A/N Just a note- the Gravity Falls fanfiction on my previous account was used as a basis to help begin this one. It's possible I'll incorporate Bill into later chapters. ~Please enjoy~
One
In the secluded depths of Oregon lies a drowsy forested town, heavily shrouded by the commercial business of national parks and seaside commerce. However, as in any such outwardly plain city, it boasts a booming business of guileful tourism. The greedy tourist very well senses that the peculiar oddities are a fallacy, but still dares to utter the question- "What if?"
There is one area in particular that throbs with a perplexing supernatural fascination. And, years ago, someone built a shack on it. His brother now crafts clever eccentricities to sell for inflated prices. He has invited his grandniece and nephew to spend the summer at his sly little business home.
A boy, small in stature, with sharp eyes and crisp books. A girl, the mirror image, doe-eyed with rainbow sweaters.
They are different. They are special.
Sunday
Twelve-year-old Dipper Pines was not a loser. Or so he thought.
"You're going down, Broseph!" Mabel said from her position behind the Mystery Shack's cold wooden counter, eyes glittering with childlike insolence. "You know I've never lost at arm wrestling, even in the third grade."
Dipper arched his brow, a smirk slowly spreading across his cheeks as he said, "We'll see about that."
Mabel scoffed, running her tongue along the bumpy ridges of her cold braces. "Whatever, Dipstick. On the count of three. One… go!"
Dipper, having known his sister for twelve years, was fully prepared for this deception and immediately fell into pattern of complicated stance adjustment. He strained intensely, sinking his upper teeth into the soft muscle of his tongue, ignoring Mabel's silly taunts opposite him. A thin film of sweat broke across his forehead as the skin on his knuckles slowly turned to white.
It was clearly a tie- the twins had been going at it for a good twenty seconds, but Dipper's arm began to lag and Mabel let loose a cluster of shrill Indian calls as she eventually slammed her brother's arm down on the counter with a bang.
"Ha!" she said, wild eyed, and thumped Dipper loudly on the back. "I am now the superior twin. Bow down, peasant, and kiss my cat rings!"
Dipper tightened his jaw and glared at the wall. "This was rigged."
The bell above the Shack's door chimed sharply, announcing the arrival of another busload stampede of tourists.
Dipper groaned. "Great. They still don't take Sundays off. Guess I'm not tearing up the hardwood today."
"Is that about that smell Grunkle Stan was talking about?" Mabel asked, chewing her lip.
"Yeah, yeah, it is. Soos was going to take care of it, but he called in sick today. Think he's too scared?" Dipper raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know, Dipper. Maybe you shouldn't. You know how this place is. I don't know." Mabel shook her head, handing a twenty back to a customer at the counter. "Come back soon!" she shouted after him. "Oh- you forgot your complimentary Mabel sticker!" She hopped off the chair and scuttled to the door.
Dipper cast a quick glance at his tools gathering dust in the corner whilst directing a meaty woman to the downstairs bathroom. The smell was pretty bad in the back area; a rat must certainly have gotten caught in one of the traps beneath the floorboards. Of course, Stan was too preoccupied with Baby Fights to provide the situation with any real attention.
A boy had crouched down on his knees and placed his ear to the spot, narrowing his eyes as a clump of hair dangled above his brow.
"You're not going to hear anything, man," Dipper said, peering over his shoulder. "It's dead."
The boy looked up, faintly curling his upper lip. "Smells like bacon," he said, a sick grin plastered on his face. Dipper recoiled, stumbling into a rack of postcards that tumbled with a crash to the floor. The boy's eyes were nothing but a blank black film, lacking pupils and whites, giving him more of the appearance of a fly than a boy.
Dipper's stomach churned violently, a blanket of dread smothering his chest, penetrating his mind, senses plugged like a wad of cotton.
"Oh, this?" he said, jabbing a finger to his temple. "Eye condition. It's all bacteria, man. All bacteria. Lesson is, don't wear contacts." He laughed, his tone lowering in pitch, taking on the sound of grating metal. "On another hand, ever think to check out that smell? Losing customers slowly but surely, I'll bet."
"Okay, uh, w-well, we're looking into it," Dipper returned, tone reaching an unstable, shaky pitch.
"Name's Johnny," he said.
"Dipper," Dipper said, then paused, offering a thin smile. "Where are you from?"
"I live here."
Dipper frowned, narrowing his eyes. "I've met pretty much everyone that lives in Gravity Falls."
"And as of now, you've met me," Johnny whispered, his face breaking into another grin, skin stretching taut over his sallow cheeks.
"Of course," Dipper said softly, fingers fidgeting wildly in his pockets.
"I need some supernatural shit for some lame ass book report due at the end of the summer," Johnny continued, right eye twitching uncontrollably.
"Almost free, man."
Dipper cleared his throat, focusing his gaze on the window. "Yeah, man. We've got all that magical crap here." He swallowed, shifting his stare to Johnny's face. "Just- just tell me when you're ready to ring up."
"About that," said Johnny, sidling up to the other boy, fingering a cloudy plastic orb in his hand, "Technically, I don't have the cash with me right now." His black eyes glittered in the Shack's cold fluorescent overhead light, an eerie simper distorting his face into an almost maniac mask.
