Chapter 1

MysteryBook

I took a deep breath, glad to be smelling thick pine trees, goat poop, and oddly enough sea salt coming from Grunkle Stan's and Great Uncle Ford's parkas hanging on the line in the Mystery Shack's yard. Summer had started once again, our parents letting us come up to Gravity Falls, Oregon once more after our pleading all through-out the past school year.

I sat down in the old warn out sofa on the porch and looked out at the woods, waiting for Mabel so we could go out to town and find the old gang again. Not much had changed for me and Mabel. Sure I could now say I had had a proper girlfriend, though sadly that didn't last too long. She was stubborn that ghosts and cryptids didn't exist. I guess if I really wanna girl to like me I just won't be able to tell them about this part of my life. Unless I got lucky and found someone who came from weirdness.

Mabel still made her sweaters, which was why she was still unpacking. Between the yarn for new sweaters and her pile of favorite ones, I expected to be waiting for a while. Though her sweaters now came in an assortment of styles. Through-out the school year she had learned how to add a hood, a few different pocket styles, and even a sweater dress.

I hope Wendy and the group haven't changed all that much. I tried to control it but I already felt my face heat up as I wiped my hands on my shorts. She's 16, I'm 13. Right now those three years made her too old for me, but I can't help it.

"You ready?" Mabel asked, getting me to jump in the seat.

I jumped to my feet and turned to see the girl who had appeared, closing the door behind her. Today she was wearing a new sweater she had made on the bus ride here that was blue with the town's skyline wrapping around her. The water tower was promptly in the front though she couldn't get it to read Gravity Falls. "I just texted Tambry, they're waiting at Greasy's Diner."

"Let's take the short cut through the woods," I offered, the lay out of the town coming back to me like I'd been here yesterday. I lead the way into the forest the front of the house pointed to, knowing the diner was just through the woods.

"Are you gonna show Great Uncle Ford what you've been working on?" Mabel asked, following me as I walked the familiar path.

"Well, yeah," I shrugged my shoulders. "I mean, sure we don't have anything nearly as awesome back home but I think he'd like to see what research I did on the supernatural around the world."

"Good, than you can bore someone else with your nerd talk," Mabel said, giving me a punch in the shoulder. "I know waaaay too much about firebirds and swamps now, thanks to you."

I smiled, rubbing where she had punched. "Yeah, ok. So I might've gotten a little obsessed with that one," I held up my hands in defense. "But can you blame me? I might've figured out something no one else did about it-"

"That the swamp creates it for its own protection," Mabel drowned over my voice. "Bro-bro, doesn't your mind ever take a… break?"

I glanced back at my sister only to see she had stopped, looking up in the trees. I stopped walking and fully turned around. "What?"

"There's a shiny in the tree," Mabel stated.

I walked back to stand next to her and looked up to where her line of sight lead me, surprised to see the sun bouncing off of something stuck in a crook of the tree's branches.

"I'm gonna get it," Mabel announced, running to the trunk of the tree.

I opened my mouth to protest, knowing everyone was already waiting on us, but my curiosity of what it could be got the better of me. I kept my eye on Mabel as she shimmied up the tree, holding on to Wendy's hat as I had to tip my head farther and farther back as I stepped closer to the tree. I would rather she not fall at all but if she did she'd have at least something softer to land on than the ground.

Mabel made it up to the first sturdy branch and made the climbing look easy as she went from branch to branch to the strange shiny thing. She got to the branch that the thing was lodged in and struggled a moment before getting it out of the tree. "It's a book!" Mabel called down.

"Well toss it down," I called up.

I saw her hold it out, about to drop it only to shake her hands. "It's a little sappy," Mabel warned just as it left her hands.

I quickly caught it only to grimace at what she meant. The book was a soft leather bound book, held closed with a clasp to make it look similar to Mabel's diary. On the front was a purple rock, the thing that had reflected the light to get our attention in the first place. But it was covered in sap and spider webs, as if it had been up in the tree for years. I ran my thumb over the clasp, noticing sap held it locked for the moment. I looked around, hoping for a puddle with the closest river in the opposite direction from Greasy's Diner, but let out a sigh. It hadn't rained for at least a week up here.

Mabel dropping to the ground got my eyes to glance back at her who now stood next to me. "So what's in it?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "When we get to the diner I'll clean it up so we can open it."

"It and me both," Mabel laughed, looking at her hands to show they were covered in sap. She looked up at me, a smile I know all too well on her face.

Oh no. No, no, no, no, no!" I quickly ran away from her just in time to miss her wiping her hands at me. I turned to run backwards, keeping an eye on her as she lunged for me again. I sidestepped out of her way only to trip over a root and fall flat on my butt. I held the book up as a shield only to feel a slap on my arm.

