The Mabel Who Knew Too Much
Chapter 1: Suspicious
Good evening. Welcome to the little town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. It is a hotbed of adventure, terror, crime, and the unknown. In fact it's quite a cozy little place, very similar to your own home town. But, as we shall see, the goings-on in Gravity Falls are sufficient to satisfy anyone's thirst for mystery . . . well, ALMOST anyone.
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Wednesday, July 31—Even after her noisy sleepover, Mabel was up this morning earlier than I was. She greeted me as I came downstairs, dressed for my work-out and run with Wendy: "Got any muscles yet, Dipper?"
"Working on some," I told her casually. I would have invited her to join us, but she sat at the breakfast table gobbling down some chocolate cereal covered with what I assume was maple syrup instead of milk.
As I headed for the door, she called out, "Oh, hey, have you seen Mr. Stringfellow around? I've misplaced him."
"Your marionette?" I asked. That was a new phase of Mabel's craft hobby—sock puppets she'd got tired of, but marionettes, those puppets worked by strings, were more of a challenge. Mr. Stringfellow was extremely weird-looking, very tall and spindly, with a too-big round foam-plastic ball for a head. His skeleton was a bunch of wooden dowels, cut to various lengths and strung together. Mabel had dressed him in a gaudy red, yellow, blue, and white clown outfit, but she was still trying to get the balance right and couldn't yet make him walk with the controller and strings. His legs kept getting tangled with his neck and shoulders and each other. I'd seen her working on the puppet recently, but—"Haven't seen him lying around," I told her.
She thanked me and said she'd hunt him up. So I went outside. Wendy had spent the night in the Shack, at her very first sleepover with Mabel, Grenda, Candy, and Pacifica. I knew because their noise up above my head (Mabel and I always swap rooms on sleepover nights) kept me awake until about two.
But Wendy was already out in the yard doing modified crunches and looking bright and cheerful in her gray T-shirt and red shorts. She greeted me, we did our warm-up exercises and stretches, and then we put on our sweatbands and started our run. We're up to forty-five minutes now, and we're doing very close to three miles. Wendy tells me my legs are getting some shape to them finally—she can see a little bulge in my upper calves, and she says my thighs are looking more muscular, too. I guess the exercise is paying off, and I do feel better—I have more energy and more stamina, although after such a long run I'm always a little achy.
Gideon Gleeful was downtown and waved to us. After we passed him, Wendy said, "Hey, Dip, one day you oughta tell him how you, like, saved his life."
"Don't think so," I gasped. "Mostly 'cause I was the one who nearly killed him in the first place."
"Is Gideon still hittin' on Mabel?"
I had to space out the answer over about a tenth of a mile, because I was getting winded: "Nope. They're sort of casual friends, have been since Weirdmageddon, when he switched to our side, but he's not focused on her any longer. He's got a crush on his sixth-grade teacher now."
"We should send her a sympathy card."
That got me laughing, and we had to slow down a little bit, so we didn't quite make our three miles—but we did over two and three-quarters.
So we got back to the shack, hit the showers—separately, I mean, though I kind of daydream—but never mind all that. I had some breakfast, oatmeal and a banana and milk. Wendy had a banana and an orange and her one cup of coffee for the day, and then she helped Melody and Soos get the Shack in shape for its 9:30 opening.
I didn't have anything planned, for a change. I'd just had a weird adventure with an interdimensional freak called the Horroracle, and I wanted some R&R, so I figured I'd hang with Mabel.
Didn't see Grenda, Candy, or Pacifica around, so I figured they'd gone home already. And Mabel wasn't in the Shack, so I went outside—just in time to hear her scream . . . .
"Nooo! No, no, no! He's dead! Oh, Gompers, why?"
Dipper came running to the back yard of the Shack. "What's wrong?"
"Look at what Gompers did! He committed puppetcide!"
