Sponge: Y'all, my SINCEREST apologies for the long wait. Further info is in the author's notes at the end of the chapter, but I've made you wait long enough, so let's get to it! I made this one a little longer in order to attempt to make up for the wait, so I really hope you enjoy. Warnings: spooky stuff, Shelma angst, and internal victim blaming. Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Scooby Doo characters. They belong to Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, and Hanna Barbera.
Chapter 14: You're The Coward
The snoring-previously-thought-to-be-dead librarian was awake now, but so immersed in a crossword puzzle that she didn't even look up as the gang entered the building. This was a good thing. Dogs almost certainly weren't allowed in the library, especially soaking wet ones like Scooby and Nova, and if the librarian had noticed them, she would probably have scolded the gang and kicked them all out.
But luckily, she was concentrating too hard on her crossword puzzle to notice that four college students and two dogs sprinted through the library to the genealogy room, looking like the devil was chasing them.
Once they were in the genealogy room, Velma slammed herself into a chair at the table, the grimoire open to the reviving spell, as the gang crowded around behind her. They stared down at the pages without really seeing anything, too shocked and confused to register any words apart from Ben's scribbled note: For Sarah.
Fred's eyes caught snatches of other words on the page, but he was too unfocused for his brain to really absorb the instructions for the ritual. His gaze kept shifting back to Ben's slanted handwriting, and it struck him suddenly that it seemed…familiar, somehow. As though he'd seen it somewhere before.
He didn't have a chance to bring this up though, because Daphne squeezed his arm fretfully. He clasped her hand in what he hoped was a comforting gesture, but even he had to admit he was feeling unnerved. Did Ben really mean to try to use this spellbook to bring his ancestor back from the dead? Fred knew that was impossible, obviously. And as much as Ben made reference to Sarah Ravencroft being a witch, Fred didn't think Ben actually believed in the supernatural.
Did he?
His attention suddenly switched to Velma as she stood abruptly from her chair, pacing the room and shaking her head. She was muttering to herself incoherently, occasionally glancing at the spellbook in her hands as her friends watched on, anxious.
Nova was the first to approach. "Velma?" she began, her voice tentative.
"Shh!" Velma hissed, pacing even more frenetically. "I'm thinking."
The rest of the gang waited patiently. Daphne dug the Sarah Ravencroft file out of the messenger bag and began flipping through it a bit absently, but still Velma didn't snap out of her reverie.
"Is she all right?" asked Nova, who wasn't used to Velma's antics.
Scooby nodded. It had been a while since he'd seen Velma like this. Then again, it had been a while since he'd seen Velma at all. Maybe she was like this all the time at school. He'd never know. This trip was the first time he'd seen anyone in the gang besides Shaggy in almost a year.
Surreptitiously, he glanced at Shaggy, who still hadn't said a word. He was leaning against the wall, fidgeting with the sleeves of his henley shirt. Scooby recognized the agitated gesture – Shaggy was just barely containing rage.
Seeing Ben with Velma must have affected him worse than it had anyone else.
Velma herself, however, seemed to have come back to earth as she hurriedly approached Fred. "We have to go to the house."
Fred furrowed his brow. "What house?"
"The Ravencroft House!"
Fred shared an apprehensive look with Daphne. "Velm, what are you talking about?"
"Look!" Velma waved the book under their noses, her finger jabbing at an underlined passage. The shade of the underline was the same as the pen in which Ben had scribbled For Sarah. Neither Fred nor Daphne had time to digest what the passage said before Velma explained. "This is a set of instructions for how to do the ritual. It says that in order to revive a dead person, you must recall their spirit to their place of birth. For Sarah Ravencroft, that would be the Ravencroft House. Ben must be going there tonight to do this ritual, so we'll be there too."
"Wait a minute," said Fred. "I thought we were done with Ben Ravencroft. That we didn't want anything else to do with him, after…" he trailed off, not wanting to talk, or even think, about what had happened that afternoon.