"Sticky twins!" Mabel called out, her hand stuck to my arm.

"Fine, sticky twins," I let out a laugh. "Help me up."
She pulled her hand off my arm before being able to hold out her other hand for me to grab. I pealed a hand off of the book, hoping the layer of sap on my hand would somehow cancel out her layer of sap as I grabbed her hand and got back to my feet only to let go and find our hands stuck.

"I hate sap."

"I think it's fun," Mabel said, turning to pull me along without my feet's consent. "Come on! They're waiting for us!"

Finding my footing, I ran to keep up as my hand was drug behind Mabel. With Mabel in the lead, we made it to the diner in record time, leaving me out of breath.

"Can I- have," air! "my hand back?" I asked, finally able to slow down now that we had come out of the forest just next to the gravel parking lot. Book stuck to my one hand, sister to the other, I stood still for a moment to get my breath back as my lungs felt like they were on fire as Mabel fought to free her hand.

"It's no use, we're stuck," Mabel sighed.

"Let's see if Lazy Susan'll let us use the kitchen sink," I said, leading Mabel at walking speed inside.

"There you are!" Wendy's voice called out, instantly sending heat to my face.

"Oh, he-hey Wendy," I called back, looking to see the red head still wearing my pine tree hat. She sat at a booth across from Robbie and Tambry while Lee, Nate, and Thompson messed around with the jukebox. I held up the hand that wasn't stuck to my sister to wave only to also wave the book still stuck to me.

Wendy let out a laugh. "Awesome, a new adventure for the summer."

"Called sap," Mabel announced. "Lots of sap."

"Come on," I tugged at Mabel's hand stuck to mine. The sooner we were unstuck the less likely I'd end up embarrassing myself. We walked over to the side of the counter just as Lazy Susan walked out of the kitchen.

"Hi kids! So y'all back in town already?" Lazy Susan asked, her good eye looking straight as us. "And already getting into mischief, huh?"

"Yap," Mabel nodded her head with a smile.

"Can we use the kitchen sink?"

"Sure," Lazy Susan pushed open the door to the kitchen, letting us in. "Boris'll be surprised to see you."

I followed Mabel into the kitchen, the first time I'd been back here. I'd seen through the widow to the counter and eating area so I knew to expect the grill to be just to the side of the window and followed Mabel around the shelves and fryers to the large sink.

"Mabel! Dipper!" the large man called out, walking out of the freezer with two bags of French fries in his arms. He kicked close the door and sat down the bags on a counter as Mabel turned on the water with her elbow as to not get stuck on anything else. "Glad to see you all back. So what's gonna happen this summer?"

"Hopefully nothing like last summer," I laughed, feeling the sap leave my hand stuck to Mabel's as she started scrubbing away. How I was going to get the sap off the book or my other hand still hadn't been figured out. I noticed a roll of brown paper towels and thought I'd start with them.

"So how was your last year of middle school?" Boris asked, slicing open a bag of fries. He dumped the fries into a metal basket before lowering it into the oil.

"Mrs. Peterson threw us a party," Mabel said, her voice loud enough to be heard over the oil and running water as she got our hands apart.

I used my now free hand to grab some of the paper towels, ripping off a handful, and got them wet to start and work on separating my hand from the book as Mabel told the tail of pizza and cupcakes from Mrs. Peterson. I was going to miss that lady, she made both homeroom and history interesting.

"So have you gotten your classes for next year?" Boris asked, getting me to realize I had missed what Mabel was saying.

"Well, of course she's got home ec," I said, throwing away the paper towels to grab more.

"He found a class on computer sciences," Mabel offered.

"Getting into normal people's mysteries, huh?" Boris let out a laugh as he pulled out the done fries and poured them into two paper baskets, adding salt.

I gave him a shrug, not sure what I wanted to do yet. I knew I would love to follow Great Uncle Ford and his research of the unusual, or how he put it, the Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness, but Mom wanted me to have a more normal idea of what to do in life.

"Hey I gotta go deliver this. If you need me, holler," Boris said, grabbing the two paper baskets of fries before walking out of the kitchen.

"Finally!" I announced, prying my hand off of the book.

"I'll clean it," Mabel offered, taking a damp paper towel to grab the book from me.

As we worked in silence, part of me wondering what was going through Mabel's mind to make her so silent, my ears traveled to a conversation out in the eating area.

"Tambry, you're doing it again," Wendy's voice said.

"Come on, you stupid machine!" Robbie's voice overlaid what Wendy said next, getting laughter from Nate.

