The poor mortal fools. No matter the time nor the place, it was going to be the same as any other feeding. They'd never know what hit them.
A smile graced the strangely humanoid face of the enormous bat as it descended out of the night sky and towards the tumbledown building below. A shiver of delight raced down the animal's spine. The setting couldn't have been more perfect. The ramshackle structure was out in the middle of heavily forested nowhere, and besides a scruffy goat that was grazing outside, there wasn't a single soul to notice his arrival. The visitor flapped down past the sign advertising "MYSTERY SHACK" in large peeling wooden letters, and he started to methodically circle around.
It didn't take long to find a way in. A triangular window had been cracked open to let some cool night air into the stuffy attic. He fluttered in close for a peek and couldn't believe his luck. There lay two youths, fast asleep and set out for him like a buffet ripe for the taking. In no time he had maneuvered himself through the small opening.
There was a puff of acrid smoke. When it cleared, the large bat had vanished. Now standing in the middle of the room was an imposing cloaked man. Piercing crimson eyes darted from one slumbering tween to the other, as he stroked his short-cropped beard and pondered his dining options. His gaze settled on the girl, lying sprawled on top of her sheets and blissfully snoring away. The corners of his lips curled into a grotesque grin, revealing a set of dagger-like fangs. Silently he crossed over to her bedside, moving so silently that he was practically gliding across the rough wooden floorboards.
A metallic jangle suddenly rent the air. He stepped back, and too late did he notice that both beds were ringed by a perimeter of stringed cans. The oblivious girl continued to slumber away, but the boy was instantly awake.
"Oh no you don't!" Dipper took one look and with practiced ease he reflexively reached for a freezer bag strategically stowed beneath his pillow and pulled out a large head of garlic.
The pale-faced intruder took one look at the wretched vegetable and recoiled at the terrifying sight. "NO!"
A flash of smoke later he had turned back into a mammoth bat. Unfortunately, now the foul stench of garlic was rapidly permeating the room. Too panicked to even see straight, he ended up fluttering smack into the glass and tumbled to the floor in a heap. Before he could even so much a raise a leathery wing, Dipper hastily nabbed a wire wastebasket and several heavy books. In no time he managed to assemble a crude cage, ringed by a perimeter of garlic cloves.
"No! Stop! Stop, please! Stop!" He pled in a thick accent as the hated pong assailed him with its ferocious sting, Frantically he flapped about his prison, banging hard against the sides of the trash bin. He raised such a din that Mabel was finally roused from her deep sleep.
"Dipperrrrr..." One of her arms flopped about like a wet noodle. "Knockitoff."
"Mabel, get up!" Dipper yelled breathlessly, flush with triumph. "The vampire's here! Here's finally here! Mabel, I got him!"
"Vampire?" Mabel was immediately awake. She shot out of bed started and started casting about excitedly. "Where? Where's a vampire?"
The girl fixed her hair and tried to make herself look as presentable as she could, given the circumstances. But the instant she laid eyes on the terrified man-faced bat, her face promptly fell. He was nothing close to the hunky brooding teenage heartthrob that she had envisioned. She folded her arms and let out a disappointed huff. "Oh...that vampire. Hmmph."
Mabel plodded over to give the trash bin a smack. "Stupid!"
"Stupid? Stupid?" Sharp fangs flashed into view as he let out an indignant growl. Captive or not, absolutely no one talked to him like that. "Insolence! You dare insult me? Do you even know who I am? I am Lord Drago, terror of Moldavia! My powers are-"
"You sneak around at night and drink blood. Yeah, we know the drill." Dipper finished dryly, and noted the shock stamped all over his captive's face with a satisfied grin.
"I...wait, how? How do you know?"The Moldavian lord sputtered. He thought his true identity was an airtight secret. It had been so for literally hundreds of years. "No one has ever been able to guess that!"
"Okay? Oh man. Just where do I even start?" Dipper gathered up a notebook lying next to his bed. Shaking his head, he flipped it open to the appropriate section and began scanning through the various observations he had recorded over the last few days. "Let's see here...okay first, you moved into the creepy up on the old house on the hill near Main Street, so that was a pretty cliched way to kick things off. Second, no one's ever seen you except a few times at night..."
"What? Y-you've...you've been watching me?" The fiendish bloodsucker gasped.
"It's his thing. My brother's a total geek for picking up on weird stuff like this. Even if it makes him look like a crazy stalker and stuff." Mabel explained. Dipper shot her a glare.
"Really? Really? You're going to do this now?"
"What? Well, it does!" She unapologetically rolled her eyes.
