Walk-Through

(May 15, 2016)

"Here we go," said Manly Dan Corduroy. "I hope you like it!" He unlocked the door of the house at 616 Gopher Road and stood back to let Stan and Sheila Pines, and then Wendy, Dan's daughter, into the new dwelling.

"I like it!" Sheila said as they stepped through a compact foyer (two closets, one on either side) and into the spacious living room. It featured a triple window with diamond panes looking out over an expansive front lawn. The gently curved driveway, newly paved, wound through a stand of pines that cut the road off from view and provided a wind and sound buffer.

The walls had been painted a soothing light blue. A hardwood floor gleamed, new-finished and buffed to a high shine. A tall stone fireplace stood in the center. "Ash dump is in the basement," Dan said helpfully. "Makes cleanin' easier. I'll show you when we go down there." His big voice echoed a little, the way voices will do in an unfurnished room.

"OK, hon," Stan said, holding Sheila's hand. "Go nuts. What goes where?"

"The sofa here, definitely. Maybe an area rug. Coffee table there, your recliner there, some extra chairs for when we have guests—we can put the mission table against that wall, with two chairs on either side of it. I love this room! We can do so much with it."

Dan beamed. "You think this is something, come with me." He led them through one of the doors opening off the living room, into a dining room. Hardwood floors again, and a sedate chandelier hanging over where the table would go.

"Oh!" Sheila said. "A fireplace here, too!"

"Uses the same chimney," Dan said. "Same ash-dump arrangement, bins down in the basement utility space, easy to get to. Kitchen is over there. As soon as you're ready, I've got an electrician and plumber standing by to install everything."

"Looks like I gotta make another SCUBA dive for some gold," Stan said, but his tone said he was joking.

Wendy watched all this, feeling a wave of affection for her old boss. Stan had mellowed out over the past years. His marriage to Sheila Remley had domesticated him—though he still had that gunpowder-keg touchiness and could go off in an instant, especially if anything threatened his family. The Pineses' house was big. Really big—3500 square feet of living space on the main floor, more than the Shack appeared to have, and more room in the basement. Although, thinking of the comparison, nobody could ever measure the Shack, somehow. It always seemed to have rooms in impossible places. Probably just a Gravity Falls thing, though.

Anyway, Sheila had her own workroom and a small library. Two guest rooms with a connecting bathroom. Tucked in the back, with a view of the surrounding cliffs, was the master suite, sitting room, bedroom, master bath, shower stall and jetted tub. The basement had been finished—it was a walk-out basement, with all the rooms at the back of the house having their own windows and a downstairs back door directly under a deck off the dining room. A separate door led into the utility space for HVAC, water heater, and ash bins.

Stan's rec room was also in the basement, with room for a pool table, an alcove for a TV and space for a loveseat, place for a mini-fridge to hold his beers, the works. Another small guest bedroom and bath. Two spare rooms. And that didn't include the attic (semi-finished, with a floor but no finished ceilings, like the attic in the Shack) or the two-car garage.

"Neat," was Wendy's pronouncement.

"OK," Dan said. "Now, I'm gonna run you guys in to the appliance and fixtures store over in Hirschville to pick out the stove and refrigerator and whatever else—"

"Sweetie," Stan said to Sheila, "How about you run over and take care of all that? I know from nothing about it, and I'd just be in the way. OK with you, Dan?"

"Sure," Dan said.

Sheila gave Stan a kiss, and then she and Dan climbed into his pickup and rumbled down the drive. "I figure we got a good three hours," Stan said.

"Yeah, at least that," Wendy said. "You sure you want to do this?"

"Wendy, this is freakin' Gravity Falls," Stan said, taking out his phone. He punched in a number, listened, and then said, "OK, Ford, the coast is clear. Bring your voodoo bag."

Ford was only a few yards away, downhill in his own house, not yet quite as finished as Stan's—everything was roofed in, walls were painted, floors were down, but the trim was undone and the floors had not yet been sealed and polished. He walked uphill, carrying a bulging satchel. "Hello, Wendy," he said as he emerged from a growth of young pines. "Glad you're here to help."

"Yeah, I'd do the diggin', but you know, my back," Stan said with a grin.

Ford gave him a playful punch on the arm. "Slacker."

