Chapter 2: Eyedentity is a strange thing.
From the basement, Zoe and Zostra could hear Ox's deranged screams carry from the collapsed room down into the basement where they were. It was a very sudden and violent snapping of reality that accompanied the man's ravings, and solidified beyond doubt that this was no prank or startle. Something very, very wrong was happening and they had to stop it to get out.
Without a moment's pause, Madame Zostra ran into the now empty elevator and hoped it put her on the right floor. It was the fastest way to get upstairs, since they still didn't know where they stairs up from the basement were. As the doors closed, she shouted to Zoe, "Try to find you way out of this horrid place, young lady! And be careful of these evil rooms!"
The little girl heard the words of the older woman and nodded to herself, immediately stumbling into the next room to her left and finding a strange chamber with a pentagram painted in the middle with some kind of red color. At the center of the room lay a mask, which she approached timidly. It was unremarkable; a stage mask used in plays or something similar. As she held it in her hands, she could feel it whisper in her ears, promising great knowledge if she would only put it on. Zoe shook her head and just put it in her pocket. When she turned to leave, she could feel a terrible weight pull on her mind, trying to keep her from leaving. She stumbled out the door, head aching, feeling a little less sure of her own senses as she continued her search.
After a few seconds inside, the elevator opened its doors with a *ding* and revealed to Zostra the upper floor. Curses, I wished to be on the ground floor, I have to help Brandon! She thought to herself. She stepped into the upper floor landing and made for the stairs. Before her foot touched the first step, she saw the pulsing blue light emanating from a room down the stairs, could feel a… presence of some kind. She knew that some foul creature must be down there, chasing the poor boy, trying to "collect" him for some unholy reason.
Yet… she froze at the top of the stairs, her body not wanting to go down towards whatever monster lay in store for her. Didn't want to risk herself. Brandon… is a strong boy. Stronger in mind than maybe any of us. I should… find something that could help us. Yes, there's got to be something in this wretched house we can use to defeat it! Shaking, she turned around and headed towards another room.
Shaggy and Scooby found themselves back in the dining room, the spaceship still floating, ramp waiting for them to walk up into. The boy turns to his dog. "Hey, I don't know if I told you this, but my name's Shaggy. And like, Scoob, I don't think this thing has any snacks on board. And the aliens wanna take us with them. We gotta keep busting this thing up!"
"Rou're right, Raggy. I'll watch the door!"
Brandon picked up the candle holder he dropped earlier and took another swing at the ship, a loud CLANG following a large dent in the side of the ship. He could even see parts of wires and electronic bits exposed. "Man, looks like these guys bought the cheap stuff."
"Raggy, it's the ralien!" It was at that moment that the alien eye floated in behind them. It focused its eye straight at the boy. "You need to stop, Brandon. Just stop fighting. Come with us," Shaggy heard in his head.
"Oh man, I think you got me confused for someone else, heheh," he chuckled nervously, glancing at the door. "Like, I'm Shaggy. Maybe you can find Brandon somewhere else and like leave us alone?" In response, the alien tried to pry into his mind. Shaggy got a small headache, but shook it off. "Well fine, then I'll just keep hitting your stuff!" He swung again, shearing off a chunk of the outer metal and smashing internal wires. Sparks and electricity flew from the ship.
Shaggy didn't need to turn and look to see how angry the alien was. But it did help. Seeing the thing loom over him menacingly, he laughed nervously. "Hey, I was wondering if you could hold this real quick?" He held out the candle holder. The floating eye, in spite of itself, telekinetically grabbed onto the metal object. "Thanks man!" he yelled, and bolted out of the room, Scooby following quickly after.
Madame Zostra stumbled into a bedroom across the stairway, what looked like a child's room. She looked around at the gathered cobwebs and dust piled up, strangely at odds from the rest of the home's relative cleanliness. She searched the dressers, the bed, and the closet, but could not find anything useful. The fortune teller stood up, taking a moment to ponder where else she could search, when she saw something move out of the corner of her eye.
"Who's there?" she asked loudly, readying herself for whatever it was. Suddenly, a disfigured porcelain doll hopped up onto the bed. Its face was cracked and all the paint long since faded or rubbed off. In its hand was a tiny spear. Without warning, it leapt at the woman.
Zostra shrieked and threw a kick, which luckily slammed right into the little monster. It flew across the room and smashed against the wall, shattering into a dozen or more pieces. She immediately sprinted from the room.
Zoe found the basement scary and creepy. The pentagram chamber hadn't helped, neither had it helped when she left the landing and found herself staring across a large chasm that didn't seem to have a bottom to it. It was pitch black down there, and the only thing she could see was the rickety old bridge and the door on the other side of the room, lit by flickering candles on the walls. She took a deep breath and walked quickly across, heart leaping out of her chest with every groan and squeak of the boards under her feet. Thankfully, she was light and quick and made it across no problem.