Dipper stopped close to Mabel out near the fringe of the woods. Gompers, the goat, was nonchalantly munching on a severed leg. The remains of Mr. Stringfellow lay scattered about, the victim of Gompers's appetite. They no longer looked remotely like a puppet. "Can you fix it?" Dipper asked.
Mabel gave him a glare. "Doy! It'll be quicker and easier to start completely from scratch! I have to face the facts, Dipper. Mr. Stringfellow is—gone. The only thing that we can do now is give him a decent burial."
Mabel's definition of "decent" meant something not far short of a state funeral: Mr. Stringfellow had to have a coffin, of course, and a suitable tombstone, and there had to be music and a eulogy and—the whole nine yards of string, in other words. Dipper rummaged through the junk room, where surplus boxes and wrappings for the Mystery Shack merch got tossed, until he came across a box about the right size, a foot and a half long, four inches deep, and four inches wide. Though it was cardboard, it was covered with paper in a faux woodgrain pattern. He had no idea what had been packaged in it.
In the gift shop, Mabel was distributing black armbands to Soos, Melody, Abuelita, and Wendy. "The services are at noon," she told them in the solemn, quiet tones of a funeral director.
"We'll make time for it, Hambone," Soos said kindly.
"Will this be a good coffin?" Dipper asked, holding out the box.
"Yes," Mabel said with a sad smile. "Mr. Stringfellow was always partial to fake walnut."
Soos cut a plank to make a headstone, and Dipper painted it stone-gray with quick-drying tempera paint before adding Mr. Stringfellow's name in black.
Then while Mabel did the mortuary work of stuffing the foam head-ball, the still-moist chewed coat and pants, the frayed and limp strings, and the dismembered dowels into the box—"I don't think we can have an open-casket viewing," she said sadly—Dipper got on his laptop and looked for some appropriate music. He found a possibility and ripped the tune as an mp3, sending it to his phone.
When Dipper came back downstairs, he found that Mabel had called her friends. Grenda, Candy, and Pacifica milled around in the parlor. They were all dressed in black, complete with veils, and they murmured condolences to Mabel, who sat in the armchair and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Pacifica hugged him tightly and said, "I'm so sorry for your sister's loss."
"Uh—thanks?"
"If there's anything we can do to help, just let us know."
"That—that's very kind."
"We're here to offer her emotional support. If there's anything—"
"Well—one tiny thing."
"Just name it, Dipper."
"Uh—could you please let go of me?"
Pacifica finally broke the hug. "I will never understand boys," she said in an irritated tone.
The Shack had quite a few tourists that morning between ten and twelve. Soos led two Mystery Tours, and Wendy chalked up a good many sales—not a record, but not at all bad for mid-week. As usual, the buses left before noon—there was always about an hour's lull, and Abuelita had already suggested that they add on a room that would serve as a fast-food restaurant to attract more midday traffic—and at twelve Soos put up a sign on the door: "Closed for a family funeral. Will re-open in thirty minutes. Stick around, dawgs."
Dipper got to be the pallbearer. Mabel insisted he wear the black suit that he—or Bill Cipher, rather, in his body—Bipper—had worn the previous year to her puppet show. Dipper hated it, not only because he despised the memory of Bill in his body and in that suit, but also because he had grown. Now the suit was tight across the shoulders, and the sleeves and pant legs were six inches too short for him—but Mabel had him wear black socks and said that would hide it.
He also was the band. And the gravedigger—he had already excavated a little hole in a soft spot of ground not too far from the Bottomless Pit.
Just as they formed up to make the trip out to the grave site, a single car pulled up in the parking lot—a handsome, classic 1950s-era Chrysler Crown Imperial, shining black and in immaculate condition. A stout, balding man in black got out and noticed the group. He came over and asked, "I beg your pardon. Is the Museum closed?"
"Yes, sir," Soos said. "But it won't be for long, if you'd care to wait, dude sir. We've got to bury Mr. Stringfellow for Mabel."
