Chapter 08

I'm not going to bore you with how we convinced Shaggy and Scooby to be the bait again. Needless to say, it was transactional and involved Scooby Snax.

When we made it back to the Weatherby Mansion, Mr. Weatherby was waiting for us. "Sharon is upstairs in her suite. I hope she is sleeping."

Daphne looked around. "Where is the staff?"

"Oh. They've all been terminated. The decisions they made when my daughter's health was in jeopardy were indefensible."

As a member of the working class, I wished I could have disagreed.

Fred stepped forward. "Mr. Weatherby, we think that your brother is going to be in the Kingston Mansion tonight, expecting to take receipt of your family's fortune."

In a fit of common sense, I interrupted. "If you want to call the police right now and get them involved, you can."

Mr. Weatherby pondered for a few seconds. "No. Let's wait until we're sure. Then we can call them in."

Fred gave me a sidelong look. He was vindicated. For the record, whenever the old, rich, white guy agrees with your logic, find new logic. There. That sounds more like me.

Fred gleefully outlined our plan to Mr. Weatherby and it is amazing how quickly things get done when a rich person wants them done. Before the sun set, we had a fully-operational smoke machine, a portable projector, multiple wireless motion sensors, and a silent generator all delivered and installed at Kingston Mansion.

In addition, we relocated a curtain from a window to in front of a built-in bookshelf and rigged up an angled clear plastic screen for the projection of ghostly apparitions.

And, of course, as with any Fred-designed trap, we had a heavy, weighted net and a ridiculously ornate treasure chest.

We were ready and didn't have long to wait.

Just as the sun was setting, my phone informed me that a motion sensor alarm had been triggered in the rear of the old mansion. Fred, Daphne, and I were hiding on the second floor and Scooby and Shaggy were down below. Shaggy had spent the afternoon rigging up a saddle-like contraption so that Scooby could carry the ornate treasure chest on his back. Scooby has mumbled something about 'not being a horse' under his breath throughout the fittings.

I texted Shaggy. It's time.

Down below, we heard Shaggy playing his part to the audience of one. "Yoo-hoo! Mr. Ghost! I'm here with the fortune! Yoo-hoo!"

Then we heard Stuart's pathetic attempt to disguise his voice. "Ah! Good! You've brought the fortune. How fortunate—for you. Stay! Until I see with my own eyes."

We held our breaths to see how he would react to the old magazines with which we had filled the treasure chest.

His voice boomed out in a childish, petulant whine. "It's a trick! I'll turn you to bones!"

The next part of the plan was the highest risk to Shaggy and Scooby—although we didn't tell them that. They were supposed to run to the end of a dead-end hallway while Fred was getting the smoke machine going. They would delay him as long as they could by hiding in the alcoves behind the curtains we had moved there and then lead him back toward us where we could use the projector against the smoke to frighten his childlike mind and herd him directly underneath where we were standing.

Suddenly there was a howl of pain and my heart jumped into my throat. But it wasn't Shaggy's voice. Somehow, Stuart had been injured but the sound of pounding footfalls downstairs told me that the plan was still afoot.

Fred returned to our interior balcony. "I can hear the ghost coming. Get ready for phase two!"

Shaggy and Scooby showed up seconds later.

Fred looked at Shaggy. "All set, Shaggy?"

"All set. Let's go!"

I don't know why, but Shaggy seemed to almost be enjoying himself on this one. Maybe it was because we knew it was nothing supernatural and Stuart was no physical threat to Shaggy, Fred, or Scooby. And Daphne and I together could probably take him down, as well.

The smoke seemed to have confused Stuart and he was walking towards us rubbing his right hand with his left. Fred projected a previously-recorded image of Shaggy onto the smoke in front of the ghost.

Stuart yelled out, "Stop! Or I'll mummify you!"

When Stuart reached out to grab him, the image disappeared and reappeared a few feet away. Stuart came up grasping at air. "Wait? Hold it!" Stuart was clearly confused.

Then Fred changed the image to one of Stuart dressed as the ghost. Then he added another. And then another. Stuart was looking back and forth at the different images that surrounded him. To me, it was an obvious ruse but Stuart's child-brain wasn't processing it. "This place is really haunted!"

"Now watch what he does when he sees the tape of you, Scooby!" Fred whispered. He was enjoying himself almost too much. But it was so rare for one of his traps to work exactly as planned that I gave him some slack.

The last projection was of Scooby Doo giving his most frightening growl. But the image was enlarged four times against the artificial fog.