Stepping into the new room, the girl found it was full of barrels and shelves of dishes along the walls and sacks of… something. She wasn't quite sure. What she did know was that it all looked terribly disorganized, and creepy or not she was going to fix it. Zoe spent the next few minutes hefting heavy bags back to their places, sorting the dishes into sets, and rolling the barrels into one corner. Wiping the sweat from her brow, her muscles felt sore, but also stronger for it. As she reached up to move one odd looking dish on the shelf, she noticed it wasn't actually a dish. It was some kind of putrid idol; a statuette of a robed, horned devil with a forked tongue and bulging eyes. Eyes, she noted, that seemed to gaze straight into her very soul. She blinked, hard, then put it in her other pocket. She turned back around to head across the bridge once again.
Shaggy and Scooby ran down the statuary corridor to the next door, where they opened it up to see moonlight and felt the cool breeze of the night dance across their faces.
"Haha! Look, Scoob, we made it out! We're safe!" Shaggy looked up at the full moon and laughed.
"Raggy, there's walls around us."
The boy looked down and to his dismay, saw walls surrounding the area. "Aw man." He was further unnerved when he saw the gravestones all around them. "Who builds a graveyard in their house? Like it's no wonder no one lives in this pad if it's only full of creepy stuff." He looked at the only empty grave, dirt piled up next to it and a gravestone with no inscription. He picked up a fallen chunk of rubble from the wall. "Aw come on, can this place get any scarier?"
Right after he said that, he saw that the graves seemed to almost right themselves, fix just a bit. The overgrowth receded, and the feeling of misery and death lessened from the air. The moon shined more brightly down on them. It was as if this place, if nowhere else, wanted to fight against the darkness and horror that gripped the house. Shaggy and Scooby both took a deep breath. "You know what? This place isn't half bad."
Shaggy didn't even turn around this time when the alien followed after him. "Dude, I'm super hungry and all this running is tiring me out, can we like call a break or something?" When the alien's shadow fell over him, he finally turned, and it there was a lot of anger in its eye. To have it right up in his face, Shaggy panicked and threw the stone he had in his hand up in the air. "Okay! Like nevermind!" He and Scooby bongo-ran out of the room. Before the eye could chase, the rock dropped down right on the top of the eye. It fell to the ground, its eye swirly and spinning.
Shaggy had just made it into the statuary corridor when he tripped on one of the fallen statues and grabbed another one to catch himself. When he did that, a door opened up into the ballroom on the other side of the wall.
"Raggy, quick, get in!" the dog yelled, dashing through the opening. The boy pulled himself up and through the passageway, panting and sweaty.
Madame Zostra, meanwhile, had paused her sprint at the doorway of another room. Catching her breath, she looked up and saw that it was, in fact, a chapel of some kind. There were rows of benches and a raised portion where a small altar sat, surrounded by candles that looked like they'd been burning for a while, wax melted on the stone. The effigy in front of her was attached to the base, its strange form seemed to wobble as her gaze shifted over it. It clearly was not of the christian god, nor was it of any pantheon she was familiar with. Nonetheless, she felt a strong urge to kneel and meditate in front of the altar. Zostra did so, clasping her hands together and closing her eyes. "Please," she whispered to the air, "I wish only a way to survive the horrors of this house."
No sooner had she spoken the words than did she feel something soothing come over her mind. She felt like something had followed her voice into her mind, bolstering it against the calls of mental control. Now, if only she could identify what it was that answered her…
Zoe, with luck, had just found the stairs up from the basement. She ran up them quickly, then up the other stairs as well. "Brandon? Madame Zostra? Are you there?" she called.
"In here, my child," came a voice from down the hall to the right.
Zoe ran over to follow the sound and found Madame Zostra. She was kneeling in front of some weird stone thingy with candles, like what mom used to talk about at church. "Come, young Zoe, sit and pray with me to our lord, that we may be delivered from the evil of this place," the older woman beseeched her with unnatural calm.
More than a little weirded out, Zoe nonetheless walked up next to her and kneeled. "Ummm… lord person, please help us."
She was shocked out of her short prayer by a thrumming of something in her pocket. She found the idol twisting and shifting ever so slightly, matching itself to the stone statue on the altar in front of her. As it moved, she sensed something in her head, slithering in and settling on her mind like a blanket to guard her thoughts. The young girl stared at the statue's form, one with wings and claws and undulating tentacles. One that would not allow another to usurp its position of madness and insanity on this plane of existence. One that now spoke, in a whisper that reached only the subconscious, to them both now.
