
"Raggy..." Scooby made the noise that sounded like Shaggy's name, then stuck his nose to the floor and started sniffing the way through the buffet line to the dining room. Through another set of doors, the oriental carpet led to a wood podium and a set of human feet in women's black pumps. Scooby and Shaggy then slowly lifted their gaze up over the brunette phantom matron with the glowing blue eyes and dark dress. Her hair was pulled back, her skin pure white and her body was transparent enough to see a room of phantom diners of varying style, shape and appearance. Some looked like decomposing corpses while others looked like dried out skeletons. Ghosts of Union and Confederate soldiers mingled with Revolutionary War soldiers and World War Two troops. It was a room full of immaterial, disembodied ghosts, spirits, phantoms, apparitions and specters from every moment in American history. They sat at tables eating, conversing, dancing to a spectral band and laughing at each other jokes. Only the spectral matron noticed their young guests and she beamed harmlessly to Shaggy and Scooby.
"Do you have a reservation?" She asked.
"Nick!" Velma yelled through the second floor. But for a few, the majority of the rooms stood open, empty and desolate. A few suitcases were left open on beds while some beds looked turned down for bed. Trying to find her ways back to the staircase, she turned on her heel confused and lost and then reached up and tried to figure out which direction she had come.
"Do you need help?" A voice asked.
"Yes, how do I get back to the..." Her eyes looked up to the tall bald security guard. He was transparent and immaterial and his eyes lacked any visible irises. They were completely white. Velma just reached up to check for another stupid mask and noticed her hand passing in and out of this spirit's head. It responded confused to her behavior and waited patiently for her response.
"Jinkies..." Velma realized what he was. "You're... you're..."
"Metabolically-challenged?"
Velma screamed and took flight running through the hotel. She dashed round a corner, into an apartment and slammed and locked the door. Her breath was racing and her heart was pounding. There was movement out the side of her eyes and she looked into the open bathroom by the door. A white-skinned female ghost sat in a bubble bath up to her chest. Her midnight dark hair was tied up, her pitch black eyes looked matter-of-factly upon her and her hand supported a crystal glass filled with white wine.
"As long as you're here," She asked the young lady in her room. "Would you get my back?"
"You know, Daphne," Fred and Daphne continued down empty Commerce Boulevard past empty restraunts, deserted stores and desolate shops. "I've been thinking, it seems as if our cases are getting bigger in size. I mean, first we had the demons on Spooky Island, then we had our worst enemies brought to life by Professor Jacobo and now we're in an entirely new reality without any idea if we're going to get home."
"I know..." She looked up at him trustingly and squeezed his hand tight. "But at least we're together." Her eyes caught a glimpse of her favorite dress shop and the dress in the window. It was a white shoulderless, strapless gown with a full skirt and red belt. She would look so good in that dress. Looking to Fred briefly, she clenched her purse tightly and dashed into the dress shop. Within minutes, she had the dress off the mannequin in the window and was looking for a dressing room. Fred just continued walking and talking down the street thinking she was still behind him.
"I feel the same way." Fred talked to the empty air. "I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this and, well, you know I care about you, and I think you care about me, so, wouldn't it be natural for the two of us to take our relationship to the next level. Now, I'm not talking about the purely physical stuff, I don't want to put you in that kind of place, that is, unless you want to be there. I mean, maybe the two of us ought to make it official. I don't have a ring or anything, but, Daphne, I was wondering if you'd like to be my..." He started looking around and discovered he was by himself. All this time spilling out his heart to her and she was gone? He started feeling like an idiot.
"Daphne? Daphne?" He looked around the empty street of vehicles and discarded objects. "I am going to put a bell around her neck! I mean, here I am, about to..." He heard something. It sounded like a loud thump of weight striking the earth. He looked to his reflection in a puddle of water and watched his refection ripple with the next loud impact tremor. That sound was louder and much closer. Fred just stared at the still water return his reflection and then ripple with the next elephantine footstep.
"No..." Fred was scared to think what it could be. "Not that. Please, this isn't Jurassic Park. I don't want to see a dinosaur." He heard the footstep again. It was just around the corner. "Please, God, let it be a plant-eating long-necked whatchamacallit." There was another footstep as the creature started coming closer.
"Two footed, bipedal..." Fred started rationalizing. "That's not good. Well, if I don't move it can't see me."
There was another giant footstep.
"Daphne..." Fred's voice whined and he started looking for company. "Nick? Velma... I'll even settle for... Shaggy!"