Velma waved him off. "We won't arrive at the same time," she said. "We'll arrive first. That way we can get the jump on him. I don't think he really believes in the supernatural, but he must have something to do with all the strange things that have been happening in town. If we get there before he does, we can make him tell us everything he knows – about the grimoire, and the two Sarah Ravencroft books, and what they have to do with each other."
"And how will we 'make' him tell us?" Daphne asked.
Velma looked right at Fred. "We set a trap."
She had said the magic word. Fred nodded thoughtfully. "That's not a bad idea," he said after a few moments.
Scooby gaped at him, alarmed. Was he kidding? This was a terrible idea! Going to a broken down fire-hazard of a house in a torrential rainstorm where a man who had assaulted one of them was planning to awaken the ghost of a witch? Scooby knew that the humans were all still angry and shaken by what Ben had done to Velma – hell, Scooby himself was still upset over it – but he also knew that they were letting their fear and outrage cloud their judgment, letting their hearts lead them instead of their heads.
"I disagree, Fred," Nova spoke up, her voice clear and calm. "I think it is a bad idea. For all we know, this is what Ravencroft wants – to lure us to the house, thinking we'll have an advantage. But what if he's already there and he's laid a trap for us?"
Fred waved off her suggestion. "We'll check out the house before we set anything up. But even so, there's only one of him and six of us. We outnumber him."
"We outnumbered him at his house, too." Shaggy had at last broken his silence, his voice unsteady with, what Scooby could tell, was frenzied, apoplectic fury.
No one else seemed to recognize this, though Fred did put a protective arm around Velma's shoulder. "We won't make the same mistake twice," he promised, his blue eyes icy and his tone dangerous.
Helplessly, Scooby looked to Daphne. She was often their level-headed voice of reason. Surely she could make Fred see what a horrible plan this was.
But she looked just as hell-bent on revenge as the others. "What's your plan, Freddie?" she asked.
"We'll find a hardware store," he replied. "Buy some supplies for a trap." He frowned, wishing he had the Mystery Machine. All of his own equipment was already in there, and who knew what the hardware store in Crystal Cove would have? But he'd make do with what they could find. He continued speaking. "Then we'll head to the Ravencroft House and set it up. We'll be ready when Ben comes."
Daphne pulled out her phone to look up a map of the area. "It looks like there's a hardware store just down the street," she told the others. Then she looked at Velma and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. "You ready?"
Velma nodded, resolute. "Let's go," she said, rising from the chair.
Scooby sighed, sharing a defeated look with Nova and Shaggy. It appeared they'd been outvoted.
The gang left the genealogy room and made their way for the exit. They were just stepping out into the rain when a frail, brittle voice called out from the circulation desk.
"No dogs in the library!"
x.X.x
Ben's stolen umbrella provided little protection from the rain, but luckily the hardware store was not that far from the library. Fred dashed inside and sailed through the aisles, grabbing materials seemingly at random. He wished he could take more time with the trap – draw blueprints, build dioramas, work out the kinks – but he knew a simple one would work out better in a time crunch like this. Daphne and Velma followed him, saying nothing, just trusting that Fred knew what he was doing.
Shaggy and the dogs waited outside. The hardware store had a huge sign out front denying entrance to dogs, so Scooby and Nova sat patiently under the awning as the rain poured down in sheets and Shaggy became increasingly – and more visibly – upset.
He couldn't get the image out of his head – Ben's large hands gripping Velma's waist, his mouth on the back of her neck, ignoring her as she pleaded for him to stop. Seriously, what was wrong with the men in this town? Did they just straight up not understand the meaning of the word "no?" First Rung Ladderton, and now Ben Ravencroft. Shaggy clenched his fists, remembering how frozen Velma had been in the kitchen as Ben felt her up.
She has been flirting with him, though, said a tiny, unkind voice in the back of Shaggy's head. What did she expect?
Of course, that wasn't fair. Shaggy understood on a logical level that just because Velma had been returning Ben's flirtations didn't mean she couldn't change her mind if he acted on them. Shaggy knew that Velma couldn't – and shouldn't – be blamed for what Ben had done.
But Ben wasn't here. And Shaggy's anger had to go somewhere.
