Summer Break. The words every student waits to hear from the beginning of the school year. The time for cookouts with family and seeing who can dive into the dirty pool better. The time when you come out of hiberation and sometimes actually do things with friends, or even just sitting in your own house waiting for the newest thing. A time where everyone wants to relax in peace.
Although there won't be much relaxing for Stanley and Stanford Pines here.
They had been sent out for the summer with their Great Aunt, or as she said to call her, 'Grauntie Mabel'. The kids didn't actually know her at all, but she did spoil them often with small gifts and anything she could afford to feed them if someone had a hankering for specifics. The downside to being there was that she asked them to help take care of the place they lived in, which was half house, half shoddy tourist trap. It was called The Mystery Shack, filled to the brim with fake 'beasts' and cheap gifts designed to take your money nefore you even stepped in the door. Of course, because Mabel was so kind and was extremely generous in her discount policies, even more people came and spent more money often.
Stanford wasn't having a great time, though. As nice as it was, everything felt normal and bland. Like everyday life, nothing interesting or weird happening. But everywhere he looked, something strange seemed to happen. Things such as, his latest theory being that the mailman, who was very hairy and never seen at night, and especially on full moons, was a werewolf. He was always interested in finding these sorts of creatures, and all sorts of weirder things. He loved to watch shows where people explored to small, lesser known places and would study or find some strange beast. So when twelve-year-old Ford heard they'd be going to this small, woodsy town for the summer, he imagined about a true exploration adventure with his twin brother, Stanley. Yet all they've done in the past week was sit in the Shack doing chores or watching tv. Even now, he was raking the pine needles and sticks outside.
"Grauntie Mabel, can I go back out to the forest now?" he asked, turning back to beg her with big eyes. "I'm finished with the raking."
She smiled down to him and ruffled his thick, brown hair. "Of course, Sweetie. But-" She reached into her bag and pulled out some fliers. "You'll need to do me a favor! Trust me, if I had the time I would do it. And take your brother with you, stay safe! And don't get lost!"
Ford tried not to groan, at least he could go. He was sure Stanley would agree and help him, too. He was very protective and caring towards him, even though he got into too much trouble with others. And while he would've wished he could handle things himself, Ford liked that he had Stanley to have his back.
He took the handfuls of papers around to the front of the Shack and looked around for the boy. He found him trying to burn ants with his new watch, unsuccessfully. "Ley! We have to go do a chore for Grauntie! We're going into the woods!" he called.
Ley leaped right up and sprinted over. "Are you sure we HAD to? Or is this another excuse to go to the forest?" He crossed his arms and smirked. Ford tried to keep a straight face and tipped his chin up slightly.
"No, we really have to! M told me to get this job done!... The forest is just a bonus?" he smiled awkwardly and shrugged.
Ley shrugged back and tore about half the stack of fliers out of his hands. "Alright, SURE. Let's get going then, poindexter!"
They split up and spent the next hour or so out amoungst the trees. Ford was disheartened that, again, nothing new was happening. He sighed and muttered to himself, "I guess there really is nothing new out here to find." Grabbing another paper from now-thin stack, he stopped by the next tree and held the flier up. When he hit the hammer against it, there was an echoing metalic clang rather than the usual "bonk" noise from the wood.
His eyes widdened. "I've discovered something! I really have!" Shaking excitedly, the child smiled and dropped the hammer and papers. He felt the trunk to see if it really was a metal tree. His fingers found the edge of a cold door. Pulling the other side of it, the small door creaked with age. It mustve been made by a person, rather than a new kind of tree...
Still intrigued however, he reached in past the cobwebs and felt something. Lifting it out carefully, he looking over a book wrapped up in a thin red sheet. Beneath the sheet, the book was the same red shade and made out of leather, with golden edges made of metal on each corner. A glass eyepiece fell out while he unwrapped it. Turning it over, the cover had just as much tear as the rest, with only a mapping of the big dipper constellation marked with a "3" inside the scoop.
Ford opened the book slowly and felt the old looking pages. Who was the person that made this? It was filled with beautiful drawings and clean, crisp handwriting. He sat down in the grass and found himself lost in the stories of beasts and monsters, and the fact that they were said to live right in this very town. His excitment peaking, he flipped through and found half of it was empty, the last page that was written on a mess of ink stains and blotted out sentences, the only legible writings stating, '-I was wrong! Nobody is safe, everyone is possibly him in disguise! Keep your minds safe, keep your bodies pure! TRUST NO ONE'
"Hey!" He jumped and almost dropped the book. Stanley was coming up from behind him with no more papers, just a curious look in his eyes. "What'cha got there?"
"Well, uh, i-it's nothing," Ford stammered. Ley just laughed uneasily at his response.