"You don't think time travel's actually possible?" Tambry asked, her voice waving.

"What?" Wendy asked with a laugh. "I think we would've found out if Ford or old man McGucket created a time machine."

"I don't know…" Tambry took a moment before continuing. "Do you remember when we were five and you had a crush on the kid with the hat?"

"No, but then again I don't remember meeting Robbie and you said I wanted to kill him," Wendy offered.

"You're wearing the hat that kid wore," Tambry said.

"Wait, what?"

I glance out the window to see she had taken off my hat to look at it. She threw it back on her head and said, "So, and Stan sells these in his shop. He might've sold them then."

"But last year was the first time he got them," Tambry pointed out.

I bit my bottom lip, glad to focus on getting the last of the sap off my hand. "Tambry remembered."

"Huh?" Mabel asked, throwing away another wad of papers.

I turned off the faucet and repeated, "Tambry remembers us going back in time."

I looked at her, watching her dry off the book and mess with the clasp to find it unstuck. "Ok?" Mabel offered. "It wasn't like a secret, was it?"

"No, I guess not."

"Here, finally unstuck," Mable said, dropping the paper towels in the trash. She opened the book and stared at the first page. "Uh, Dipper."

I took a step to her side and stared at what I saw. "What?" I took the book out of her hand to look closer and sure enough, it was his handwriting. "Property of Stanford Pines. Volume 4, finem mundi. End of the world?"

"Let's go show them," Mabel said, pulling on my arm.

I started flipping through the pages, confused by what I found as Mabel pulled me out of the kitchen. The dates were full with years from the 80s and 90s, diagrams of weapons and other devices, and plants and animals I hadn't seen before all was written out before me.

"So what's with the book?" Wendy asked as I slid in the seat next to her. My mind was so engrossed with the book, I didn't think too much about her.

"The fourth journal," I said. I glanced up to see the guys coming back to the table at what I said.

"Your great uncle wrote another one?" Nate asked, confused.

"I don't know," I admitted, laying the book on the table to show them the first page. "It's in his handwriting but…" I flipped the page to read the first entry. "April 4, 1988."

"I thought he went into the portal in '84," Wendy put in. "At least, that's what Soos said."

"Yeah, that's how I remember the story too," Mabel nodded her head.

"Time has drastically changed since I wrote in the last of these journals. Gone is the time of machine made paper and hard back leather books," I read aloud. "The journal now in my hands as well as yours was made by my good friend's wife. The accounts of the world wide Weirdmageddon are recorded in Journal 3." I stopped and looked at the people around me. "It wasn't worldwide."

"Keep reading, man," Lee ordered, leaning against the back of the booth seat.

"So I have no wish to write them down again. As of now, Sue B is running the governments of the world-"

"Sue B? Who's that supposed to be?" Robbie interrupted.

I shook my head, not sure, as I continued, "and our little resistance is growing in number. Four years ago I stared working on a way to take her down but my love of the weird won't end nor will the amount of weird creatures drawn from the rift to this town."

"Too weird, dude," Thompson said.

"And this was dated when?" Robbie asked.

"1988." I flipped through pages of creates and plants I had never seen only to stop on a page with a strange empty circle.

"That's definitely a black light page," Tambry stated.

"I left mine in the shack," I admitted, leaning the pages away from my face to see indentations where Ford had bared down hard.

"You're here all summer, you can figure it out another day," Nate threw off, diffing a hand into his pocket. He pulled out three tickets and handed two to Mabel as I closed the journal. "Last month they finished building the rink, we got together and got you two tickets for skates."

"Oh cool! Thanks!" Mabel exclaimed.

I stashed the journal in my inside vest pocket and took the ticket from my sister. "Skates? As in roller blades?" I asked.

"Yeah. You do know how to skate, right?" Wendy asked.

No.

"Uh, yeah. Of course," I lied. "It's just..,, been a while."

Mabel threw a look at me but I tried to ignore her.

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AN: Ok, any of you with a map of Gravity Falls will notice the… river problem. I honestly thought the river was in the other direction. And then I got Dipper's and Mabel's Guide to Mystery. Oh well.

Dipper: But you've moved the river.

AN: So, now the river's on the other side of the shack.

Dipper: But… but you can't do that!

AN: It's my Gravity Falls. The river location will tell the real Dipper he's in a parallel world.

Dipper: But I'm the real Dipper.

AN: Are you?

Danny: Dude, welcome to something worse than the Mindscape. Welcome to Kiwi's Mind.

Link: Danny, not helping.

AN: While they help Dipper get accustom to my head, hope you like the codes added, there will be one for each chapter but they won't all use the same code or even same cypher. That's what you gotta figure out.