And okay, maybe he was still upset about their conversation the previous night. He'd all but admitted that he wanted to get back together with her – she was the one who refused to make up her mind. So yeah, his anger at her was misplaced. That didn't mean it wasn't real.
Fred and the girls came out of the hardware store, the bell jangling as the door closed behind them. Daphne held a plastic shopping bag in one hand as Fred opened the umbrella.
"Let's go," he said, gesturing for the others to get under the umbrella and taking the shopping bag from Daphne. Together the group stepped out into the rain, still not quite protected by the umbrella, but it was better than nothing. On the way Fred explained his trap. It was an improvised bear trap, just with a rope instead of sharp metal teeth. The idea was that Ben would step into the loop of rope, which would then be pulled tight by Fred, who would be waiting nearby, tripping Ben and incapacitating him.
It sounded simple, but Shaggy was barely listening. He was staring at the back of Velma's neck, noticing how her fingers kept drifting to the spot where Ben's lips had been, then quickly dropping her hand. Like pressing on a bruise and flinching every time you realized it still hurt. This just made him angrier.
Even though it was only late afternoon, the rain had darkened the sky to a deep slate color. By the time the gang had arrived at the Ravencroft House, Shaggy's anger was being slowly replaced by apprehension. They stood on the decrepit front porch, staring at the broken windows and peeling paint. There seemed to be no sign of anyone else.
"Okay," Fred began. "Here's the plan. We'll split up into groups of two – each pair can search one floor, since this house has three stories."
"Actually," Daphne interrupted. "There are four stories." She held out her hand to Velma, indicating the shorter girl's messenger bag. Puzzled, Velma handed it over and Daphne pulled out the Sarah Ravencroft file.
"You didn't put that back?!" Velma was aghast.
"Nope," Daphne replied. "Because look at these." She flipped through the folder and extracted several sheets of paper. Blue paper.
Fred recognized them for what they were immediately. "Oh my God. Daph, are those diagrams of the house?"
Daphne nodded. "I found them when I was flipping through the file when we were at the library just now, after we discovered Ben's notations in that book." She cocked her head again towards Velma's messenger bag, which still held the spellbook they'd found at Ben's house. "It turns out there's an attic, too. See?" Daphne passed around the blueprints, and Fred discovered she was right. The Ravencroft house had four stories – a ground floor, an upper floor, an attic, and a basement. The door to the attic appeared to be at the end of the hallway on the second floor.
"I don't remember seeing a door there," Fred mused.
"I'll bet it's hidden behind something," Daphne said. "Like a painting or a bookshelf."
"Hmm," Fred murmured, thinking. "Well it looks like the basement has more nooks and crannies to hide in – everything else is pretty open, apart from the bedrooms on the second floor. So how about if we split up and search the upper three floors – the attic, the second floor, and the first floor – and then we all meet up at the stairs to the basement and search it together?"
Scooby and Shaggy glanced at each other nervously. Splitting up and searching for clues in a dark, potentially haunted, house was their least favorite part of solving mysteries. But at least they'd all be searching the darkest, scariest part of the house together.
The others were nodding their assent, so Fred rubbed his hands together. "Okay," he said. "Let's split up. Daph and I will search the attic, Shaggy and Velma can take the second floor, and the dogs can stay on the first floor. Let's give it fifteen minutes? Then we can meet at the stairs to the basement."
Everyone stared at him a little dumbstruck. Shaggy and Scooby were almost never separated while they were searching for clues. And because of their argument last night, and Shaggy's complicated feelings, he wasn't exactly eager to be alone with Velma.
But Fred was already pushing open the front door, leaving no room for arguments.
The gang found themselves in that same derelict foyer they'd explored with Ben. Had that really only been two days ago?
Scooby and Nova split off from the others at the bottom of the stairs, bypassing the hall to the basement door and instead veering left, towards the living room. Nova noticed Scooby gazing uncertainly after the humans as they climbed the stairs, and put a comforting paw on top of his. He glanced at her gratefully and they continued on their way.