"My condolences," the man said, and Dipper belatedly realized that his measured speech resulted from a cultured British accent. "A pet, my dear?"
"No," Mabel said. "A puppet."
The man gave a courtly nod, almost a bow. "Then I shall not intrude."
"Play, Maestro," Mabel told Dipper.
He pressed play on his phone, and the music began, a perky and yet solemn tune.
"Ah," the visitor murmured. "Gounod, 'Funeral March of a Marionette.' Quite appropriate. I have always liked that melody."
"Come along," Mabel said.
"Thank you, no. I'm only here for a brief appearance."
So the rest of them walked to the back of the shack and out to the grave. Dipper turned off the music and Mabel said, "Family and friends, we are here to commemorate the passing of our beloved Mr. Stringfellow. Alas, we hardly knew ye. Chunk him in, Dipper, and cover him up."
And so the solemnities were properly attended to.
Though the whole thing lasted less than fifteen minutes, the black limo was gone when they got back and Soos re-opened the Shack. "Huh," he said. "Maybe that dude will come back later. Or maybe he just made, like, a cameo appearance."
The girls changed out of their funeral clothes and had lunch together, laughing and chattering away—just as if the funeral had never happened and as if they hadn't spent the previous night doing almost exactly the same thing. Mabel asked Pacifica how things were, and she shrugged. "Dad's making money already on those wifi hotspot mudflaps, so he's happy. Mom's happy that he's not grumpy. Everything's OK, I guess. Oh, my cousin's, like, coming to visit later this week. He's from upstate New York."
"How old is he?" Grenda asked. "Is he fair game?" When Candy gave her an exasperated look, Grenda said, "What? Marius and I aren't exclusive, you know!"
"I think it is time you gave someone else a chance, perhaps," Candy retorted. Under her breath, she muttered, "Nae jasin-ii sonyeon-eul eodgi wihae dangsin-eul bunswaehaeyahanda."
"He's like, fifteen I think," Pacifica said. "I haven't ever even seen him, to tell you the truth. The few times we visited his family, he was always off at boarding school."
"Well, we'll be excited to meet him," Mabel assured her. "We'll make him feel right at home."
Looking faintly skeptical, Pacifica glanced around the parlor. Though under Soos's management the Shack had been brought up to code—it no longer really qualified as a hovel—it wasn't exactly a luxury spot. "I'm sure he'll find this place very . . . quaint," Pacifica said, after a brief search for the right word.
"Guys?" Wendy called from the gift shop. "I think Pacifica's ride's here."
"Oh," Pacifica said, hopping up. "That's right, Mother wants to take me shoe shopping this afternoon. Come on, Grenda, Candy. Welly will be happy to give you girls a lift home."
They said their goodbyes, and Mabel saw them to the door. Wendy, leaning on the counter, asked, "So what's up next, Mabes? You plannin' to replace Mr. Stringfellow?"
"Yeah, eventually," Mabel said with a sigh. "As soon as the grief heals, you know." She perked up. "So, tomorrow, I guess."
The phone rang, and Wendy reached for it. "The Mystery Shack, come for the mystery, stay for the weirdness. How may I direct your call?"
A pause, and she frowned. "No, dude, she was, but she just left. . . . Her chauffeur came and picked her up. . . . Home, I think. . . . Well—huh." She hung up. "Dude just cut off on me. I didn't like his voice, anyhow. Creepy."
"Who was it?" Mabel asked.
"Dunno. Wanted Pacifica, seemed mad when I told him she'd already gone." She looked thoughtful. "He said something that rubbed me the wrong way, though. When he asked where she was and I told him I thought she was headin' home, he said—aw, it's nothin'."
"No," Mabel insisted, "what did he say?"
Wendy frowned. "He said, 'I'll grab her there, then.'"
Mabel frowned. "That sounds . . . suspicious."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"OK."
Mabel's eyes narrowed, and she slowly repeated, "Suspicious. . . ."