Daphne continued to dance to the music. Velma could feel her hands shaking... "This can not be real... this must be a dream... This makes no sense!" Still... There was a band playing! There was a buffet! She had just come in from a walk through the formal gardens! "But everything was in a state of ruin when I went to bed. This isn’t real. If it was, Scooby and Shaggy would already be eating at that buffet..... DAPHNE!", she screamed! Daphne stopped her dance and looked over at Velma. "Come on out here and dance!" "No!", Velma screamed back, "This is not real! This is very wrong!" With her eyes closed, Velma heard the music stop.......

Slowly, she opened one eye. The morning sun was beaming in, but through a crack in the roof. Daphne’s face looked like she was about to burst out in tears. The room was a wreck! Smashed and rotting furniture covered the floor. Mold covered the damp rotting walls. Daphne began to cry. "What’s happening?", she asked. Velma shook her head. "I don’t know, but it’s happening to both of us. Lets go find the guys." The two tried to make their way up the staircase, but is was very hard to do as the stairs were also covered in rubble. "Ok", Daphne said, "We came up these stairs last night and it was not like this! In the blink of an eye, this place has turned from a dream to a nightmare!" Velma was perplexed. There was no logical explanation for what just happened. In fact, logic appeared to have taken a vacation! The went down the hall and found the room Freddy, Shaggy, and Scooby were in. They didn’t have to knock. The door was a pile of rotted wood on the floor. "Wake up!" Velma yelled. Fred leaped up in a start! Shaggy and Scooby groaned and rolled over. Fred looked about the room. "Boy! This place looks a lot worse in daylight!" Shaggy and Scooby both stretched and yawned. "What’s for breakfast?" Velma chuckled, "Well, if you’d been up about fifteen minutes ago, there would have been a whole buffet!" Freddy looked puzzled. Daphne and Velma related the strange experience they had been through. "Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?", Freddy asked. "Well", Velma said, "If we were, we not only had the same dream, but we both sleep walked to the same place! Of course, that probably would be the only explanation I would have for it." Freddy got out of the bed, which now looked more like a pile of rubble as well. "I don’t remember this place looking this bad...."

Shaggy and Scooby yawned a second time. "Well, I think I can say that me and Scooby had our first good nights sleep in a hunted mansion ever!" Velma scratched her chin. "Those two are usually the ones running around freaked out, and they slept! This is really strange.... Whatever is effecting us, seems to be having its greatest impact on Daphne and me." Freddy looked around. "I don’t know Velma, I mean, I remember this being a bedroom last night, not a rubbish heap!" All five proceeded out into the hallway and to the stairs. Freddy worked his way down the staircase. "Holy Mackerel! These stairs weren’t like this last night!" Velma picked her way down following Freddy. "They weren’t this bad five minutes ago! Whatever is happening here is getting worse!" All five made it to the bottom of the stairs before it hit them.... "What about Misty?", Fred said. All were thinking the same thought. "We need to find her! Maybe she can fill us in! Scooby, Shaggy, You two check the garden. Daphne, Velma, you two check the first floor. I’ll check the basement."

Fred soon discovered that the basement was a lost cause. Although three of the floors in the mansion were underground, they were filled with water all the way up to the staircase that led to the main floor. Daphne and Velma were not having any better luck. A full tour of the first floor only produced one room after another in the same condition... Ruined! If was only Scooby that was having any luck, and that luck was bad!

"Fred! Daphne! Velma! Come quickly! Scooby found something!" All came charging out of the building and headed down a marble walkway through what had been a garden, then descended steps that led down to a fountain that was part of an earthen wall behind the mansion. Shaggy and Scooby were standing by a shoe that was laying in front of the fountain. Daphne reached down and picked it up. "One thing I know is shoes, and this was one of the shoes Misty was wearing last night!" Shaggy nodded his head. "I thought it might be. But, what happened to Misty? Like, is she walking around barefoot?" Freddy took the shoe and looked it over. "I have a real bad feeling about this! Scooby, do you think you can pick up the scent and find her?" Scooby shook his head no! Velma reached in her pocket. "Hey, I know it’s an old trick, but..... I’ll give you a Scooby Snack!" Scooby looked at her with a look in his eyes that just screamed, "What, are you kidding??"

Reluctantly, Scooby sniffed the shoe and headed on his way with his nose to the ground. The rest of the gang followed in tow. They followed him up through the overgrown gardens toward what looked like a gazebo that was made out of stone. He crossed through it and all came to a halt directly behind it. Daphne gasped! Fred was the first to speak. "It looks like a fresh grave...." Velma walked over to the soft, dug up earth. "It’s the right size.. I think your right. I have a nasty feeling that we just found Misty!" Daphne was reaching over to pick up a shiny gold object. Velma stopped her. "If this is a grave, we shouldn’t touch anything. This is out of our league. Lets get the police involved." Freddy nodded. "Velma’s right. It looks like a gold wedding band, but let it be. Lets go into town and get the cops.

As the Mystery Machine pulled away, all looked back toward the mansion which was disappearing behind the trees. Little did they know, that was the last time they would ever see it!