On the second floor landing, Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, and Velma pulled out their phones to use the flashlight functions. The storm outside had darkened the sky enough that there was very little natural light in the house. "Daph, where's the entrance to the attic?" Fred asked.
She held up the blueprints and squinted at them in the light of her flashlight. "I think it's down at the end of the hall," she said, pointing. "Behind that wall panel?"
The four of them crept forward, their cellphone flashlights lighting the way. Fred studied the wall panel. There was wainscotting at about his waist height that appeared to double as a latch. Sure enough, when he lifted it, the wall swung outward, revealing a set of stairs behind it.
He glanced at his friends.
"We'll meet you back here in fifteen," he told Velma and Shaggy. "Then we'll go back to the first floor to meet up with the dogs before we head for the basement. Understood?"
Shaggy and Velma nodded stiffly. Daphne cast an anxious glance Fred's way, but he didn't appear to notice. Instead he just started climbing up the stairs, leaving Daphne no choice but to follow him.
"Freddie," she whispered once they were out of Shaggy and Velma's earshot. "What are you doing?"
"Exploring the attic," he responded.
She stopped walking and grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop too. "You know that's not what I mean."
Fred sighed and turned to look at her on the step below him. "You were right," he said. "About Shaggy and Velma. They're not over each other, and I'm tired of them pretending like they are. So I'm doing something about it."
Daphne blinked at him, but said nothing.
Fred continued. "Do you remember when we were fighting our senior year of high school? When the gang disbanded and you and I broke up?"
Daphne nodded slowly. "Of course," she replied, her voice soft. It had been the worst two months of her life. She almost hadn't known how to breathe without the gang. Without Fred.
"Do you remember what made us stop fighting?" he went on.
Daphne nodded again. Velma had been in trouble, and the gang had rescued her. They'd had a common goal, and they'd worked together to accomplish it. It had solidified something that Daphne had already known: their friendship was too strong to sever. Even when she was mad at her friends, she couldn't live without them. They were a part of her.
"Is that why you split us up this way?" she asked Fred. "Forced proximity to make Shaggy and Velma mend fences?"
Fred nodded. "When you and I went to the Mystery Machine to get supplies for a trap that day, we talked," he reminded her. As if she needed a reminder – that conversation, and the kisses they'd shared during it, were burned into her memory forever. She smiled just thinking of it. Fred did too, taking her hand. "I was still in love with you," he told her. "I'd always been in love with you, but it had taken me too long to admit it. So when I had the opportunity to tell you…I took it." He pulled her up so they were sharing the same step. "I'm just giving Shaggy and Velma that same opportunity."
"I hope it works," Daphne said honestly. Then, almost without thinking about it, she wrapped her arms around him. She didn't like being reminded of the time they'd been broken up – it had truly been the most miserable time of her life. And it had been entirely her fault, since they'd broken up over stupid secrets that she'd insisted on keeping. She'd never make that mistake again, not after it had nearly cost her the most important people in her world.
Fred hugged her back, his strong arms holding her close to his chest. For a moment, everything else disappeared – the storm outside, the dusty attic stairs, the gnawing anxiety of what was to come. The two of them were the only things that existed for each other.
x.X.x
The same couldn't quite be said for Shaggy and Velma.
There were approximately five bedrooms on the second floor, along with three full bathrooms, one of which was in what must have been the primary suite. All the furniture in the rooms were dusty and ancient, and they clearly hadn't been used in decades, if not centuries.
But Shaggy thought he would almost rather be searching the attic, or the basement all alone, if it meant he didn't have to exist in this awkward silence with Velma.
They were in the primary suite now, checking under the bed and in the armoire. In the adjoining bathroom, Velma yanked back the timeworn shower curtain with such force that she tore it off the hooks. But she didn't care.
She was pissed.
Mostly with herself. Because she knew, deep down, that all of this was her fault. None of this would have happened if she hadn't insisted that the gang insert themselves in this mystery. She was the one to blame for all of this.
The anger clenched in her stomach like a fist as she glanced at Shaggy through the open doorway into the bedroom. He was on his hands and knees, reluctantly checking under the bed.
