Chapter 3: Botanical Brutality
The silence after Ella’s voice faded was brittle. Velma broke it, her whisper hoarse with anger. “They can’t be volatile. They’re inanimate objects. Her psychic influence is limited to kinetic energy transfer through—”
“Velma,” Fred snapped, his voice low. He was looking at Daphne, who stood rigid, her face a mask of aftermath. Her hands hung at her sides, clenched into loose fists. She didn’t meet his eyes.
“Sorry,” Velma muttered, her own anger collapsing into helpless guilt. “Are you… can you walk?”
Daphne gave a tiny, tight nod. Every small movement was a fresh reminder. The pain was no longer sharp; it had settled into a deep, humiliating throb, a constant presence she had to carry. “Yeah,” she managed, the word raw.
Fred took a shaky breath. “Right. We can’t stay here. This room is a… a toolkit for her.” He eyed the shelving warily, expecting another volume to launch. “We find another door. Keep moving.”
Shaggy and Scooby peeled themselves out of the urn with a scrape of pottery. Scooby was trembling so violently his tags jingled a frantic rhythm. “Reah!Rove! Anywhere!”
They moved as a tight, wounded flock toward the only other exit from the library, a low, arched door shrouded in shadows. Fred tried the handle. It was cold brass, and it turned with a surprisingly smooth click.
Beyond was a short, tiled passageway that reeked of damp earth and something sickly-sweet. The air grew humid, clinging to their skin. At the end of the passage, a wall of grimy glass panes steamed from the other side.The conservatory.
It was a cathedral of decay. The soaring glass roof was webbed with cracks and dark stains, filtering the moonlight into a sickly green gloom. The plants had won a war decades ago. Towering ferns with fronds like ragged flags choked the space. Creeping vines, thick as Shaggy’s wrists, snaked up rusted iron pillars and across the stone-flagged floor. Palm trees stretched skeletal fingers toward the broken panes. The air was a thick soup of peat rot, blooming fungus, and that ever-present lavender.
“Like, worst botanical garden ever,” Shaggy whispered, his nose wrinkling. “I don’t even think there’s a snack bar.”
Fred stepped cautiously onto the mossy stone. “It’s a way through. Might lead to the gardens, an outside wall.”
They ventured in, the humidity immediately beading on their foreheads. The path was a narrow snake between monstrous leafy growths. The silence was different here—not the dry hush of the library, but a wet, breathing quiet, punctuated by the occasional plink of condensation dropping from above.
It was Velma who noticed the etchings first. She stopped, her glasses fogging slightly. “Fascinating. The glass.” She gestured at the panes.
They weren’t just dirty. They were covered in faint, milky-white markings. Hundreds of them. Handprints. Some large, some small, all pressed against the glass from the inside as if trying to escape. They glowed with a faint internal light, casting a ghostly radiance on the leaves.
“They’re… all the same,” Daphne said, her voice quiet. She was staring, not at the pain in her body, but at the ghostly record on the walls.
“Not exactly,” Fred said, his investigative tone returning despite everything. He pointed. “Look at the angles.The spacing. It’s like…”
“Like someone was put against the glass,” Velma finished, her face paling. “Repeatedly.”
A low, delighted chuckle rippled through the dripping leaves. It seemed to come from the trumpet of a giant, wilted lily. “Guests often find my collection impressive,” Ella’s voice murmured. “I’ve had so many over the years. Caretakers, trespassers, foolish young people… they all leave their mark. Eventually.”
The air didn’t just hum this time; it vibrated. From the dark, loamy beds on either side of them, vines began to uncoil. They moved with a sinister, vegetative intelligence, slithering across the stone with a dry, whispering rustle. Some were smooth and dark. Others were studded with thorns the color of dried blood.
“Not again!” Shaggy yelped, jumping behind Scooby.
The vines weren’t aiming for their ankles.
A thick, smooth tendril shot out from a nest of philodendron, wrapping swiftly around Shaggy’s left thigh just above the knee. It constricted, not painfully tight, but firm as a belt. Before he could even shout “Zoinks!”, another, thinner vine, tipped with a cluster of sharp thorns, lashed out from the other side.
Thwip!
It struck the back of his thigh, right through his thin trousers. The sound was a sharp, wet sting. Shaggy screamed, a high-pitched shriek of pure surprise and pain. A faint, glowing red line, mirroring the thorn pattern, bloomed on the fabric.
“It’s got me! Like, a vegetable is beating me up!” he wailed, trying to twist away. The holding vine tightened, keeping him upright and in place.
Across the path, Scooby was having his own crisis. Two ropy vines had ensnared his hind legs. A third, a whip-like frond from a fern, rose up and delivered two rapid, stinging cracks to his furry backside.
“RAH-HOO!” Scooby howled, bucking wildly. His eyes were wide with canine betrayal. The natural world itself was against him.
Fred lunged to help, but the floor beneath him erupted. A network of creeping ivy tangled around his boots, rooting him to the spot. A heavy, woody stem swung from a potted orange tree, its purpose horribly clear. It swatted him hard across the seat of his pants with a solid thwack that echoed in the humid space.
“Gah!” Fred grunted, more offended than injured, struggling against the green bonds.
Velma, meanwhile, was analyzing even as she retreated. “Phytokinesis! Or telekinetic manipulation of cellulose structures! The energy signature must be—OW!”
A supple, thornless vine, smooth and cool as leather, had curled around her wrist. It didn’t hurt. It tugged, pulling her arm gently but insistently toward the glass wall, toward one of the glowing handprints. Another vine, this one with broad, flat leaves, patted her rear twice with a sharp, almost scolding rhythm.
