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“Ruh-roh!”
Rattle, rattle, clunk, clunk, wheeze-shudder.
“That doesn’t sound good!” Daphne exclaimed as Fred pulled the Mystery Machine over to the side of the road. Fred shook his head in resignation and looked around at their surroundings.
“Time to grab a late lunch, I think, and then I’ll take a look at the engine!”
“Oh yeah, man! Food!” Shaggy interjected, piling out of the van and heading straight for The New Inn across the road, Scooby hard on his heels.
“I hope they allow dogs,” Velma commented as she followed at a more sedate pace.
Inside the Inn, Shaggy and Scooby were contemplating the menu. Fred, Daphne and Velma joined them as the brown-haired man singing under his breath behind the counter looked up and gave them a bright smile. Fred grimly reined Shaggy’s order in to an amount this size establishment could produce in a reasonable amount of time, and Velma asked if it would be a problem for Scooby to stay under their table.
“Oh, no, that’s quite fine, as long as he’s polite!” Hob (according to his name tag) reassured them. Then he turned away to start preparing their order, once again humming the little tune he’d been singing when they entered.
“That’s such a pretty tune he’s humming!” Daphne exclaimed as Fred took their number and turned to find a table for them.
Velma’s forehead wrinkled. “It has the tone progressions you’d expect from a tune from the late Middle Ages, but it’s not one of the ones I’m familiar with.”
“What are you saying?” Fred asked as they all slid into a booth, Scooby getting comfortable under the table where he had the best chance at scraps.
“It just seems weird that he’d casually sing such an old song,” Velma pondered.
“Yeah, and what’s with his weird name?” Shaggy asked.
“It’s a very early variation on Robert,” Velma explained.
“Ooh, do you think he’s immortal?” Daphne asked. “Because a time traveller wouldn’t just be serving food but an immortal might!”
The crew looked at her and nodded contemplatively.
“Oh, man! Like what if he’s a ghost!” Shaggy exclaimed. They all looked surreptitiously over at the man preparing their food.
“He’s not translucent,” Daphne pointed out.
“He’s not trying to scare people,” Velma added.
“We’ll put a pin in that one,” Fred decided. “What else do we have?”
“He could be a Chosen One, a valiant hero who spent hundreds of years in another land where time flows differently, like Narnia or something!” Daphne suggested, sighing romantically.
“Hmmm, that’s a good one,” Velma agreed. “I wonder if he still has magic now that he’s back?”
“He’s good-looking enough for it!” Fred pointed out as Shaggy nodded in affirmation. Then they paused in their speculation as Hob brought their drinks over to their table, still smiling as he distributed them and nodding in response to their thanks as he turned back to the counter, humming the same tune once again.
“Any other ideas?” Fred prompted once he was out of ear shot.
“It’s possible he was captured by fae, and only recently returned,” Velma suggested.
“Do you think he would tell us if we asked him?” Daphne wondered.
“Let’s try to figure it out first!” Fred said.
“Like, I’d kidnap him if I was a fae,” Shaggy admitted, stirring the ice cubes in his drink. “I don’t know though, like, what if he’s a vampire? That would be scary!”
“Ooh, yes!” Daphne exclaimed as the whole group shivered deliciously.
“Like, we should order something with lots of garlic, and then we’ll see if he can serve it!” Shaggy suggested enthusiastically.
“No more food, Shaggy!” Fred protested.
“He seems fine in the sunlight coming through the window,” Velma pointed out, as she sipped her smoothie.
“He may just be a very old vampire,” countered Daphne. “I know! We could stake him!”
“No!” shouted Fred, Velma and Shaggy, in tones of command, reason and terror.
“Scooby,” Fred ordered, ”when he comes over again, you sniff him to see if he smells like blood.”
“Ro rampire!” Scooby protested, shrinking back farther under the table.
“Oh, I’ve got another one!” Fred leaned in, gesturing with his mug. “What if he made a deal with the devil? For immortality in exchange for his soul? Or his first born, or something?”
“Oooh, that’s so evil!” Velma objected. “He had such a sunny smile, it’s hard to believe that of him!”
Daphne repeated a lesson they’d learned well in their time together: “You can’t always trust appearances!” The crew looked at Hob as he came out of the kitchen, trying to surreptitiously scan him for devil’s marks.
Hob approached with their food, once more giving them a bright smile. He put a plated sandwich in front of three of them and a plate with five sandwiches stacked on it in front of Shaggy.
“Do you need anything for your dog?” he asked, hunkering down to reach a hand out to Scooby.
“Could we have a bowl of water? And any meat scraps you have in the kitchen?” Fred requested.
“Sure thing!” After Scooby sniffed and licked his hand, he gave him a little scratch on the head and turned back to the kitchen. A moment later he was back with a couple bowls, one with water and one with scraps.
Scooby and Shaggy dug into their food as the rest of the gang watched him return to the counter. The door opened as he passed it, and they watched in fascination as he greeted the newcomer with “Hello, love!” and a kiss on the cheek. The tall, thin, milky pale man with wild black hair and a long black trench coat took a seat at the counter, and they could see as he started a conversation with Hob that he was familiar with the space as well as the man.
“If he was captured by fae, that’s the fae that took him!” Velma’s eyes were wide, but not even she was sure if it was curiosity, fear, or the compelling charisma of the stranger. She took a big bite of her sandwich, pretending not to watch the two men at the counter.
“I don’t know,” Daphne said, chasing the olive that rolled off her sandwich and across the table when she took out the toothpick, “he doesn’t seem mind controlled, or resentful of a captor.” It was true, Velma thought. The two just looked very much in love.