Who did he think he was, anyway? He'd barely batted an eye when the gang had caught Ben with her in the kitchen, and he hadn't said anything about it after. Even the occasionally-emotionally-obtuse Fred had asked Velma if she was okay. But Shaggy? The boy she'd once loved? Nothing.
She could feel him avoiding her. It was palpable, like a charge in the air before a thunderstorm.
As though it had heard her, lightning split the sky outside.
This is so much of a pathetic fallacy, it's almost a cliche, Velma thought wryly.
Well, if it was going to storm outside, why not in here, too?
"Do you have something you want to say to me?" Velma stopped in the threshold of the doorway and fixed Shaggy with a stare. She knew that she shouldn't pick this fight. But she was feeling so much anger and regret and shame – she wanted to fight, goddamn it.
Shaggy paused, still on his hands and knees beside the bed. Then he slowly rose.
"What?" His tone was defensive.
Velma put down her messenger bag and spoke slowly, through gritted teeth. "Do you. Have something. You want. To say to me?"
Shaggy narrowed his eyes at her. "Why would I have anything to say to you?"
His words hit Velma like a gut punch. But instead of letting them sink in, she channeled them into the anger she already felt with herself and lobbed it back at Shaggy. "So that's it? All these years of friendship down the drain because your feelings got hurt last night?"
"At least I have feelings," Shaggy shot back, his voice rising.
"Yeah, one: terror," Velma exclaimed. "That's the only thing you know how to feel. Not empathy, not compassion. Just unadulterated fear."
Even as she said the words, she knew they were untrue. Shaggy was capable of feeling all of those emotions, and more. But she couldn't stop. Velma was feeling too much outrage and resentment to get a hold of herself. Normally she let her brain lead her actions instead of her heart. But why was it so hard to do that when Shaggy was involved?
"You're a coward," she steamrolled on. "That's why you let me break us up last fall, because you were too chicken to fight for us." She knew that wasn't really what this fight was about. She was more angry with the fact that he hadn't seemed to care about what had happened between her and Ben this afternoon.
But for some reason, she found that too difficult to say.
Shaggy scoffed. "I'm not responsible for your actions, Velma. You decided we should break up. I will not take the blame for that. I've told you like, a million times."
"Then why didn't you fight for us?!" Velma could hear herself getting shrill, and tears of embarrassment and fury stung her eyes. It was so unlike her to let her emotions get the better of her like this. But if she kept talking, if she kept yelling, she could focus on the anger instead of the pain. "You've always been like this – too afraid to admit how you felt until it was almost too late, too afraid to fight for our relationship when it really mattered. I've been doing all the heavy lifting since we were in high school, and I'm tired, Shaggy. It takes two people to make a relationship." She narrowed her eyes at him. "That's why we broke up. Because I was tired of being in a relationship with a guy who was too afraid to do the work."
Velma cut herself off, wondering if she'd gone too far. It wasn't fair, she knew, to bring up their past. They'd already talked to death about their relationship in high school, and Velma knew she wasn't saying anything new. But that wasn't really what this was. It was the subtext. She wanted to remind Shaggy of a time when he'd loved her, to see if she could bring out that side of him, the side who would be justly furious with Ben, and for what he'd done that morning.
Because that's what this was really about.
Shaggy had been silent this whole time, and Velma worried briefly that he was getting ready to scream at her. But when he spoke at last, his tone was icily calm.
"Like you know what I think?" he murmured, voice low. "I think that you have a lot of repressed emotions that you don't let yourself feel fully. I think that you spend so much time in that head of yours, being logical and pretentious, that when you do feel something, it scares you. It scares you so much that you shove it down deeper and deeper until it like, explodes to the surface. And I think that's why we broke up – because you were scared of what it might mean to really let somebody in." He set his jaw. "Like, you're the coward, Velma. Not me."
She gazed at him in disbelief, thrown for a loop.
"You know what?" she finally whispered. "Fuck you, Shaggy." She turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.
"Yeah well like, fuck you too, Velma," Shaggy called after her retreating back. She pretended not to hear him as she stomped down the dusty, termite-riddled staircase.