All five entered the front door of the township building and went to the police desk. Officer Jim Thorp greeted them. Freddy, as usual, spoke on behalf of the gang. He told Jim about the call, how they had stayed over at the mansion, and how they had found what looked like a freshly dug grave. Jim looked very angry! "What are you talking about! That place was torn down twenty years ago!" Daphne chimed in, "That can’t be! We just came from there! We slept there last night!" Velma tried to add an air of calm. "Sir, a lot of strange things have happened in the last 24 hours. Wasn’t there some odd clause in the township charter that the mansion could not be taken as long as a relative was living there?" Jim stopped cold. Not many people knew about that one. "Old Ed practically owned this town. He certainly built it! It’s true, as long as someone in the family lived there, the township was prevented from taking the building no matter how much was owed in back taxes! In 1979, the last member of the family disappeared. A developer had been wanting to buy the property at auction to build a housing tract. He was pushing the township. Then Misty disappeared, and the house was vacant. The township took the property and it was sold to the developer. That was 1980, the mansion was then demolished." Velma looked shocked! "Did you say Misty? That was the.... er..." Velma fell silent. She tried to think of how to say this in a way that Jim would believe her. "There’s a chance we found a grave. She might be in it..." Jim stood quietly. "Well, we’ll send a car out to investigate. Give us about an hour and we’ll meet you guys out there."

Freddy rounded the corner and headed through the stone gates toward the mansion. Something was very, very wrong.  All looked out of the windshield of the Mystery Machine in disbelief. The mansion was nowhere in sight! The sides of the streets were lined with houses. About 500 feet in, the street veered to the left. Freddy stopped the van and all of them got out. "This makes no sense!" The only thing that looked familiar was a piece of stone fence at the end of the road. Once again they piled in the van. Freddy drove back out the gateway and down the street. Making a right, he followed the road until he found a side street that looked like it should cut into the estate. Once again the only thing they found were houses. He continued up the street until it ended in a cul-de-sac. In the center was what looked like a statue. Once again, they got out. Velma walked over to the statue. "I remember this.. It was in the center of the far fountain. The mansion should be about a half of a mile in that direction." Velma pointed towards what looked like woods. Freddy tried to get his bearings, then all jumped in the van. Once again Freddy back-tracked out to the main road, drove down a ways, then entered a side street. About one thousand feet in, the road divided. Freddy turned to the left and followed it through what looked like yet another development. There was a break between the houses, and something came into view. Freddy jammed on the brakes and all leaped out of the van! "I don’t believe it!", he gasped.

The five hiked the short way up the hillside into a small open plain. A set of stone columns was all that remained of the house itself. Freddy and Daphne quickly ran to where the back garden had been. The marble steps were still there and they followed them down to where they had found the shoe by the fountain. Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma headed over to where the stone gazebo was. It was still standing! Grass had long since covered where the grave had been, but there was still some irregularity in the ground. About at that moment the police car showed up. Everyone gathered around where they were standing. Officer Jim joined them along with a younger officer named Pete. Pete spoke up. "Hey, I’ve heard of you kids... Well, I guess your not kids anymore, but your work is famous!" Jim looked a little surprised at Pete, but now took them all a little more seriously. Velma spoke for the gang. "I don’t know how to describe what we have gone through here, but the bottom line is we believe this is Misty’s grave." Jim looked over to her. "Nothing you guys have said has made any sense, but this disruption in the soil does look an awful lot like a grave. The case of Misty Cromwell was never solved, so I am going to call a forensic team in and we will investigate." As strange as your statement is, I am going to have Officer Pete take it, and we’ll call you if we find something."

We made most of the whole trip home in silence. What could any of us say? We had stayed somewhere that hadn’t existed in twenty years! It wasn’t too long after our return that we received a call from the Whitemarsh Township police. It was a grave. They found Misty’s body along with the construction hammer that had been used to kill her. And...... The calling card of the killer! It was his engraved wedding ring! It must have fallen off while he was trying to burry her. In the darkness, he had never seen where he had lost it! The killer: A man named Jack Roach! He was the developer who purchased the estate at tax auction, and made quite a fortune too! So, what had we just experienced? I had no idea. Nothing was logical. Daphne had some ideas though... We talked about it several weeks later.......

"Velma, your trying to think this out in a logical fashion! Use your heart instead! Here’s what I think happened: For some reason, on the twentieth anniversary of her death, Misty’s soul reached out to us in the form of what seamed to us to be a phone call. Her soul wanted us to find her killer even though what she was asking us about was a problem that she was having, she was living twenty years in the past!  I think old Ed was trying to chase her out of the mansion because he knew she was about to be murdered. Somehow, we got drawn into her world. It was through her eyes, and her thoughts that we experienced the night it as it happened twenty years before...." 

Velma interrupted, "Where did we actually sleep?" By this time, Scooby and Shaggy had entered the room and were listening to Daphne’s explanation... Daphne continued:

"Who knows! In the van. On the grass. What does it matter! This was about Misty.  We lived that night with her! She was so sure there would be a haunting that night, but old Ed’s ghost had changed roles..... He had given up on getting his head-strong grand niece out of the building, and came that night as an angel of death.  Not some grim reaper, but someone to make the transition easier.  He did this by taking her into his world with his memories of life at the mansion the way it was back when he was alive. We got caught up in that the morning we woke up! Every looked like it did back in the 1920s’ ! Then, when she passed, it all started to fade away...  Things lingered that way long enough for us to discover that she had been murdered, and that there was enough evidence to solve the crime! We left, and that’s when the real world came crashing back!"

"Wow......." Velma sat back in the chair as Fred entered the room and gave Daphne a kiss. "Well", she said, "At least you guys seem to be getting along better! As for the mansion, it’s going to take a while for me to process what you just said. From that prospective, things do fit together." Daphne smiled, "Velma, not everything in life can be processed by the brain! Some things need to be processed by the heart!" Velma gave out a low whistle. "Daphne, I think this time around, you were the smart one, and I was the ditz!" Daphne laughed, "Fall down any holes lately? You need to do that to fill out the danger prone part!" They all laughed. Even Velma caught herself laughing!

     The End!