1995: Rustin Cohle had always wondered if the original Scooby Doo gang’s emergence onto the scene of amateur crime busting was a direct reaction to the prominence of the Manson Family in the late 60’s. He had wondered if their treacly sweet adventures had gained such prominence in an attempt to allay the fears of middle America about teens in vans. He was still uncertain about how to justify the talking dog.

Rustin Cohle was surprised to see them though at the crime scene of Dora Lange. Of course, they weren’t the original Scooby Team, as the young detectives were replaced every few years, like Menudo. The cyclical nature of these differing iterations of young crimefighters appealed to Rust’s concepts of the inescapable nature of fate; Scooby Doo being a flat circle. Boys being Shaggy Rogers from birth on an immutable path towards broken men in elaborate costumes. He did not care for their methods though. They had relied too heavily on serendipity and happenstance for his tastes. Marty on the other hand was mainly thinking about Daphne. Marty’s thoughts, while not as analytical, were as intense, far more carnal though and also involved Velma Dinkley.

The collision, as that’s what it was, between the two forces began inauspiciously. Rust walked up to the young ratiocinationists, who were now, as he saw it, invading his crime scene. Rust walked up to Fred, the alpha male, and said, “Kids, I have no idea what in the fuck you are doing here, but I can assure you that this does not involve a haunted discotehque. This is not a scam to shut down an orchard or kidnap Sandy Duncan. Here, the monsters are real, and they’re inside of us. The masks are our humanity, and the ghost of Red Grange is just memory polluting the interminable suffering that is the waking world.”

Marty bristled at this, as these innocent, totally bangable, young people would have no idea how to handle a man like Rust. Marty chimed in, “Look, I’m sorry my partner has a terminal case of seemingly every mental disorder and the Mondays. Now, we’re primary on this, but I’ll talk.”

Fred responded, “Thanks detective. We were hired to track down a Dora Lange; she’s Sandy Duncan’s second cousin.”

“Jinkies.” Velma chimed in. She continued, “We were just expecting to find her shacked up or in a meth lab. We didn’t expect to find, all this. What happened?”

Rust fielded it, “It looks like we’ve got a serial on our hands. Whoever did this was ritualistic, plotted.”

“Rituaristic” Raid Rooby, er, Scooby.

“I’m thinking we should get into our own ritual Scoob. It’s looking like these guys might be hero cops, so I’m thinking we, like, top some hero sandwiches in the Mystery Machine.” Said Shaggy.

This back and forth went on for some time, illusory, heavy time, but time, nonetheless. There were some canned laughs thrown in. The conclusion was that everyone decided to split up. Marty stood way, way too close to Daphne; she didn’t mind. Actually Fred, Marty, Daphne, and Velma went off to …. frankly things went from being a little AMC to being full HBO. Let’s just cut ahead to Rust, Shaggy, and Scooby sitting in the van. Shaggy and Scooby had convinced Rust, rather easily, to smoke a fat bowl of Humboldt Puppy Power. Rust was, of course, mid heady monologue, “My god when you imagine a dog that can talk. A dog that can fathom his doggy-ness breathing with the rest of us. Watching us, with his world view suddenly changed from there’s a ball over there, am I good? That dog, now thinking about am I really living? Am I truly good? What the fuck even is human goodness? I want to be good in a world of fucking genocide, corruption, of human cruelty. Hell, how are we, even as a species, full of the arrogance to put this dog in some sort of illusory system of fucking good dog bad dog judgment while we absolve ourselves from it every fucking day with every innocuous inhumanity to each other. He’s asking himself am I a good boy. Now, ask yourself, why would you even feel bad about leaving a Scooby stack of dook in the back of the mystery machine in this fetid world of sentient human feces?”

“Ry, Rod, rit’s r’all reaningress.” replied Scooby

“Like, great you broke my dog, man. You’re a stone-cold bummer.”

Before Rust could make with a witty, emasculating, and baroque putdown, he heard something outside of the van they were sequestered to, for reasons. Rust ran outside, while Shaggy and Scooby cowered in fear, ate marshmallow covered hotdogs. Rust had followed the noise and saw him, the Spaghetti Man with the green ears and scars. It was in fact a man in a cheap latex suit and not a man with mild facial scarring, which could be covered with a beard and some house paint on his ears. Knowing that his backup was either stoned in a van or engaging in activities most libidinal that involved far more kerchiefs than one would imagine, normally, Rust still gave chase.

The two ran through the muck of the bayou for what seemed like an eternity, in one continuous shot no less, but Rust simply could not catch him. He would later blame the Humboldt Puppy Power but never in an official interview of course.

The Scooby Doo gang would go on to give the bad news to Sandy Duncan about her second cousin; they weren’t really that close anyway, so it was no biggie. Marty would later pay for Velma’s procedure, as it was the right thing to do. Life would continue on unabated. It would seem that it was all just serendipity, but of course, sometimes, fate masquerades as coincidence.

You see in 2012 Marty and Rust would return to this case; they would find the man with the scars, the yellow king, Carcosa. And there, in the confines of lost Carcosa, Rust and Marty would use the skills they had gleaned from the Scooby Doo gang. Pretty much the two of them would just run back and forth through the different doors, and the guy would chase them, etc. Eventually, they would get the man with the scars onto some roller skates on a wet floor. Eventually, they got a barrel on top of him during their epic conclusion. While all of this was happening, there was a song that sounded like a Monkees song playing. Something about “Girl, I’m your yellow king. Yeah babe, that’s my thing. Going to put flowers on you to show you girl that I love you.” The song was an abomination, and after all of the wacky, tonally jarring shenanigans that happened in Carcosa, Rust still shot that groundskeeper in the head. Also, let’s say that Scrappy Doo was part of that Yellow King altar. Hey, it worked in the first Scooby Doo movie, right? (Oh, I’m sorry about the spoilers for a decades old kids movie.)

The other connection, of course, being when Velma fairly awkwardly showed up to visit Marty in the hospital, after everything had gone down. She had not gotten her procedure, and Marty was slightly less psyched to earn the forgiveness of his second family. He still cried, again.