"What? You really won't show me? I'm hurt!" Stanley sat down beside him. Ford calmed down and put the book back on his lap.
"Sorry... I... You just really startled me is all. This book... It's like some sort of journal that has all these great things, all of them in or around this town! Did you know there are gnomes, bigfoots, fairies, and things called 'Leprecorns' in these very woods?"
"Woooah... What's a Leprecorn?"
"Part Leprecaun, part Unicorn," he turned back to the page and held it up for Ley.
"I think we should go find it! Maybe Grauntie Mabel will listen to me finally about exploring and it will even help her business to find some of these things!" Ford said with a wide grin on.
"Well then, let's get goin' bro!" Ley jumped up with a hand out to help his brother up, too. "Where to, Captain Nerd?"
'Captain Nerd' giggled and looked in the chapter. "Let's see, we need to go this way first towards a river..."
What a mistake.
Ford had been too focused on reading the directions and descriptions of the journal, that he hadn't been paying any attention to whether he was going the right way. He assumed Stanley was in the lead as usual, but he should've realized that he was the one leading this time.
"Why are we stopping?" Ley whispered. "Are we where the thing-a-corns are?"
He bit his lip. "I...don't think so..."
Ford turned to see him looking surprised. "Why not? Did ya read the instructions wrong? Maybe you should've let me read them."
He frowned and snapped back, "Maybe you should've asked and led then!"
This time, Ley actually looked hurt. But before he could respond, the ground started to shake to a small degree. The boys looked down at their feet and saw rocks moving little by little. It grew in intensity slightly but still remained very weak.
They looked back up at eachother. "I think its an earthquake!" Ley was getting very unsettled now and looked around wildly.
"It seems small, I'm sure it won't be a-" Ford was interrupted as what could be possibly hundreds of tiny men jumped out of the surrounding bushes and trees to enclose them in a circle. The twins stood back to back immediately while they stared dumbfounded at the small men.
One of them with brown hair and a brown beard that was shorter than the others' gray hairs stood before them. "What are you doing here? I thought we had an agreement! No human comes in our land...without a beautiful Queen Offering!" He looked honestly upset that there was no girls with them.
Ford leaned back towards Ley. "I think these are the Gnomes... How did we end up here?" He shrugged as his face cleared from shock to annoyance.
"Whatever they are, if they don't leave us alone I'm gunna hit'em first and pound 'em good!"
With the gnome seemingly in-charge still waiting for an answer, Ford cleared his throat and tried to speak louder. "I-I'm sorry sir, we hadn't meant to go this way, honest! We w-were reading the directions to another place and mistepped. We've been out here all day, and would really appreciate it if you could let us go back to our home..."
The gnome looked thoughtful for a minute and stroked his beard before nodding. "Yeah, ok. I personally get lost every other day! Don't worry about it I guess, since you'll leave us alone we'll leave you alone. My name is Jeff, and I'm like the king around here, basically. If you tell me where you live, I can get you back there!" Ford smiled and held back a sigh, about to agree.
Before he could, unfortunately, Ley punched the gnome 'king' in the face. He turned to his brother and with his mouth gaped wide. Jeff got back up quickly, holding his nose. "Ow! OW! You know what? I've changed my mind! You're enemies! Garden variety gnomes! ATTACK!" Immediately every gnome around them hissed and jumped at them. As they were jumping, the twins were able to run through and escape any harm.
"WHAT was that?" Ford screamed at Ley. He looked a bit shamed and bent his head down.
"I'm sorry, I was getting more an' more stressed out and I had to hit something!" he looked back up to meet his brother's glare. "Besides, what if they didn't keep their promise to leave us alone?"
He sighed and kept running, the sounds of the hissing and stomping getting further away. Ley looked back and giggled. "Y'know what? I'm sure we're safe, did you see their legs? Suckers were tiny! They couldn't keep up with-"
A loud screech filled the air as the stomping got immediately louder. Both boys looked back again, to see a giant monster that appeared to be a 25 foot tall gnome made out of individual gnomes that was rushing towards them. They ran even faster, screaming in unison now.
Stanford started to tear up and broke his screams. "I'm sorry! I should've just finished our job and we could've been in and out of here safely! Or payed more attention to the directions in the book! Or not asked to come out here at all! This is all my fault!"
"Don't! Don't you dare!" He saw that Stanley was trying not to cry, too. "We're going to get to Grauntie and maybe she can help us! And if we don't, then we can do this ourselves and make it back anyways!" He started looking around as they ran, and stopped suddenly. Ford stopped too and looked back.
"Why are we stopping?!" He said. Ley ran over to a pile of junk.