Stan supervised as Ford and Wendy used a post-hole digger, stashed in the garage, to dig five strategically-placed cavities, Ford locating the spots and Wendy excavating. Then Ford handed Stan a small white paper bag. "You can at least make yourself useful. One of these in each hole, and then bury them. Wendy, help me with the glue here."

"Bag of marbles?" Stan asked, looking inside. "These the ones ya lost, Sixer?"

"Not marbles," Ford said. "Moonstones. Sodium potassium aluminum silicate, a variety of feldspar. A gemstone, Stanley."

"Buryin' perfectly good gemstones you could charge tourists fifty, no, a hundred smackers for!" Grumbling a little, Stan strolled around the yard, dropping a moonstone in each hole, covering it over, and moving to the next.

Ford crooked a finger. "Wendy, come with me."

They started at the front door and went counterclockwise around the house. "This is quite a lot of unicorn hair," Ford said. "I'm surprised they let you collect this much. They can be very frustrating."

"Yeah, well, they got more hair than they know what to do with," Wendy said. "And it's all in the way you talk to them." She had brought in the bag of hair, enough to treat both twins' houses.

"They must have mellowed out since last I dealt with them," Ford said. He painted on a special glue, and he and Wendy began to string a single strand of unicorn hair—it would take more than one strand, of course, much more, but they'd lay them end to end—around the base of the outer wall. Ford asked, "How did you get that black eye, Wendy?"

"Eh, a tree branch sprang back and slapped when I walked over to the unicorn glade," Wendy said. "'S not bad, just a little puffy."

"I see."

"So, Dr. P., how's the school comin' on?"

"Hmm? Oh, the Institute? I have hired twelve faculty members. We have twenty-four lecture rooms, four labs, and the equipment is all in. We're set to open for the fall term with a hundred students—we've accepted eighty-four already, and we have so many applications we may stretch a point and go to 120. I hope to double that for next year."

"Great. And the government job?"

"Oh, that's really more a part-time thing. Just looking into the occasional random outbreak of strangeness, you know. I sort of coordinate. We almost caught the West Virginia Mothman last month. I really wish I could get my hands on that one."

"Bad dude?" Wendy asked, smoothing down a strand of unicorn hair.

Ford painted on more glue. "No, not particularly, but he's owed me twenty dollars for more than thirty years now. The deadbeat."

It took them a little less than an hour to protect Stan's house. "Next month you'll have to help with mine," Ford said as he repacked his satchel. "Well, what now?"

"Let's go up to the Shack," Wendy suggested. "I oughta get back to work anyway."

"And I can check to make sure the mystic protection is holding there as well," Ford said. "We have an ample supply of unicorn hair if it needs replenishing."

They could have driven—Stan's car was in front of the garage, and Ford's was just down the hill at his house (614 Gopher Road), but, heck, you could see the roof of the Shack from Stan's side yard, and they'd already worn a small path through the pines, so they just walked up a gentle slope for about a hundred and fifty feet and came out not far from the shed and the pig sty.

"Looks like business is good," Stan said, rubbing his hands. Two tour buses stood in the parking lot.

"Yeah, better get into my work jacket," Wendy said. "Later, Stan dudes!" She went in through the family entrance.

"She's a good girl," Ford said as he and Stan stood in the side yard, contemplating the Mystery Shack.

"Woman," Stan corrected. "She's grown enough to be a woman now. Hope Dip's gonna be man enough for her."

"I don't think we need to worry about that," Ford said, taking an instrument from his coat pocket and switching it on. He pointed it at the Shack.

For just an instant, a transparent pinkish bubble, flowing with arcane symbols, seemed to shimmer into existence, covering the Mystery Shack like a dome. "Still workin'?" Stan asked.

"Hm? Oh, yes. Field's still strong."

"Ford," Stan said, "come clean, brother to brother—how come you're insisting that we gotta put this unicorn voodoo shield over both our houses? What's gonna happen?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe something drastic," Ford said.

He replaced the scanner in his coat pocket. After a moment of silence, he said, "Stanley, you don't remember it clearly—but take my word for this. You and I are going to have to be on our guard over the coming summer. I'm making plans to be here just about every day—just down the hill in July, after my and Lorena's house is ready. I won't spend more than four hours out of Gravity Falls at a time, if I can possibly help it."

"You're just makin' me nervous now, Poindexter. What?"

Ford took a deep breath. "We have to be ready, Stanley. This summer—and in physical form—Bill Cipher is coming back to Gravity Falls."

The End