“Stop that!” Velma swatted at the leaf with her free hand, her face flushing with a mix of indignation and something else—a startled, involuntary jolt that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Through the jungle, Ella materialized, sitting elegantly on a twisted bonsai tree that shouldn’t have supported her weight. She was clearer here, her lavender dress seeming to bloom from the flowers around her. She watched Shaggy and Scooby’s frantic, slapping dance with a smirk.
“The coward and his beast. So noisy. The thorns encourage… volume.” She gestured, and another thorny vine snapped against Shaggy’s other thigh. He shrieked, hopping on one foot while trapped by the first vine.
Scooby, trying to bite the vine holding him, got a stinging lash across his nose for his trouble. He whined, tucking his tail.
But Ella’s gaze drifted past their comical suffering. It found Daphne, who had frozen near a marble birdbath filled with black water. She wasn’t being attacked. The vines near her swayed, but did not strike.
“You,” Ella said softly. “You’re quiet again. Learned your lesson, have we?”
Daphne said nothing. Her whole body was a single tense wire. She could feel the memory of the hairbrush, a deep echo of the pain currently being inflicted on her friends. The glowing handprints on the glass seemed to pulse.
“They’re so loud,” Ella sighed, as Shaggy yelped from another strike. “It’s tiresome. Perhaps you could… demonstrate proper composure? Show them how a young lady accepts correction?”
The meaning was clear. A hot-cold rush shot through Daphne. Shame. Dread. And a terrifying, unwelcome thread of anticipation. The choice was being offered again, and it felt less like a choice and more like a destiny.
“Don’t you touch her!” Fred roared, finally ripping one foot free of the ivy. He stumbled, off-balance.
Ella didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were locked on Daphne. A single, sleek vine, devoid of thorns, slid across the stones toward Daphne’s feet. It stopped, its tip raised slightly, like a pointing finger. Then it gently, almost tenderly, tapped the back of her calf.
The touch was a question.
Daphne’s breathing was shallow. She looked at Fred, struggling. At Velma, whose scientific curiosity had been replaced by wide-eyed horror as the vine guided her hand closer to the glowing print on the glass. At Shaggy and Scooby, who were receiving a frantic, stingy volley from the thorny whips.Her role.
She took a step.Then another. She walked past the tapping vine, toward Ella. The path seemed to clear for her, the hostile vegetation pulling back.
“Daphne, no!” Velma cried.
But Daphne didn’t stop. She stood before the ghost, near the marble birdbath. Her reflection in the dark water was pale, fractured.
“Good girl,” Ella purred. She nodded toward a low, stone bench overgrown with moss. It was positioned directly beneath a large cluster of the glowing handprints.
Daphne walked to it. The moss was cool and damp. She didn’t need instructions this time. The script was written in her bones. She bent over, placing her hands on the chilly stone of the bench’s back. She didn’t look at her friends. She fixed her eyes on a single, fat droplet of water tracing a path down a green glass pane.
Ella drifted from her perch. She didn’t use a vine. She simply raised her own shimmering hand.
The first smack was not the deep thud of the hairbrush. It was a crisp, clear crack of spectral energy against tense muscle, sharp and shocking. It stole Daphne’s breath.
A choked sound escaped her, but she didn’t scream. She held onto the stone, her knuckles white.
The second landed an inch below, a twin bolt of lightning. Her body jerked, but she stayed in place.
From across the conservatory, Shaggy’ thorny lashings stopped. Scooby’s vines loosened. They all watched, horrified and mesmerized, as Daphne took her punishment in near-silence. Each sharp, ghostly impact was a punctuation in the dripping quiet. She flinched, she gasped, but she didn’t cry out. Her shoulders trembled with the effort of containment.
Fred stopped struggling, his face a grimace of helpless rage. Velma’s vine released her wrist, the lesson seemingly concluded. The conservatory held its breath.
Ella delivered a final, measured stroke, then let her hand fall. She looked down at Daphne, who was shaking, her forehead pressed against her clenched fists on the stone.
“Acceptable,” Ella said, but her voice lacked the cruel satisfaction from the library. It was almost… respectful. “You may rejoin your friends.”
As Daphne slowly, painfully straightened up, the ghost’s form began to shimmer and fade. “The east wall,” Ella’s voice echoed, now disembodied. “There’s a door behind the hanging Wisteria. It’s never locked. I do so hate damaged goods trying to claw their way out through my glass.”
And she was gone. The vines retreated into the soil and shadows. The oppressive, directed energy lifted, leaving only the damp, rotting silence.
Daphne turned. Her face was streaked with silent tears, her jaw tight. She met no one’s eyes.
“Like,” Shaggy whispered into the void, rubbing his stinging legs. “What just happened?”
Fred finally pulled his other foot free. He walked to Daphne, his hand hovering near her shoulder, not daring to touch her. “Daph…”
“Don’t,” she said, the word a brittle shard. She walked past him, a stiff, careful gait, toward the ominous curtain of hanging purple flowers on the east wall. “She said there’s a door.”
Velma exchanged a look with Fred, a look full of unscientific fear and dawning, awful understanding. They weren’t just being haunted. They were being curated. And Daphne had just been promoted from a guest in the collection to its star exhibit.
Scooby, sniffing the air, let out a low, confused whine. The scent of lavender was already fading, replaced by the deeper, darker smell of wet stone and the lingering, coppery tang of fear.