"Look! This could help, right?" he crouched and pointed at it. On closer inspection, the 'pile' was really just a golf cart, dirtied and almost broken down in some spots.
"How can that help? It's gotta be empty on gas and broken!" Ford said.
Stanley sat in it anyways and held up some keys from under the seat, jingling them around before turning the cart on with a surprising start. "It works!"
Ford was confused but didn't have time to think about it as the monster pushed some trees back to roar at them. He held in another scream and jumped in beside Ley. "Drive, drive, DRIVE!"
Ley slammed his foot on the gas pedal and mud spewed up before it slowly pulled itself out and gained immediate speed through the woods. Both boys began screaming again as they hit everything in the way; bushes, tree limbs, squirrels. The distance between them and the gnomes became much larger and Ford started to nervously laugh as the roaring was even a bit quieter now.
He turned back to Ley, panting. He was also panting, and had better control of the cart now. Ley glanced over and said, "There is GNOME way we escaped that!"
He chuckled at the pun before gasping im fear as they bumped over a large root. "WATCH THE ROAD, WATCH THE ROAD!"
The cart drove right out of the trees into a clearer area. "Look! It's the Shack!" He turned to see Ley was right, and Ford was never happier to see the old run down place. He started to think about it; if they had ended up here, they must've taken a left instead of a right maybe...
As they were around halfway back, it started to rain gnomes around the cart. "What the-!" One grabbed onto his seat and hissed. Stanley leaned over and punched it off, causing the cart to swerve drastically. "OH, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION!"
The cart stopped just outside of the Shack, having run out of fuel almost completely. They jumped out and pushed or threw the flying gnomes away. "Hey!" Ford turned. "Take this!" Ley tossed the rake to him and nodded. He smirked back and started swiping the gnomes together and tossing them out of the way. Ley was waving around a weedwacker, turning it off and on. Each one began running back to the woods, and the monster was no longer in its monster form, having thrown too many of its components.
Jeff stepped up from behind other gnomes. "You're coming with us! Nobody can hurt me without consequences!" Stanley raised his weedwacker and spun it, Ford himself tapping his palm with the rake's handle threateningly.
"You know what? We can go, we can go! For now! But you'll get what's coming, even if it's not from us!" he pointed at them, and ran off in fear when the weedwacker was spun again closer to him.
He relaxed and looked back sombrely at Ley. "I'm sorry..."
"I said to stop saying that!" he interrupted. "It's fine, really! That was the best adventure we've had so far here! You really can't stay sad after that, can you?" Ford smiled back at him and laughed quietly. Ley opened his arms. "Awkward sibling hug?"
"Awkward sibling hug."
"...pat pat."
Going back inside, Mabel frowned at the boys. "Where have you two been? It's been hours! And- Why are you two so messy?" They looked at eachother, not knowing what to say. She looked outside the window beside the table. "Look, it's already getting d- Is that a golf cart?"
They shared another surprised glance. "We found it in the woods," Ford spoke up. "We drove it here to get back faster...after all the papers were up and spending so much time out there doing that." He shrugged subtly to Ley.
She stared out at it longer. "It looks like the one we lost weeks ago! Besides the 'Gnomes Rule' an 'Shmebulock' grafitti. However you found it out there, well done!" She looked back to them as they started heading off to their room. "Hey boys? That cart had a free reward from the gift shop for its return... And I was already thinking, you help out so much around here, too... Why don't you help yourselves and pick sething out, eh?" She smiled to them.
Smiling back tiredly, both boys ran to the shelves and boxes in the corner. Ford knew what he wanted if he could buy one, so he went straight to it. The wall was lined with hats and snowglobes, the lower half being a bunch of brown jackets with fuzz on top. The tags read "Real Explorer's Jacket!" with a picture of the guy from the Beans cans giving a thumbs up. He put it on and looked in the mirror, the jacket fiting perfectly. "Nice..."
He turned around to see Stanley digging through a large box. He jumped and had to readjust his glasses when he raised something up quickly with one arm. "Aha! Grappling hook!"
Mabel nervously smiled. "Wouldn't you prefer something less...in the recall box?"
Ley pulled the trigger and was lifted into the air via ceiling board. "Grappling Hook!" She sighed and laughed to herself, he giggled too.
"How are you getting down, Bro?"
Twenty minutes to midnight now, but Ford stayed sitting up in bed. He held a flashlight in one hand as he continued reading through the pages of the strange journal. He was muttering to himself, "There's so many things in this book... I think the Author might've been onto something here. Well, maybe other than that stuff about trust." He turned and smiled as he watched his brother laying peacfully belly-down in his own bed. When someone's always there for you the way he was, you can probably trust them with your life. Maybe the Author didn't have anyone to trust, but he was glad he did. "Goodnight Bro."
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