A Taste of Ashes
Chapter 1: Just Outside of Reality
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: July 22-We have only a little more than five weeks left here in Gravity Falls, and yet there is so much I want to do! Great-Uncle Ford says I probably won't have any luck tracking down the Venus' woodpecker trap tree. He points to the abundance of woodpeckers to argue for the rarity of its plant predator, and maybe he's right. It could be just one of those legends that isn't really true, not even in Gravity Falls, like the Hide-Behind.
So I decided that, even with time growing short, I would slack off just a little. So this morning after Wendy put me through our workout (oh, right, I meant to note that Wendy has me on an exercise routine, but I'm always too tired to write about it), I reluctantly agreed when Mabel wanted me to walk into town with her.
"C'mon, Mabel," I said at first. "I ran two miles in thirty minutes just now! I need to rest!"
"Two miles is nothing!" Mabel insisted. "Say . . . are you and Wendy running every day?"
"Every single day," I said. "Even her days off."
"Ah! Methinks the lady doth be training you! For a . . . marathon! Wah-wah!"
"We're not running that far," I told her.
"Double entendre, bro-bro!" She poked my face and went "boop-boop" for, well, too many times. And also I think she mispronounced "entendre." But anyway she got me out of my chair.
We went through the gift shop on the way out, and Wendy said, "Hey, meant to tell ya, man. You did good today, Dip, so I think tomorrow we may go an extra ten minutes on the run. Get ready for me early."
"Oh, he's ALWAYS ready for you, Wendy!" Mabel said.
I clamped my hand over her mouth and dragged her outside. She kept licking my palm.
It's only about a mile walk into town, and I have to say that after a week of exercises and running, it didn't actually seem all that far. But then we got into town—there were plenty of people already up and about at 9:30—and Mabel said she wanted to go to the craft store, the drug store, and the candy shop. I told her I'd hang out in the arcade to wait for her.
So I turned the corner and stopped and blinked and wondered if I'd gone out of my mind.
Because tucked between the arcade and the coffee shop café—and believe me, there is NO ROOM between the arcade and the coffee shop—I saw a narrow wooden building, no more than ten feet wide, and two stories tall. Five steps led up to an arched doorway; beside it was an arched, narrow window, curtained inside with what looked like purple velvet; and stenciled over the door was an arched sign: MAGICK SHOP. It was aged wood, I could tell, looking all splintery under layers of crumbling gray paint. Everything about it seemed to warn "STAY AWAY!"
I wanted to go in.
I can't explain WHY I wanted to go in, because both my arms broke out in goosebumps and I got that cold-to-the-bone feeling I've had before in the presence of ghosts.
But—a magic shop just appearing overnight, like a mushroom after a hard rain? One standing in a place where obviously no building could possibly fit? Oh, man, this was like a cliché right out of fairy tales and second-rate fantasy stories! The Little Shop that Wasn't There, you might call it. The kind of place where they sell three wishes that end in disaster, or a love potion that works too well, or—you get the idea.
I stood there just staring, blinking my eyes and wondering if maybe perhaps I was dreaming and was in the Mindscape. But, no, the sun was pretty hot, I was sweating a little, and when I pinched myself, it hurt. Not as hard as when Mabel does it, but still.
The shop seemed, well, dead. In a metaphorical way. I think that's what it's called. I mean, no lights inside it, no noise, no sign that any of the passers-by even noticed the place. Nobody glanced at it, and certainly nobody went up the five steps to the door.
Mr. Gleeful, Gideon's dad, came around the corner with a couple of shopping bags in his arms, and I stopped him. "Excuse me, Mr. Gleeful," I said, "but how long has this place been here?"
He glanced over. "The café? Oh, I'd say just about fifteen years or so."
"No, the—"
The goosebumps on my arms felt like they wanted to fly to my spine.
There was no Magick Shop there at all. Just the arcade and next to it the coffee shop. "Uh, thanks, sir," I said lamely.
"You're certainly welcome. Hey, tell your uncle for me that any time he wants to trade in that classic car of his'n, I'll give him a right good deal, you hear?"
"Yes, sir." Though there wasn't a chance in the world that Grunkle Stan would trade in the Stanleymobile. Mr. Gleeful went on around the corner.
