~A Slender Escape~
~Dipper's POV~
"Gotcha!" I shout in triumph, holding up the small lizard I have in my hands.
"Wow, Dipper, that's the eighth one today!" Mabel says, taking the green-brown lizard from my hands.
We'd been in the woods for a couple hours seeing how many of the 5-inch lizards each of us could catch.
"Hey, there, friend." She giggles. "What's your name?"
"I think he looks like a Fred." I say.
"I'm going to call you… Bruce!"
"Bruce?" I ask. "But he's so… Not Bruce-y."
"Bruce!" She nods, smiling.
I shrug, continuing into the woods to find another.
"Bye, little fella." Mabel says to Bruce, letting him go.
When she sets him on the ground, he just crawls up onto her shoulder, making her giggle. Continuing to travel deeper into the woods, I soon become agitated. It was getting late, dark, and I didn't even want to think about what lived in these woods.
"Hey, Mabel?"
"Yeah, Dipping Sauce?"
Dipping Sauce has been her nickname for me ever since we'd snuck into Skull Fracture, a crazy biker joint in town, to interrogate Manly Dan, the local lumberjack, of murder. We'd made fake ID's to get in, I was Sir Dipping Sauce and she had been Lady Mableton.
"Don't call me that. Anyway, we should probably head back to the Mystery Shack. It's getting late and I don't want to be caught outside after dark. You know, because of the… Stuff." I say, kind of afraid to say "supernatural stuff", for fear that if I say it, one might actually appear. Mabel laughs.
"You sure you're not just a scared-y cat?"
"I am not a scared-whatever, I just think we shouldn't do anything crazy. Remember the gnomes? They might come back."
"Scared-y cat! Scared-y cat!" She says again.
"Am not! Now, come on, we should-"
"If you're not so scared, come and get me!" she begins to run farther into the woods, her laugh slowly fading away.
"Mabel!" I yell after her, beginning to pursue her.
"Mabel, come on! Who knows what's in these woods?! It's probably dangerous!"
I hear her laugh echo a little, closer this time. Running faster, I soon hear the leaves crunching under her feet. They soon stop.
"Hey, Dipper…" she says.
"Yeah?" I catch up to her and double over, holding my knees and catching my breath.
"Lookit."
She points to a spot on the ground, and I see what she means. There are footprints indented in the dirt. At first, they appear to be normal human footprints, but when I take a closer look at them, I see that they're different. They definitely aren't human, they're too…. Slender.
"Whoa." I mutter, pulling Book 3 out of my inside jacket pocket.
Book 3 was my book full of all, well, most of Gravity Falls' secrets. I had found it in these same woods by mistake when I'd been hanging signs for the Mystery Shack. I had no idea who had written it, but after a couple years' worth of entries, the book just stops, as if the writer mysteriously disappeared. I had sometimes wondered where Book 1 and Book 2 were, and if they even existed. Was the author still alive? I again had no idea.
Flipping through pages, I find a page with a picture of a footprint identical to the one in front of us. The page, however, is harder to read than the others, because it's quickly scrawled on the page, as if the person had been running when they'd written it. A very blurry photo sits in the middle of the page, and I barely make out what looks like a man in a suit.
"Uh, Dipper?" Mabel says, "I think you need to see this..."
"Not now, Mabel, I'm looking at these footprints."
"DIPPER. LOOK UP." She says in a more urgent tone.
I do, and I almost have a heart attack. In the distance, I could see it. I could see the suit man. Not his face, but his back, like he wasn't facing us. Taking a quick glance at the book, I barely make out a name.
Slenderman.
I'd heard the urban legends about him back home, but I never thought he was real. Until now, that is.
"Uh, Mabel?" I say.
"Yeah?"
"Run!" I yell, taking her hand and almost literally dragging her behind me.
I hear the leaves crunching under our feet, but I also hear the sound of another person, err, thing's crunching steps. I don't dare look behind me, and it doesn't help when I hear Mabel yell
"Run faster! He's gaining!" her eyes are shut tight, and she's following me step for step.
"I'm going as fast as I can, and look! It's the Mystery Shack!"
Not allowing myself to feel relieved until it was gone, I run as fast as I can, my heart racing, and I barrel through the front door, drag Mabel inside, turn around, my eyes shut tight but still able to hear the slender thing gaining distance with incredible speed, and slam the door. Locking it and closing all the blinds, I try not to scream like a girl.
"What. Was. THAT?" I hear Mabel ask, gasping for breath.
She had never been interested in the supernatural until I found Book 3.
"I- I…" My voice is shaky.
"Whoa, guys, what's going on?"
Wendy walks into the room, and all I want to do is freak out and cry like a little girl, but I just stand there for a minute, staring at her.
"OHMYGOSHWENDYWESAWTHESCARIES TTHINGEVEROHMYGOSHWENDYITHOU GHTWEWEREGONNADIE!" Mabel yells.
"What? Ok, half-pint, slow down. Start over."
"Wendy." I say in a serious tone.
"Yeah?" she looks at me.
"Stay out of the woods."
"What?"
"Seriously, don't go in there anymore, even if you have to. Tell Soos, too. There's stuff in those woods, Wendy. Lots of bad stuff." My voice shakes a little.
"Wow. What's got you freaked, Dipping Sauce?"
I flip open the book to the page.
"This." I reply, pointing to the photo I now find utterly horrifying, "This is what's got me freaked."
"What is it?" Mabel finally pipes up.
"Slenderman."