"Cthulhu Fhtagn," Zoe and Zostra spoke in eerie unison.
Panting and tired, Shaggy looked over at his faithful dog companion. "Man, if I'd known I was gonna be running this much today, I'da brought some protein bars or something."
"Reah, I'm soooo hungry, Shaggy," Scooby whined.
The glow coming down from the door did not make them any happier. "Like man, could you just give us five minutes to relax?" Shaggy shouted at the eye.
"ENOUGH." Shaggy grabbed his head in pain. "YOU WILL COME WITH US, NOW." The pain had come back, and now he could feel this was a battle he couldn't win. He couldn't move his legs, and the eye was staring straight at him.
At least, he could see, that Scooby was being left alone right now. That gave him an idea. "S-Scoob! Take thi- Ah! Take this to Zoe or Zostra!" With shaking hands, he took out the van symbol he found in his pocket and tossed it to the dog, who hopped up and snatched it out of the air. The moment it left his hands, Shaggy could feel the eye's mental probe reach further into his brain; too far to fight against, too far to resist, too-
Calm. That's what he felt now. Calm, and assured. I must go with my masters now, he thought, the eye in front of him glowing with triumph as it watched the boy walk away, towards its ship. Scooby whined, but bolted out the door and up the stairs where he could smell the other explorers.
"Zoe! Zostra! Heeeeeeeeelp!" A voice called from behind the woman and girl, an unfamiliar one indeed. They turned away from the altar and saw a great dane was panting at the door, a strange holy symbol at its feet.
"Isn't that the dog Brandon found?" Zostra questioned, confused. "Who was talking?"
"Shaggy got caught by the ralien! He needs help!" the dog shouted, causing the two humans to freeze.
"It… it talks?" Zoe said, startled.
Scooby whined loudly in desperation. "Please! Hurry! Shaggy's gonna get abducted!"
Zoe jumped to her feet. Zostra stood up, stumbling slightly and needing to support herself on the pew. She winced at herself and turned to the girl. "Zoe, my child, I'm afraid this something you will have to do yourself."
"What?!" said child cried. "Why can't you help?!"
The older woman gestured to herself sadly. "I was never strong, even in my youth. And neither age nor this house has been kind to my body. I would only get in the way. Please, go save the boy. I will get to the door and try to get us out." She clasped the younger girl's hands in her own. "Good luck, Zoe." With that, Madame Zostra took off at a jog, heading for the stairs.
Zoe took a deep breath, then sprinted out the door of the chapel, scooping up the holy symbol and feeling the power of it join the power of her lord in protection. Scooby followed right behind. The yellow clad child knew she wouldn't get to the dining room fast enough on her feet, so she ran into the mystic elevator, said a short prayer, then pressed the button.
The doors closed, she felt movement, and a moment later they opened to reveal the dining room, and finally saw for herself the floating spaceship, with its pretty lights that sang siren songs to her mind that bounced off an impenetrable shield of mental protection. Worse, she saw the familiar shape of Brandon slowly walking towards the ramp, clearly going to enter.
"Brandon, stop!" "Shaggy, no!" the two cried as one foot stepped onto the silvery entry ramp. Then Scooby pulled at Zoe's shirt, towards the damaged engines of the ship that he and Shaggy had nearly destroyed. With no time to think, she accepted that she needed to break them, but how with just her tiny fists?
In a split second moment of inspiration, she rubbed the idol of her lord in her pocket, feeling the ridges of each tentacle. Her mind swam for a moment, but relaxed, and she felt just a little closer to her lord. More than that, she could feel and see her arms glow with power. Brandon had nearly stepped inside when she tensed. With a mighty battle cry (that Zostra heard as a terrified scream from where she was attempting to pick the lock of the front door,) she slammed her fists into the ship.
Sparks cascaded around Zoe, the engines smashed beyond all repair. The ship rocked treacherously, an explosion heard from within it. She saw Brandon get tossed back off the ramp, slamming into the wall by the far wall, clearly unconscious. The lights dimmed from the spacecraft.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" came the mental cry of the floating eye, speedily hovering into the room and up the ramp, trying to save its vessel. Zoe wasted no time in grabbing Brandon and Scooby and dragged them out, into the foyer, the entrance hall where Madame Zostra was waiting and who grabbed the boy in her arms while the girl picked up the puppy, and out the front door they went.
At the bottom of the hill, they turned and looked back, against their better instincts. The glow of the eyeball seemed to shine from every window from the front, racing throughout the house in agitation and rage. Both girls felt their load stir slightly, as if they were trying to get down in their sleep. They readjusted themselves and kept running.