Chapter 1: Back Again?
As this story begins, the sleepy town of Gravity Falls Oregon was slowly waking up to another, seemingly mundane day. The woods towered around the edge of the village and as usual the atmospheric hum of animal chatter filled the air. Together with the surrounding forest, the people of Gravity Falls awoke and started to go about their morning routines. The air was cut with sharp 'thunks' as Manly Dan chopped wood for the fire, the scrap heap was alive with the hammering and yodelling of crazy old man mcGucket, and little Gideon Gleeful could even be heard more than two houses away as he sang over breakfast.
While all else was perfectly normal, and a regular daily occurrence, two people approached by van, who definitely did not belong...
As Dipper Pines spied the town through the tall trees, he couldn't help but recall his last five (or wait... was it six?..) summers he and his twin sister Mabel had spent there. It had been a blessing in disguise when their parents had told them that they were to stay with their great uncle Stan for the Summer at age 12. Both he and Mabel, who was currently asleep and drooling in the front next to him, had been apprehensive at first. They had never met their grunkle and were dreading staying in some backwards town with nothing to do. Luckily, that was so far away from the truth. From the first day they had stepped foot into Gravity Falls, both siblings could tell that the quiet unassuming town was hiding a lot.
The first summer they had spent at Grunkle Stan's shop 'Pines Pawns' had involved adventures with gnomes, lake monsters, dinosaurs, and so much more. However, instead of the expected 12 year old pre-teen reaction of terror, Dipper and Mabel were caught up in all the excitement, and were soon hunting the danger out for themselves. They had eagerly awaited the end of each school year until they could come back to discover more of the weird and wonderful sights that the not-so-peaceful woodland town had to offer.
Dipper was gradually snapped out of his reminiscing as he pulled up in front of a shabby old building with flashing neon lights and faded posters glued to the insides of dusty windows. He turned to his now snoring sister and nudged her shoulder gently.
"Mabel we're here, wake up." With a muffled snort, Mabel opened her eyes and yawned as she rubbed the rest of the sleep away.
"What? At Grunkle Stan's?" Dipper turned the ignition and threw open the van door.
"Yeah, we're here. Lets go say hi, we can surprise him." The two jumped out of the van, one more clumsily than the other, and approached the familiar entrance. Ignoring the paint-flecked 'closed' sign, they pushed through into the dim shop, with the soft tinkle of the door's bell sounding behind them. The building was stuffed with odd trinkets and obviously phoney artefacts, as well as some ridiculously expensive fake jewellery. Both twins were startled by a loud shout from the depths of the store.
"Can't you idiots read! The sign says closed! As in, not open!" Smiling Dipper called back,
"Well, I guess if you don't want us here we can just leave now!" But before he even finished his sentence, their great uncle Stanley Pines shoved his head through the signposted 'staff only' door, and laughed.
"Kids! Woah, you've definitely grown again." He lightly punched Dipper's shoulder and gave Mabel a quick squeeze before she collapsed into a cushy armchair with an outrageous price tag attached. Chuckling, he continued;
"So how come you two are here already, last I heard you weren't arriving for a week?"
"Well, we didn't really have anything to do and we don't exactly have as many friends at home as we do here, so... we bumped it up a bit" Dipper replied quickly.
"Yeah, and my brilliant bro Dip over here lost our house keys while mum and Dad were away so we didn't exactly have anywhere else to stay." Mabel exclaimed with an indignant gasp.
"Couldn't you stay with your great uncle Stanford?" Their other grunkle asked.
"Nah he's busy working on some new doohickey for the university, and you know how he gets when he's working on something."
"True, I could hardly stand it when we were kids. But anyways, did you two want to stay over here?"
"Oh no, me and Dipper already found this awesome, creepy shack in the woods for a bargain, so we were gonna move straight in there."
"You're welcome to visit any time." Added Dipper, and agreeing, Stan replied
"I'll take you up on that some time the shop's closed, I could use a break."
After an hour or so, the siblings decided they needed to get moving, so they bade Stan goodbye and drove the rented van deep into the woods. They soon reached the old, weathered cabin just as the sun hung closely above the treetops, basking the whole area in an orange glow. Mabel gazed up at the stained lumber and whistled.
"Well Dipper, this definitely looks like the home of a serial killer. Great choice you made on this one."
"Aw come on Mabel, it'll look just fine after we fix it up. We just need to spend a bit of time and effort on her. Shame Soos isn't here to help."
"Yeah well he's happy in Portland with Melody."
After a small sigh, Mabel continued,
"Well, let's unpack then shall we bro?" And with the decision made, the twins started lugging boxes from the van to the house. Slowly, it dawned on them that they shared very few belongings and the many boxes they thought they had packed only took about an hour to be unloaded into the front room. Dipper locked the van up and heard Mabel screech from near the top of the house,
"I call the spooky attic!"
"Fine! Have it, you weirdo! I bet it's disgusting and Cold!" Dipper shouted back, secretly berating himself under his breath for letting Mabel get first choice of room. Dipper continued,
"And you better not leave me with all the boxes! You know my noodle arms get tired after heavy lifting!"
"Yeah Dip! Just let me move all my stuff up first." And with that, they both started distributing their meagre possessions around the house.
Cardboard boxes now forgotten in the cellar, Dipper searched through the measly supplies of food they had brought along and picked out a can of beans and some suspiciously green bread. A few minutes later, and his bubbly sister had thundered down the stairs and into the kitchen.
"Dipper, you got dinner ready yet? Oh, well... maybe we can get some takeaway." Dipper huffed in defence of his admittedly lame cooking skills.
"What?! It's not like I had much to use here. And we can't get takeaway, or had you forgotten we live in the middle of the frickin' woods?"
"If we got here in a van, then a pizza guy definitely can."
"Mabel, no. We just got here, and you can suffer through my beans on toast."
"Fine fine, but I get to choose the dinner-time entertainment."
"Sure, whatever. As long as it's not..."
"Ducktective here we come!" Dipper groaned in despair.
As they watched a duck in a Deerstalker hat solve mysteries, the two fell into easy conversation and discussed their future in Gravity Falls.
"Well we'll have to look around for some odd jobs to pay the bills, but I'm hoping we can get out and start documenting even more of the strange activity around here." Dipper said to Mabel.
"Well we could find Wendy and see if her Dad needs any help lumber-jacking." She replied, half joking, but Dipper shut the idea down,
"No, she's moved away, I saw on her Facebook."
"Ooh, has Little Dipper been stalking someone?" Mabel questioned, giggling as Dipper turned bright red and stuttered out a quick denial.
"N-No! I just happened to notice, we are friends after all."
"Well, whatever. She's gone and Ducktective just found out his evil twin was actually trying to save their long-lost triplet, and not trying to destroy the world as he previously thought."
"Ugh, what a stupid plot." Dipper groaned in response.
"You know you love it, and besides, we can deal with it all in the morning."
"Yeah, I guess. But you know what? I did bring a new journal with us that we can start filling up."
"Cool, what's on the cover this time?"
"A pine tree. I thought it would be an appropriate nod to our name."
"Well, it's better than the others you've picked so far. I mean, I loved the llama, but a bag of ice? I mean, come on man."
"Mm, true. Well, I'm gonna head up to bed. See you in the morning."
"Yeah yeah, 'night." Replied Mabel, her eyes still glued to the screen, and after a tired chuckle, Dipper Pines made the trek up to bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, with his yawning sister soon behind him.
However, little did the two sleeping twins know, A dark and ancient being slumbered along side them...