Shaggy finally looked up from his meal. “Oh, like, that one’s the vampire, for real!”
“Ro rud!” Scooby argued.
“No blood, eh?” Fred considered. “What if your first idea was right, Shaggy, and he’s a ghost, and this guy is Death???”
“Yeah, that could be! He fits some of the mythological stereotypes for Death characters!” Velma enthused.
“Oh no!” shuddered Shaggy, “Not Death! That’s almost scary enough to turn me off my food! Almost!” he clarified, squishing his remaining three sandwiches together and taking a big bite.
”Or,” Daphne countered, swallowing a mouthful, ”what if he was in Narnia and this is the wizard who brought him back to Earth!?”
“He looks very wizardly, I could buy that,” Fred nodded, picking up the second half of his sandwich. “I can also see why he’d choose to stay here with Hob!”
“Yeah,” Daphne agreed. “Hob’s very good looking, and so is the wizard, for that matter! They look besotted with each other!”
“On the other hand,” contended Velma, toying with her crusts, “if it was a deal with the devil, this could be the devil. Maybe he’s some kind of incubus demon. Or would he be a succubus?” she wondered, squinting at him. Scooby moaned in fear from under the table.
“Ro Reath! Ro revil! Ro remon!”
Fred shook his head in sympathy as he considered his last bite. “There are too many options and not enough ways to narrow them down. He seems like a decent person. Maybe we should circle back to Daphne’s idea and just ask him.”
“No, no, no!” Shaggy shook his head vehemently. ”He could be a ghost! He consorts with a fae, or maybe the devil! If that’s a wizard or Death, I don’t want to offend him by interrogating his boyfriend!”
“Don’t look now,” Fred whispered conspiratorially, “but he’s looking over at us!”
Daphne, of course, looked. When the dark stranger smirked at her, she jumped so hard she knocked her nearly empty plate to the floor. She tried to catch it, succeeding only in falling from the booth as it smashed and Scooby carefully wolfed up the leftovers of her sandwich.
“Jeepers!” she shouted from the floor.
The whole gang froze in terror as the stranger languidly rose from his stool, pacing gracefully towards them while calling over his shoulder, “Hob, bring a broom.”
He stood over Daphne, looking down at her with a slightly bemused expression on his face, and held out a hand to help her up. She blushed a becoming pink and courageously took his hand, getting to her feet as Hob ran up with the broom.
“Ah, no worries, I’ll have this cleaned up in a moment!” Hob got to work with the broom as his dark lover smirked again.
“Hob, they are not worried about the plate.”
“What? They’re not?” Hob looked more closely at the gang, suddenly noticing that their faces were betraying much more fear than could reasonably be attributed to breaking a plate in an eating establishment. He looked curiously at his tall friend.
“They have been telling themselves stories about you, and about me.”
Shaggy was not the only one who thought he might pee his pants at that, and Scooby leaped into his arms with a frightened whine. The gang was petrified, waiting to hear their punishment. They hadn't considered that he might be able to overhear! Well, thought Velma a bit hysterically, we’ll probably be able to tell which theory was correct by what the punishment is!
“Have you, then?” Hob inquired with another one of his lovely, sunshiny smiles. (It was slightly reassuring.) “You should tell us your stories, then. He’s the Prince of Stories.”
The gang took a collective breath of relief as Hob and the Prince of Stories pulled over chairs.
Velma began, “You see, we noticed the song you were humming. It’s about as old as your name, but neither name nor song are in current use.”
The Prince of Stories glanced at Hob. “I told you your humming would get you in trouble one day.”
“It’s been over a hundred years since I’ve been caught! These kids are more observant and well-educated than most people, and they’re really good at connecting dots if they got “immortal” out of that!”
“Hmmmmm.”
Fred continued, ”We ruled out time travel because serving food didn’t seem like quite the thing for a time traveller.”
“We thought you were, like, a ghost! And that guy was Death!” Shaggy announced.
The Prince of Stories nodded. “It would not be the first time I was mistaken for my sister.” The gang tensed up again at that, until Hob’s calm countenance reassured them again. Hmmm, thought Velma, we’re in the realm of gods and eldritch beings rather than fae or wizards now.
“So you’re not a fae, then,” she guessed. “That was another theory, that you were a fae who had captured Hob and kept him in Faerie while time flew by in this plane of reality.”
Hob grinned. “Ah, yes! That was one of my initial theories as well, when we first met! I also thought perhaps I’d accidentally made a deal with the devil!” He laughed and gazed fondly at his lover.
“I am neither fae nor devil.”
“That rules out my theory, then,” Fred said. “You didn’t seem like the type.”
Daphne nodded. “Scooby ruled out vampires earlier, so that leaves my theory. I thought you were a Chosen One, a hero who travelled dimensions and rescued worlds, returning here when your adventures were over, to retire with the wizard who facilitated your travel.”
“Oh, I like that one, Dream!” Hob gazed adoringly at his lover. “How romantic, a conquering hero, settling down with my magical love!”
“You are that for me, as I am for you.”
“So you did live in Narnia?” Daphne asked breathlessly.
“Oh, no, it’s nothing so fun as that.” Hob glanced at Dream, who nodded minutely. Apparently he had decided these young people had earned the truth with their stories. “I’m just a regular human who decided one day that I wasn’t going to die. And I haven’t.”
The Prince of Stories smirked at him. “It helped that my sister wanted to set me up with you.”
“She has good taste!” Hob protested.
“Oh, I am never complaining!” Dream retorted.
“But who are you?” Fred insisted.
“I am Dream of the Endless, and that is the end of what I will tell you.”
The Endless, thought Velma, and took it as a challenge.