Stuart's voice was now shrill with terror. "On no! That does it!"

The last part of the plan was Daphne's. She had psychoanalyzed Stuart and assumed that he would head for where he felt safe. We hoped that we had correctly figured that out.

He ran from the Kingston Mansion with us in hot pursuit and made straight to the mausoleum. Leaving all of the doors open behind him, he crossed through the mausoleum, opened the secret exit and ran through the tunnel in the darkness to the secret room in the Weatherby's basement where he had imprisoned Sharon.

What we were supposed to find there was Mr. Weatherby waiting with the police and with Sharon to identify Stuart as her kidnapper. But all we found was Mr. Weatherby standing alone in the exit from the secret room to the basement. Stuart stopped in the middle of the room and, on seeing Mr. Weatherby, tried to turn back down the tunnel only to be stopped by our entrance from that direction.

Mr. Weatherby's voice was calm. "Stuart, it's over."

Stuart's pathetic ghost make-up began to swing off as he whipped his face back and forth between Mr. Weatherby and us. He finally realized that his brother was right. It was over. "Why do you get all of the money? Half of that should be mine!"

"It was. You gave it away to a charlatan."

"That wasn't my fault!"

The tone of Mr. Weatherby's voice changed. It got somehow colder. "You kidnapped my daughter. You risked her life and damaged her mental well-being."

A small silhouette appeared from the basement behind Mr. Weatherby. Just as the light from the secret room hit her face and I recognized Sharon, she pointed at Stuart and screamed. "He touched me! He touched me in a bad way like they teach at school!"

For a few seconds, there was total silence. And then I was on my hands and knees with a heavy weight on top of me. I was confused and didn't understand what was happening. I couldn't hear anything but a brain-fogging ringing in my ears. I saw nothing because my eyes were squeezed tightly shut. The first sense that came back to me was smell and I smelled something burning. There was an acrid smoke which I was breathing in through my mouth.

I forced my eyes open just as my elbows gave way and the weight on top of me pressed me to the ground. I still couldn't see anything and my panic was mounting. I screamed.

I almost heard something as if I was listening underwater. But it was more vibration than sound. The weight lifted off of me and I realized that it was Shaggy. He had tackled me and forced me to the ground. He lunged away from me and covered something that was on the floor. I made out another shadow as being Scooby Doo running from the room. All of this occurred in a silence covered by the horrible ringing.

Fred grabbed Mr. Weatherby and held him roughly which made no sense until my eyes focused on what was about two feet away from my face. It was Stuart's face. He was making a motion with his mouth that looked like exaggerated chewing. His eyes were wildly darting around the room. Until they weren't. They just stopped and went dead—like turning out a light.

Fred wrestled Mr. Weatherby out of the room and Shaggy rolled off of the item on which he had dove. It was large pistol. My frantic thoughts began to coalesce and give me a retroactive picture of what had happened. Mr. Weatherby had shot his brother. The gunshot in the small, enclosed room had deafened and stunned me. Shaggy had reacted quickly, knocked me to the ground, and placed his body between me and the threat. When Mr. Weatherby had dropped the weapon, Shaggy had jumped on top of it to keep all of us safe. That was the last time I ever thought of Shaggy Rogers as a coward.

I put my hands out to press myself up from the floor and my left hand sank into a shallow puddle. For some inane reason, I brought it to my nose and sniffed. It smelled like an old penny.

I made it to my knees and started taking deep breaths trying to ward off shock. Daphne was pressed into the corner, staring into space. I crawled over to her and shared what little knowledge I had. "Breathe deeply through your mouth." My deafened ears couldn't hear my own words. There was no way that Daphne could. The only thing I could think to do was crawl the rest of the way over and sit next to her. I know that I probably should have wrapped her in a reassuring embrace but I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

Through the door, I saw a movement out in the basement. It was Fred's fist being raised to strike. He had Mr. Weatherby on the ground and Fred was responding as he always did to sudden emotional stimuli—with rage. But the fist stopped at its apogee and my eyes focused through the swirling wisps of cordite smoke onto Sharon's face. I could also see the back of Fred's head as he looked at her and stopped his punch in mid-swing.

Shaggy was now sitting up in the center of the secret room, hugging his knees, and with tears streaming down his face. The widening puddle of Stuart's blood oozed over and began to stain Shaggy's trousers. I held up my left hand and saw the red-brown stain of the blood dripping from my palm down my forearm.

Sharon screamed and continued to scream.

It was two months before my sixteenth birthday.