How dare he? Velma was practically shaking with rage at the unfairness of his accusations.
Though she had to admit, he'd had a point. She did repress her emotions sometimes, she knew this, and the idea that she could feel things so deeply did frighten her. Fear, anger, shame…even an emotion as positive as love.
She paused. Was Shaggy right? Had Velma actually been afraid about the possibility that things might work out between them? Was the fact that she cared about him this much frightening to her?
Yes, of course it was. Because there was no room for logic in love. She couldn't listen to both her head and her heart. She wasn't built that way.
And so she made a choice.
She groaned, leaning against a dusty wall and removing her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. It was disconcerting that Shaggy had been able to decipher this in her – that he knew her better than she knew herself. She remembered that he'd been seeing a therapist for the better part of a year, and wondered if that was what had made him so perceptive.
Maybe I should go to therapy, she thought, putting her glasses back on. She glanced around, surprised that she'd ended up in the kitchen on the first floor. She reached for the strap of her messenger bag, but discovered it wasn't there. Velma groaned again – she'd left her bag in the ensuite. With Shaggy.
Reluctantly, she trudged back upstairs. But when she arrived at the room she'd vacated, she discovered it was empty. Shaggy was gone. So was her messenger bag. She frowned. Shaggy must have realized she'd left it behind and went to go find her.
She checked all the rooms on the second floor but didn't see him anywhere. Confused, she glanced thoughtfully at the hidden door to the attic, where Fred and Daphne were. But Velma didn't think Shaggy would go up there on his own. He must have gone downstairs and they'd missed each other, somehow.
But she went back downstairs, combed through the entire first floor, peeking into rooms she hadn't seen on their first visit to the house, including a music room with a huge grand piano, and couldn't find him anywhere. Oddly, she didn't see Scooby or Nova at all either. She stood in the doorway to the decrepit living room, breathing hard.
Wasn't this how her story had gone in the Book of the Dead? That she had discovered her friends all missing one by one?
She shook her head. Don't be silly, she scolded herself. This was a huge house. Fred and Daphne were in the attic. Scooby and Nova were on this floor somewhere. And Shaggy was…around. He had to be.
Still, maybe she'd better check the attic to be sure Fred and Daphne were okay.
Velma turned abruptly on her heel and started to make her way out of the living room, toward the hallway. But apparently the termites hadn't just compromised the integrity of the bannister – the wooden floor was weak too.
Velma almost didn't realize she was falling until she hit the floor. She barely even had time to shout. When she landed, she was more bewildered than hurt. Luckily she had landed on something soft. Or at least, something not hard.
I must be in the basement, she realized, noting that the only light in the room came from the hole she'd just fallen through. She couldn't have fallen more than six feet, but it was far enough that she wouldn't be able to climb back through the hole. Gingerly she sat up and glanced at her surroundings, vaguely recognizing the dark shapes and outlines of the basement furniture from their first trip to the house. Though it appeared that when she'd fallen through the floor (ceiling?) she'd landed on a mattress, and she didn't remember seeing a mattress down here that first night.
Well I wasn't really paying all that much attention to my surroundings that night, she reminded herself. I'd been a little preoccupied looking for the hidden compartment in the wall where the Book of the Dead was. Involuntarily, she glanced in the direction of the wall, where the slim hidden door still hung open from her discovery. She stood, glad to discover that she was unhurt, and walked over to examine the compartment. It was still empty.
Velma had managed to hang on to her phone, so she shone it around the basement now. There was the mattress she'd landed on, looking both somehow newer and more disgusting than the other things in the basement. It was marred with a huge, dark stain that was hard to make out in the light of her phone flashlight. Not wanting to think too hard about the origin of that stain, Velma continued to move around the basement, searching for the exit.
She paused when she noticed a large wooden table with a stainless steel top. She vaguely remembered this from their first visit – Shaggy had said it was a butcher's table, hadn't he?
But that night, the table had been bare.
There was something on it now.
Something fleshy and bloody and definitely dead.