Dipper frowned. "Look, man, we don't do loans here. You either got the money or you don't."
Johnny's eyes flashed as he twisted his lips. "You don't understand."
"Come on. You can't expect me to let you steal this stuff. God, my uncle wouldn't let a penny out the door unless it was in his own wallet.
Johnny's eyes glistened, fixing Dipper with a blank stare, their eerie blackness seeming to pierce into his mind, drilling a cavity in the squishy flesh of his brain. He clamped his jaws together and ducked down, bile carving a road up his throat.
"Okay, okay," he said finally, raising his arms.
Dipper released an inaudible sigh, organs unclenching like an accordion.
"I get it. I'll come back later with some cash for my crap," he continued, scrutinizing Dipper's expression, the corners of his mouth twitching softly. "They scare you, don't they?"
Dipper's eyes widened, a barely perceptible shudder twitching throughout his body. "I-"
Johnny slid a pair of deeply tinted sunglasses over his eyes. "Good."
"What's going on?" Mabel asked, sliding up to her brother. "Who's this?"
"This is Johnny," Johnny smiled broadly, pointing a finger to his chest.
"He lives here," Dipper said quietly.
"Really now?" Mabel said. "We should get together sometime soon! I'm Mabel, by the way."
Johnny grinned widely and punched Dipper on the shoulder. "Yeah, bro," he said, and, leaning close to his ear added, "And maybe we can talk about that loan."
He winked. "Kidding. You like the Diner?"
"Eh," Dipper shrugged. "Food's okay. Those strength machine games they've got in there aren't fun at all, though." He scoffed. "Rigged games aren't cool, am I right?"
Johnny smirked. "Hah. I totally roasted that Manliness Tester. Got free pancakes to last me a month."
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, me too." Dipper said quickly.
"We should meet up there, then! Tomorrow at ten cool?" Mabel said.
"Sure. See you around," Johnny said, raising his arm in a sharp salute, tossing the plastic orb several feet into the air and allowing it to land in the gaping mouth of his sweatshirt hood.
Mabel let out a breathy gasp, the sudden inhalation whistling in her braces. "What a hunk! Those sunglasses- so… mysterious. I was trying to keep my cool, couldn't you tell? I'm so great at playing hard to get. As the less superior sibling, you could learn a thing or two from me."
Dipper shook his notepad of scores for various games before her face, letting the thinning pages caked with lead smudges and tally marks dart about in the unforgiving fluorescents. "Ah, let's see… Dipper, thirteen, Mabel, zero. Dipper, twenty-five, Mabel-"
"Okay, okay. Stop now while you're ahead."
"Kids! What's the holdup?" Stan barked, slapping several plastic flies onto a glass eye near the window.
"Oh, nothing," Mabel batted her soft lashes, "Just telling Dipper not to do that incantation in his tighty whities in the middle of the gift shop like his Journal said. No matter how much he hopes Wendy might enjoy it."
Dipper's cheeks flushed a bright shade of scarlet, eyes darting about the room. "Yeah, yeah. Why don't you be a little louder next time, I don't think the people in China heard you!"
Dipper was running.
Crunch crackle crunch
Short footsteps.
His breath expelled in short, wheezing gasps, rising in pitch and layered with heaving sobs.
An abandoned log cabin. He halted, bare feet splintering on the rotting wood, beetles scrabbling across his toes.
White noise.
Silence.
A lone branch, clacking against the remnants of a fractured windowpane.
Dipper's head shot upwards, blank eyes painted black.
Don't look.
He lies on the rafters.
Clack clack
thump
Blood spurted from Dipper's eyes, pooling about in the thick netting of his lashes.
"GET OUT! GET OUT!"
A lone voice, reverberating throughout the cabin, guttural tone similar to that of grinding cogs, grating over and over again, "No loan, Dipper? That's a shame. Say goodnight. Say goodnight. Say goodnight. Say-"
His mouth agape in a soundless scream, arms outstretched, scraping frantically at the air before him.
Dipper gasped a wheezing series of coughs into the chill night air, curling his skinny limbs into himself like a pill bug, tears gushing and splitting a network down his cheeks like spiderwebs.
"Dipper." Mabel's face materialized inches before his, chewing her lip and rubbing his shoulders. "Hey, hey, hey. Wake up. You were screeching and clawing at the air, Bro-Bro. It was just a dream. It's okay," she whispered, yanking the blanket up his trembling frame.
He released a violent shudder, recoiling at the sound of his own pitiful whimpering. His sister hoisted herself upon the groaning mattress, ignoring the protesting grunts of her pig on the opposite side of the room, using the mass of tangled blankets strewn across the bed to wrap his bony limbs in a stiff burrito.
"You'd never let me do this while you were awake," she said, smile revealing itself in the crinkles in the corners of her eyes. "This is what I do after I have a nightmare. See, Bro-Bro? You're safe. No monster hunting for you tomorrow, okay?"
She let his icy body curl up against hers for the remainder of the night, smoothing down his hair and babbling about soothing nothings.
As each of the boy's breaths grew more sound and his weary eyes sagged, his remaining conscious determined not to tell his sister that it was no monster that had triggered the dream- it was Johnny.