I shrugged. Weird stuff happens in this town. Hallucinating a store isn't even in my top ten. So I felt in my pocket for my folding money—I had ten dollars in ones that I intended to change into quarters, and with luck that would last for as long as Mabel's shopping spree.
But—the Magick Shop was there again. I'd hardly taken my eyes off it, but it had vanished and then come back. This was definitely making its way up the charts. In fact, the Gobblewonker had to move over as it climbed past. I walked over to the steps and put my foot on the bottom one. It was solid. I walked to the top step—but not onto the front stoop. Nothing would persuade me to get that close to the door.
I thought furiously, but could remember nothing in the Journals that covered a situation like this. I felt at a loss, but—
"I'll ask Great-Uncle Ford," I told myself. He'll know what to do.
And then—then the shop door slowly, soundlessly, opened . . . .
Reminding himself to breathe slowly to prevent hyperventilation, Dipper paced back and forth on the sidewalk opposite the Arcade, his eyes watering because he wanted to keep the intruding shop under close observation and tried to avoid even blinking. "Come on, come on," he kept muttering, wondering when Stanford Pines would get there.
The morning was heating up, with bright sun and a fair sky—not a cloud in it. Yet traffic was slow on a sleepy summer Monday—few pedestrians passed, and even fewer vehicles. Every time a car went by on one of the side streets, Dipper hoped it would be Stan's treasured El Diablo with both of his grand-uncles in it.
For twelve or so times, it was not.
The magic-shop door had closed slowly again, and without the least sound, as Dipper had retreated in near panic, stumbling down the five steps, nearly falling when he reached the sidewalk. Then he had dashed across the street, backing away because he had the feeling that the door could open and something might come out of it—
His walking backward caused a heavy kid, a boy ten or eleven years old riding a bike, to wobble dangerously as he narrowly avoided a collision. "Hey, doofus, watch it!" the boy yelled, pedaling furiously as he went around the corner.
Dipper didn't respond, but by the time he stood on the opposite sidewalk the shop door looked firmly closed again. He patted his vest pocket, found his phone, and took it out and snapped three or four quick photos, without really aiming. Then he called his great-yuncle Stanford's number—it was number 1 on speed-dial—and to his relief immediately heard the reassuring baritone on the other end: "Good morning, Dipper! How are things?"
"Not so good," he said, his voice shaking. He hurriedly explained what was going on and then as he waited for Ford to reply, he started biting his lip. What if he just thinks I'm crazy, or fishing for attention? What if the shop disappears while I'm talking to him?
But to his relief, Ford seemed to take him seriously: "Intriguing. I'll come downtown right away. Just let me pack a few instruments and we'll see if we can learn anything about this unusual phenomenon."
"Bring Grunkle Stan, too," Dipper blurted.
Ford chuckled. "Why? Does this shop have a 'Poker Day' sign on the door?"
"No, but—but Grunkle Stan is good to have if, you know—if things get rough."
A moment of silence and then Ford said, "Right you are. I'll collect him and we'll be over as soon as possible. In the meantime, Dipper, I think you did the right thing. Stay away from that place. It's probably nothing dangerous, but there's no sense taking chances in a place where a tree can eat a woodpecker."
When the connection broke, Dipper felt a tingle of guilt. Had his great-uncle Ford sounded slightly hurt at Dipper's asking for Stan to come, too? The two brothers had reconciled nearly a year earlier, after the cataclysm of Weirdmageddon and Stan's heroic sacrifice, but—but they weren't as close as Dipper and Mabel, even now. Dipper didn't want to hurt Ford's feelings, but—well, Stan had saved his life when zombies threatened, and the old man had proved he really cared for Dipper and Mabel, and—
Why do I always beat myself up over things like this? Sometimes Dipper felt very close to adulthood. Other times he wondered if he would ever be the man he hoped he could become.
Dipper didn't dare look at his phone to read the time—his eyes ached because he stayed so focused on the strange shop—but he judged that half an hour had already gone by when, finally, he heard the rumble of the Stanleymobile's engine, and the long classic car glided to the curb. Stan usually parallel parked by the simple method of shoving any other inconvenient cars out of the way, but this early on a Monday there were plenty of open slots, and the car braked, the engine died, and both front doors opened as the original Mystery Twins stepped out.