His eyes reared skyward to the edge of the office building blocking his view. Human fingers about as thick as steel barrels and as long as electrical poles curved around the edge of the sixth floor preceded by the two tons hands and twenty foot long arms of a giant person, a giant female person whose bosom was dressed and covered by ragged, flapping bed sheets and whose lower body was dressed in something like at tarp pulled and held up by a rope tied tight round the hips. The sun hit Fred's eyes as he cocked his head higher. Long strands of red hair framed the face of the woman impersonating actress Allison Hayes as the Fifty Foot Woman. Up above the flawlessly toned abdomen, perfect skin, and jutting Volkswagen-sized breasts, the green eyes of Daphne Blake looked down to earth as a goddess who had found the secret of immortality.
"Oooooo..." Her ruby red lips were caressed and moistened veraciously by her moist tongue. "Someone I haven't eaten yet."
"Daphne?" Fred asked himself if he was hallucinating. Nothing in this case was making sense. "Oh, my god! What happened to you? How did you get this way? Are you okay?" He watched as her bare feet crunched the street under her. Her foot length had to be almost six to seven feet long and with her incredible height, her increased weight at least seven to eight tons. She wouldn't be able to move very fast carrying that much weight, but anything she stepped on would be crushed flat. He slowly stepped back as she came closer to him. Her shadow stretched over him and blotted out the sun. Fred felt as if he were a mere child to her as she leaned her body forward and reached to pick him up.
"Daphne, stop it," he dashed between her legs and ran behind her. "What are you doing?"
"Well," She grinned harmlessly with a toss of her hair. "I'm eating you, of course."
"Why would you do that?" He answered grinning as if she was just kidding.
"Duh, it's what I do?" She explained herself and braced on the pillars of the bank to keep from falling over at her height. When the marble pillar collapsed and she started to fall, Fred dashed out of the way and through a gate into an alley. There was no way she was going to squeeze through the alley. It was only seven feet wide, but as he looked back, he saw her squeezing through sideways like a bratty child after a toy she wanted. Coming out to the back entrance, Fred chanced upon a familiar green psychedelic van he knew very well.
"The Mystery Machine!" He raced to it, pulled open the door and got into the driver's seat. Sticking the key into the ignition, he began pounding the gas pedal with his foot. "Start, darn you, start! No!" The windshield filled with the sight of four immense finger prints on fingers each a feet thick. The Mystery Machine tilted backward and faced heavenward as the back doors popped open. Held sixty feet off the ground, Daphne opened her mouth wide and started shaking the chassis of the van over her open gullet. Clicking his seatbelt, Fred looked down into her throat, through her cleavage to the ground far down below. Even if he didn't land in her mouth, he'd never survive the fall.
"Daphne, for the love of God!" He screamed at her and held on for his life. "What's wrong with you!" Her shaking began getting even more vicious and impatient. Hissing and screaming, she started shaking the van harder and harder. Fred hoped even if he was knocked cold that the seat would stay bolted.
"Hey, you guys, you need to pay for the food you ate!" A ghostly cook chased Shaggy and Scooby through the hotel kitchen, basement and up into the lounge. Ghostly by-standers watched the chase with little to no interest. One spectral gambler with a tight skull-like face and no eyes placed a bet on Shaggy and Scooby to escape. A ghostly waiter dropped his tray as the boy and his dog raced through him. A ghoulish maid fooling around with a guest in a closet peeked out at the fracas going on. The ghostly cook slid to a stop after losing sight of his unpaying customers. As he started looking round, Shaggy and Scooby strolled by him casually while wearing tuxedos and talking on cell phones.
"Can you hear me now?" Shaggy asked the person on his cell phone. He took a few more steps. "Can you hear me now?" He noticed the incorporeal ghost. "It's for you."
"Thank you." The ghost took the phone. "Hello?" It took him only a second and he screamed a loud hollow moan. Upset for being so stupid, he recognized the guy and his dog and chased after him again. Shaggy and Scooby raced up the staircase to the next floor from the lounge and on the balcony followed it to the front of the hotel. Shaggy and Scooby were racing side by side. There were ghosts everywhere, but instead of all teaming up together against him, they just watched and observed just like the people they once were. The hotel was definitely haunted, but the ghosts were not out to scare him. In fact, he was sure they could have lived together in peace, but he wasn't going to stop and test that theory. As he raced for the stairs to the lobby, he hit someone quite solid.
"Shaggy!" Velma looked at him on top of her. "The hotel is haunted!"
"Now you tell us!" He lifted her over his shoulder and raced down the stairs to the admitting area. Racing past a couple of honeymooning ghosts and a spectral bell boy with a skull-like head, Shaggy was screaming his lungs out as he and Scooby hit the street once more with Velma.
"I know we're ghosts, but that is just rude!" The phantom concierge at the front desk groused and folded his thin arms.
"Okay," An extra skinny house maid in a black dress and white apron posed with a broom in her hand. "Who left the mess in the buffet line!"