With a loud scream, Velma fell backward, dropping her phone and crashing into a cabinet with such force that her glasses flew off her face. She didn't care – if she didn't have her glasses, she didn't have to look at the butchered corpse on that table. Though the fact that she couldn't see did hinder her chances of getting out of the basement. And she didn't even have her spare glasses – they were in her messenger bag. With Shaggy.
Velma reached out in the darkness for something - anything - but her hands only grasped air. Trying to steady her breathing, she backed up into the corner of the dank basement, cursing her luck. Usually Daphne was the one who fell through trap doors and false walls. Though Velma was sure that even Daphne had never stumbled into something this gruesome. If she stayed against the wall, she wouldn't have to see that butcher's table again.
Her stomach turned at the mere thought and she sank to the ground.
She needed to get out of here. But that was hard to do when she couldn't see two feet in front of her. And of course, it didn't help that she'd lost her glasses in her hurry to get away from the butcher's table.
Bile rose in her throat, and she forced her mind to think about something else. Her glasses would have to stay down here - there was no way she could go back for them. Besides, Shaggy had her spare glasses. She just needed to find him, even if she was still upset.
"Velma?"
Daphne's voice! It was far away - definitely not in the basement. It sounded like it was coming from the top of the stairs. But which way were the stairs? Velma stumbled in the direction she thought the staircase was, but bumped into something - a bookcase, or a cabinet? - and the contents crashed to the ground.
"Relma!"
That was unmistakably Scooby's voice, coming from the same direction as Daphne's.
"I'm here!" she called, picking herself up from the floor.
"Are you alright?" Nova this time, her normally calm voice uncharacteristically anxious.
Velma nodded, even though obviously none of her friends could see it. "I'm okay. But I can't see anything - it's too dark. Can you get me out of here?"
"I think the door is locked from your side," Fred spoke up. Velma heard him jiggling a handle. "We could try to break it down."
"No!" Velma shouted, panicked. She couldn't let them down here, not after what she'd seen. "Keep talking, I'll make my way up the stairs so I can try to unlock the door. I lost my glasses though - is Shaggy there? He should have my spare ones."
There was long silence from the other side of the door.
"Hello?" Velma called.
"He's not with you?" asked Daphne, her tone worried.
"No!" Velma cried. "Why would he be with me?"
"He was with you when we split up," Fred reminded her.
Of course, the others didn't know that Shaggy and Velma had argued and stormed away from each other. All anger forgotten, Velma's heart hammered in her chest. "He's not here," she told them. "I'm alone."
She heard Scooby whimper. "Rhere's Raggy?" he worried.
Velma's breath came in short, rapid bursts as she sank to the ground again, remembering the grisly sight on the butcher's table. She hadn't paid very close attention to the gore. But her mind went back to what she'd read in the Book of the Dead that morning. What if…?
No. No. She would not entertain the thought. Witches weren't real. That book wasn't real. The stories in it weren't real. They couldn't be, no matter what the gang had seen in this town.
But then where was Shaggy?
"Scooby, you and Nova go find him," she called, trying to keep her voice steady.
There was no answer. Maybe they'd already gone.
"Fred? Daph?" Velma called again. "Are you still there?"
But they didn't respond either.
"Guys?" Velma yelled. "Hello?"
Still nothing.
Heart pounding, she called them twice more, but they didn't answer. They were gone, and she was alone.
Suddenly, through her blurry vision, Velma became aware of a movement in her periphery. She whirled around and gasped. A strange figure on the other side of the room seemed to materialize out of thin air. Velma didn't need her glasses to know that it was the pale woman. She curled against the wall in fear, remembering now. This was how her story had ended. Trapped in a dark room with her friends incapacitated, the boy she loved gone, and a pale, spectral figure gliding ever closer.
Sponge: ANYWAY again, I'm truly sorry for the long-ass wait. 2024 got off to a rough start, but I'm feeling like I can get back on the horse now! I'm still working on the final chapters so I hope to have the next installment ready by this time next week. In the meantime, your reviews have fed my soul and I can't tell you how grateful I've been for them. Keep them coming, and I'll see you soon!