Dipper glanced over and beckoned.
And—of course—when he looked back, the shop had vanished. He groaned, "Oh, no, no, no!"
"Where is this apparition?" Ford asked as he walked over.
"It was right there!" Dipper pointed, and his great-uncles glanced over, then stared at each other, and then at him. "I swear, great-uncle Ford, it was right between the Arcade and the café! It was there. I mean, I walked up the front steps!"
"Indeed?" Ford murmured. He carried a backpack, and he reached inside for an instrument, which he aimed across the street. "Let's see what the readings are."
"Spooky store, huh?" Grunkle Stan rasped, coming to stand behind Dipper. "Some nerve of 'em, openin' a place that competes with the Mystery Shack! Maybe a little creative arson is in order."
"Stanley," Ford murmured absently, "that honestly would result only in the destruction of the arcade and café. Hmm. Bizarre readings. It looks as if there's indeed a disturbance—"
"In the Force?" Stan asked.
"No, no, in the fabric of reality," Ford said. "But it's not really all that strong. I've seen much higher readings than these—around unicorns they're triple this, for example. And Bill Cipher, well, if he were around it'd be off the scale! But there is definitely something odd about the juncture of those two buildings."
Dipper was looking at the gallery of photos on his phone. Most were sneaked shots of a freckled redheaded girl, but the last three showed—
"Look at this," Dipper said. "It shows something was there."
Ford took the phone and both Stans looked at the image. "Fascinating," Ford said.
"Yeah, yeah, Mr. Spock," Stan rumbled. "But what is it? I mean, I see the arcade and the café, and there's like a blotchy, misty, wavery gray spot in between them that obviously ain't there now, but it's not a shop."
"No, it isn't. It's something just on the other side of real," Stanford said. "Maybe—I don't know, maybe we can't see it because we're adults. Or maybe it's searching for a special kind of mind."
"Hah! Out of luck with me, then. I don't have one of them!"
"No, no, I mean it may need a young mind, an imaginative one—Dipper's, in fact. Perhaps only a young person can see the shop qua shop. Perhaps in the whole town, only Dipper can see it, or enter it."
"I'm not interested," Dipper said.
"Good," Ford said in a decisive tone. "Such things can bode very ill for you, Dipper."
"For Mabel, too," Stan said. "For the bode of you! Get it? It's funny 'cause it's a pun!"
Ford pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes and sighed. "Yes, Stanley, it's a danger for both Dipper and Mabel. Remember, Dipper, curiosity can be used as a lure. It's possible this is just an accidental intrusion, with nothing malevolent behind it. Such things happen occasionally."
"Try all the time, Poindexter," Stan said. "While you were away, nutty stuff was always happenin' around the Shack. One day a rock asked me to roll it over 'cause it was getting sunburned on the top."
"What did you do?" Dipper asked.
"Rolled it over. In exchange, it told me where I could find its brother. It's a rock that looks like a face."
"Oh, yeah," Dipper said.
"It was homeless, so I offered it a place near the Shack—"
"That's not exactly a parallel, Stanley," Ford said.
"Oh, no? Well get this: One late evening on the stair, I met a man who wasn't there! So I kicked him to the bottom and chased him into the forest."
"Probably a low-level apparition or ghost," Stanford said. "There's a large burial ground—"
"Yeah, of lumberjacks, I know," Stanley said. "But that was like this shop—somethin' that just faded in and lasted long enough for me to chase it away."
"More similar than the rock," Ford agreed. "Well, as Stanley says, these manifestations generally don't have the power to last very long. It's likely this one will fade over a few days. Just—just stay away from this corner for the rest of the summer, or until the readings normalize. The same goes for Mabel. I'll do some research and see if I can learn anything about such phenomena. There may be ways of countering them that I can learn about. At any rate, do nothing until you hear from me."
"Got it," Dipper said.
"Listen to him, Dip. He's got like a dozen degrees, and he knows what he's talkin' about. Don't go near the place," Stan said, as if backing up his brother.
"Grunkle Stan," Dipper said, "I won't. I promise you, I won't."
And, at the time, he really meant it.