Us... But not quite
Part 1
Crossover: Mystery incorporated x My Scooby Gang
Summary: After falling through a portal while they were being chased by their most horrifying monster yet, The Scooby Gang finds themselves in a place they have never been before. A place called Crystal Cove.
No one saw the portal.
Shaggy was running ahead of them, each step faster them the last, Scooby in rapid pursuit. Fred, Velma, and Daphne were not far behind while the ghost from Blackhill facility loomed over their backs way to close for comfort.
The hallways of the old medical facility were narrow, without a window on sight, either covered in mold or falling apart. Each step taken resonated in the walls and a thousand same steps followed you, echoing in the stale air. The light system was barely functional, flickering on and off like it was candlelight on the wind, each movement made in the weak light or in the complete void with only their lanterns to lead the way.
Shaggy spent most of the night handheld by one of the gang while his other hand was firmly attached to Scoob’s collar. Since the gang started dating, Shaggy had shed his fears little by little, taking comfort and support from their presence and encouragement. For months he, and by extension Scooby, was getting more confident, especially with their acting and disguises.
“Like, its easier to be brave when you are pretending, you know?”Shaggy had said after a case. He was smiling from the back of the van, Daphne helping him sew one of his dresses back together after the skirts having being lacerated by the ghost lions from the Pongie circus, one of their more festive cases.
But there was something different in this particular mystery. And it was not only Shaggy that noticed.
The Blackhill scientist was a grotesque creature. There were local myths and legends that said that one of the lead scientists tried several experiments with himself as the guinea pig, trying to make himself something more than human. Something better.
But not even armed with this information was enough to prepare them.
His skin, rotten and blackened, was falling away from his body like rags. The fingers no longer had any flesh on them and the white bone looked more and more like claws the closer he got; where the right eye should be there were only maggots and darkness; and the smell… Shaggy, Daphne and Scooby, the three with the best noses on the group, were beyond nauseated when they made the first contact.
“It smells like something rotten. You know, like roadkill that was left for days in the rain and then put to dry in the Arizona sun” Daphne had said in a whisper. The absence of windows and precarious old led lights gave the place an eerie feeling keeping them all on edge.
“Yeah. Like, as if something started to eat it and then threw up all over the carcass” completed Shaggy, that had his hand on Daphne’s strong grip, whispering even softer them Daphne did. Scooby whimpered and got closer to his best friend.
Velma and Fred had walked just some steps ahead and hadn’t known what frightened them more: the roadkill description; the smell; or the fact that even with both of them whispering, they could hear them perfectly. No wind passed them by. No door creaked from years of disuse. There was no sign of the pitter-patter of the rain that they knew they left behind.
But what truly made them pause was when they noticed.
Their feet no longer made a sound on the marble floors.
This was when it appeared again.
Now they were running. Running, running, running. It was just behind them approaching slowly like it had all the time in the world. Each step it took, more and more of its skin graced the floor like rotten autumn leaves. But the most unsettling thing about it was the bottom half. Where in any other human-shaped being a pair of legs would be present, the Blackhill monster had… something else…
They could not see clearly over the flickering dim light. Only that it was big. Big, contorted, and decaying. Just like the rest of the creature.
Even running they could not take their eyes away from the thing. How its sheer presence consumed the entire dark corridor. How they were, even without knowing, running from its shadow as if it was a second entity entirely.
Maybe if they were more attentive they would have seen where the creature was leading them.
Maybe they would have seen the portal.
Falling, falling, falling. The portal appeared endless and void of anything. It was cold. Far colder them any cemetery they had ever wandered and darker them any night they had ever seen. There was no sound coming from nowhere. Even their screams refused to leave their throats.
There was no sound in the silence.
Grabbing each other for fear of being torn apart, they fell, and fell, and fell.
And then they stopped. They laid on the ground groning not too far apart from each other.
They were outside again and the sun was just starting to rise.
Fred was the first one to take a grasp on his senses.
“Hey gang, is everybody ok?” he said, crawling slowly to where Daphne was sited, one hand in her head, trying to make the world stop spinning for five seconds.
“If by Being Ok you actually mean I feel like a used spinning top, then yeah. I’m doing ok” Even Velma’s sassy voice sounded dizzy. Her glasses where nowhere to be seen. “What exactly was that thing?”
“To what are you referring to here? The sleep paralysis demon following us or the Alice in wonderland’s rabbit hole that we fell into?” Daphne was now standing, supported by Fred’s arms, cleaning her skirt the best she could. The world was still spinning, even if now in a more calm way.
“The portal, silly” Velma said, a little smile wanting to creep its way on her face. “The creep was what all the creeps are. It was probably just some dude in… to be fair, a really convincing costume…” here her voice vacillated a little. Even some of their most scary crooks didn’t pull this kind of… felling of dread from them.