"C'mon." He groused. "Right after I saved you? Like, literally right after? Mabel, this guy was about to drink your blood a minute ago."
"Okay, sorry. I think I'm just tired...and super annoyed." The girl was still mighty sore over the fact that their prisoner wasn't a dreamy immortal teen hunk. She crankily blew him a sopping wet raspberry. "Thbbbtttt! Why couldn't you be sparkly and gorgeous? Why'd you have to be the bad kind of vampire?"
"What? What other kind?" The pop culture reference was utterly lost on him. Even if he did have any clue about she was complaining about, it wouldn't have mattered. The fact that they were handling his presence so cooly was driving him mad with confusion. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"
"Hold on, I'm not done yet." Dipper skimmed over his findings one last time and burst out chuckling heartily. "Oh yeah, can't believe I almost forgot about this. There's also the fact that you dress like a nineteenth century eastern European lord. I mean, an all black suit and a cape? For someone who's probably a couple hundred years old, you haven't learned a lot, have you?"
The well crafted put-down finally roused Mabel from her disappointed funk. She erupted into an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. "Haha! Old person burn! Awesome!"
She raised her palm, and Dipper happily joined her for a high-five A moment later he found himself deeply regretting his decision.
"Ahhh! Ow, ow..." He nursed his aching hand.
"Sorry. I high five really hard, remember?" She reminded
Lord Drago's head was spinning, both from the noxious garlicky fumes and with further bafflement. Here he was, a walking nightmare. It used to be that anyone who caught so much as a glimpse of him on the hunt would immediately go at least half-mad with terror. Back in the old country, mothers would scare naughty children with threats of him coming to visit in the middle of the night. Yet these two mere preteens had yet to display even the slightest bit of concern, much less genuine fright. His befuddlement soon reached agonizing levels.
"Who are you?" He desperately demanded again. Leathery wings beat hard against the sides of the waste bin. "Do you really not understand? Can you not see who I am? Why do you not fear me?"
"Fear you?" The twins exchanged blank stares, and Dipper casually broke the truth with a shrug. "We were honestly kind of expecting you to show up around here."
He jangled the makeshift alarms to help drive his point home. "Like, ever since since you moved in."
"Yeah, I'm kinda surprised it took you this long. See we're like magnets, but for super crazy stuff!" Mabel thoughtfully explained with a matter-of-fact smile.
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" The vampire lord howled, his perplexity now soaring to previously unknown heights.
"Hey, sorry. But what can we say? Look, you're just one vampire, and it's not the scariest thing we've ever seen." The boy explained. "You're just too...well, kind of conventional."
"Yeah, you're super boring compared to what we've had to deal with already!" Mabel peppily chimed in. She promptly started listing off paranormal monsters and creatures from past adventures. "Gnomes, time travelers, a monster made out leftover candy, a gross naked monster that wanted to eat all our candy, old people ghosts, a giant robot..."
"Two giant robots." Her twin corrected.
"Ooh, yeah! Almost forgot about the Gobblewonker! Okay, where was I...there were the shrinky jewels, dinosaurs, a bottomless pit, the lefty guy from the bowling alley-" Mabel tried to fight back the urge to laugh, and instead ended up snorting loudly as she cracked up hard. "Dipper, remember that?"
"How can I forget?" Dipper chuckled.
"Yeah, with those little green jelly guys living inside of him?" The two snickered while they happily reminisced.
"What was that all about?" He laughed.
"Well, they didn't stick around long enough to tell us!" Mabel recalled the disturbing sight of a crew of mysterious green beings sacrificing themselves with a toothy smile. "Ahhh, memories!"
"Fools! FOOLS! You babble about utter nonsense before me?" Drago hissed, offended that they would dare ignore him for so long. "How dare you? How DARE you? I've stolen the life out of hundreds, and will continue to do so for centuries more! My exploits are age-old legends! You are nothing compared to me! You are worse than nothing!"
He worked up the strength and bodily hurled himself against the sides of his improvised cage. "You're mere livestock! You are walking morsels for me to feed on as I please! You are-"
"Whoa, all right. That's enough." Unimpressed by the ferocious outburst, Dipper picked up a garlic clove and pressed it through one of the many openings in the wire trash bin. Hopefully that would be enough to get him to shut up. "C'mon, calm down."
"No! NO!" He began to thrash harder in protest as pieces of the forbidden vegetable nearly touched him. "SCUM! MORTAL SCUM! WHEN I AM FREE I WILL DRINK YOU DRY!"