“Well, man, if it was a crook in a suit we have found the most invested lunatic on the planet! Like, what did he do? Bathed in the remains of a poor cow somewhere in the local slaughterhouse??? That man stinks.” Shaggy said not too far away from them. Scooby was perched on his back like he was an extension of his body, the poor pooch still terrified from the entire ordeal.
Velma giggled and approached slowly the blurry form that had Shaggy’s voice. When she reached them, her clumsy fingers tried to discern with of the fluffy heads was Shaggy’s sandy hair or Scoob’s soft fur. When she found out which was a man, and with was a Dane, she asked Daphne for a Scooby Snack while she patted the pup between his ears. Scoob’s whines stopped almost immediately and he happily started wagging his tail.
“What a ham!” Said Fred when he approached arm in arm with Daphne, the promised treat already in hand.
While Scooby happily devoured his snack to the sound of the giggles of the gang, Shaggy started looking in his pockets. With a small Aha, he brandished a pair of red glasses like they were the most important artifact created by humans.
He slowly cupped Velma’s face with his hand while the other gently put the spare glasses over her eyes. When she finished adjusting them he leaned down and gave a little kiss to her nose, causing a new wave of giggles to escape her lips.
Scooby started snickering and slowly he left his perch on Shaggy’s back and took place by Daphne’s side, who had already forced the world back on its axis and was no longer using Fred as a beefy staff.
The atmosphere had regained its light, and the dread that had consumed them was now on the back of their heads.
“Ok gang, first things first. We have to figure out where exactly we are before we figure out how we got here. Velma, any ideas?” Fred started to look around, searching for something familiar on the small road they found themselves in.
“The air is windy and salty. This indicates that we are close to the coast, no more them five kilometers away I would say” Velma was looking around too, looking for any signs or tall buildings, but wherever they have landed it was more of a road in the middle of nowhere them anything.
“Shag, do you smell anything?” Daphne asked.
Shaggy had over the years of cooking and gardening developed a keen nose for all the foods and spices known to man, so much so that in one mystery he was able to locate a salt mine by smell alone. Since that day, the gang began to ask Shaggy what he smelled in the air. More times than not it was really useful for them to locate themselves, sometimes even give them clues. You would not believe what the local food said about a place.
He stopped looking around. Shaggy closed his eyes and straightened his back, slowly filling his lungs with the night air. Fred and Velma stayed quiet, waiting. He took two more deep breathes before he opened his eyes again.
“There is a restaurant up north, like, probably a trucker stop or the first and last food joint before you leave a town. It’s American food that’s for sure, but it appears to have some europian influence?” here he took another deep breath “Yeah, definitely europian. Spain, if I’m not mistaken” another deep breath “Velma was right, like, no one eats that much fish and clams if they are not close to the coast! Do you guys know how expensive it is to import clams to non-coast cities? Man, it’s almost an arm and a half!”
Shaggy started to widely gesticulated the more into the local cusine he got into. The lanky man could go for hours just talking about preposterous food prices and the most ecletic recipes know to human (and dog) kind.
“Ok, ok, Chef Rogers, we get it” Fred hugged Shaggy from behind, giving him a small kiss in the cheek “No matter how cute it is, now is not the time to get worked up on food prices”
Shaggy let himself relax agains his boyfriend’s chest and cuddled more into Fred’s warm arms, grumbling something about overpriced fish. Scooby was nodding his head saying something about expensive ralmon. Velma and Daphne laughed of how surreal it was that even the man’s dog appeared to have his broad culinary knowledge .
“Ok, so we are close to a Spanish influenced American coast town. So far so good. What you guys say that we go walking towards this road restaurant and see if we can find any more clues about where we fell on?” Said Daphne with one hand on her hip and the other pointing north, like she was one step away from starting a new adventure.
“Sounds good” Agreed Fred.
“The most logical” Said Velma.
“Restaurant! Yummy, yummy, yummy” Scooby was already licking his lips.
“Daph?” said Shaggy, having left Fred’s arms, now looking up at something.
“What?” She turned towards him, a questioning look in her blue eyes.
“You memorized the entire road map, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, and all the cities, towns, and historical sites from across America” she responded, not understanding where his line of thought was going.
“Where exactly Crystal Cove is them?”
“What?” They turned their heads towards Shaggy, then towards were his eyes laid.
Above their heads, a green sigh, one that they should have noticed before, read in big white letters:
CRYSTAL COVE. 3 MILES.
They all looked at Daphne, waiting for the answer.
But her face was getting paler and paler the longer she looked at the sign. Frowning, once in concentration, them in confusion followed by horror, her blue eyes turned to her lovers and their dog, with her words loaded with dread.
“There is no Crystal Cove”