"Hey, relax! You sound like you need a chill pill, Mister!" Mabel casually followed her twin's example. Clove after clove rained inside, and their prisoner twisted and flailed in a desperate panic. The poisonous stench quickly started to become overpowering.
"You can't! You can't!" His energy diminished with every passing moment, and it took all he had to even sound remotely menacing. "I am beyond your greatest fears! I am legend! I am horror itself! I am Drago!"
"Yeah, yeah, real scary." Mabel fetched another bulb from her brother's stash and starting feeding parts of it into the makeshift prison, one piece at a time.
"I am….nightmare personified...I-I am a devourer of villages...I…" He threatened weakly.
"Still not scary." Dipper noted out loud.
"I am...I...the….I…." His cries soon faded into incomprehensible whimpering. The frantic fluttering turned to weak flapping as the toxic fumes overwhelmed him. In a minute the racket stopped, much to the twins' relief.
"Okay, much better...wait a sec...oh oh." It quickly dawned on Dipper that their captive was a little bit too silent. Immediately a hefty lump rose in his throat. "Uh….Count Drago? Or wait, was it Lord Drago? Hello?"
Nothing. He tapped the sides. Nothing. He rattled the trash can. Nothing. He lifted it up, still nothing. The bat just lay there in a lifeless heap. The boy cautiously prodded him with his foot. Again, nothing.
"...Ew." Mabel crinkled her nose. A deafening quiet settled upon the room as they collectively realized what they had just done. The siblings milled about and shot one another awkward glances.
"Okay...well he's dead." Dipper decided there was no point in denying the obvious. He shuffled uncomfortably and looked to his sister. "Um...so...we're not murderers now, are we?"
"Nuh-uh!" Mabel folded her arms and fiercely justified before any guilt could set in. "You heard what he said! He sounded super evil! You know, with all his talk about sucking everyone's blood and stuff."
"So, we're not terrible people for doing this, right? It's okay that we ki-" He decided to rephrase it a little more gently. "Uh, get rid of him."
"Yeah, remember? It doesn't count if it's a monster!" She declared, absolutely unapologetic about what they had done. Her twin thanked her for the vindication with a nod.
"Yeah, let's just say this was for the best." He grimaced at the motionless pile of fur, wings and fangs. "...I should really go throw this all out."
"Okay!" Mabel squeaked, looking as sweetly unperturbed as could be. After all, she had more important things to deal with than deceased Moldovan vampires, such as her reeking fingers. "I'm gonna wash up. My hands smell super stinky now."
"Sounds good." Her brother mumbled distractedly as he hurriedly brushed the body into the trashcan. Together they plodded out of their room. Right before parting ways, Mabel took a moment to beam an appreciative grin.
"Hey, Dipper? Thanks for keeping on eye out for the creepy vampire guy!" She chirped.
The gratitude brought a brief smile to his face."No problem. If only they were all this easy, right?"
Mirth filled the hall as the twins shared a hearty laugh together. Dipper's joy however came to an abrupt end when his eyes wandered back to the lifeless result of their encounter. "Seriously though, let's keep this a secret, okay?"
"My lips are sealed, bro!" Mabel zipped her lips up with tight with an imaginary zipper. Dipper then hustled off downstairs to dispose of the body. Only a second later he returned to fetch the notebook that carried all his jotted vampire observations.
"I should probably throw this out too." He mumbled, and then headed off to securely dispose of the paranormal evidence.
About a minute passed before Mabel skipped back into the bedroom, now with freshly scrubbed hands smelling cleanly of spring soap. She then proceeded to gather the garlic cloves that littered the floor. By the time Dipper returned, it was like the underwhelming nocturnal visit had never happened. He sighed in relief and made a beeline for his bed.
"Glad we don't have to worry about that guy anymore." He thankfully remarked around a gaping yawn. He was still a little ruffled, but that would wear off soon enough. It was just as they said earlier. When all was said and done, it just wasn't even close to being strangest thing they'd ever seen. With that being the case, he thought it was high time to get back to bed, They needed to be rested and ready for whatever weirdness they were destined to deal with the next day.
Such was life for them in Gravity Falls. No point in questioning it, especially at that hour of the night. Dipper flopped onto his mattress and curled up under the refuge of his sheets. "G'night, Mabel."
Several seconds passed, yet he didn't received his customary reply. Puzzled, the boy sat up and gazed across the room. "Mabel? You okay?"
Mabel's mind was currently elsewhere. The tween had taken out one of her sketchpads and was longingly looking at one of her doodles. As she gazed at the hand-drawn image of her and a sparkling fanged hunk, she gently traced her fingers over it with a long, wistful sigh.
"Maybe next time..."